On Love's Gentle Shore

by Liz Johnson

  Rick tugged at the back of his neck. “I’m not asking for myself. I know I’m out of chances. But I heard she’s getting married.” He cocked his head to the side, one eyebrow arched. “I thought it was to you.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well …” He shrugged like the groom didn’t matter. Although if he cared about Natalie, shouldn’t he care about who she married? “I just figured maybe it was the right time to tell her the truth.”

  Justin hated himself for it, yet he couldn’t help but ask. “The truth?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Let it go, Kane. Let it go. Don’t fall into his trap.

  But he didn’t listen to himself. “Know what?”

  Rick mumbled words that might have been intended for himself but still reached Justin. “Thought your mom or Aretha would have said something by now.”

  Bringing his mom into this was a low blow. “What about my mom?” He was in too deep to let go, so he took several steps across the grass to be sure he didn’t miss anything else Rick might mutter.

  “Oh, um … Nothing.”

  “This is not nothing. If you want my help with Natalie, you’ll fill me in.”

  A stricken look crossed Rick’s features, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. But he didn’t speak.

  Justin fought it, fought the urge to fill the emptiness between them, but when he closed his eyes to muster his strength, all he could see were Natalie’s eyes. So big. So blue. So filled with sadness that he wanted nothing more than to protect her.

  He should still be angry with her. He should let that cold shoulder he’d perfected fall back into place.

  But he wasn’t angry anymore. All he wanted to do was keep this man from hurting her any further.

  Rick rubbed the top of his head, his short hair thinning and lighter than Justin remembered it. But he still didn’t speak. Only the rolling waves and chirping bugs filled the night air.

  And Justin’s tense breathing, which picked up speed with every passing moment, coming out in short bursts.

  Finally the moment exploded. “If you can’t tell me what’s going on, then you don’t deserve to talk to her.”

  Rick held his gaze, sadness etched in his features. But there was no shame in his eyes. “If that’s how you feel, I understand.” Stuffing his hands back into his pockets, he strolled toward the street and disappeared between pools of yellow light.

  Justin hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what it was that Rick wouldn’t say. What it was that Justin’s mom had never told him.

  What secrets had this little town been saving for at least fifteen years?

  Justin had thought about asking his mom, but there were some things a son just couldn’t ask his mother. Like what exactly was the nature of her connection with Rick O’Ryan?

  Every loose-lipped biddy in the county could probably come to a single conclusion. There was a reason Rick had been a favorite in the rumor mills. He’d earned his reputation. And Justin wasn’t about to even hint at a connection with his mother. No way.

  Besides, Aretha was somehow connected to this whole thing. What did it have to do with Natalie and what Rick wanted to tell her?

  His stomach ached and his head pounded. He just needed to get some sleep.

  Instead he stared at the ceiling, watching the shifting shadows of the moon dancing across his room.

  The last time he’d felt like this, he’d written “Good-bye, Girl.”

  He rolled out of bed, his bare feet landing hard on the second-story floor. Cringing, he prayed his mom hadn’t been bothered by that. She didn’t take kindly to his late-night meanderings right above her bedroom.

  Yet another reason to move out.

  Except as much as she groused at him, she understood that he needed to be close to the dairy. Besides, she’d be awfully lonely without him. And vice versa.

  He strode across his room, then back. Then again. He tried to keep his feet light, his steps careful in the relative darkness. But he wasn’t quite careful enough. His pinky toe caught the leg of his bed, and he stifled a cry as he hopped on one foot to the wall. Falling against the faded paint that had more than earned a fresh coat, he leaned his shoulder into the window frame. From this angle, he could see the lighthouse, its beam sweeping across the water, into the trees, and over the pastures where his herd grazed.

  And suddenly he needed to be there.

  Shrugging into a T-shirt, he grabbed the notebook on his nightstand and swiped his keys from their hook by the door. He tiptoed down the stairs, skipping the last step. He was out the door, into his truck, and rolling toward the lighthouse before he could think better of it.

  With the windows rolled down, the air caressed his face with all of its warmth and serenity. Stars sparkled and disappeared behind dancing clouds, their gray outlines shifting and swirling. And always, the ocean beckoned, its call gentle yet insistent.

  As he raced up the ladder in the lighthouse, words had already begun tumbling through him—the cry of the island, the same cry of his heart.

  When the storm is rolling o’er the sea

  And the light can’t even reach the trees,

  You can find a peace with me

  Somewhere on this shore.

  As he scribbled the words into his notebook, he ignored what they meant. He did his best to wipe her picture from his mind. But the memory of her glistening eyes and the tremble of her bottom lip tore him open.

  He’d always been Natalie’s protector, and those instincts were hard to turn off.

  Sure. That’s what he was going to go with. That’s the story he’d tell himself.

  A niggling voice in his mind asked him if the stories he told himself were any better than the story Natalie had been telling her fiancé.

  But that was a question he didn’t want to answer. And Russell Jacobs wasn’t someone he wanted to think about. Not tonight. Not when he could still smell Natalie’s citrusy perfume.

  He might need Russell’s help. But tonight wasn’t about producing a record or making the music he loved.

  Tonight was about excising feelings that had no business showing up.

  He watched the beacon for hours as it swept over the rolling bay. By the time the sun rose, he’d filled a page with notes, scratching out line after line and refilling them with better words. With the right words. Words he couldn’t say, but words that needed a place to live. This notebook had always been a safe place for that.

  And always in the back of his mind, the question of Rick O’Ryan.

  As the orange glow in the east became more insistent, he closed the pages and crawled down the ladder and into his truck.

  There were cows to be fed and milked, but first he needed to talk to his mom.

  She was right where she’d been every morning of his life, in front of the stove making something that smelled of cheese and heaven—not that those two things were mutually exclusive. In his estimation, heaven would have an excellent dairy section of cheeses from around the world. And the marriage supper of the Lamb would probably be topped off with a cheesecake made by Caden. That sounded just about perfect to him.

  “Morning, hon. You were out early.” She glanced over her shoulder in his direction, and he took a quick survey of what she must see.

  A wrinkled T-shirt that smelled like it hadn’t been washed in this century, sleeping shorts that had a hole along the seam at the outside of his thigh. A quick run of his hand through his hair reminded him that he hadn’t bothered to comb it at any point during the night.

  She raised both eyebrows. “Or out late, I suppose.”

  He shrugged, tapping his notebook against his flat palm. “Little of both.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her tone was serious, but the corner of her mouth crinkled in the way it always did when she was amused. “Got something on your mind?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  She spun around then, leaving the eggs she’d been stirring to fend for themselves for a few minutes
. “Well, it’s about time. You’ve been walking around like a zombie for days. Is this about Natalie?”

  “No. Yes. Not really. Wait, why would it be about her?”

  All innocence, his mom put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I just assumed. You haven’t been yourself lately, and it all started about the time Natalie got back to town.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He was definitely himself. He hadn’t changed. And if he had, it certainly wasn’t a result of Natalie’s arrival.

  “Oh, you know.” She waved the plastic spoon that carried a few remnants of the eggs. “Running off to the lighthouse in the middle of the night.”

  “I do that all the time.”

  Her eyebrows arched higher. “After stomping around your room in the middle of the night?”

  That was a fair point. Hard work meant hard sleep, but lately sleep had been more acquaintance than friend.

  She turned back to the pan on the stove, and as she ran her spoon along the edge, a puff of steam escaped, carrying with it the scent of spicy bacon and Monterey Jack mixed into breakfast. “And you’ve been sociable.”

  His brow furrowed of its own accord. “You think it’s unusual that I’m spending time with people? What’s that supposed to mean? I spend time with people. I hang out with Dillon every day.”

  “No, you work with Dillon. That’s different. Set the table.”

  She said her words like they were all one thought, and he had to shake himself out of the argument he was already preparing in his mind. The table. Right. He pulled two plates from the cabinet as he opened his mouth to reject her premise.

  But her command wasn’t the end of her argument. “Dillon has been a staple in your life since Natalie left. And he’s wonderful.”

  Well, that might be taking it a little too far. Wonderful wasn’t the word Justin would use. Dillon talked way too much, had a bad habit of pulling practical jokes, and had no qualms about leaving the least fun chores for the boss. But he was still a hard worker and a reliable friend, and the two had formed an easy camaraderie.

  “But since Natalie’s been back, you’ve been spending time with her and Marie and Caden—”

  “I spend time with Caden.”

  She gave him a patronizing smile as she dished the eggs onto the plates. “Of course you do. I’m just saying your circle has widened. I mean, you’ve been to see Pete at the hardware store in Cavendish three times this week.”

  He rolled his eyes before pulling out a chair and plopping into it. “Because Seth was gone, and I needed supplies to fix up Natalie’s barn. It’s not like we’re going out to dinner and a movie.”

  “But you’re still getting off the farm and seeing people.”

  Without any preamble, she bowed her head, and he did the same. “Father, thank you for this food and your good provision to us. Thank you for your mercy and forgiveness. In your Son’s name, amen.”

  As though she hadn’t even stopped to pray, she continued with her case. “Even Lois Bernard said you’d been by her shop. Of course, I heard that as she was telling Biddy Oatway that she was sure you and Natalie were up to no good and probably sneaking around town like Natalie’s old man had done.”

  Suddenly his chest seized, and air ceased to exist. “She said what?” He managed barely a wheeze.

  “Oh, don’t you worry. I set Lois and Biddy straight.”

  But they’d been talking about Natalie. They’d been gossiping about her. Probably because of him.

  He gave himself a quick reality check. Okay, it wasn’t because of him. They were going to talk about Natalie’s return no matter what. But they certainly wouldn’t be talking about her in such rude terms if he wasn’t showing up with her wherever she went.

  “And Harrison said that you only came in for lunch once this week.”

  “We were working on the barn. Wait. Now you and Harrison are talking about me? That man doesn’t talk to anyone.”

  She popped a forkful of fluffy eggs into her mouth and pretended she couldn’t possibly answer.

  First his mom and Harrison had been sitting together at the kitchen party. And now they were having private conversations. What was she up to?

  Acid flowing in the wrong direction, his stomach sizzled. He grabbed his glass of water and guzzled it, but it did nothing to stem the burn.

  Too many. There were too many things going on right now. He was happy to handle them one at a time, but all of them woven together made him want to go back to the lighthouse and sit there until Natalie left, Rick’s secrets were revealed, and his mom went back to normal.

  He swallowed his water and eyed his mother.

  One at a time. One at a time. He just had to get to the heart of one thing. Then he’d tackle the next.

  “Mom, Natalie’s dad is back in town.”

  She nodded. “I heard that. Have you seen him?”

  “Yeah, the other night when I dropped off Natalie. The day that Marie went into the hospital.” He pushed the food around on his plate, his usual appetite washed away. “He wants my help to talk to her about something. He said she should know before she got married.” He lifted his gaze, staring hard at his mom, guarding himself against whatever she might reveal. “He made it sound like you and Aretha knew about it.”

  Suddenly her chin quivered, and everything that he’d eaten threatened to make a swift and violent return.

  This was going to be much worse than he’d feared.

  But all she said was, “He should tell her.” Her voice was soft, and her shoulders slumped under a sadness that he couldn’t identify.

  “What? What is he going to tell her?”

  She shook her head. “It was a long time ago.”

  His heart stopped, and he couldn’t move. “Mom, there are too many secrets and half-truths running around this town. Tell me the whole truth.” As soon as he said it, her eyes turned glassy, and he suddenly wasn’t so sure he actually wanted to know. But as long as he didn’t, he’d never get any sleep.

  She heaved a soft sigh, and she reached for him, squeezing his arm with a sad smile. “You know that I always loved Natalie like she was one of my own.”

  He nodded. Natalie had been a fixture at their dinner table for more years than he could remember. And when he was in high school, his mom had taken special shopping trips to Charlottetown just before the start of the school year, coming home with enormous bags of new clothes, all in Natalie’s size.

  “But there wasn’t anything we could do for her. We tried.”

  “We?”

  “Aretha, your father, and I.” She stared off into the space above his head, and Justin released the breath he’d been holding. This wasn’t about Rick at all. At least not in the way the gossips would suggest.

  “What happened?”

  “It was before you even became friends—although I was so happy when you did. It gave me an excuse to provide for her. To protect her.” She cleared her throat and pushed her plate away, leaving her jelly toast completely untouched. “We all saw it. The whole town.”

  He hated to pull his mom from her memories, but this was too important to leave any ambiguity. “It?”

  “The neglect. The abuse.” She sniffed and pressed a finger to the corner of her eye. “She was so skinny, and when we saw her around town, she tried to fade into the background. Her dad could have single-handedly kept the liquor store in business, so we all assumed it was him. When we saw bruises, we assumed he was … we assumed they were from him. And that maybe Natalie wasn’t his only victim. But when I asked Connie if everything was all right at home, she brushed me off and avoided me for years.”

  Natalie had rarely talked about her life at home. Even in the lighthouse, she preferred to dream about the outside world, about a place far from North Rustico. But he’d assumed too. It had always been her father she avoided talking about. Her father who caused such embarrassment.

  But a sinking feeling inside had him questioning everything he’d ever thought about her childhood. And
it hurt like it had been his own.

  “It was Aretha who saw it first, the way Natalie always flinched away from the women. The other girls would run up and hug Aretha at church. Natalie put as much space as she could between them. But she didn’t mind hugging your Sunday school teacher or Father Chuck.”

  A lump formed in his throat, and he had to force the words past it. “Because it was her mom?”

  “Yes. So we went to Rick.”

  “And it didn’t go well.” It wasn’t even a question. He could fill in the blanks for himself now. Each one made him sick to his stomach. But one gaping hole remained. “What about child welfare? Why not call the authorities?”

  She hung her head as though this was her greatest shame. “We did. But they couldn’t prove any abuse, and Natalie wouldn’t tell them anything.”

  Justin pushed back from the table, his chair rocking back at the force. “Because she was scared, Mom. Couldn’t you do something? Why didn’t you tell Natalie? Or me?”

  “Tell you what? That we wanted to save her but couldn’t?” She reached again for his arm, but he jerked it away. “You were just kids, and you hardly knew her at that point.”

  His eyes burned, and he pressed the heels of his hands against them. Somehow it was so much worse realizing that Natalie had had an escape but hadn’t known it. If he’d known, he would have snuck her out of her house, gotten her to safety.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected his mom to say, but this wasn’t it. This was so much worse than what he’d imagined, because his best friend had been in a pit and he’d been unable to save her.

  Maybe you can save her from a new pit now.

  The voice in his head came out of nowhere, but he knew instantly what it meant.

  She had constructed a very careful facade for her fiancé. She was about to marry a man who had no idea of the passionate, fiery woman she really was. It was bound to be a disaster that neither could see coming.

  Perhaps he could save her from that. But if he did, he’d also ruin any hope of signing with Russell Jacobs.