by Maggie Finn
‘Better that way. For both of us.’
Chapter Fifteen
It was a fine morning, Noah couldn’t deny that. The sky was the bright blue of a robin’s egg, speckled with dabs of trailing white: just the kind of crisp winter day Clover Cove specialized in, made even more beautiful by the sparkling coverage of snow that had fallen overnight. Walls, post-tops, window-sills, everything looked sharp and clear. Down here by the water, it was particularly pretty, with that pale sun shimmering on water, but Noah wasn’t in much of a mood to appreciate pretty.
Grunting, he picked up a section of the metal fencing and carried it across the path, maneuvering it into place. He looked up towards the chapel high on the headland; another hour and the barriers would be in place, he reckoned. Every year, the Christmas Procession attracted more and more people and they needed the barriers to keep the path clear for priests and the choir in their robes as they walked up, candles in hand. And to stop the spectators from falling into the water, especially with the iciness underfoot.
‘You doing okay there, Raff?’ he called. The big fisherman was sitting on the sea wall eating a pie. He mumbled something and gave Noah a thumbs-up.
‘Me and Mikey will just get on with the work, shall we?’ said Noah with a hint of sarcasm he knew was wasted on Raff. Mikey, of course, was further up the hill, working like a trooper, his big blacksmith’s arms throwing the heavy fencing around like it was made from bamboo. Raff was, as usual, adopting a foreman’s role from a seated position. Noah was about to snap at him, then bit his tongue. He didn’t want to turn his own woes on the big man, it wasn’t his fault, after all. Wasn’t Raff’s fault Noah had pushed Eliza away, it wasn’t Raff’s fault he’d made a mess of everything. Noah turned away and picked up another fence and another, throwing them into place, using his misery as a lever.
‘Ah Noah, you great fool,’ he whispered to himself. He blew out his cheeks and looked up at the sky. What had he been thinking? How had he allowed himself to believe he could win the heart of the American girl? She was gorgeous and smart and sophisticated. What was she going to see in a small-town cop? Besides, she lived halfway across the world. There was no future in it, there never was. And that was if you took out the fact Eliza had gone behind his back. However well-meaning she was, it was still… He shook his head. He didn’t know what it was. Calling it a betrayal was far too dramatic. You had to have a long-standing relationship, some sort of mutual trust to betray someone. You couldn’t betray a virtual stranger, could you?
And he knew Eliza was only doing what she had thought was best.
Noah looked up at the sound of a car horn. Coming down the narrow lane was the battered old library van, and leaning out the window, her curly blonde hair bouncing, was Moira.
‘Great,’ he sighed. ‘Just what I need right now.’
He watched as Moira parked – diagonally across two spaces, blocking the entrance to the harbor, obviously. Noah knew he should tell her to move it, but, as with Raff, he knew he would be wasting his breath. Slamming the door, Moira strode across the waterfront, pausing to wave at Raff and Mikey, then walked straight up to Noah.
‘So I heard you made an ass of yourself last night,’ she said, her arms crossed over her chest. No preamble, no ‘how are you? How’s your morning been?’ Typical Moira. Noah loved the girl, she was his oldest friend, but Lord, she could be annoying.
‘Where did you hear that, exactly?’ he replied, lifting another section of fence into place.
‘A little bird told me,’ said Moira, following him. ‘Are you saying I’ve got my information wrong, are you?’
Given that Eliza had been working in the bookshop alongside Moira, it didn’t take Columbo to join the dots, but Noah wondered if she’d heard on the Clover Cove grapevine, or from Eliza herself. Not that it really mattered; the result was the same.
‘The important part is,’ said Moira, hands now on hips, ‘You’re going to make a mess of things again.’
‘Again?’
‘Oh, so you’re going to tell me that you’re a wild success with the women, like yer man Rod Stewart?’
He sighed.
‘No, Moira, but which of us is?’
Moira narrowed her eyes.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing!’ said Noah, turning away and hoisting another fence into place. The last thing he needed right now was to get into a discussion about Moira’s dating disasters. Or his own.
‘Anyway, it’s grand that you’re taking Eliza’s side in all this, but…’
‘Who says I’m taking her side, yer big gobdaw? You’re my pal, Noah Moyes. You’re the one I’m fond of – Lord knows why. And you’re the one who needs saving from himself.’
That stopped him. He dropped the fence with a clang and looked at her.
‘I need saving from myself now? How exactly?’
Moira’s expression softened.
‘Noah, that girl’s lovely. And she’s perfect for you.’
‘And she’s going back to Los Angeles in a few days,’ he said.
Moira held up one finger.
‘Only if you let her,’ she said.
Noah shook his head. It was nice of Moira to care, it really was, but he felt powerless and not a little bruised after that kiss had gone so spectacularly wrong.
‘So you just came up here to tell me I’m thick, is that it?’
‘No, I came to give you this.’
She pulled a parcel from her bag. It was wrapped in bright red Christmas paper dotted with little green fir trees and even had a gold bow stuck to the side. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting it into Noah’s hands. ‘Not that you deserve it.’
She waited, hands on hips.
‘Go on,’ she said impatiently. ‘Open it.’
Feeling chastened and embarrassed, he unwrapped the paper. It was a book, a book of poetry to be precise. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’ in hardback.
‘It’s a first edition, seeing as you’re asking.’
‘Thanks Moy.’ He gave her a sideways look. ‘Why do I get the feeling that there’s more to this than a simple Christmas present?’
‘Well obviously,’ she tutted. ‘I want you to read the book and for once, Noah Moyes, I want you to really think about what you’re doing.’
Noah opened the book, leafing through the pages.
‘They’re poems?’ he said dubiously.
‘Love poems. Beautiful love poems, full of heartbreak. Your girl Sylvia wrote this after Ted Hughes had cheated on her. He broke her heart, but she still loved him.’
‘Why? That’s stupid.’
Moira flipped both hands in the air in frustration.
‘No, that’s love you big gombeen. Love doesn’t fall at the first fence!’
Moira stalked around in a circle, clearly building up a head of steam.
‘Get over yourself, Noah. I know you’ve been hurt, but who hasn’t? Don’t let all that get in the way of something special.’
‘You mean Eliza? She went behind my back Moira,’ said Noah, hearing the sulkiness in his own voice. ‘She interfered with my family.’
‘And so what? It’s not like your family doesn’t need interfering with. It’s not like it was working perfectly, otherwise you wouldn’t have a face like a bedraggled sheep.’
Moira closed her eyes and her shoulders slumped. Clearly the rant was over.
‘Look, you pig-headed fool,’ she sighed. ‘We’ve all had doomed love affairs. In fact isn’t that the dictionary definition of a love affair? They’re all doomed, they all fail – until they don’t. And then they turn into a love story – or if you’re very, very lucky, they turn into a long marriage like your ma and pa’s.’
Noah looked at Moira with surprise, then down at the book, her point finally sinking in. She hadn’t given him the poems to tell him something about Eliza, she had brought the poems to say something about his family – about his Dad specifically.
‘But you don’t get it Moy,’
he said. ‘My da had something perfect with Ma and now he’s running around with Linda…’
‘Don’t be so naive, Noah,’ interrupted Moira. ‘That marriage wasn’t perfect, no one’s relationship is a fairytale, no one plans their love life on a spreadsheet. It just happens. Same as you and Eliza, if you could only see it. Okay, so it’s not convenient. Well, so what? So she went behind your back? If she’d have written you a formal invitation to meet your Da, would you have gone?’
‘No, but it wasn’t right. How can I trust her?’ He was being stubborn and childish and he knew it. Maybe it was because he’d known Moira since they were kids. She brought out the worst in him.
‘Fine!’ said Moira, throwing her hands in the air in a gesture of frustration. ‘Fine, you walk away from love.’
Moira looked straight at him, her eyes blazing.
‘You go be miserable for the rest of your life, Noah Moyes,’ she said. ‘But don’t go fooling yourself that you never had a chance at happiness. And don’t say I didn’t warn you that this is your one big chance to grab hold of something most people never even glimpse in a lifetime.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘True love!’ shouted Moira, ‘True love.’
She turned, her blonde hair bouncing, and stalked back towards her van. Noah watched her go, the wind cutting through him and making him shiver.
Chapter Sixteen
Eliza sat back and put down her pen, reaching back to massage her neck. She looked down at the pad in front of her, reading back the words she had written.
Dear Noah, I wish I had been able to say goodbye in person, but I think it’s better if I just slip away quietly. I have adored our time together, but we both know that if I stay…
She stopped, crossed out ‘better’ and wrote ‘easier’. No, that wasn’t right either; and should she say ‘adored’? Wasn’t that too intimate? With a groan, she tore off the top sheet, screwed it up into a ball and threw it into the waste basket along with a dozen or so other rejected attempts. Why was it so hard to set down your feelings on the page? How did writers manage it? Eliza had spent a good portion of her career dealing with authors and their books, but she had never ceased to marvel at the ability to express deep emotions via those twenty-six little characters.
She stood up and walked across the book store, picking up the little kettle and filling it at the sink. Not that she was much of a tea person, but in only a few days – less than a week in fact – she had picked up the Irish habit of using tea to punctuate the day. Need to start the day? Have a cup of tea. Need a break from work? Have a cuppa. Tea could even be used as a sales tool. Whenever they had customers in the store – rare though that was – the first thing Moira did was offer them tea. A happy customer was more likely to buy something, she reasoned, plus a customer with a cup of tea was likely to stay longer browsing the shelves. Eliza spooned tea in the blue teapot; Moira insisted on doing it the old-fashioned way, saying it tasted so much better, but Eliza suspected it was just another way of delaying getting back to the real work.
Just like now, of course, the tea was a distraction from the task at hand: writing Noah a goodbye note. Eliza had convinced herself that a ‘Dear John’ letter was the best way, because whenever they tried to do anything face to face, it always ended up going awry.
Shakespeare had called Romeo and Juliet ‘star-crossed lovers’, two people who were perfect for each other, but whom destiny had conspired to keep apart. Perhaps she and Noah were the opposite of that, perhaps the universe was telling them they were wrong together and that they were better off apart. Certainly they kept hurting each other and Eliza knew how that particular script went; she was in Clover Cove in the first place because she hadn’t been able to walk away from her relationship with Nic even when she had known it was heading downhill.
Eliza poured the tea and sipped it, both hands cupped around the mug. She was even getting used to drinking it the Irish way, with milk – real milk from a cow, not squeezed from almonds or soy beans. Eliza wasn’t sure whether dairy was even legal in California anymore.
She jumped as the bell above the door tinkled.
Noah. Eliza felt her heart jump and a smile ease onto her lips, before she remembered: she’d just spent the afternoon trying to think of the best way to tell him goodbye.
‘Hello,’ he said, taking off his Garda cap and knocking the snow from it. ‘I’m… can we talk?’
Eliza looked away.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Noah.’
He nodded, as if that was the answer he’d expected. There was a long awkward silence. Eliza had rehearsed this a hundred different ways, had even committed some of her thoughts to paper, but right now, with Noah right in front of her, she couldn’t think of a single way to begin.
‘You know this was my ma’s shop,’ said Noah finally.
She looked at him evenly. He was trying make a connection, trying to make her feel there was some emotional bond… oh, she didn’t know what he was trying to do anymore. And she was tired of trying to second guess him.
‘Listen Noah, I think you made your position pretty clear last night, so I don’t think there’s much point in us talking about anything any more.’
‘But that wasn’t my position,’ said Noah. ‘I mean, I was angry and confused about my da being there and I said – and did – the wrong thing. I just wanted to apologize.’
‘Okay, sure,’ she sighed wearily. ‘Apology accepted, but it doesn’t really change anything, does it?’
‘Eliza…’
‘No, let me talk,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Because this isn’t about your dad. I understand you’re still grieving, I get that, and I know my timing was all off last night, but this isn’t about your family actually, it’s about you and me. I put myself out there, I took a risk down there by the water.’
She could feel tears begin to fill her eyes, but she ploughed on regardless.
‘I asked you to kiss me and you slapped me back. Well you know what? I’ve had enough of that for one year – for a lifetime.’
‘I’m truly sorry Eliza. I shouldn’t have turned away, but you have to understand it’s complicated.’
‘Is it, Noah? Or do you want it to be complicated? You want to believe it’s about principles and respect when and the way things should be, don’t you? But you’re just hiding behind all that, pretending you’re on some noble mission, just like Diana Brennan’
He snorted, a half-smile on his mouth.
‘I’m Diana Brennan now? Gee thanks.’ He was trying to make light of it, but Eliza was in no mood for levity.
‘Yes, Noah,’ she said, ‘In your own way, you’re just like Mrs. Brennan. You said it yourself: she has fixed ideas of how the world should be and when it doesn’t turn out that way, she reacts badly – shouting at strangers stuck in cars or picketing bars with the Bishop.’
‘I’ve never been on a picket line. I have to stay neutral.’
‘Yes, and maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you need to commit, to stand up and say who you are and what you want. At least you always know where you stand with women like Diana Brennan.’
‘But you know where I stand Eliza,’ he said, taking a step towards her. ‘I just think my father’s disrespecting my mother’s memory. Is that so wrong?’
Eliza’s voice softened. ‘Noah, that’s your memory – just yours. And I’d never want to change the way you remember your mom, but you need to see that not everyone had that same experience of her. You think she would be upset that her best friend has got together with Niall. Maybe she would. But maybe she’d rather see him happy.’
‘Well I wouldn’t,’ he said, pouting. ‘Not if that’s what it takes.’
Eliza let out a long breath.
‘The trouble is, this isn’t about you, Noah. And that’s what’s so tragic about this. It’s your one blind spot.’
‘So I’m short-sighted now?’
‘Don’t sulk, there was a compliment in th
ere,’ said Eliza. ‘It’s a blind spot because in every other part of your life, you’re such a good man. You spend all day every day being selfless, putting other people first, seeing the good in everyone. 24/7, you’re doing the best you can.’
‘That’s the job I chose.’
Eliza shook her head.
‘It chose you, Noah. I don’t think you could do anything else. It makes you an outsider, a man alone, and yet you carry on. And that’s pretty wonderful actually.’
Noah looked as if he was about to reply, but looked away.
‘The saddest thing is that you can’t bring yourself to be so selfless with the one person you care for most in the world.’
‘Is this my da now?’
Eliza felt anger rising in her chest.
‘Yes, Noah!’ she snapped, ‘That’s why you’re being so pig-headed about it, because you care about your dad, because you want the best for him.’
‘I do, I do want the best for him.’
‘Then be the bigger man, Noah. Let him have what he wants.’
‘Her?’ he said incredulously.
‘Yes, her! Niall loves her, can’t you see that?’
He looked down at his hands.
‘It’s not love.’
‘That’s not for you to say, Noah – it’s not up to you how your father feels and who he chooses to spend his life with. It’s your Dad’s life, not yours. Like it or not, Niall loves Linda. He loves her, just like…’
She stopped dead. Just like I love you, she thought.
And the realization took her breath away. She did love him, crazy though that was. Actual real-life, full-blown love. She’d only known Noah a matter of days, but Eliza had fallen hard for this maddening, stubborn, completely unsuitable man. What she had said was true: the heart didn’t get to choose. She loved Guard Noah Moyes – even though it was doomed from the start. Geography, baggage, timing, everything was wrong. Everything.
‘What do you expect your dad to do?’ she asked. ‘If the roles were reversed, if you were in love with someone your dad disliked, would you just drop her?’