by Laura Drewry
Apparently that’s how O’Donnells dealt with things: Walk away and don’t talk about them again.
He’d talked tonight, though, and as much as it sickened Kate, it also touched something deep inside her. He didn’t have to tell her what happened; he could have easily said she needed to help with the shack and that would’ve been the end of it. She’d been sent there to do whatever they needed her to do, and at the end of the day it was his family’s name on the deed, not Jessie’s.
At least that’s how it was for the moment; a few months from now it could well be Paul’s name on the deed, and then this need of Liam’s to rip down the shack would have been for naught. And it wasn’t the first time thoughts like that prickled her conscience.
They were busting their butts to get this place in shape, and the only one who was going to benefit from their sweat was Paul Foster. And, God willing, Kate.
—
By the time she finished her workout and made it up to the lodge the next morning, Finn and Jessie were just sitting down to breakfast.
“How was the book?” Kate asked. “You were pretty into it when I went to bed.”
“Ahhh.” The sigh Jessie released made Finn roll his eyes. “Have you ever read Caroline Linden?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a whole stack of them you can borrow. She writes Regency romances, and they’re like…wow!”
“Historical romance, eh?” Kate tipped her head from side to side. “Not my usual genre, but I’m always happy to try something new.”
“There’s eggs.” Apparently having had enough of the romance talk already, Finn pointed toward the frying pan on the stove.
“Thanks, but Liam’s already at the shack, so I’ll just grab a thermos of coffee and get going.”
“I was hoping to get an inventory of the kitchen today,” Jessie said. “If Liam’s going to do a run to the mainland sometime soon, we need to send him with as complete a list as we can.”
Kate heard what she said, even nodded along with her, because Jessie was right. They did need to get the inventory done.
“Finn’s going to have to help you,” Kate said as she screwed the lid onto the thermos. “Liam needs my help today.”
“But—”
“Sorry, gotta go.” Armed with her work gloves and an extra pair of socks, she hustled down to the shack, where Liam had already started ripping things out. The sink was on the dock close to the same boat they’d stored all the old shingles on, and the wooden countertop it had been attached to was now stacked in pieces on the grass.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her short time at the Buoys, it was that nothing got wasted. If they couldn’t reuse it themselves, they either took it to the Return-It place in Port Hardy or they burned it. But there was no logical reason to get rid of what looked like a perfectly good sink, which meant Liam was going to have to do some pretty fast talking when Jessie or Finn asked. And Kate had no doubt they would.
Liam was inside the shack, furiously thumb-typing something on his phone and muttering under his breath, when Kate walked in. The second he saw her, he pushed something (she assumed it was the SEND button), then tucked his phone in his pocket and tipped his chin up at her.
“Hey.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Nah, it’s…it’s nothing.” He pressed the heel of his hand against his right eye, presumably to stop the twitch she saw flicker across his lid. “You ready for this?”
“You bet. I brought coffee.”
“Thank God.” With a quick wink, he unscrewed the lids and filled the cup, while she tried to figure out if there was a system to what he was doing. Didn’t look like it.
Handing her an old yellow milk crate, he pulled open the cupboard door and lifted his coffee cup toward the mess inside. Lures and weights were scattered over, under, and around a couple of pairs of rusty pliers, half a dozen water-warped books, and three tipped-over metal coffee cans. And all of it was tangled up with miles of unrolled fishing line.
“Most of this stuff we can reuse; we just need it out of here for now.”
Kate wasn’t sure any of it was any good, and when she started running the place, she’d make damn good and sure that Paul replaced all of it. When the crate was full, she walked it out to one of the boats and set it inside the back, under a tarp she’d found in the shack.
Turned out she and Liam worked pretty well together, falling into an easy but steady rhythm of removal and sorting, and the whole while their conversations flowed with a growing ease she didn’t have with many people.
He told her about his early days in Little League, and she told him about her failed attempts at cheerleading. He told her about how hard Ronan cried the night Liam got drafted, and she told him how hard she’d laughed watching Shrek the first time—and, yes, since he asked, that meant she’d watched it more than once. More than half a dozen times, actually. He’d never seen it, but he had seen Moneyball four or five times, as well as Field of Dreams and a bunch of other baseball movies whose titles were only vaguely familiar to her.
By early afternoon they had the place completely gutted and sorted into different salvage piles, and even though they were both starving, neither one was keen to go face Jessie alone, so they did it together.
“Exactly how long is that shack going to take?” Jessie asked as they quickly threw a couple of PBJs together. “You’re not ripping the whole thing down, right?”
“I’m not really sure,” Liam said. “And, yeah, whole thing’s going.”
“God almighty, Liam, we can’t afford for you to be wasting time on things like that when there’s so many other things that need to be done.”
“He’s not wasting time.” The words were out of Kate’s mouth before she realized it. Regret immediately followed. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“We’ve got about a thousand things on our to-do list,” Jessie snapped. “And that stupid shack doesn’t even make the top twenty.”
“I know what’s on that list, Jessie; you show it to me forty freakin’ times a day.” Liam slammed his knife down on the counter and turned. “But you better get used to it, because this is what I’m doing right now. Today. And I’m not asking you to like it and I’m not asking you to help, but since I’m the one footin’ the bill for this shit-show, you might want to cut me a little slack here, all right?”
Silence.
Kate didn’t dare turn around for fear of what Jessie’s expression might be, but by the time Liam picked his knife up again, Kate could hear Jessie’s footsteps fading in the direction of the office, followed immediately by the sound of Finn’s rapid approach.
“Oh shit.” Liam’s mutter made Kate snicker. “Here we go. Better brace yourself.”
So Kate did. She braced herself for both flying words and fists, even winced when she heard Finn stop just inside the kitchen, but nothing happened until Liam glanced back over his shoulder at him.
“Hey.”
“I just got off the phone with Ronan.”
“Yeah?”
Kate could hear the apprehension in Liam’s voice, even though he’d mumbled the word out over a huge bite of his sandwich.
“Yeah. He called to see how things were coming along, so I started bitching at him about you and that goddamn fish shack.”
Liam stopped chewing, set the rest of his sandwich down, and turned slowly, his hands gripping the counter behind him. Kate turned, too, shocked to see the look on Finn’s face. Gone was the smart-ass grin, and gone was the accusing glare he’d pinned her with the other night.
Leaning up against the wall, his hands tucked behind him, there was something in his eyes, an ache that made him look like he was about eight years old.
“He told you,” Liam said quietly, then cursed again, louder, when Finn nodded. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
“The hell with that!” Finn blasted back. “You should’ve told me when it happened!”
“It
wasn’t your problem, it was ours. You didn’t need to know what happened in there.”
“I didn’t…Jesus, Liam, you had no right to keep that from me.”
“I had every right! You were fifteen years old and still having nightmares about—” Liam stopped short.
“Fuck you.” Finn wasn’t even close to yelling, but he almost vibrated as he yanked one arm out from behind him and jabbed his finger in Liam’s direction. “The day I left for that goddamn school trip, I got into it with Ro, called him a fucking asshole and told him all of our lives would’ve been so much easier if he’d have left with Ma.”
“Oh.” Kate tried to catch the whoosh of air before it escaped, but she was too slow, and just as her hand clapped over her mouth, Jessie came hustling back into the kitchen.
“What?” she asked, but no one answered. Instead, Finn kept going.
“When I got home, he was gone and you wouldn’t tell me why. So all this time I thought he left because of me. Just like Ma did.”
“What are you—” Liam stopped cold when Finn’s eyes darkened. Kate didn’t know what that meant, but she knew better than to ask right then. “Fine, I’m sorry, maybe we should’ve told you, but we didn’t. We didn’t tell anyone.”
“Tell anyone what?” Jessie demanded. Again she was ignored, especially by Kate, who was desperately trying to find somewhere else to look.
“Bullshit. She knows, doesn’t she?” Finn tipped his chin Kate’s way but didn’t move off the wall, which made Kate kind of happy, because she was pretty sure if he did, things were going to get bloody again.
“I told her last night, but only because I need to get the shack done before Ro comes home. You and Jessie are so fixed on getting through that damn list, so, yeah, I told Kate. If I hadn’t, she’d have been up here all morning doing inventory instead of helping me gut the place.”
Before Finn could fire back, Jessie held up both hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His sandwich forgotten, Liam rubbed his face roughly and started at the beginning. By the time he got to the part about Jimmy cornering him, Jessie had slumped into a chair and covered her face with her hands.
When he finished, she wiped her eyes and sat back.
“For the love of God, Liam, why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because.” When that didn’t seem to appease her, Liam cursed quietly and threw up his hands. “Fine. Because when he came at me that night, I knew he wasn’t going to stop. There was a look in his eyes I’d never seen before, and—”
He gripped the nearest chair, bent over at the waist, and exhaled loudly before pushing himself upright again.
“And instead of standing up to him and fighting back, I fell into the corner, crying like a baby and pissing in my pants, until Ro was forced to take him down. So which part of that whole scene do you think we wanted people to know, Jessie?” His voice got increasingly louder, increasingly harder. “Do you think it was fun having an old man who liked to use us for punching bags? Or that he scared me so bad I pissed my pants when I was sixteen? Or how about the part where for about ten seconds there we were sure Ro’d killed him, and for about two of those seconds we were both glad?”
The only thing stronger than Kate’s worry that she might throw up was her need to go to Liam and wrap her arms around him until the memory washed away. It was no bloody wonder he hadn’t told her anything down in Vegas about his family. Her childhood hadn’t exactly been a picnic—with the number of boyfriends her mom moved in and out on a regular basis, and especially that one year they spent living in their car—but that was nothing compared to any of this.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie whispered. “I had no idea it was that bad.”
“Yeah, well, now you know.”
Long seconds ticked by without anyone saying anything, and the longer the silence dragged on, the more Kate wished she hadn’t come up for lunch. This was family business, and Kate wasn’t even close to being family.
Much to her surprise, it was Liam who finally broke the awkwardness that followed his confession, with a quiet choking laugh.
“Couple days after that, the idiot over there”—he tipped his head toward Finn—“he walks into the shack while I’m gutting my catch and says, ‘Smells like piss in here.’ D’you remember that?”
Finn shook his head slowly.
“I swear to God, I must’ve gone through about fifty gallons of bleach trying to get that smell out, but even today…” Liam snorted softly. “I open that door, it’s all I smell.”
The only thing Kate smelled down there was salty ocean air, but telling him so wouldn’t change anything. As long as that shack stood, it’s what he’d smell.
“So what you’re saying, then,” Jessie said, her expression softening, “is that you think it’d be better for business if our fish shack smelled like fish instead of piss.”
“Yeah,” Liam laughed. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, all right, then.” The smile on Jessie’s face wasn’t a happy one but rather one of understanding and compassion, mixed with a hint of sass. “There’s no need to get so dramatic about it.”
Pushing out of her chair, she stepped up next to him and wrapped him in a tight hug, exactly how Kate had wanted to.
Giving her the token one-arm hug back, he shrugged. “You know me, Jess, I’m all about the drama.”
“Yeah, right.” Snorting out a laugh, Jessie swiped her eyes again as she released him. “Well, come on, then, you big crybaby, let’s go get this shack done.”
She was half a dozen steps past the door, on her way to the mudroom, before she turned back and tugged on Finn’s sleeve until he followed her. Kate didn’t move until Liam finally turned to face her.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Just great,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Nothing I like more than rehashing shit like that.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He took another bite of his sandwich, but he clearly wasn’t tasting any of it. “I shouldn’t have yelled at Jessie like that.”
“Maybe not, but the two of them were pushing you kind of hard.”
“Yeah, but…” God, he looked tired. “She’s the one who convinced Da to join AA. We’d just celebrated him being twelve years sober a couple months before he died.”
“Twelve years,” Kate breathed. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it was. He could still be a right son of a bitch when he wanted to be, but at least he wasn’t drinking.”
She handed him a napkin to wipe the peanut butter off his lip while she put their supplies away.
“You ready to go back?” he asked. At first she thought it was a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t. His blue eyes searched her face, as though the answer lay somewhere there instead of in what she said.
“I am. Are you?”
Without a second’s hesitation, he shook his head. “Nope. So let’s just get it done.”
They were heading for the door when Jessie’s voice called out from the mudroom.
“Hey, Liam?”
He stopped, looked straight up at the ceiling, and sighed. “Yuh?”
“In the span of a week we’ve found out this and the fact that you were married, and you thought neither of those things were worth mentioning. Is there anything else we should know?”
“Nope, that’s it.” Pressing his hand against his eye again, he continued toward the door, with Kate right beside him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as they stepped out on the porch. “That’s twice your eye’s gotten all twitchy today.”
“It’s nothing,” he muttered. “I’m fine.”
Even if she had believed him, which she didn’t, she didn’t get a chance to call him on it, because Jessie and Finn came out behind them.
“All righty, then,” Jessie said. “Are we good?”
Liam’s gaze flicked to Kate for a second before she turned a well-practiced smile Jessie’s way.
&
nbsp; “Yup,” she lied. “All good.”
“Great. Then let’s burn this thing down, shall we?”
Chapter 6
I’d rather be a good person off the field than a good baseball player on the field.
—Bryce Harper
While Liam didn’t think Jessie had meant what she said about them burning the shack down, Finn took it to heart. For obvious safety reasons, they didn’t just torch it, but anything that could burn did, including most of the stuff Kate had stored on the boats.
Always a bit on the superstitious side, Finn thought the whole shack and everything in it was contaminated and said it would be wrong for them to give any of it to the Return-It place, where their family’s disease would infect others’ lives. So while Jessie and Kate fed and tended the fire by the water’s edge, Liam and Finn took sledgehammers first to the building and then to the sink and freezer.
It was damn therapeutic, he’d give Finn that much. Watching it burn was like one of the last pieces in Liam’s recovery. When the old man finally decided to start going to AA, Jessie had begged and pleaded with Liam, Ro, and Finn to go to some Al-Anon meetings; only then did Liam recognize that Da’s drinking was an illness that made him do things he wouldn’t have done otherwise.
So while the kid in Liam, and probably his brothers, too, still remembered every beating, the adult he’d grown into had managed to put most of it behind him. The shack had been the last physical memory of any of it, and now it was gone.
Neither he nor Finn spoke much while they worked, and Kate and Jessie seemed to understand why, because they didn’t force conversation to mask the silence. Even later, when Liam was out with his bucket of balls, Kate came waddling out of the lodge and took her place behind the plate without so much as a word.
And to show his appreciation for that, Liam wound up and nailed fastball after fastball at her until his arm begged for mercy.
Instead of heading to her cabin afterward, Kate simply refilled her ice bag and grabbed a clipboard and pen from the office.