Home to the Harbor--A Novel

by Lee Tobin McClain

  As usual these days, Venus and Kait were trying on clothes. “After this, will you do my makeup?” Kaitlyn begged Venus. “You’re so good at it.”

  “At your service,” she said. “I’ll do yours too,” she offered Sunny.

  “Sure,” Sunny said, surprising herself.

  Kaitlyn’s jaw dropped, but Venus smiled. “You have to get ready for when Caden comes over,” she said.

  Sunny sat upright. “He’s coming over? Why?” She narrowed her eyes at Kait, then wiped the angry expression off her face. Did Kaitlyn like him? Did Venus?

  “She invited him for you, idiot! We know you’re crazy about him.”

  “I’m not crazy about him! I don’t get like that!”

  “But wouldn’t you like to know him better?” Venus asked. “We saw how you looked at him.”

  If she was looking at Caden weirdly, she needed to stop. No way would she moon around about boys, the way her friends did.

  “I don’t know if he’ll even come,” Kaitlyn said. “I just figured...because I invited Marcus, too, and it would be good to have another boy.”

  “And I’ll be the fifth wheel, as usual.” Venus let out a windy sigh.

  As Kaitlyn punched at her phone to change the music, Venus beckoned Sunny over to the mirror, which they’d set up by the window for natural light. “Hair back,” she said, handing Sunny a scrunchie. “Good heavens, girl, you need to stop being out in the sun all the time, you’re brown!”

  Sunny shrugged. “A lot of people pay for this kind of tan,” she said, echoing what her mother always said. Although Mom had gotten more careful with sunscreen lately.

  Sunny was glad Venus and Kait had invited her to hang out. They were all getting along better for whatever reason.

  Venus was just getting ready to apply the facial masque she said Sunny desperately needed when the doorbell rang. The dog barked, and there was the sound of Kaitlyn’s dad talking to someone, and then heavy footsteps tromping on the stairs. A rap on the door, and Caden and Marcus came in.

  “Keep that door open,” Kaitlyn’s dad called up the stairs.

  “Dad!” Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “You’d think I was twelve.”

  “I heard that,” he called.

  “I just love your dad,” Venus said. “He’s adorable.”

  Sunny winced. She’d once made the mistake of describing old Rooker Smits as adorable, and her mom had yelled at her for fifteen minutes about respect and dignity and treating older people like people, not puppies.

  Anyway, she wouldn’t have thought of Mr. Martin—a big former cop who took no flack from anyone—as adorable. But it was sweet how close he was with Kait and her sister. Sometimes, it made Sunny wish she had a dad.

  Caden and Marcus hunched together over a video game, and Kaitlyn abandoned the other girls to join in. Venus decided to forgo the facial masque. Instead, she went ahead and put a little makeup on Sunny, then put her hair into French braids.

  “How’s it going, staying here?” Sunny asked. Venus was living in the Martins’ spare room most weeks.

  “It’s great. Better than that awful island.”

  “Teaberry Island is cool,” Sunny protested. They went by it pretty often when they were fishing, and its quaint, two-street downtown was interesting. Only a few recluses lived there all year round, according to Mom. “Why’d your mom move there, anyway?”

  “She needed to take a break. For her art.” Venus rolled her eyes and then squirted a little hairspray over Sunny’s head. “There. Perfect.”

  Sunny studied herself in the mirror. Having her hair in a fancier style, wearing a little mascara and blush, did make her look better. Less like a kid or one of the guys.

  “Thanks,” she said. “So you don’t like the island?”

  “No way,” Venus said. “It’s totally boring. There’s nothing to do.”

  Sunny felt like there wasn’t much to do in Pleasant Shores, either, but at least it wasn’t deserted and there were other teenagers. “Do you have any of your mom’s art? I didn’t even know she was an artist.”

  “She left a perfectly good job to do pictures of dogs,” Venus said. She gestured at Kaitlyn’s wall. “Kaitlyn loves them, so I kinda permanently loaned them to her. I don’t want ’em in my room, but I don’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings.”

  Sunny walked across the room to the pictures Venus had indicated, sucking in her stomach. Mom always said she shouldn’t slump, that slumping just made her look like a miserable tall girl, so she kept her shoulders back and tossed her head.

  From the side of her eyes, she glanced at Caden. Was he looking at her?

  He was. She blushed and hurried the rest of the way to the pictures.

  She studied the first one and frowned. It wasn’t what she’d thought of as art before; it was more like a comic book version of a dog. Not a kids’ one, but not exactly manga, either. The dog portrayed looked a little bit like the one Mom and William had found, and Mom had brought home overnight.

  She moved over to the next one. She didn’t recognize the two dogs there, but they were fighting in a kind of pit while men leaned over watching, leering.

  “What’s with the dog pictures?” she asked Venus.

  “Oh, Mom’s like an animal rights activist. In her spare time.” Again, Venus rolled her eyes.

  “I’m out.” Caden put down his gaming console and walked over to where she and Venus stood looking at the pictures. “Hey,” he said, “isn’t that Peppy?”

  “Maybe,” Sunny said. “You mean the dog kids were trying to get drunk, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, that.” He looked down.

  Wait a minute. Mom hadn’t named names of any of the kids she’d seen. “Were you there?”

  “Uh-huh, but don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I sorta sneaked off.”

  Just like he’d sneaked off when they’d found Muffin in the woods. She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s wrong, feeding a dog alcohol!”

  “I wasn’t doing it,” he said. “I’m just...” He trailed off.

  “You’re just what?” she asked.

  “I’m just looking into things,” he said. Then he turned away and marched back over to where Kaitlyn and Marcus were still playing video games. They’d leaned closer to each other, so that now, their shoulders touched. “Marcus was there, too,” he added defensively.

  Sunny threw up her hands. “You guys are awful.”

  “Yeah,” Kaitlyn said, “but they’re cute.” She pinched Marcus’s cheek, and Venus giggled, and Kaitlyn was back to thinking her friends were complete idiots.

  She, on the other hand, wasn’t so distracted by a cute boy that she forgot about the mystery they were trying to solve. Was the dog in the woods, the one these yokels had gotten drunk, somehow related to Xena and Muffin and whoever had hurt them? And was Venus’s mom somehow involved?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “WILLIAM!”

  The lilting voice outside Victory Cottage made William want to hide his head in his hands. His ex-wife was still in town?

  He’d seen Ellie Saturday and Sunday. Monday, she’d promised she was leaving. But here it was Tuesday afternoon and she was knocking on his front door.

  “William? I know you’re in there.”

  And Ellie was nothing if not persistent. He pushed aside his laptop where he’d been reviewing plans for today’s museum work with the teenagers and trudged to the front of the cottage. He opened the wooden door but not the screen. “You said you were leaving.”

  Her face fell, and a reflexive guilt gripped him. Ellie was fragile, easily hurt.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye.” She smiled winningly. “I just have a little time before I hit the road, and I thought...”

  He sighed. “I’ll take you out for a milkshake before you leave town,” he said. “If you promise me you’re all pa
cked and ready to go.” He glanced at the time on his phone. “If we go now, you can be on the road by three, and home well before dark.”

  “You’re so sweet to take care of me. I can just come in and say goodbye.”

  “No.” He knew what that would be like, because she’d already tried to get him into bed twice. “Out in public, or forget it.”

  “Oooh, you’re so firm.” She smiled. “I really like that.”

  He sighed. “Let me grab my things so I can go straight to work from there.”

  Minutes later, they were walking through town. It was a warm day, the last day of March but more like May, and people kept glancing at them.

  It stoked his memories. Partly, they were conspicuous because he was so big and she was tiny; they made an odd couple. But partly, people noticed them because Ellie was gorgeous. Model-thin, with blond hair to her waist and a ready smile and laugh.

  It had taken him a while to realize that the thinness was due to a problem with anorexia that dated back to her high school days. The laugh, as often as not, was related to her drinking in the middle of the afternoon.

  He hadn’t smelled any alcohol on her so far, so hopefully, she’d restrained herself today. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t be able to encourage her getting in a car and driving.

  “I’m glad you’ll be done with this program soon,” she said, grabbing his arm and squeezing it, leaning close. “I can’t wait for you to get back to Baltimore.”

  “Ellie.” He pulled his arm out of her grip. “Even when I come back, it’s not going to be you and me together.”

  “But I’m sorry! I told you I was sorry.” She clutched his arm again. “I was devastated, and I needed a distraction. You can understand that.”

  He shook his head, pulled his arm away again and urged her past the shops toward Goody’s. “Even when we were together, I wasn’t what you wanted.”

  “How can you say that? You know I adore you!”

  He shook his head. “After your earlier two affairs, I took you back. For Jenna’s sake, so we could have a family. Now, with her gone...” He trailed off.

  “But our marriage wasn’t all about Jenna.”

  For him, in the end, it had been. But telling her that—again—wouldn’t do any good. She was in one of her non-listening phases.

  He ushered her into Goody’s and held up two fingers toward the woman behind the counter. “Chocolate,” he said, and led Ellie to a table. Thank goodness, the place was nearly empty.

  In their discussions the previous couple of days, William had surmised what was going on and why Ellie had appeared in Pleasant Shores now. Her latest boyfriend had left her. And she was one of those waiflike creatures who couldn’t manage without a partner supporting and adoring her.

  He got the milkshakes, paid for them and carried them back to the table. He set one down in front of her.

  She frowned at it. “I can’t drink that. I’ll be as big as a house.”

  “Doubtful.” He could tell she wanted more attention and praise for her slenderness, but he wasn’t going to encourage that. “What are your plans for when you get back? You said you have an apartment lined up?”

  “Kind of,” she said, her voice veering toward a whine. “I was hoping we could live together.”

  “We’re divorced, and we’re not getting back together. You need to take charge of your life, honey.” He slipped back into the endearment and could have smacked himself.

  Her face lit up in a smile. “I love it when you call me honey,” she said.

  “It was a mistake. And I’m saying you need to find a place to live and a job. Until then, you’d better stay with your parents.”

  “They kicked me out,” she said.

  Something about the way she said it made him think she was lying. “I still have their number,” he said, pulling out his phone. “I can call them and talk them into taking you in.”

  “All right, all right, they didn’t kick me out and I can stay with them.” Her lower lip stuck out. “But you should take me in. You owe me.”

  How had he ever found her attractive?

  “It was your fault Jenna died,” she said, her voice going shrill as she repeated a refrain he’d heard constantly in the weeks and months after Jenna’s death. “You should have been there.”

  The truth was, she should have been there. She was supposed to have picked up Jenna within an hour of William’s departure, but she hadn’t come. She’d hedged enough about why she’d been late that he’d figured out she’d been preoccupied with her latest man of the month.

  “You should have waited till I got home,” she accused now.

  Maybe he should’ve. He’d known what Ellie was like, how unreliable she was.

  But he’d had to go to his faculty meeting, and Jenna had said she’d be fine, she was going to take a nap, and he’d headed off to work without a worry in his head.

  He’d arrived home after a few hours at work to police tape and a misery so enormous he could barely take it in. Only later had Ellie arrived and collapsed into hysteria.

  Deep inside, she probably blamed herself. But she never really did blame herself, so she’d blamed him.

  Ellie was dependent, and childish, and wanted a man to lean on and pet and baby her. She easily found them, too, because she was so beautiful.

  He’d been shocked that she’d wanted him, when he was working on his graduate degree all those years ago and she was a student. She’d loved how big and strong he was, how protected he’d made her feel.

  His head had been turned, he admitted it.

  Now, looking at her as she cried a little and flung her hair back and leaned forward with her low-cut shirt, he didn’t feel flattered or attracted at all; he felt trapped.

  An image flashed into his mind: the last time he’d been here with Bisky. Bisky, strong, happy, enjoying life. Now that he knew himself, knew more what life was about, he realized that was what he wanted. That was what he would choose if he could have anyone.

  He couldn’t, of course. Ellie was right about one thing: he should have protected Jenna, and he hadn’t. Hadn’t succeeded in protecting and keeping and reforming Ellie, either, for that matter.

  “Can’t we try again?” Ellie begged.

  He studied her and made himself consider her plea one last time. He’d been swayed by her tears and promises twice before. They’d gone to marriage therapy and things had been okay for a while, until someone else caught her eye.

  Now, without Jenna, he had no motivation to take her back, and no desire to, either.

  He took her hands. “Look at me.”

  She did, through long, teary lashes. “You’re saying yes?”

  “I’m saying no. This is no and this is forever. We’re through.”

  She stared back at him and her throat worked and he remembered loving her.

  Not anymore.

  “Go home,” he said. “Go home to your parents and get yourself on your feet again. You’ll figure it out.” Even as he said it, he could predict exactly how she’d get on her feet: with the next man who took her out and bought her things and told her she was pretty.

  “William!” The words were hissed from the doorway, and he looked up to see Sunny. She tapped at her wrist where a watch would have been, if she’d worn one. “Time to start!”

  He scanned for Bisky and there she was, outside Goody’s. Her back was to him, but something about the stiff set of it told him she’d seen him with Ellie.

  He was still holding Ellie’s hands, and now, he pulled his own hands away and stood. “I have to go.”

  Sunny walked out of Goody’s and over to her mother. She put her arm around Bisky and they walked toward the museum.

  Ellie cleared her throat, a choking, crying sound. “I...I don’t know what I might do to myself,” she said, her voice trembling.

&n
bsp; Those words clutched at his stomach, just as they did every time he heard them. He couldn’t be responsible for another woman’s death.

  His therapist had told him the suicide card wasn’t valid, that those who used it to keep a relationship were emotionally abusive. He’d practiced a response—“that’s your choice, and I can’t stop you from making it”—but now, the words stuck in his throat.

  He sighed. “Look, I’m going to call your parents and tell them you’re here,” he said. “Unless you’d rather I call...Roscoe, was that his name? Raymond?” She’d flung it at him as she’d left, but he’d pushed it out of his mind.

  She tilted her head to one side, considering. “I guess I’ll call Roscoe,” she said. “If he knows I came down here to see you, he’ll be pretty jealous.” She pulled out her phone.

  Translation: she could manipulate him. “I’ll call your parents, too, just to make sure you’re safe,” he said. “Goodbye, Ellie.”

  She gave him a sulky pout, and then started speaking into her phone. As he called her parents and relayed the situation and Ellie’s location, he watched Ellie’s pout turn into a smile. Roscoe had evidently caved.

  He gave Ellie a little wave and strode out of Goody’s. He needed to find Bisky and make sure she hadn’t misinterpreted what she’d seen. He couldn’t be with her, no, but he had kissed her; the least he could do was clarify that he wasn’t with someone else less than a week later.

  * * *

  BISKY WALKED TOWARD the museum beside Sunny, barely listening to her daughter’s indignant rant. “What was he doing with that woman? I thought he and you liked each other! Man, if he’s treated you badly...”

  “It’s his ex-wife,” she interrupted.

  Her own voice sounded dull, as dull as the day. Low clouds hung over the Chesapeake, blocking the sun and seeming to muffle the town’s bright colors.

  “Oh.” Sunny sounded surprised and went quiet for a minute, then started up again. “If she’s his ex, then he shouldn’t have been holding her hands like some loverboy. What a jerk! I thought he was one of the good ones.”

  “He has every right to do whatever he wants,” Bisky forced herself to say. “He and I aren’t seeing each other.”