Love Bound

by Rebecca Ryan

  Some sleaze-ball, doughy realtor or banker or something from Boston is not going to take away my clinic and the one thing that ties us all to our parents. I carefully arrange the muffins on a white plate with delicate roses along the edge.

  The reality is, Finn Colton is trying to kick me out.

  And he has no idea who he's dealing with.

  Chapter Two

  Finn

  Seven in the morning is shit late, but I never sleep anymore. I set my watch down on the cheap little side table and lie staring at early light against the windows. I'm tired. Tired of waking up angry all the time. Wrestling with that window last night should have been my last fight of the day, but then the showers spat rust—I tried all five—and I ended up sponging up in the mudroom off the Inn's kitchen in a foot sink. At least I think that's what it is. Just a square, low basin with a lip and an equally low faucet.

  Maybe to clean mussels? Lobsters? Traps? Feet? Dogs?

  I finally fell asleep around three a.m. and now the sunrise is blinding me. Every time I close my eyes, I just want my brain to shut up. It's been like this for two years and rolling dark thoughts around in my head is not a solid plan for success.

  I had success. I had it all. It's not what it's cracked up to be.

  When Allison and I visited this place four years ago, it was still open and looked nothing like it does now. Yeah, maybe it needed some TLC but not a complete renovation. We were on our way down from Quebec City on our seven-year anniversary and found this place. It was July, and quintessential Maine, with cerulean blue skies and sparkling water, the islands just off the beach interrupting gazes and everything wavering colors of green with batches of summer flowers everywhere.

  Shit.

  Allison fell in love with Echo Bay and The Inn, and we ended up spending the rest of our time here. She made me promise to do something that day and now, I'm trying to make it happen. She always wanted to come back, but we never did. I wish we had.

  Now it's eight. I roll over, the bed creaking and smelling of mildew. The springs in the frame must be a thousand years old. I had an old sheet in the back kitchen I used for wiping out mud and that's what I slept on last night. There was a musty throw in one of the closets, some hand-embroidered thing in black with bright colors, but it worked.

  Wiping my eyes, I sit up, reach over, and sniff my T-shirt from yesterday before pulling it on. I don’t have any clean underwear, so it will be a commando day. The wheeling gulls outside pull me to the window and I see several huddled together on the roof below, on the slate stretching over the front porch facing the sun.

  We'd talked of buying it then, but we didn’t have any money. Now I have the money, but don't have her. It would take two years at least to bring this place around. I could wait that long. I could do that for Allison. I could sit here and pine for her and sweat for her and bleed for her. That would be my penance. Anything to bring her back to me.

  I reach for the doorknob to the bathroom, a bright little glass item, and it comes off in my hands.

  The place is literally falling apart. Whoever took care of it did a shitty job. George Johnson, nice guy, but not handy with a hammer is my guess. I stare at the knob in my hand before reaching for a Phillips head and squat to fix the damn thing. Maybe this is why he was so reluctant to sell. He knew the place was a dump.

  Dump or no dump, I bought this place for her. And I know it's crazy, but I want to have it ready for her.

  Someone knocks at the front door downstairs. What the hell?

  I it again, this time, more like a rap. I grab my watch and check the time.

  Fuck. Who comes over on a Saturday morning at eight twenty-five?

  As I trip down the stairs, I can see someone outside on the front stoop. The door has two parallel panels of glass from the middle up. Dirty, filmy, curtains block my view, but then the person moves slightly and it's clearly a woman. Probably some do-gooder from town welcoming the newcomer. I stand still for a moment thinking if I don’t move, maybe she'll go away, but she leans in and starts to peer through the glass.

  I sigh, put on a smile, and open the door.

  "Hey," she says.

  There's a light blond woman with a loose ponytail, light green cardigan with threads pulled, and blue jeans, standing and holding a plate of muffins.

  Are you kidding me?

  "Hi," she tries again. "Six blueberry muffins. Just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood." There's a pause. "Oh, and this." She holds a completely round, blue stone in her hand, like a marble. "Found it right outside. A good omen."

  For God's sake.

  "Hi," I say. We stand for a few moments and then I realize I should invite her inside. That's what people do. That's what I used to do. But I don't want her to come in.

  "I brought coffee too," she adds, handing me the plate, then leaning over and grabbing two giant mismatched mugs from the metal lawn table by the front door. "It's black, but I can run over and get cream and sugar if you need it."

  Another second goes by and we are bound by this food thing. I'm holding the plate and she's got the coffee.

  As she pushes her way inside, she keeps talking. "I looked at your truck and figured you probably drank it black."

  For some reason, this makes me laugh. There is something about my dad's truck, maybe how beat-up it is helping her guess I liked strong coffee, that's charming. She obviously anticipated my inability to cook anything with no food in the place.

  "I'm surprised the electricity's on," she continues.

  "Yeah, I am too. I had to keep calling. It took a while for the power company to come check out—"

  She's nodding and moving toward the front of the dining area. "That'd be Noland. He's like a hundred."

  "Yeah. And five feet tall. The guy's a midget."

  "You mean a little person." She smiles. I can tell she's smiling even with her back to me. There’s a curve to her cheek when she turns to wipe dust off a table with her arm. "When I was a kid I thought he was an elf because of his ears." She sets the mugs down and turns to look at me.

  I can't remember the guy's ears. "All I know is he decided the place wouldn’t go up in flames."

  "Always a good thing," she says, then frowns. "So, you're not an electrician?"

  "Hell no. I can wire a light with dimmers, but I'll have to get someone else in here to do the sprinkler system."

  Stepping toward the windows facing the shore, she rubs one of the little squares layered twelve-over-twelve in dust with a finger and peers out.

  "Do you know this place?”

  "Here," she says, turning back to the plate of muffins. "Eat. Drink. Yeah, I do." She pauses for a sip of coffee. "I grew up around here."

  There's something so familiar about her standing right in front of me, her hip out a little, arm wrapped around her stomach, the other bent and holding the hot coffee like we've chatted like this before.

  She smiled. “I mean, most people have. This is not the land of transplants, like a lot of Maine.”

  The coffee is good. And hot. My stomach rumbles. She hands me a muffin and goes on.

  "This is a place where a lot of people never leave and families go back generations."

  "Wow. So, I'm going to be an outsider forever," I say.

  "Yep," she says and smiles again.

  And I think: Perfect. I don't want to belong.

  Instead, I bury that shit and say, "Well, guess I better make the best of it. Good to know though, not to invest too much effort."

  "Well you won’t be here that long," she adds.

  I can't make sense of that one. Seems a little rude after her muffins and coffee debut. I notice how the morning sunlight catches her blond hair. There are highlights in there too, really golden, and a few small curls around her face.

  "Let me wipe down the booth," I say and duck in the kitchen for a second. The towel is still damp from last night's sponge bath. A single twenty-foot long booth seat tucks under those long windows. Five square Formica tab
les punctuate the span with three chairs each. The rest of the dining area has round tables, some turned over, some broken, with most of the chairs stacked in the far corner.

  She gestures to the booth as I finish wiping down the black little spindly chair.

  "Thanks. So where do you live?" She leans against the table. It scoots suddenly and she starts to fall backward, but I grab her by the arm. "Whoa. These used to be bolted to the floor," she says.

  At once, I see her slightly unhinged, a little out of her element. Something just happened that she had no control over. Nothing she could anticipate, and it threw her.

  I know a lot about anticipation and control. I used to get paid a lot of money to do both.

  "You okay?" I ask her.

  "Yeah."

  I can tell she's embarrassed. I let go of her.

  "But really," she says, not letting it drop. Setting her coffee down, which miraculously does not spill on the table, she ducks underneath and points to two filthy holes in the floor.

  "I believe you. I don’t think you broke the table," I say.

  At this, she laughs.

  She couldn’t possibly break the table. She's a tiny thing, small-boned and thin, strong though. I could feel the muscle harden in her upper arm when I grabbed her. A fine spray of freckles covers her nose and cheeks. Women don't seem to have freckles anymore. I think they cover them up with makeup. She doesn’t have any of that on either. Just some lip balm.

  "Well, this table always jiggled. I guess the bolts finally got stripped," she says.

  "We're not bolting anything to the floor this time around. It's all going to be new." I pause. "Well, new-ish. There's an old barn just north of Newburyport and we're repurposing the boards. They're tamarack, about twelve inches wide. They're going to be turned into tables."

  "Really?"

  "With wrought iron frames and legs," I add.

  "Posh."

  "Not really."

  "So, you're going to give The Inn a full facelift? You're not just going to renovate parts of it?" She gestures as if to encompass the entire building.

  "Yep. All these windows are coming out," I tell her.

  The back of her neck tenses up and she straightens her shoulders. "Really? You're going to take all these out? They’re really old, you know. That's why they're all warped. The glass is handmade."

  "Maybe."

  "No. They are," she insists.

  "But they'll leak heat in the winter. We're going argon-filled, double-paned, a series of five with lower panels to swing out. Easy to clean too. Jesus, these must have been a pain in the ass."

  "You could do plastic," she suggests.

  I can tell she’s leading me to a different conclusion. She' knows there's no way I'm putting plastic up over windows. I just cock my head to the side.

  "Or here, see this?" She rubs a finger along the side of the window frame in the corner. "See these two little holes? They held a magnet. You could do Plexiglass and magnets."

  "Or bubble wrap. There's an idea." My words make her stiffen even more and I immediately regret sounding like a jackass.

  Now she speaks patiently, as if to a child. "You should know this. You just cut the Plexiglass to fit the window. And then you attach it with magnets. The air acts like you know, like your fancy argon gas, and creates a heat barrier. It'd be a lot less expensive."

  "Yep. Nope."

  "Save on that budget, earn some points," she says to me but looks out the window.

  I look at her funny. I don't know quite what she's talking about. I guess she means the budget in the grand scheme of the universe. Like my carbon footprint would be smaller. "I'm not going with Plexiglas, but maybe I can come up with something else."

  She picks up a muffin and though I'm not hungry, I find myself reaching for one as well, to keep her company.

  Why should I care? She barged in here.

  Be nice. Be nice.

  "You worked here, then?" I ask.

  "No. No, no, no, I never…I never worked here," she says leaning back, but there’s something about the way she says "worked" that trips my ear.

  A warning bell.

  She turns around and stares out the tiny window panes again, wiping off a new one to see through. "I love this Eastern light. Especially in the fall. You're in for a treat in a month. The sun doesn't come up quite as early. Look at the water," she says.

  I glance out the window, but something of interest does snag my attention. "What's the name of that island over there? It's not on any map. I mean it's on the map, but there's no name."

  She sighs and talks around a big bite of muffin. "Rock Island. At least that's what we locals call it. The causeway connects it to the road right here, and there's a regular bridge at the other end. But when the tide's out you can walk to it in your boots or barefoot. At least if the tide comes back in you have a way to get home."

  "I thought the causeway was a trail."

  She laughs, all the tension now gone from her body and I feel like I've won something.

  "Yeah," she says, still laughing. "I guess I wouldn't exactly call it a causeway. It's more like a wide footpath. You can get a car on it though," she adds, nodding. "I mean it is a road. It's a dirt road. Yeah, it's a dirt road."

  "It's a dirt road with a little footpath along the edge," I correct her.

  "And guardrails," she adds enthusiastically.

  "What's left in the lagoon when the tide goes out?" I’d noticed when I looked at the place that when the tide was out, the little inlet was still filled with water.

  "Well, a lot of kids. They love wading around out there in the summertime. They look for sea cucumbers, starfish. Once an octopus."

  I must register something on my face because she clarifies with, "It was a baby. A baby octopus. Have another muffin. I made them for you. Are you like gluten-free or something?"

  She hands me another one and says, "There used to be lobsters in the deepest part, but the water has gotten too warm for them and they’ve moved far offshore. When it gets above fifty degrees, they go deeper to find colder water." She swallows the last of her coffee. "What do you know about the ocean? You got a boat?"

  "No, and not much," I say. "I don't really do much with water."

  She smiles. "You're going to have to learn. The whole town—the entire coast—is driven by the tide schedule."

  "These are delicious," I observe, pointing to the muffin.

  "The tides are a part of life here. You'll need a chart, like now. You need to know where you can walk places and when. You're dead without a tide chart."

  I set my muffin down and look out the windows. The warped glass buckles the view of the water, the sand, and sky. I stuff my hands in my back pockets.

  "What? You don’t believe me?” she says. “We have twelve-foot tides here. You can get caught in the caves."

  Caves?

  "They're north, about half a mile,” she says. “There are two openings, but really just one cave. When I was a kid we had signs posted on how to get there, but so many people come in the summer now who don’t know anything about the tides—"

  "Because they're idiots?"

  "Well, yeah, that too." She sighs. "We had to take the signs down."

  "That's too bad."

  "If you don't pay attention to the time and the tides and get stuck, you can drown."

  I flinch. Her back is to me and she doesn’t see it, but I feel it.

  "Like Anemone cave in Acadia. Except, Echo cave doesn’t really fill up. It's not super deep, because it's not a true cave and you can only get there when the tide’s out. When the tide comes back in, you're sunk. Unless you can get to the top. I mean, nobody's ever really drowned. Because there's always room at the top." She glances at me. "Supposedly."

  "You tested it out?"

  "Me? God no. I don’t want hypothermia." She spreads her arms and says, "That's why it's called Echo Bay."

  "So, the caves make this Echo Bay. I thought it was called Echo Bay because you cou
ld shout across the water and the sound comes right back."

  "That's what we tell the tourists," she says.

  That's right. Because Allison and I were tourists. I think of how silly we must have looked shouting at Rock Island, waiting for our voices to return. I spend way too much of my time waiting for things to return.

  "You'll have to check it out on your day off," she says.

  I shake my head. "Wouldn't want to get caught."

  "I'm exaggerating. You can just climb up on the rocks inside the cave if you get caught. The last time, it was a couple from Kentucky. They disappeared and then moseyed out seven hours later."

  "They didn’t call anybody?" I question.

  "Sketchy phone reception here. You'll see. They were a little dehydrated and hungry. But we fed them at the Pine Cove, they were fine."

  "Oh, so you work there?"

  "No," she says. "I don't." And then she sits down swiftly across from me. "Listen," she says, looking at me directly, right into my eyes.

  Her eyes are stormy, light blue and depthless, and I realize they’re the color of the sea behind her. It’s too much. Her little spray of freckles across her nose, her fine features, full lips, all blur for just a second. Her skin is pore-less. I think if I were to touch her cheek, it would be hard to tell when I actually made contact.

  Just then, I feel a tug in a place I haven’t felt in a very long time and I have to look away.

  "I have to tell you something," and she keeps at it, trying to retrieve my gaze again. "And I…I need to be upfront with you about this."

  "What?"

  "I'm the vet from next door," she blurts.

  My heart leaps up and starts thudding hard against my ribs. I wipe my face with one hand and am finally able to return her stare. "You're the vet." It isn’t a question.

  "Yes. These are not welcome muffins. They're wooing muffins." She runs a hand through her hair and a finger snags on a wave. "How long are you up here for?"

  Forever is what I want to say. But I know this is a detour right now. This is not permanent. So I shrug and say, "For the duration."

  "So, a while? Okay. You've got to convince your boss to drop this thing about buying the house—my clinic—next door."