It Happened One Summer

by Tessa Bailey

  When they reached No Name, Piper was surprised to find a man leaning up against the door. He appeared to be in his sixties, slightly round at the middle, a newsboy cap resting on top of his head. He watched them approach through narrowed eyes, a slight curve to his mouth.

  “Hi,” Hannah called, getting out her keys. “Can we help you?”

  The man pushed off the door, slapped a hand against his thigh. “Just came to see Henry and Maureen’s girls for myself, and there you are. How about that?”

  After living two decades without hearing her father’s name at all, it was a jolt to hear it out loud, have it connected with them. And their mother. “I’m Piper,” she said, smiling. “This is Hannah. And you’re . . . ?”

  “Mick Forrester,” he said affably, putting out his hand for a shake, giving each sister a hearty one. “I remember when you were knee high.”

  “Oh! It’s nice to meet you as adults.” She glanced at Hannah. “My sister has a work thing. But if you’d like to come in, I think there’s still some beer in one of the coolers.”

  “No, I couldn’t. I’m on my way to lunch with the old-timers.” He smoothed his thick-knuckled hands over his belly, as if pondering what he’d order to fill it. “Couldn’t let a day pass before I stopped by to say hello, see if you girls ended up favoring Maureen or Henry.” His eyes twinkled as he looked between them. “I’d have to say your mother, for sure. Lucky, that. No one wants to look like a weathered fisherman.” He laughed. “Although, Henry might have had that ocean-worn look about him, but, boy, your dad had a great laugh. Sometimes I swear I still hear it shaking the rafters of this place.”

  “Yeah.” Inwardly, Piper winced at this stranger having more substantial memories and feelings for her own father. “That’s kind of the only thing I remember.”

  “Shoot.” Hannah’s smile was tight. “I’m going to be late to the meeting. Pipes, you’ll fill me in?”

  “Will do. Good luck.” Piper waited until Hannah had disappeared, the sound of her running up the back stairs of No Name fading after a moment. “So, how did you know Henry?”

  Mick settled into himself, arms crossing over his chest. A classic storytelling stance. “We fished together. Worked our way up the ranks, side by side, from greenhorns to deckhands to crew, until eventually I bought the Della Ray and became my own captain.” Some of the luster dulled in his eyes. “Not to bring up a sad subject, Piper, but I was right there in the wheelhouse when we lost him. It was a dark day. I never had a better friend than Henry.”

  Piper laid a hand on his elbow. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hell, you’re his daughter.” He reared back. “I’m the one should be comforting you.”

  “I wish . . . Well, we don’t remember much about him at all. And our mother . . .”

  “She was hurting too much to fill in the blanks, I’m guessing. That’s not unusual, you know. Wives of fishermen come from tough stock. They have nerves of steel. My wife has them, passed them on to my daughter, Desiree.” He gave a nod. “You might have met her husband, Brendan, the other night when you arrived.”

  Desiree. That was Brendan’s late wife’s name? Just like that, she was real. Someone with a personality. Someone with a face, a voice, a presence.

  Sadness had turned down the sides of his mouth at the mention of his daughter. “Wives of fishermen are taught to lock up their fears, get on with it. No crying or complaining. Your mother rebelled against the norm a little, I suppose. Couldn’t find a way to cope with the loss, so she picked up and left. Started over in a place that wouldn’t remind her of Westport. Can’t say I wasn’t tempted a time or two to do the same after my daughter passed, but I found it was worth staying the course.”

  Piper’s throat felt tight. “I’m sorry. About your daughter.”

  Mick nodded once, weariness walking across his face. “Listen, I’ve got a lot more to tell you. Since you’re staying awhile, I figure we’ll have chances. A lot of us locals remember your father, and we never miss a chance to reminisce.” He took a piece of paper out of his back pocket, handed it over to Piper. An address was written on it, blunt but legible. “Speaking of locals, I figured there’s one who’d be more eager to catch up than any of us. This here is the address for Opal. I wasn’t sure if you’d had a chance to stop over and see her yet.”

  Was Opal a woman Piper was supposed to know?

  No clue.

  But after visiting Henry’s memorial and not being moved the way she should have been, she wasn’t up for admitting her cluelessness, on top of the lingering guilt. Plus, there was something else she’d been wondering about and didn’t want to miss her chance to ask.

  “Opal. Of course.” Piper folded up the piece of paper, debating whether or not she should ask her next question. “Mick . . . how exactly did Henry . . . ?” She sighed and started over. “We know it happened at sea, but we don’t know the details, really.”

  “Ah.” He removed his hat, pressed it to the center of his chest. “Rogue wave is what did it. He was standing there one minute, gone the next. She just snatched him right off the deck. We always thought he must have hit his head before going into the drink, because no one was a stronger swimmer than Henry. He had to be out cold when he went overboard. And that Bering Sea water is so damn frigid, there’s only a minute’s window before it sucks the breath right out of a man’s lungs.”

  A shudder caught her off guard, goose bumps lifting on every inch of her skin. “Oh my God,” she whispered, imagining the robust man made of brass being pitched over the side of a boat, sinking to the bottom of the ocean all alone. Cold. Did he wake up or just drift off? She hoped it was the latter. Oddly, her thoughts strayed to Brendan. Was he safe when he ventured out on the water? Was all fishing this dangerous? Or just crab fishing? “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah.” Mick sighed and replaced his hat, reaching out to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder. Until he touched her, Piper didn’t realize her eyes were wet. “I promise I won’t make you cry every time I see you,” he said, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

  “Just once in a while?” She laughed.

  Amusement lit his eyes again. “Here now, listen. We’re having a little party on Friday night. Just us locals having some drinks, a potluck. Sharing memories. Consider yourself and Hannah invited.” He pointed toward the harbor. “Up that way, there’s a bar called Blow the Man Down. We’ll be in the party room downstairs, around eight in the evening. I hope we’ll see you there.”

  “I do love a party.” She winked at him, and he blushed.

  “All right, then.” He gave her the signature Westport hat tip. “Great meeting you, Piper. You have a good day now.”

  “You too, Mick.”

  “Henry Cross’s daughter,” he muttered, heading off. “Hell of a thing.”

  Piper stood and watched him walk for a little before going inside. She didn’t want to interrupt Hannah’s Zoom call, so she took a seat on one of the barrels, letting the quiet settle around her. And for the first time, No Name felt like a little more than four walls.

  Chapter Eight

  Later that night, Piper stared down at the package of ground beef and tried to gather the courage to touch it with her bare hands. “I can’t believe meat looks like brains before it’s been cooked. Does everyone know about this?”

  Hannah came up behind her sister, propping her chin on Piper’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  She thought of Brendan’s smug face. “Oh, yes I do.” She sighed, prodding the red blob with her index finger. “Even if we could find a way to stretch our budget to cover takeout for every night, you should have home-cooked meals.” Shifting side to side, she shook out her wrists, took in a bracing breath. “I’m the big sister, and I’m going to see that you’re properly nourished. Plus, you cleaned the toilet from hell. You’ve earned dinner and sainthood, as far as I’m concerned.”

  She sensed her sister’s shiver. “I can’t argue with that. There were stains in
there dating back to the Carter administration.”

  After her work call, Hannah had tripped over to the hardware store for cleaning supplies. They’d found a broom, dustpan, and a few rags in a supply closet downstairs in the bar, but that was it. Meaning they’d been forced to spend a chunk of their budget on bleach, a mop, a bucket, paper towels, sponges, cleaning fluids, and steel wool to block the mouse holes. All eight of them. When they’d dragged the bunk bed away from the wall, the panel running along the bottom had resembled Swiss cheese.

  They’d been cleaning since midafternoon, and the studio, while still irreversibly grungy, looked a whole lot better. And Piper could admit to a certain satisfaction that came along with making her own progress. Being part of a before and after that didn’t involve makeup or working with a personal trainer.

  Not that she wanted to get used to cleaning. But still.

  It smelled like lemons now instead of rotting garbage, and the Bellinger sisters of Bel-Air were responsible. Nobody back home would believe it. Not to mention, her manicurist would shit a brick if she could see the chipped polish on Piper’s nails. As soon as they were settled, finding a full-service salon that did hair, nails, and waxing was top of the agenda.

  But first. Bolognese.

  Looking at the lined-up ingredients forced her to recall her impromptu morning shopping trip with Brendan. God, he’d been smug. Right up until she’d brought up his deceased wife. He hadn’t been smug then. More like distraught. How long had the woman been gone?

  If Brendan was still wearing his wedding ring, the death had to be recent.

  If so, he had a thundercloud attitude for a good reason.

  Despite her dislike of the burly, bearded fisherman, she couldn’t stave off a rush of sympathy for him. Maybe they could learn to wave and smile at each other on the street for the next three months. If growing up in Los Angeles had taught her anything, it was how to make a frenemy. Next time they crossed paths, she also wouldn’t mind telling him she’d mastered Bolognese and had moved on to soufflés and coq au vin.

  Who knew? Maybe cooking was her undiscovered calling.

  Piper turned the stove burner on, holding her breath as it clicked. Clicked some more.

  Flames shot out of the black wrought iron, and she yelped, stumbling backward into her sister, who thankfully steadied her.

  “Maybe you should tie your hair back?” Hannah suggested. “Fingers might be sacrificed tonight, but let’s not lose those effortless beach waves.”

  “Oh my God, you’re so right.” Piper exhaled, whipping the black band off her wrist and securing a neat ponytail. “Good looking out, Hanns.”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay, I’m just going to do it,” Piper said, holding her spread fingers above the beef. “He said to cook it on the pan until it turned brown. That doesn’t sound too hard.”

  “Who said?”

  “Oh.” She made a dismissive sound. “Brendan was in the supermarket this morning being a one-man asshole parade.” Closing her eyes, she picked up the meat and dropped the whole thing into the pan, a little alarmed by the loud sizzle that followed. “He’s a widower.”

  Hannah came around the side of the stove, propping an elbow on the wall that was much cleaner than it had been this morning. “How did you find that out?”

  “We were arguing. I said I felt sorry for his wife.”

  “D’oh.”

  Piper groaned while poking the meat with a rusty spatula. Was she, like, supposed to turn it over at some point? “I know. He kind of let me get away with sticking my foot in it, though. Which was surprising. He could have really laid on the guilt.” Piper chewed on her lip a moment. “Do I come across really spoiled?”

  Her sister reached up under her red ball cap to scratch her temple. “We’re both spoiled, Pipes, in the sense that we’ve been given everything we could want. But I don’t like that word, because it implies you’re . . . ruined. Like you have no good qualities. And you do.” She frowned. “Did he call you spoiled?”

  “It has been heavily implied.”

  Hannah sniffed. “I don’t like him.”

  “Me either. Especially his muscles. Yuck.”

  “There were definitely muscles,” Hannah agreed reluctantly. Then she hugged her middle and sighed, letting Piper know exactly whom she was thinking about. “He can’t compete with Sergei, though. Nobody can.”

  Realizing her hands were greasy from the meat, Piper reached over to the sink, which was right there, thanks to the kitchen being all of four feet wide, and rinsed her hands. She dried them on a cloth and set it down, then went back to prodding the meat. It was getting pretty brown, so she tossed in the onion slices, congratulating herself on being the next Giada. “You’ve always gone for the starving-artist boys,” she murmured to Hannah. “You like them tortured.”

  “Won’t deny it.” Hannah slipped off her hat and ran her fingers through her medium-length hair. Hair just as nice as Piper’s, but worn down far less often. A crime, to Piper’s way of thinking, but she’d realized a long time ago that Hannah was going to be Hannah—and she didn’t want to change a single thing about her sister. “Sergei is different, though. He’s not just pretending to be edgy, like the other directors I’ve worked with. His art is so bittersweet and moving and stark. Like an early Dylan song.”

  “Have you talked to him since we got here?”

  “Only through the group Zoom meetings.” Hannah went to the narrow refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke, twisting off the cap. “He was so understanding about the trip. I get to keep my job . . . and he gets to keep my heart,” she said wistfully.

  They traded a snort.

  But the sound died in Piper’s throat when flames leapt up from the counter.

  The counter?

  No, wait. The rag . . . the one she’d used to dry her hands.

  It was on fire.

  “Shit! Hannah!”

  “Oh my God! What the fuck?”

  “I don’t know!” Operating on pure reflex, Piper threw the spatula at the fire. Not surprisingly, that did nothing to subdue the flames. The flaring orange fingers were only growing larger, and the counter’s laminate was basically nonexistent. Could the counters themselves catch on fire, too? They were nothing more than brittle wood. “Is that the rag we used to clean?”

  “Maybe . . . yeah, I think so. It was soaked in that lemon stuff.” In Piper’s periphery, Hannah danced on the balls of her feet. “I’m going to run downstairs and look for a fire extinguisher.”

  “I don’t think there’s time,” Piper screeched—and it galled her that in this moment of certain death, she could almost hear Brendan laughing at her funeral. “Okay, okay. Water. We need water?”

  “No, I think water makes it worse,” Hannah returned anxiously.

  The meat was now engulfed in flames, just like her short-lived cooking career. “Well, Jesus. I don’t know what to do!” She spied a pair of tongs on the edge of the sink, grabbed them, hesitated a split second before pinching a corner of the flaming rag and dragging the whole burning mess into the pan, on top of the meat.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah screamed.

  “I don’t know! We’ve established that! I’m just going to get it outside of this building before we burn the place down.”

  And then Piper was running down the stairs with a pan. A pan that held an inferno of meat and Pine-Sol-soaked cotton. She could hear Hannah sprinting down the stairs behind her but didn’t catch a word of what her sister said, because she was one hundred percent focused on getting out of the building.

  On her way through the bar, she found herself thinking of Mick Forrester’s words from earlier that day. Boy, your dad had a great laugh. Sometimes I swear I still hear it shaking the rafters of this place. The remembrance slowed her step momentarily, had her glancing up at the ceiling, before she kicked open the front door and ran out onto the busy Westport street with a flaming frying pan, shouting for help.

  Chapter Nine
r />   Brendan went through the motions of looking over the chalkboard menu at the Red Buoy, even though he already knew damn well he’d be ordering the fish and chips. Every Monday night, he met Fox at the small Westport restaurant. An institution that had been standing since their grandfathers worked the fishing boats. Brendan had never failed to get the same thing. No sense in fixing something that wasn’t broken, and the Red Buoy had the best damn fish in town.

  Locals came and went, calling hellos to each other, most of them picking up takeout to bring home to their families, greasy bags tucked under their arms. Tonight, Brendan and Fox were making use of one of three tables in the place, waiting for their orders to be called. And if Fox noticed Brendan glancing too many times at No Name across the street, he hadn’t mentioned it.

  “You’re even more quiet than usual,” Fox remarked, leaning back so far in his chair, it was a wonder he didn’t topple over. He wouldn’t, though, Brendan knew. His best friend and relief skipper of the Della Ray rarely made a misstep. In that way, he lived up to his name. “You got crabs on the brain, Cap?”

  Brendan grunted, looking across the street again.

  If he didn’t have crabs on the brain, he sure as shit needed to put them there. In a couple of weeks, they would be making the journey to the Bering Sea for the season. For two weeks after that, they’d be hunting in those frigid yet familiar waters, doing their best to fill the belly of the boat with enough crab to support their team of six until next year.

  Every crew member and deckhand of the Della Ray had year-round fishing jobs working out of Westport Harbor in addition to participating in the season, but king crab was their payday, and Brendan’s men counted on him to deliver.