by Olivia Miles
“Margo Harper.” He shook his head, chuckling softly, the sound of it making something in her chest pull a little tighter than it should. “What brings you to town?”
Shouldn’t she be saying that? But from the uniform, the answer would be obvious.
Her heart was pounding so loudly she was almost convinced that he could hear it. Eddie was supposed to be gone. Long gone.
“I didn’t realize you’d moved back,” she managed. Curse her sisters. Couldn’t one of them have mentioned this?
“Only recently,” he said. More silence. He’d always been good at that. “You in town for long?”
As if she’d be telling him the details of her arrival. He’d have to arrest her first. Put her under oath. No way would he be finding out that her fairy-tale ending had imploded thanks to a girl named Candy.
“Visiting family,” she said, hoping her smile passed for sincere. She didn’t want to smile at Eddie. Didn’t want to see him or speak to him, for that matter. When she was tucked away in Charleston, she didn’t have to worry about unfortunate run-ins with the Boyd family or with reminders of Eddie. But Oyster Bay was small. Too small. So small that she could still see the welcome sign in her rearview mirror. And here he was. Her past. Her everything. Once.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “You’re a cop now?”
He patted his badge. “Well, it’s a little early for Halloween.”
She didn’t laugh. Her smile had waned. “A cop. How ironic.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I seem to recall you getting into your fair bit of trouble once upon a time.” A fair bit was putting it mildly.
He gave a lopsided grin. He was so good at those. “We were kids back then. That was half a lifetime ago.”
Then why did it feel like yesterday that they’d sat on the sand, holding hands, walking home from school and stopping for a snack that stretched out for hours, not wanting to ever part? Margo frowned, knowing all at once that it had been a mistake to come back to Oyster Bay. Being here, it felt like no time had passed at all. That she hadn’t grown up, gotten married, moved a thousand miles away and made a life for herself. Being here, she was still Margo Jane Harper. Middle daughter. Peacekeeper. Daydreamer. Girlfriend of bad boy Eddie Boyd.
The boy who’d left town. And left her.
And here they were. Silence stretched between them, whether for lack of words or nostalgia, Margo couldn’t be sure. How many times had she dared to hope, that somehow, someway, they would end up together? That he’d track her down, find her, the way he’d promised her so many times?
Well. It was time to get back on track.
“I didn’t realize I had done anything that warranted being pulled over,” she said. Just give me the ticket, she thought. Slap my wrist and let me be on my not so merry way.
“Do you know how fast you were going back there?” he asked, all official and stern.
Please.
She didn’t have a clue how fast she had been driving, actually, so she just shrugged.
“Forty.” He said it gravely, like it was one hundred forty.
“That doesn’t seem very fast to me.” Really, who was he to talk? Didn’t he remember the time he “borrowed” his cousin Nick’s Corvette, took her on the back roads, and pushed the speed limit to ninety, until her palms had nail impressions embedded in the skin, despite the way she’d howled in laughter?
“In a thirty-mile zone,” he said flatly.
“Thirty!” Margo started to protest and then stopped. She wasn’t going to argue with Eddie about the speed limit, or a sign she didn’t see, or about the fact that last time she’d been in Oyster Bay, the speed limit had most certainly been forty on this road. There were many things she could argue about with him instead.
“It changed over a mile back. Village-wide policy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “New policy?”
He didn’t give in. Instead he looked away, giving her a full view of his profile. His straight nose, the slope of his chin. That mouth. God, she’d memorized that face once. Then banished it.
Now it was her turn to look away. She wanted to go, turn the car around and leave. But she couldn’t go. Not until he said she could. He was the law now, after all. Or lack of sleep had finally caught up with her and she was officially hallucinating. Really, that seemed like a more realistic scenario.
“I’ll let you go with a warning—”
She should be grateful, she knew, but instead she felt something sputtering to the surface. “A warning.” Who did he think he was, her father? This was Eddie. A man who skipped school more days than he went, who never drove within ten miles of the speed limit. A man who had been kicked out of Oyster Bay and sent to juvie to clean up his act.
Well. It looked like he’d kept one promise.
“Thank you.” She struggled to form the words. “I should probably let you get back to arresting the real criminals in town.”
She went to buckle her seatbelt, but it was already fastened. Awkward.
His mouth quirked. “Eager to get back to town, eh?”
She gave him a long look before sliding her sunglasses down and turning the key in the ignition. “You have no idea.”
Chapter Two
Margo gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, barely taking in the sights of Oyster Bay’s shops and restaurants as she approached the town center. Eddie Boyd. Her Eddie. Her first dance. First kiss. First heartbreak.
She never thought she’d see him again. With time, she hadn’t wanted to see him again. Still didn’t. But now she had. And she might again. And then what?
Her mouth felt dry. Nothing good would come from seeing Eddie again. She was a married woman. Well, technically. And he was… She frowned. Was Eddie married? Was that what had brought him back to Oyster Bay? She hadn’t checked his hand for a ring. She’d been too shell-shocked to process the fact that she was speaking to him at all, again, after all these years.
She didn’t like thinking back on that last summer together, when they spent the afternoons combing the beach, hand in hand, making all sorts of plans that would never happen. She was working as a babysitter that summer, her charges were two little hellions named Oscar and Camille Hodges, towheaded twins that seemed to love nothing more than to fight with each other or get a rise out of her, their mischief ranging from locking each other in various bedrooms and hiding the keys, to once, when Margo dared to turn her back to take a delivery at the door, Oscar cutting off Camille’s long golden braid. By the time their mother returned from the job she’d professed to taking “for her sanity,” Margo was exhausted, too tired to eat, much less go out with friends. But five minutes with Eddie was all it took to turn her day around. “I hope those two haven’t turned you off kids someday,” Eddie would joke, and Margo’s heart would swell with the possibility that loomed in their future. Endless days together, just the two of them, and then…
And then nothing. They were supposed to graduate high school, maybe go to Boston or New York, somewhere far from Oyster Bay where they could avoid the gossip and the prying eyes and the rumors that seemed to float around about Eddie’s past—the life he’d lived before he came to live with his aunt and uncle in this small town. Eddie hated the speculation, the feeling that all eyes were on him, and the wisecracks the kids would make in their quest for information. They’d get an apartment, nothing fancy, and get jobs while Margo went to art school at night. They’d spend weekends walking through their new town, making it their own, dreaming of all that was yet to come.
Instead, after a school yard fight the fall of senior year, Eddie had gone to juvie. And that, as they said, was that.
Only it didn’t end there, at least not for her. For six months after he’d left, she wrote letters, checking the box every day for a reply. She tried to call the facility he’d been sent to, only to be told each time that he was unavailable. She applied to colleges at her parents’ insistence, and when the full
scholarship to Georgetown arrived, she knew she couldn’t turn it down. She left for DC a year after Eddie had left, and the first weekend in her new city, she’d borrowed her roommate’s car to drive to the detention center in New Jersey, only to be told that Eddie had aged out. Of course. He was eighteen after all. They couldn’t provide a new address, and his aunt and uncle back in Oyster Bay knew nothing of his whereabouts. Eddie Boyd was gone.
And now, all these years later, he was back.
She rolled to a stop at the intersection of Gull and Main, watching impassively as people she didn’t recognize crossed the street. It was September, and it was Wednesday, meaning these were locals, not tourists. She should know them. At least some of them.
But there was only one person she ever looked for when she came to Oyster Bay—which wasn’t often. One face she still scanned for in every crowd; it was habit by now. The need for answers, for understanding. And now she’d seen it. Really, that should be the end of it. Instead, it opened more questions, more confusion. Eddie Boyd. A cop?
She supposed she would have known this if she’d asked one of her sisters. But she’d been a married woman. A happily married woman, or at least happy enough. It would be unseemly to ask outright about an old boyfriend. It was ancient history. They were kids, as Eddie had pointed out. And now Eddie, the Eddie who loved jumping on his motorcycle and speeding through town, no helmet or jacket, laughing until she screamed and hugged his waist a little tighter, was a cop.
And she was a divorcee. Almost.
She didn’t know which outcome was more ironic.
A horn behind her honked, and she jumped. Right. Time to focus on the road or risk being pulled over again. By Eddie.
Yeah, no thanks. Unless the next words out of his mouth were a big fat apology, she had nothing more to say to him.
She drove down Main, her eye darting to her speedometer. There was The Lantern, owned by her Uncle Chip, and The Scoop on the corner, where she and her sisters used to ride their bikes to get ice cream on lazy summer afternoons—she and Bridget in the lead, Abby trailing behind.
She pulled onto Shoreline Road, without even having to think about it, knowing every curve and tree as if she’d just seen it yesterday, not coming up on two years this Thanksgiving. She frowned, doing a quick calculation. Make that three years. When she first moved away for college, she’d visited more often, but after Bridget got married and Abby went off to college and then their parents died, well… Sometimes it was easier to focus on the life she had, the home she’d built. With her cheating bastard of a husband.
Mimi’s house was just around the corner now, impossible to miss, even if it wasn’t her childhood home, and her father’s before that. The Harper house was one of the prettiest in all of Oyster Bay, most people in town would quickly agree. It was large enough to comfortably house three children, which is why, perhaps, Mimi felt it was more suitable for her parents’ young family than just an aging widow, with white-painted cedar siding and big bay windows and a huge span of cool green grass that led right up to the sandy shore.
Margo eased off the gas, wanting to linger on the sight as the old Victorian came into view. She stopped, stared at it, felt the stress of the drive roll off her shoulders like waves on the sand. She could close her eyes and picture it, room by room, right down to the knickknacks on the bookshelves and the worn floorboards in her bedroom, but today she didn’t have to. The old wooden swing that hung from the branches of the big tree on the front lawn swung in the breeze, and if she tried hard enough, she could almost remember the sensation of flying, higher and higher, until she sometimes thought she could let go and drift all the way out to the sea if she really tried hard enough.
She let her gaze linger on the swing, the memory of her father pushing her back, Abby whining that it was her turn soon, and she smiled against the tug in her chest. A seagull swooped past, and she followed it, glancing at the front of the property.
And that was when she saw it. The hard plastic sign blowing in the breeze.
Her childhood home was for sale.
***
The gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the driveway toward the stone path that led to the house’s wraparound porch. Her heart was racing as she reached the steps, frowning when she noticed the chipped paint on the porch railing. Under normal circumstances, she’d offer to touch it up, or make a call to Freddy, the handyman who had worked on the house for as far back as she could remember, doing anything from fixing broken window sashes to installing a new light fixture after Abby had broken the dining room chandelier playing Tarzan when she was five. He whistled while he worked and always charged less than he should, refusing fair pay no matter how much Mimi or Margo’s mother insisted. Eventually, they always reached a compromise: his quoted price plus an invitation to dinner that night. Freddy loved a home-cooked meal, and he wasn’t shy with his praise, which pleased Mimi to no end.
It wasn’t until Margo was older that she realized Freddy was a bachelor, with no family of his own at all. And that a night sitting at her family’s dinner table meant more to him than an extra fifty bucks.
“We’re lucky,” her mother had said, whenever Freddy left. “Not everyone has what we have.”
And now…now what did Margo have?
For all she knew the sale was already pending. A new buyer all lined up. Someone eager to come in and repaint and strip floors and gut the kitchen where her mother used to make cookies, and her father would dance with them, sliding around in socks, letting them stand on his feet as he moved to the box step. All those memories. All they had left. Gone. All under the hand of her own sister.
Margo eyed the FOR SALE sign critically.
Bridget Harper. Well. She’d just have to talk to Mimi about this.
With a heavy heart, Margo rang the bell, wondering now if she should have called before dropping by. When no one answered, she pressed her nose to the glass, relieved to see the furniture still in place. Maybe Mimi was out back having her morning coffee. Of course! It was her favorite spot three seasons of the year; even when the leaves were gone, she’d drape a blanket over her shoulders, saying she never grew tired of the view of the waves crashing against the rocks that lined the shore.
But Mimi wasn’t out back, and her favorite rocking chair wasn’t either. Margo frowned, and tried the set of French doors that led into the kitchen. Locked. Hurrying, she went back around to the front of the house, but that door had one of those intimidating-looking lock boxes on it, no doubt installed by Bridget in hopes of several showings.
Margo pulled her phone from her back pocket, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t checked it since the gas station in New Hampshire. She licked her lips, taking her time in flipping it over and lighting up the screen. Blank. No calls. No texts. Ash would surely have recognized her absence by now. If he was smart, he would have even seen that a few suitcases were missing. Their best suitcases, including the one he preferred to use for his annual conference trips.
Now she wondered what really transpired on those trips. If his indiscretions were limited to one woman, or if this was just his style.
She should have left a note. Crystal clear: Ash, I’m leaving you. Really, what else was there to say?
A smile curled her mouth. She could think of several other things to say, but she was a lady.
She supposed Mimi could be in town. She liked to buy fresh flowers, but she usually did that on Sunday, for the start of each week. Margo supposed she could drive around, look for her.
Or she could call her sister. See what the hell was going on.
With that, Margo walked over to the FOR SALE sign and dialed the listed number, bypassing Bridget’s cell phone number that was stored in her phone, and going straight to her direct office line.
“Bridget Harper,” her sister answered a moment later.
“Bridget.” God, it felt good to hear a familiar voice. So good that Margo’s throat felt tight. “It’s me. Margo.”
Ther
e was a pause. “Margo! Is everything okay?” A strange reaction, but not completely, considering how much time seemed to lapse between their calls.
For a moment Margo had the urge to tell her sister everything, to let it all come pouring out of her like a flood, but she stopped herself. Now wasn’t the time.
“I think I’m the one who should be asking you that,” Margo said. “I’m staring at a FOR SALE sign in front of our house.”
“You’re home? In Oyster Bay?” Another pause, this one shorter. “Why?”
Well, that was a loaded question. “Why is our house for sale?”
“I didn’t know you were coming home,” Bridget replied, again dodging the topic.
Margo was losing patience. “Well, I am home. I drove all night and I really need a cup of coffee and a hot shower. Mimi isn’t home. Can you give me the code to the lock box?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Bridget said instead, and hung up without another word.
Margo shoved the phone back into her pocket. The wind was picking up and a chill cut through the thin sleeves of her shirt. She walked back to the car to wait, an unsettling feeling creeping over her as she wiped the chip crumbs from the driver’s seat and sat down. Why did she have the distinct impression that there was more to Bridget’s sudden urgency than just a concerned sister?
***
Crap. Bridget pushed back her chair and stood. She smoothed her skirt and took one last sip of coffee from her “World’s Best Mom” mug. Cold. No time for a refill either. She had more important matters than feeling perky, or at least mildly awake. It was ten thirty and she’d been up for five and a half hours. Some people, like her youngest sister Abby, a lifelong student and professional job hopper, were probably just now pouring their first cup of coffee, not swallowing the dregs of their fourth.
Right. Cold coffee. Then over to the house. Then the big meeting.