by Grace Palmer
What on earth had he been thinking?
He looked out through the cell bars and saw the fat man sitting on a bench outside the holding area. He had an ice pack pressed against his jaw. Brent could see a trail of dried blood looping down from the man’s nose. He also had fury surging in his eyes. Brent could hear him saying, “Of course I want to press charges! That crazy guy walked up and socked me hard. It was a sucker punch! A freakin’ sucker punch!” He jabbed a finger towards Brent. Sheriff Mike was sitting in a chair across from the man, nodding and taking scribbled notes on a little yellow legal pad.
“All right, Mr. Fitzgerald, I’ve made a note of that. I’m gonna have Officer O’Leary here finish taking the rest of your statement, if that’s all right with ya.”
Another man in a sheriff’s deputy uniform came over and escorted the man away. He gave Brent one more withering look before he disappeared through the door. Sheriff Mike sighed and rubbed his temples. Then, standing, he walked over to Brent. He unlocked the jail cell and slid it open, then dragged the chair he’d been seated in over in front of Brent and took a seat on it backwards.
“Brent, kid … You messed up, man.”
Brent had to lick his chapped lips twice before he could speak. “I know,” he finally croaked. His head was still swimming—with pain, with alcohol, with Rose’s words. “You deserve happiness,” paired with the image of his father. But he was aware enough to look into Sheriff Mike’s eyes and realize that he could feel tears running down his face.
“Mr. Fitzgerald over there wants to press charges this time, and I can’t say I blame him. You cold-cocked him, man. I told you you didn’t have much rope left. What were you thinkin’?”
“I … I don’t know. I wasn’t. I was … I don’t know. I just don’t. I’m sorry. Can you tell him I’m sorry?”
Mike shook his head. “He doesn’t wanna hear that, sport. Trust me. You’re gonna need a lawyer. Brent … Your father was my friend, you know. And I know that I’ve told you this and I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times from other folks, too. But he would hate to see you like this. He’d just hate it.”
“I know,” Brent repeated dumbly. He looked down in his lap. The tears were running down his cheeks, mixing with the dirt and blood, and splattering on his knees. He didn’t want to look at Mike anymore. He just wanted it to be dark in here. He wanted to sleep for a long, long time.
“What happens next?” he asked after a long minute of silence.
Mike was in the midst of exiting the cell, chair in hand. He stopped. Brent could hear him sigh again. He didn’t turn around when he spoke. “A few things. There’ll be a trial. I expect you’ll take a plea deal. Can’t say for sure what the judge’ll do. Maybe jail time, maybe just community service, considering the circumstances. It just depends.”
“No,” Brent interrupted, “I mean, what happens now?” He looked up.
Mike sighed a third time. “Right now, you probably oughta call your mother.”
38
Mae
It was another heart-wrenching call in a summer that had been full of them. Sheriff Mike didn’t say much when Mae picked up. He just said, “I’m handing the phone to Brent now,” and then there had been a long pause while Mae held her breath and wondered what on earth was going on.
She heard Brent breathing on the other end of the line. And, call it crazy or call it a mother’s intuition, she just knew that he was hurt. He hadn’t even said anything and yet she was ten thousand percent sure of that. He was hurt—her youngest, her baby, her soldier—and he was bleeding, and crying too most likely.
“Brent?” she said when she couldn’t bear waiting for him to talk.
“Hi, Mom,” he rasped. His voice was thick with sorrow.
“Brent, honey… what’s going on?”
He didn’t answer for another agonizingly long moment. “You should probably come to the police station,” he said finally. “I don’t expect you to bail me out or anything. But I—I just… It’d be good to see you.”
That was all he needed to say. She told him she’d be there right now and she went racing off that way.
Sheriff Mike met her in the lobby. “Where is he?” she said. It sounded like a snap. She didn’t mean to be rude to Mike—he had been friends with Henry for a long time; she knew him and his wife well, they were good folks. But terror had a nasty grip on her heart.
“Mae, breathe,” Mike counseled.
“Where is Brent?” was all she said.
Mike sighed with the air of a man who had been doing an awful lot of sighing lately.
“C’mon, this way.”
She followed him back through the little Nantucket police station to the set of four cells in the back room.
And there, behind bars—oh, God, what was her baby doing behind bars?—she saw Brent. He was seated and looking down, rubbing his wrists gingerly. Had they cuffed him? Why on earth would they need to cuff him? He was a little lost right now, everyone with eyes could see that, but did he really need to be handcuffed?
She broke loose of Mike’s calming hand on her shoulder and ran to Brent. He looked up and saw her coming. Standing, he met her at the bars.
She touched his hand through the gaps between the bars. He was dirty and bloody. There were tear tracks leading down his cheeks and his eyes were red-rimmed and raw. He looked like hell warmed over.
He looked like he needed his mother.
“I’m here,” was what she decided to say, though that much was obvious. Maybe, though, it wasn’t quite obvious. Maybe she was telling him she was here, not just here in the cell, but here in this downswing with him, here in his sadness with him, here in mind, body, and soul with him. Maybe that was what she needed to hear. Lord, she hoped that it was.
“I know, Mom,” he said, his voice thick with unshed tears.
She squeezed his fingers in hers as tight as she could and said it again. “I’m here, Brent. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
He rested his forehead against the bars. “I know,” he repeated.
“And we’re going to get through this. Together. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” he echoed numbly, like a little kid in school repeating after the teacher. “I hear you.”
Where they would go from here, Mae wasn’t yet sure. But she meant what she was saying with every fiber of her being. They were going to get through this. All of them, all of the Benson family.
As long as they stuck together.
The Benson family saga continues in Book 2 of the Sweet Island Inn series, NO BEACH LIKE NANTUCKET. Turn the page for an exclusive sneak preview!
Coming Soon
NO BEACH LIKE NANTUCKET
Preorder Book 2 in the Sweet Island Inn series now!
Click here to pre-order!
The Bensons badly need a fresh start. Can they find peace and happiness on the beaches of Nantucket?
* * *
Last summer, a storm blew the Benson family’s lives to bits.
It’s been almost a year since that fateful day.
Since they learned that life at the beach isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
* * *
They’re doing their best to pick up the pieces.
Mae is running the Sweet Island Inn.
Eliza is learning what it means to be a mother.
Sara is rediscovering her passion in the wake of heartbreak.
Holly is searching for stability in her marriage.
And Brent is—well, Brent isn’t doing so great.
* * *
Despite these challenges, they just might make it—if they can stick together.
But right when it seems like they’re going to be okay, terrible news strikes.
A call from Aunt Toni changes everything.
And suddenly, Nantucket doesn’t feel quite like home anymore.
* * *
Come book your stay at Nantucket’s Sweet Island Inn—where the water is warm, the sun is shining, and everyone
welcomes you like family—in this heartwarming, inspirational women’s fiction beach read from author Grace Palmer.
FRIDAY, APRIL 2—MORNING
* * *
“More coffee?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.” Dominic looked up at Mae and gave her a broad smile.
It had become a morning ritual between the two of them—sitting on the first floor wraparound porch of the Sweet Island Inn and sharing the first cup of coffee of the day. Half the time, they didn’t even say much of anything. Instead, they just sat there, soaking up the sunrise and each other’s presence. The company was nice, as was the stillness, before the hustle and bustle of an innkeeper’s never-ending work began.
It was strange to Mae to start her days in tranquility. After all, she’d spent most of her six decades on this earth hitting the ground running, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Maybe this was a ‘growing older’ thing. A new chapter of her life, so to speak. She still felt young at heart, but she couldn’t deny that her knees and wrists tended to get a little cranky at her if she got them going too abruptly first thing in the morning. Slipping into the day, like going one toe at a time into the first ocean dip of the spring, felt nice and right.
Eventually, though, the time came when the rest of the Inn’s guests would start to stir and she’d have to get up and going. She always felt just the slightest pang of nuisance when she heard a noise from upstairs. She still loved running the Inn—she’d told everybody who asked that it felt like this was the job she was born for—but she just loved these quiet morning moments with Dominic, too.
“Is today the day?” Dominic asked with a wry grin as he took a sip of the fresh coffee.
She settled into the rocking chair next to his. “Perhaps tomorrow,” she said with a teasing grin of her own.
That little exchange was a ritual, too. A running joke that had started some time ago and seemed determined to persist. He’d asked her suddenly on one of their first mornings sharing coffee on the porch if today was the day she kicked him out of the Inn. And, just like she’d done on that first morning and every morning since, she had said, “Perhaps tomorrow.” She didn’t mean a word of it.
It was true that he’d been here for quite some time now. Nearly a year, actually. He’d extended his stay in Room 1 indefinitely. Mae was hardly upset about it. She liked his company, she liked his politeness, she liked how he knew when to ask a question or make a joke, and when to just smile and enjoy the sunshine or the snowfall.
“Can you believe it’s been nearly a year?” she said suddenly after a moment.
“Time certainly passes with haste. More so, the older I get, despite my protests.”
Mae loved how Dominic spoke. Elegant, poetic, even when he was doing something as simple as remarking on the weather or some new dish Mae had whipped up. “What a year it has been.”
“That it has. That it has.”
What had happened? So much and so little at the same time. Her old life had been irretrievably shattered by the tragic loss of her husband, but she had found a new and beautiful one inside of that, like a Russian nesting doll broken open. The Inn was a blessing she had never anticipated. She was newly a grandmother once more, and it gave her such pleasure to see Eliza blossoming into motherhood that she knew her eldest daughter had given up hopes of long ago. There was happiness in so many places in her world.
There was a little corner of happiness seated with her on the porch just now. Dominic was a source of happiness in her life; there was no denying that. Theirs was a comfortable and pleasant friendship. She had come to rely on it whenever sadness reared its ugly head.
They heard a big yawn come from upstairs. It was a warm morning, so the Robinson couple in Room 4 must have opened their window to greet the dawn. “I should get hustling,” Mae said with a tinge of sadness. Again, she felt that little irritation at having to spoil this nice, quiet moment. But such was her life and her duty to her guests. Once she was in the thick of her errands, she didn’t mind so much. The hummingbird side of her personality that so loved flitting from task to task to task wouldn’t ever leave her.
“And so begins another morning,” Dominic smiled. “Time for me to go back to sleep then, I believe.”
Mae chuckled at that. She knew—though she didn’t particularly like to acknowledge it, whether to herself or anyone else—that Dominic only got up for these mornings for her sake. He worked late into the night six or seven days a week, tapping out the beautiful words of his novel into his laptop. So, once they’d shared their coffee, he went back to bed for a few hours before getting back up and beginning his day proper. Sara had made one or two sly comments about it (“He wakes up that early just to hang out with you? Oooh lala!”), but Mae had just swatted her youngest daughter with a dish towel and told her to hush. No need to read anything into it. Dominic was a treasured friend. That was good enough for Mae.
They bid each other goodbye and went their separate ways. Mae went into the kitchen to pop her blueberry muffin mix into the oven in time to serve breakfast once the Robinsons came down, along with the Inn’s other weekend guests, and put a fresh pot of coffee on to brew.
The rest of the day went by in a hazy blur. A trip to the grocery store to restock the Inn’s pantry, a long overdue deep clean of the bathrooms in Rooms 3 and 6, and then hanging up some new pieces of art in the living room that she’d purchased at Winter Stroll and had been meaning to take care of ever since. She particularly liked one of them, a blurred watercolor of a Nantucket lighthouse. The color palette was soft and muted and the scene it depicted was a frigid beach in the dead of a harsh winter, but there was something indescribably beautiful about it anyways. If Nantucket could be pretty in the midst of a blizzard, then it could be pretty any time at all.
Before she knew it, the late afternoon rays were slanting through the kitchen window, and it was time for the other event on today’s calendar. She’d been ignoring it all day long, trying not to expend too much mental energy on it. But now, here it was, up close and personal, and there was no avoiding it any longer.
One year since the accident aboard Henry’s boat, Pour Decisions. One year since everything had changed forever for the Benson family. It had gone so fast—“with haste,” as Dominic had said. Thinking back on it now, she knew that this year had been so full of many moments both happy and sad. But try as she might, she couldn’t remember many of them. Only a few stood out: the return to Nantucket of her daughters, one by one, each for their own challenging reasons. The birth of her granddaughter. The Inn, of course. The journey of her youngest son, which had been full of switchbacks and turnarounds and many, many difficult times. She hadn’t spent much time looking backwards. Onwards and upwards, as the saying went. Mae was particularly good at keeping her eyes rooted on the future.
But today, a year to the day since the accident that took her husband away, it was time to reflect. This night, at sunset, she and her children would be honoring Henry. Mae took a deep breath. She felt tears brewing deep down inside, but it wasn’t time for that yet. First, she would get ready. Then, she was going to meet her children at Henry’s favorite beach and remember him.
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