The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  I turned to them, people I barely knew, all of them I very much liked, and watched Paige hand out champagne glasses she’d obviously grabbed on our way up.

  Walt took up the other bottle of champagne from where Rob put it down on a low wicker table in order to open the one he had and then Walt popped its cork.

  The men filled the glasses, and when everyone’s was charged, I lifted mine.

  “To new chapters and new friends,” I said.

  “Hear, hear!” Rob called.

  Amanda bumped her shoulder against mine.

  “New chapters and new friends!” Paige cried.

  We all drank.

  When I took my glass from my lips, I lifted it again and said, “And long live Magdalene Lighthouse.”

  “Long live Magdalene Lighthouse!” Jackie called.

  I looked to Walt and lifted my glass up one more time to him and waited for his smile and the dip of his chin before I sipped.

  “I’ve got some munchies downstairs in the kitchen. Since we shouldn’t move an inch from right here, I’ll go down and get them,” Paige declared.

  “I’ll help,” Trish offered.

  “Me too,” Jackie said.

  The three women descended the stairs.

  I turned back to the view.

  Walt turned with me.

  Rob came to stand at my other side.

  “You did it,” I said to Walt.

  “We did it,” he replied.

  He was a very lovely man.

  “Never thought I’d see the day. And if I did, never would have dreamed it’d be this perfect,” Rob put in, and I looked to him. “Glad I got this shot.”

  “Thank you for not talking me out of it,” I said.

  “I tried,” he replied. “You just weren’t listening.”

  When my face scrunched up in a smile, I actually felt my eyes twinkling.

  Walt put his glass in front of me and murmured, “Long live Magdalene Lighthouse and God bless Cady Moreland for preserving a legacy.”

  “Please don’t, I picked toss pillows,” I murmured with embarrassment.

  “Shut up,” Walt returned teasingly.

  Rob reached out with his glass and clinked Walt’s. “God bless Cady and her legacy.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  The two men drank.

  Then Walt put his rough hand on the bottom of my glass and pushed it inexorably toward my lips.

  I started giggling but stopped enough to sip.

  “If you three are done congratulating each other, I’m going to go check out every inch of that bathroom. Cady, wanna come with me?” Amanda asked.

  Did I want to come with her?

  “Absolutely,” I answered.

  We moved down the stairs and it wasn’t just every inch of the bathroom Amanda and I checked out.

  It was every inch of the old girl made new.

  Only after we’d done that did we join the party.

  Coert

  Coert leaned against the side of his truck, head tipped back, eyes on the observation deck that was lit up and filled with people who looked like they were having a party.

  They were far away but he could still see Cady’s auburn hair in the mix.

  It was only in his mind he could see her green eyes.

  Then again, he hadn’t been able to get those eyes out of his head for years.

  Her anywhere near him, for weeks, he had not seen.

  She was steering clear, as she’d promised.

  And there he was, on public land but not far from her house, at night, in the cold dark, staring up at her like a brooding romance novel hero or worse, a creepy stalker.

  But there was no way in hell that woman after all these years had hauled her ass across the country and set herself up in the middle of nowhere in Maine, that middle of nowhere being right where he was, unless something was going down.

  Something she intended to drag him into.

  Or something she hoped he’d protect her from.

  He just had no freaking clue what that was.

  If she wanted to reconcile with her brother, she could have set herself up in Waldo County where that asshole lived.

  If she wanted another go with him, she’d be in his space, in his face, something.

  But there was nothing.

  All he knew was her husband was dead, her investigator had disappeared, but she’d appeared.

  Other than that, nothing.

  But something was up with Cady Moreland, Coert could feel it in his bones.

  He just had no idea what it was.

  He wanted to let it be.

  He wanted to forget her and move on.

  But he hadn’t been able to do that for years either.

  And now she was here and there was a reason she was here. People didn’t up stakes and move from where they grew up and lived their whole lives, in her case forty-one years, and plant roots somewhere else for nothing.

  And women sure as hell didn’t do that where a man from her past, who made no bones then or now about the fact he wanted her no part of any present lived.

  He just could not get a lock on why she’d done what she’d done. Why she’d shown out of the blue and reopened the gaping wound she’d delivered them both that obviously neither of them had found a way to permanently close.

  And it was driving him crazy.

  You Never Deserved It

  Present day . . .

  I PACED THE OBSERVATION DECK, but even pacing, my eyes were glued to the jetty.

  I had my phone in my hand and my heart in my throat.

  Because the shops on the jetty were on fire.

  I could see the inferno from there. The blaze burning high, billowing smoke shrouding city lights and streetlights.

  If there was a fire, police would be called, I was sure.

  Yes. If there was a fire, especially in a small town, police would be called to help, to keep people back.

  Would they be called to go in and help get people out?

  I mean, exactly how large could Magdalene’s fire department be? It was a small town. With a fire that big, surely it was all hands on deck.

  Now I couldn’t go to town and loiter on the outskirts of a fire to see if I could catch a glimpse to ascertain if Coert was okay. They didn’t need a bunch of people hanging around when property was burning to ash.

  I also couldn’t go into town and loiter outside the sheriff station because that was weird (and Coert had already caught me doing that once and that hadn’t been pretty).

  And I couldn’t call him because the last thing he needed was to have his phone ring if he was carrying a small child to safety at the same time hopefully not singeing his lungs from smoke inhalation.

  But there was a fire in town.

  And Coert was the sheriff.

  That required him enforcing the law all over the county, but Magdalene was part of that county. The sheriff’s station was situated right on Cross Street, for goodness sakes, just blocks from the jetty.

  Okay, so it was quite a number of blocks from the jetty.

  But it wasn’t fifty miles from the jetty.

  “Fuck it,” I whispered harshly, deciding to go back to not swearing tomorrow, and I stomped down my stairs through my fabulous, snug, gorgeous bedroom, down to my fabulous, snug, gorgeous family room with its extraordinary and comfortable circular sectional and curved TV. And finally I stomped down to and through my fabulous, warm, inviting living room to my fabulous kitchen with its window that looked like the semi-circular window at the bridge of some big, awesome ship.

  I had obviously transferred my liquor cupboard from the studio to my new kitchen, and there I found one of my new brandy snifters in which I put two pieces of ice from my new fridge and over it I poured some smooth but fiery tequila (this description offered to me by the liquor store owner, not that I’d had any of this smooth and fiery tequila myself . . . yet).

  That done, I stomped back up to the observation deck and fretfully watched a fire
while I ridiculously tried to settle my nerves with (exceptional, it must be said, but highly ineffective at that moment, no matter how smooth and fiery) tequila.

  In the end, I went to get the bottle.

  And in the end, after I’d woken from a doze with my head on the back of the built-in couch, I saw some smoke still shading the dark sky but the fire was out. Thus I snatched up my phone and stabbed it with my finger, hitting a number I’d programmed in even if I’d done it tremendously foolishly, my actions at that moment proving that thought irrevocably true.

  I put it to my ear and it rang once before Coert’s voice came over the line.

  “Cady, are you okay?”

  “Are you okay?” I somewhat slurred.

  Bad tequila.

  Bad. Bad. Bad.

  And bad ex-undercover-cop boyfriend who lied to me but made me fall head over heels in love with him and ruined me for all other men.

  Bad. Bad. Bad.

  “Why are you asking if I’m okay?” he asked.

  “There was a fire!” I screeched.

  “I’m a cop, not a fireman, Cady,” he stated like he was Dr. McCoy and I was James Tiberius Kirk.

  “So you didn’t save any small children tonight while suffering smoke inhalation?” I asked.

  A moment’s silence before, “Are you drunk?”

  “There was a fire, Coert!” I shrieked. “A big one!”

  “Calm down, Cady,” he said in a voice I hadn’t heard in years.

  Years.

  Millennium.

  (Not really, but it felt like it.)

  Soft and sweet and playful and amused, but he still meant to be obeyed.

  My toes curled.

  Bad, bad, bad ex-boyfriend.

  “Now answer me, are you drunk?” he pressed.

  “No,” I lied.

  “She’s drunk,” he muttered.

  “Is everyone okay?” I asked.

  “Why are you asking?” he asked back.

  “Because there was a fire that engulfed the jetty, Coert,” I stated like he was a dim bulb.

  “How do you know?” he queried.

  “I have a panoramic view of, I don’t know . . . everything,” I responded.

  To that, he inquired, “Are you alone?”

  “If your question is, have I gotten a dog yet, the answer is no. But I’m in search of one. A Newfoundland because we’re close to Newfoundland. I mean, not really, but I’m a heckuva lot closer to it than I was in Denver. But I think that might be goofy and I’ve always loved Hagrid’s dog in the Harry Potter movies. I had to look it up. It’s a Neapolitan mastiff. I haven’t gotten around to Googling breeders because I also think I want a French bulldog, so I can’t make up my mind. But I don’t want a dog that slobbers so I’m not sure I’m on the right trail.”

  “You aren’t on the right trail,” he muttered.

  “That’s what I thought. But how bad is dog slobber?” I asked. “If you love something, they could slobber everywhere for all you care.”

  “Did half the jetty go up in flames tonight and I’m sittin’ here talkin’ with a drunk woman about dog slobber?” he asked.

  I shut up and rethought the wisdom of phoning Coert to make sure he wasn’t suffering smoke inhalation.

  “My question wasn’t about a dog, Cady,” he stated.

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  Oh my God.

  “Do you . . . think I . . . I would phone you if I had a man—”

  “Don’t need details,” he interrupted me curtly, “but do need an answer.”

  Suddenly, I was sobering.

  “Why do you need an answer?” I inquired.

  “Half the jetty went up in flames tonight.”

  I stared at my lap then I looked over the back of the couch at the town.

  “Are you . . . ?” He couldn’t be. Could he? “Are you asking me if I have an alibi?”

  “I’m asking if you’re alone.”

  He could!

  “You’re asking me for an alibi.”

  “I haven’t seen you in weeks, Cady, and you’re callin’ me to see if I’m all right after a bad fire sweeps the jetty. I’m not a fireman. I’m a cop. I’m pissed half my town’s new jetty went up in flames but I’m all right. Now what I want to know is why you’re calling me out of the blue about something that has shit to do with me.”

  This was a question I couldn’t answer verbally because first, answering it verbally would be admitting verbally that I’d made myself drunk with worry (literally) about a man I was supposed to leave alone and move on from. And second, I was too angry to enunciate words since I’d worried myself drunk about a man who was asking me for an alibi for a fire I had nothing to do with.

  “We’re done talking,” I stated stiffly.

  “Cady—”

  “And don’t you come out here using your secret emergency code on my gate and hammer on my door in order to be mean to me, Coert Yeager. Forget I called. I didn’t call. This conversation didn’t happen. I’m back to steering clear. But warning, when I get my Newfoundland or mastiff or bulldog, I’m teaching him to bite tall, dark-haired, handsome men in aviator glasses.”

  Uh-oh.

  Did I say the word handsome?

  “Ca—”

  “Goodbye, Coert.”

  I disconnected, and then I turned the ringer off and finally I just shut the phone down altogether.

  I mean, really.

  He asked for my alibi?

  I glared at my phone not wishing it would explode but wishing my glare could transfer through it and scorch Coert Yeager.

  I then turned it back on for the sole purpose of erasing Coert “Mr. Judgmental and Grudge Holding Champion of the Universe” Yeager’s number from my phone.

  It rang in my hand.

  It was Coert.

  I took the call for the sole purpose of saying what I said in my greeting, “Do not ever call this number again.”

  “Do not ever hang up on me again,” he growled back.

  “I can hang up on who I want,” I retorted. “And anyway, it won’t matter because we’re never speaking again.”

  “Cady, why are you getting drunk by yourself at the lighthouse?”

  “Because I live at the lighthouse. I mean, how crass, going to some bar to drink yourself drunk. Especially while the jetty is burning down. That would be terrible manners. And anyway, you know I detest drunk driving.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” he said softly, reminiscently.

  Since I was allowing myself to swear that night, fuck him and his soft reminiscence.

  I mean, really?

  “Am I done with my interrogation, Sheriff?”

  “I asked you one question,” he retorted.

  “Perhaps this conversation, but just to say, the heavy, judgmental burden of shame is leaking through, Coert. Next thing you know, you’ll have me walking through the streets naked while people throw garbage at me.”

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  “Don’t you watch Game of Thrones?”

  “No.”

  I stared at my knees in complete and utter shock.

  “Who doesn’t watch Game of Thrones?” I asked incredulously.

  “Me,” he said impatiently. “Listen, Cady, try to focus on what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. Okay? You with me?”

  He seemed earnest now and not jerky so I said, “I’m with you.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  I stopped thinking he wasn’t being jerky.

  Instead, I was just plain hurt.

  “She had nothing to do with me,” I whispered.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I wanted to pull away. It was you that kept me in.”

  He finally grew silent.

  “You knew I did. I told you I did. From the start, Coert. You knew. Or at least Tony knew.”

  “Cady.”

  I didn’t know if he intended to say more but it didn’t matt
er.

  I didn’t let him.

  “You can’t make me pay for what she did. I had no idea she had that in her but it didn’t matter. She was my friend but I wanted to be on the right path. I wanted to pull away. It was you who kept me in. So you can’t make me pay for something that had nothing to do with me. I didn’t pull the trigger on Lonnie. I didn’t sell drugs to high school kids. I worked at Sip and Save and prayed every night my boyfriend would break free.”

  “Cady—”

  “I earned it, you know. I earned what you thought of me. I earned you being mad at me. I earned you walking away from me,” I told him. “I know that. I know. But I didn’t earn this.”

  “Cady,” he whispered.

  “Goodbye, Coert, and please, God, do not phone again.”

  With that, I hung up, erased him from my phone and then turned it off.

  “Newfoundland,” I declared, staring at the dark sea.

  Then I got up and left my snifter and the tequila right where it was, my phone too, not that it mattered since it was off, and I went through my house and turned out lights on three stories before I hit my snug bed and climbed in.

  “No, a mastiff,” I said to the dark.

  By the time I went to sleep, I’d changed my mind to bulldog then Newfoundland and back to mastiff about fifty times.

  What I didn’t do before I fell asleep was cry.

  I was sitting outside my lovely, curved, butcher-block topped island with the raised outer counter so it had an inset area on the inside where I could tuck canisters (and I did). It also had double spice pullout shelves in the middle where I could keep spices handy (something I did). This island, something that Paige had designed and Walt had had built for me, was one of the seventy-five thousand, six hundred and twenty-two things I adored about my lighthouse.

  There wasn’t a lot of room but they went to pains to make every inch not only gorgeous, but functional.

  It was the day after the fire and Magdalene’s newspaper website was speculating about what happened, but not speculating about the fact that four shops had burned down, because they had, and fortunately no one was hurt.

  I’d gone on from researching the meager details to be had about the fire to searching for Newfoundland breeders (and mastiff and French bulldog, and by the way, pedigree dogs were not inexpensive) when there was a knock on my door, not the one by the garage, the other one at the foot of the stairs.