A short, gray-haired man, no taller than five feet with the name tag Murphy, stepped up to the cash register. “Sure, what’s the address?”
She rattled it off and saw his eyebrows pop up. “You bought Gilly’s place?”
“No, no, I’m just staying there for a little while.”
“I’ll get my box boy to hustle everything over on his bike in about twenty minutes. That okay?”
“Will he have enough room for what I bought on a bike?”
“Sure. We deliver all the time. He’s got one of those big baskets attached to the front and rear.”
“Great. Thank you.” She reached her hand across the counter. “My name’s Marley Lennox.”
He pointed to the name tag. “Murphy. Owner of this establishment and mayor. You’re the accident victim.”
“That’s me. Can’t drive a straight line when you’re asleep at the wheel.”
“Welcome to town. Hope you’ll stick around a while.”
“I might just do that.” She waved to him and took off out the double doors for…home…temporary as it was.
As promised, the groceries arrived on time twenty minutes later. She tipped the delivery boy with a generous amount, a kid no more than fifteen with a mop of brown hair and clear blue eyes.
The kid took the money and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. “My name’s Beckham Dowling Blackwood,” he announced. “You need any odd jobs around here, call me.” He dug out a grubby business card in off-white and handed it off. “That’s my phone number.”
She took the card and studied it. “Any relation to Quentin and Sydney?”
“My parents. I’m adopted.”
“Some of the best people are. Any relation to the Dowling Memorial Hospital?”
He beamed. “My grandmother.”
“Ah. Well, as you might expect, I didn’t enjoy staying there very much. But you should know it’s an excellent medical facility. I’d give it five stars on Yelp any day.”
The kid’s smile widened at the praise. “My mom and dad see to that.”
“I bet they do.”
“You’re the woman who ran her car off the Coast Road.”
Marley winced. “Word travels fast. My fame precedes me.”
“I’m saving up to buy a car. I want one of those sporty jobs.”
“Good for you. Just remember not to drink and drive or fall asleep at the wheel. It’s bad publicity and terribly embarrassing when it happens.”
“I’ll try to remember that. Thanks for the twenty bucks. And remember, if you need any yard work or anything like that, I’m cheap.”
“I’ll keep you in mind. Thanks for the great service.”
“No problem. You have a good day.”
As soon as she closed the door, Marley realized she was exhausted and hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. She went into the kitchen and turned on the oven. She ripped off the cardboard end and dumped the frozen pizza out of the carton and onto the counter to tear off the plastic.
Waiting for the oven to reach the right temperature, she unpacked the wine and considered trying it out. It was, after all, not even four o’clock. But she’d run all her errands and felt like rewarding herself.
She picked the pinot grigio, peeled off the foil top, and went through all the drawers trying to find a corkscrew. With no luck, she used a wooden spoon to push the cork all the way down into the bottle.
“You really are desperate,” Scott muttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that before.”
“Then you’ve lived a sheltered life, haven’t you?” she sang out as she poured the wine into a glass.
After she’d put the bottle back on the counter, he leaned over the opening and looked down to see the cork bobbing at the top. “Obviously, I have. How’d you learn to do that?”
“You don’t get to have my valuable life experiences without picking up some major superpowers along the way. Getting into a wine bottle is one of them.”
She went over to the oven and shoved the pizza onto the top shelf and set the timer for twenty-two minutes. “What’s your deal anyway? Why are you…you know…dead and hanging around talking to me in the middle of the afternoon? Isn’t there somewhere else you’d rather be?”
“Around this time of day, I like to watch my little girl leave school. Her mother picks her up.”
That information caught her off guard. “Oh. That’s incredibly sweet. What a good daddy you must’ve been.”
“I never got to hold her or touch her. Not once. So, I actually wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a daddy.”
Marley had the urge to reach over and try to pat his hand. But even she knew that was impossible. “Oh, Scott. I’m so very sorry. That’s…awful. Go ahead, you might as well take a seat. You’re the only one who seems to understand it all. Now I see why.”
“Don’t get attached to this place.”
“What? Why not? It’s perfect for me.”
“Because in about two weeks a couple from San Francisco will decide this is where they want to live. They’ve already toured the place twice before.”
“You’re kidding? Well, that’s crap. Those people can’t have it. Maybe Gilly and Simon will say no.”
“Why would they do that? You did say if they found a buyer, you’d move out.”
She held out her wineglass to him. “You’re very annoying, throwing my words back at me like that.”
Scott sent her a lopsided grin. “But there are other places in town that will suit your needs even better.”
“Oh, I see. What would you know about my needs?”
Scott gave her a withering stare.
“Jeez, that look is why you remind me a lot of my know-it-all ex-husband.”
“Why’d you get divorced anyway?”
“The usual. He came home one night and told me he’d found someone else. It was all very civil, cordial even. I got the house, but he wanted to share custody of the kids, which I thought was right decent of him under the circumstances.”
“You really have had a crappy five years, haven’t you?”
“Please don’t do that. Don’t pity me,” she cautioned. “Try to see it from my perspective. You wouldn’t like seeing people stare at you full of sympathy every time they set eyes on you. Invariably, you leave the house to go to the market and run into someone who thinks they know your pain. At first, they do it because they know your husband cheated on you with a younger woman. Then later, it’s because he walked out on you, packed up his stuff, and moved on to start a new life with her. I’m from a small town, not all that much different from this one. Everyone eventually knows that Ewan looked around until he found someone prettier and younger. But then you get your entire family killed and that look changes to one of two things—either downright disapproval or raw empathy, depending on who you happen to bump into. It’s grief all over again every time you turn the corner and run into someone who reminds you of the endless horror of it all, again and again. And then you’re filled with that anger knowing tragedy and loss is your only claim to fame. People see you differently. I can’t go through that again here.”
“So you took off for a new start. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you need to stop running.”
The timer dinged, and the pizza came out gooey and hot. She cut the pie into fourths and slid a piece onto a plate. “I’m not running. I’m seeking…something…trying to find another path. I figure it’s gotta be around here somewhere, right?”
“What do you want?”
She brought her pizza over to the table and took a slow sip from her glass. “That’s a good question. At this point, I’m not sure. I have days where I feel empty and just try to move forward on automatic. I know what I don’t want. I can’t be around children. Their little innocent faces…they haunt me.”
“You mean children in general?”
“All children.”
“That’s…you do know you’re cheating yourself out of a chunk of life, a future.”
>
“No. I don’t see it that way at all. I’m not putting myself at risk like that again. Making one mistake took everything away. One lousy mistake not seeing, understanding, what was right there in front of me. I should’ve seen what he was. I should’ve seen the crazy in his eyes. The thing is I didn’t even know he’d been stalking me.”
“You weren’t responsible for what happened. How long will it take to get that through your thick head?”
“Another decade should do it.”
“I see you’ve learned to use humor as a coping mechanism.”
“This is starting to sound an awful lot like a therapy session.”
“You weren’t trying to off yourself out there on the Coast Road, were you?”
“If I’d wanted to do that I would’ve stayed in Wisconsin where people actually knew me and at least would’ve bothered with a funeral. What have I got here? A handful of people who’ve known me for four days. Now that’s depressing. I have no plans to off myself.” She took a bite of pizza before it got cold and it ended up tasting like cardboard. “What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Hutton. Harris. My best friend married Jordan and then adopted my little girl.”
“Some best friend,” Marley muttered between bites. Frowning, she stared at him over her slice of pizza. The look on his face said something was off. “Unless that’s what you wanted.”
“I wanted Jordan looked after. Hutton, too. God knows I didn’t do it properly. I went off to fight a war, leaving her pregnant and alone. And for what? It cost me everything.”
“That’s how you died? In the Iraq War?”
“The Hummer hit an IED. Blew it into the next province. I was gone like…” Scott snapped his fingers. “Instantly. How is it that I don’t freak you out? Most people are shocked, surprised, taken aback. They want to run the other way. You don’t.”
Wine had a way of loosening her tongue. Moving into the living room, she got comfortable on the sofa and patted the spot next to her. “It takes more than a ghost to freak me out. I’ve seen death. Remember?”
“I guess you have.”
“Besides, you brought me back from the brink. I saw the blackness, and I wanted to stay there. If not for you, I might not be sitting here drinking this nice white wine.”
“And thinking about downing the entire bottle.”
“Someone has to. But you want to save me from myself, is that it? That’s why you hang around…to save people like me from themselves.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“I’m thinking of taking up surfing. Dawn patrol Wally called it.”
“Is it something you’ve always wanted to try?”
“I just want to live, to feel something other than utter sadness and try to fill this empty hole in my heart. Is that so wrong?”
“No. It’s perfectly normal to want to get rid of the agony that comes from loss.”
“Now see, I’m more willing to listen to what you have to say now that I know your backstory.”
“You want my backstory, lady? Grab your glass. You ain’t heard nothing yet.”
It was true, Marley found Scott’s story fascinating. They talked for hours. She learned everything about the guy.
She couldn’t believe she spent her first night out of the hospital in a deep philosophical discussion with a ghost. If her life had stayed on course, she would’ve spent hours writing a lengthy report detailing someone else’s mental state and how crazy and delusional that sounded.
But she’d learned that life wasn’t perfect. Far from it. It was messy and complicated…and sometimes full of shitty heartbreak.
If this ghost was a manifestation of her mind to help her cope, so be it. She would accept Scott’s presence as if she’d adopted a dog, a pet to talk to, to confide in and care about, maybe take all his quirks in stride.
Hadn’t Hollywood played up the role of ghosts in plenty of movies over the years? The Ghost and Mrs. Muir came to mind, the one where Rex Harrison played the ghostly sea captain haunting Gull Cottage. And who could forget Patrick Swayze as Sam Wheat?
As she unpacked her clothes and put them away in the modest four-drawer chest in what Gilly had deemed the master bedroom, she decided to settle in. She’d take this opportunity and run with it. Eventually, she’d be able to run, she told herself. Until then, she’d hobble.
She took out her laptop and carefully, slowly, crawled into bed, holding ribs still bruised and tender. After booting up the drive, she searched for a list of all the films about ghosts, zeroing in on one with a handsome actor in the lead. She tried watching it on her computer, but it was corny and stupid.
Bored, Marley’s eyes drifted closed in front of the monitor where an image of a man stood covered in a sheet. Another stereotype down the drain, she mused as she let sleep overtake her, nestling into the pillow.
She dreamed about a farmhouse outside New Glarus. And all the happy times she’d had there. But then the images of the blood came, came with every gunshot, the sound of bullets hitting flesh, echoing out into the lush green fields, the slopes and valleys where she’d played as a child.
There was so much pain. And then she remembered why she had to get away from it all.
Six
As soon as it started getting light out, Marley made herself get up and get dressed. She could only toss and turn for so long before her body and head began to ache.
Struggling to get a top over her head, she gave up and opted instead for a blouse she could button. Pulling on her jeans proved equally difficult, which is why she reached for a long flowing skirt with an elastic waist.
Without bothering to make coffee, she headed out the door to the beach, hoping to sit by the water and catch the sunrise. By the time she reached the strand, she was breathing hard. The pain in her side caused her to slump down on the first bench she came to that faced out toward the bay. She twisted around to watch the dawn come out of its darkness, the sunrise behind her, the water reflecting the glimmer and glow of first light.
She spotted Gideon Nighthawk in the distance, jogging along the shoreline. Doing her best not to stare at his muscular legs straining from the marathon run, she tried to look away, only to keep locking in on his form, his physique. She might not be in the market, but the man was nice to look at. He ran with the grace and ease of a sprinter, focused on the finish line, determined to take no less than first place.
When he looked up and saw her staring, she gave a neighborly wave before hightailing it back home. But she wasn’t fast enough.
He caught up with her on the sidewalk and went into concerned doctor-mode. “How are you feeling?”
Annoyed with his probing manner, her voice came off curt. “Do you really care? Oh. Sorry. Do you always run at dawn?”
“Not always. But I found myself awake this morning at five-thirty and couldn’t get back to sleep. How about you?”
She dialed back the attitude. “I’ve always been an early riser. Although the change in time zones might be throwing off my whole routine.”
“How’s Gilly’s house working out for you?”
“It’s fine. Better than. You live around here?”
“There.” Gideon pointed to the old stone pub across the street.
Before stepping off the curb, Marley looked up at the cottage, only to stare at the unusual rock exterior. “Now that’s a house. Funny though, I never would’ve pegged you for a person who appreciates old things.”
Insulted, Gideon scowled down at her. “Why not?”
“Big city background. Successful surgeon used to the finer things in life.” She could see that she’d hit a nerve. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to assume. Obviously, that assessment is way off base. You have great taste in houses. I’d love to get a look inside it sometime. You haven’t been here long, have you had an open house?”
“Why would I do that? I’ve already bought it.”
She laughed. “No, I mean, have a party where you invite friends and neighbors over after
moving in, like a housewarming.”
“Um, no. It never even occurred to me to do that.”
“You should. Invite the whole town to take a look at what you’ve done with the place. They bring gifts, bouquets of flowers, booze, even food. I’m sure there’d be interest in such an old building. And maybe do something about that backyard. It’s hideous.”
He winced. “I know. Got any brilliant ideas?”
She puffed air out and studied the crop of weeds sticking up through the asphalt. “Hmm. Well, right away, I’d say nothing will grow there even if you get rid of that crumbling blacktop. Too many environmental issues. But…having said that, once you scrape off the pavement and get down to the layers of dirt, you could landscape the area, put in raised beds, make a beautiful garden with a fountain. You’ve got the space to grow vegetables and flowers. I’d go big and do both. But that’s just me.”
The small talk continued about various plants with drought tolerance until they reached the corner where Gideon thanked her for the input. “Were you a big gardener back in Wisconsin?”
“You’re kidding, right? I thought you checked up on me. I’m a farmer’s daughter. Was,” she quickly corrected. “I must’ve been born with a green thumb. It’s in my genes.”
Slightly embarrassed, Gideon shifted his feet. “I guess I didn’t remember that part. Your family grew wheat as I recall. And had dairy cows.”
“Wheat, sorghum, corn,” Marley began. “Alfalfa for the cows. But we always had a garden out back, rows and rows of beans and heirloom tomatoes, big red suckers, so juicy you could eat them right off the vine, still warm from the sun. We grew every other kind of vegetable you could think of, leeks, peas, even cabbage. And pumpkins. Come fall, you should’ve seen how big they grew.”
The Coast Road Home Page 6