by Helen Brenna
Sophie’s mom had been the one to explain it to him. “It’s not you, Noah, sweetheart,” she’d said days later. “It’s this island. A person either loves it, or she hates it.”
It wasn’t always as simple as that.
“Yep, I’m Noah.” He nodded at the kids. “Lauren and Kurt?”
Lauren smiled and took a step or two toward the porch. “Marty said you’re a writer.”
So Marty, not Sophie, had been talking about him.
“No, he didn’t,” Kurt argued, keeping his distance on the lawn. “He said he’s a photographer.”
“Actually, I’m both.”
“Will you be taking the pictures for Marty’s wedding?” she asked.
“Not that kind of photographer.”
“What other kind is there?”
“I’m a photojournalist. I travel, write books and articles, take pictures.”
“I can’t wait to travel,” Lauren said. “I want to go everywhere. Have you ever been to Tokyo?”
“Nope.” There weren’t any wars in Japan.
“Marty said you were in an explosion.” Kurt was clearly intrigued. “A roadside bomb went off in Iraq.”
Noah nodded.
“Ever been shot at?”
“A few times.” Noah didn’t bother telling Kurt about his stint covering civil unrest in Haiti. There was nothing heroic about sleeping in a bathtub while bullets zinged overhead. “I took two bullets in Afghanistan. Right here and here.” He pointed once near his shoulder, again at his thigh. “Left a couple of nice scars.” He’d been lucky. The bullets had missed bone and went clear through muscle. “I had a flak jacket on, otherwise I wouldn’t be alive today.”
More and more these days he was considering settling down at his house in Rhode Island and focusing on his books.
“Do you carry a gun?” Kurt’s face lit up. “Did you ever see Osama bin Laden?”
“No, I’ve never seen bin Laden.” He laughed, sidestepping the question about the gun. “But I was with our military forces when they were fighting the Taliban.”
“Cool.”
In some ways, yes. Others, definitely no.
The clip, clop, clip of a single horse’s hooves drew their attention toward the rider coming up the hill. Dark blue uniform. Hat and shield. Ah, hell. Now what? Too early in the morning for this.
“Hi, Grandpa,” the twins said, practically in unison, clearly comfortable in the man’s presence.
“Hey, there, Miss Mirabelle,” his dad said to Lauren. “Young man,” he said, nodding to Kurt. “Morning, Noah.” He took off his hat, and his mouth flattened.
“Morning, Dad.”
His father turned back to the kids, love and tolerance abundant in his damned grandpa smile. Go figure. “Did you two remember to check in with your mom before heading out this morning?”
“No.” Kurt rolled his eyes. Lauren put a somewhat defiant hand on her hip.
“Well, then you know exactly what you need to do before you head off to any friends’ houses, don’t you? Hop to it.”
“We’re having a bonfire tonight,” Lauren said to Noah. “You should come.”
Noah opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure how to politely decline.
“I’m sure Noah has other stuff going on, kids,” the chief said.
“Maybe another night,” Noah offered.
“Okay,” Lauren said. “Marty said he wants one every night he’s here.”
“Later,” Kurt said.
“Bye.” Lauren’s hair flew when she spun around and raced her brother down the hill.
“Nice kids.”
The horse shook his big brown head, shifted, and his dad loosened the reins. “Isaac was a good dad. He and Sophie did okay.” His dad cleared his throat and looked out over the great expanse of Lake Superior.
“Something on your mind, Dad?”
“Yeah. I think it’s best if you steer clear of Sophie.”
Noah wasn’t exactly sure why, but this pissed him off more than anything else. He’d been a black sheep as far as these islanders were concerned, never fitting in, always wanting something different for his life, but he’d never been a serious troublemaker. He’d never thrown it in their faces.
“Sophie can decide for herself who she wants to be around,” Noah said. “At least she always did in the past.”
“Sophie’s too softhearted for her own good, and you know it. With Isaac gone, I don’t want you getting any ideas.”
“You didn’t want me to know he’d died, did you? You didn’t want me coming back.” Amazingly enough, his father’s words and actions could still hurt.
“She doesn’t need you messing up her life—”
“We were kids. Remember? I never messed—”
“Bullshit!” The horse snuffled and pawed a front hoof in the dirt as if reacting to its rider’s anger. “Kids or not, she was hurt after you left. Until she and Isaac got together. No one on this island wants to see her go through that again. Not that you’d give a damn.”
Noah barely held his temper in check. “I care about Sophie more than you could ever understand.”
“You sure have a strange way of showing it.”
“Why do you think I’ve stayed away all these years?”
“You and me never did get along. That doesn’t have anything to do with Sophie.”
“Not everything’s about you, Dad.”
The chief studied him, hard. “You’re saying you stayed away from Mirabelle for Sophie’s sake?”
Silently, Noah held his father’s gaze.
“All right then.” His dad set his hat back on his head and turned his horse toward the street. “At least we agree on one thing.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“GOT IT!” SOPHIE YELLED, positioning herself directly under the volleyball’s trajectory. She popped the ball into the air, hoping to set it up for Marty, but she’d miscalculated.
“Dang, Sophie.” Her brother had to dive to hit the ball over the net. “That was a close one.”
“Sorry.”
It was late Sunday afternoon and Marty was taking a break from all the wedding preparations for a friendly game of beach volleyball with Lauren, Kurt and Sophie. Sophie should have been relaxed, calm, having fun. She wasn’t. The volleyball court faced inland toward Grandma Bennett’s and she couldn’t stop looking uphill.
“Game point,” Marty said, grabbing the ball for his serve. He hit it over the net and Kurt returned it.
The ball zoomed past Sophie. Too late, she dove and landed in the sand.
“Get in the game, Soph!” Marty yelled.
“Okay, okay,” she snipped back.
Since running into Noah at their lighthouse a couple days ago, she hadn’t once seen him out and about. She hadn’t noticed him in his yard or on the porch, in town or at the beach. The house shades were still closed. It didn’t matter the time of day or night, the house looked the same. Shades drawn. No lights flickering from within.
She’d thought Noah staying out of her way would ease her mind. Instead his vanishing act had set in motion a different set of worries. What if he did develop PTSD? What if her wish had come true and he’d drunk himself to death out at the lighthouse?
“You guys bombed!” Kurt heckled.
The kids—and Marty, for that matter—had been hooting and hollering at every point they earned. “Your serve.” Marty tossed Lauren the ball. “Let’s see what you can do, munchkin.”
Lauren glared at Marty. She hated that baby nickname.
“Right here, munchkin, right here!” Marty yelled, clapping his hands together.
“You’re toast, Uncle Marty.” Lauren grinned. She stepped back to the serving line, her face set with concentration. Tossing the ball into the air, she whacked it over the net. Marty popped the ball up, right above Sophie. Sophie jumped, planning to tip the ball over the net, and miscalculated the angle. The ball hit the ground by her feet.
“Woo-hoo!” The kids screamed triumphantly.
“I want a rematch!” Marty said.
“You’re on,” Kurt yelled.
“Tomorrow,” Marty said.
“Now or never,” Lauren challenged.
“No can do, munchkin,” Marty explained. “I promised Brittany I’d take her to the mainland to check out the casino we’re taking everyone to next week.”
The casino on the mainland? This was the first Sophie had heard of an excursion off Mirabelle as being part of the wedding festivities.
“Oh, good excuse, Uncle Marty,” Kurt teased, running off to join Lauren.
“Tomorrow, you guys are going down!” Marty yelled before joining Brittany on the sidelines. “You should have played,” he said to her. “We needed you.”
“Are you kidding? Volleyball would so ruin my nails.” Brittany wrapped her arm around Marty’s waist.
“You want to come to the casino with us, Soph?” Marty asked.
“Nah, I don’t think so.” Sophie didn’t do spur-of-the-moment jaunts off the island.
“Oh, come on,” Brittany urged. “It’ll be fun.”
Leaving Mirabelle was never Sophie’s idea of fun. It’d been almost a year since the last time she’d gone to the mainland for a back-to-school shopping trip with the kids. Just the idea of getting into a car and driving down a highway at fifty-five miles an hour made her heart race.
It hadn’t always been this way. When she’d been young, Sophie had loved heading off into the outside world, but then her dad had died and she’d taken over running the inn. One thing had led to another and before she’d realized it, years had gone by without going to the mainland. Now the only time Sophie ever left Mirabelle was after—and only after—weeks of advance planning, giving herself time to mentally prepare for stepping into the outside world. Necessity had somehow turned to a quiet acceptance.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” Marty asked.
“Positive,” Sophie said. “You guys have fun.” As they walked away, she called out, “Hey, Marty?”
He spun around. “Yeah?”
“Have you seen Noah at all?”
“No.” Frowning, he shook his head. “I went up to his house both yesterday and today to visit and drop off a wedding invitation.”
“And?”
“He never answered the door.”
Sophie glanced up the hill. You’ve always been our responsible one, she could hear her parents’ voices. Well, Noah is not my responsibility. Not. Not. Not.
The sooner he left this island, the better. For everyone.
NOAH STOOD BACK FROM the sheer curtains covering the front picture window and looked down the hill. From here he could see miles of the Mirabelle shoreline and, out ahead, the seemingly endless expanse of Lake Superior.
A white latticed gazebo near the point heralded the beginning of the Rousseau property line and beyond that, a great meandering lawn leading to the Mirabelle Island Inn’s sprawling veranda. Bookended with columned turrets and painted pristine white with a red tiled roof, the inn looked exactly as he remembered it, although the trees had grown, obscuring some of the property.
The back lawn of Mirabelle Island Inn, though, he could see as clear as a bell. People were playing croquet and horseshoes. He picked Sophie out at the volleyball net on the beach within seconds. Even if he’d wanted to—which he didn’t—there wasn’t much of a chance he’d be joining that crew. For the last several days, he hadn’t slept for more than a few hours a shot, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to hold down more than a mouthful or two of food. He was a mess and he sure as hell didn’t want to bring everyone else down.
He tore his gaze away from the window and glanced halfheartedly at the supplies—scrapers, brushes, primer and paint—he’d had delivered from the hardware store. For two days he’d been planning on getting outside and working on the house, and for two days he’d been coming up with excuses to stay inside. It was too hot, too cold, too cloudy, too sunny. Today the excuse was needing to get back to work on his book.
He sat at his grandmother’s dining room table and stared at his laptop screen. The file with his manuscript about his stint in Iraq sat there, awaiting a word or two or thirty thousand. No matter what he did, or didn’t do, he couldn’t seem to string a sentence together to save his soul, and he couldn’t motivate himself to care one way or the other. Not only hadn’t he finished the damn thing, he’d yet to sort through his myriad files of photos to be included within the finished book.
He hated feeling this way and had no idea what to do to get back some semblance of normalcy, but it was becoming apparent that his doctors had been wrong. He’d been wrong. Coming to Mirabelle had been a mistake. He’d been blissful in his ignorance with regard to Isaac’s death, and being near Sophie was far worse than not thinking about her at all these many years.
Sophie. He had a momentary thought of sending her a message. An SOS. Sail a paper airplane down the hill. Leave a window blind at a certain angle. Position rocks in particular patterns along the cobblestone road. Who needed cell phones or text messaging? He and Sophie, grounded or not, had always seemed to get through to each other when they’d needed each other the most.
Oh, Soph. Did you ever really love me?
That question had run through his mind many times through the years and he never came any closer to an answer, or maybe the answer was one he had a hard time accepting. He’d left and she’d married Isaac. Didn’t that say it all?
More than once he’d wondered if Isaac had always had a thing for Sophie. Though Noah’s brother had consistently denied any attraction, the summer Isaac graduated from college and returned home a full-fledged man was the same summer Sophie had bloomed into a woman. A man would have to have been blind not to notice, and it’s not as if there had been a lot of options on the island.
What would’ve happened if Noah had stayed on Mirabelle? She would’ve had to choose between the two of them, and Noah had a feeling she wouldn’t have chosen him.
The cursor stared at him from his laptop.
Start anywhere. The point was to start.
Tomorrow. He’d do it tomorrow. Noah dragged himself out of his chair and a jolt of pain, as if someone had suddenly pressed a live electrical wire to his knee, shot through his leg, making him stumble and nearly fall. Damned phantom pains! He flopped onto the couch, pulled off his prosthetic and threw it across the room. It crashed against the wall, making a satisfying hole.
“Sorry, Grandma. This isn’t like me, I know. I’m not sure I’ll ever be me again.”
Coming back to Mirabelle had been the second biggest mistake of his life. He reached for another bottle of booze he never should’ve had delivered, but then drowning his pain had to be better than wallowing in it.
“GOOD AFTERNOON, ARLO,” Sophie said as the horse-drawn carriage passed her along Island Drive. After having started work quite early that morning, she’d decided to head to town before dinnertime for a few groceries. Only light, fluffy clouds dotted the clear blue sky and there was enough of a breeze to keep the gnats away.
“Ayep.” Arlo nodded back. “That it is, Sophie.”
The moment, in fact, would’ve been perfect, except that Arlo was only transporting a single couple from the ferry to their lodging destination. In Mirabelle’s heyday, his carriage as well as at least three more would’ve been loaded to the gills with guests and their luggage. Those booming business days were gone and didn’t look to be coming back any time soon.
Sophie’s family had weathered these kinds of slow times before, so the inn would be all right, but she wasn’t sure about some of the other establishments on the island. Resolving to bring up the issue with the town council after Marty’s wedding, Sophie continued her walk toward Main Street. She glanced up Bennett Hill.
As far as she knew, Noah hadn’t emerged from his grandmother’s house since the night she’d seen him at the lighthouse. With the blinds and curtains still drawn and no outside activity, the place looked as desol
ate today as it had before he arrived. He seemed to be taking his promise to stay out of her way to an extreme. Maybe he was in tougher shape than he’d looked. Then again, maybe it was none of her business.
She put Noah firmly out of her mind and continued on to Newman’s grocery store. Dan Newman, the owner, was putting out fresh produce on a display as she walked through the entrance. “Hello there, Sophie.”
“Hi, Dan.”
She put a few oranges in her basket and before she could stop herself asked, “Dan, have you seen Noah Bennett at all?”
“Yeah, I heard he was on the island.”
“Have you seen him? Here. In your store?” This was, after all, the only place to buy groceries on the island.
He pursed his lips. “Nope. Can’t say that I have.”
“He hasn’t bought any food?”
“Well, he did call here the other day to have some things delivered. Strange, though.”
“What?”
“We were out of a few things he’d ordered. When our delivery boy took them up later on, he said the other bags were still on the porch.”
“Did you call? Make sure Noah was okay?”
“It’s really none of my business, Sophie.”
“None of your—”
Since when had that ever stopped anyone on this island from helping another resident? Except that Noah, from the time he’d turned into an obstinate teenager, had been treated as more of an outsider than an islander, and somehow she’d let herself fall right into step with them.
She debated, get involved or stay out of it? Either course held its own pitfalls, but there was only one way to get Noah off her island and out of her life before he turned her world upside down. All over again.
After grabbing some staples, she rushed out the door. By the time she reached Grandma Bennett’s front steps, she was out of breath. The grocery bags were no longer on the porch, but there was no sign of life inside.
She rang the doorbell. Nothing. Pounded on the door. Still nothing. The door was locked. “Noah!” she yelled and then listened for any answering sounds. She pounded again. “Dammit, Noah, are you in there?”