Half Moon Harbor

by Donna Kauffman

  Grace gaped. “What? Tomorrow? I thought you were coming back later today—”

  “Eel season was extended to this weekend, first time in thirty years. Buyers are on the docks tonight. It’s the last night. Going rate is three hundred fifty a pound.”

  Her eyes went wide at that. “Dollars? For eels?”

  “In Japan, Taiwan, China they’re a delicacy, so yes ma’am. Man’s gotta earn a livin’. I’ll be back out here at noon tomorrow. You be here on the dock, ready to go. Or radio Blue by eleven at the latest not to bother coming if you plan to stay.” He glanced up toward Ford, then back to her. “What’s it to be?”

  Grace’s heart was thumping so hard she could barely hear herself think, much less scope out plans that included what she was going to do the next day. She didn’t even know how she was going to handle the next five minutes. Not only that, she had work crews scheduled to come back in the morning. “Go,” she blurted. “I’ll be—I’m staying. Tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, or I’ll radio, or—or something.”

  The man looked dubious. “You sure?”

  “Not even close,” Grace said, then turned, grabbed the ladder as if it was a life raft, and started to climb before she changed her mind. If she didn’t go through with it now, she’d never work up the nerve again. She’d taken the crucial first step. He’s going to at least hear me out, dammit.

  She slung her bag farther onto her back and continued the rest of the way up the ladder, clinging as much to the tiny surge of anger as she was to the rungs. He can do that much.

  The boat was already pushing clear, the engines rumbling louder as the captain moved away from the pier by the time she reached the top. Mostly to give herself a moment to catch her breath . . . and get a hold on her sanity . . . she turned and waved at the captain. He gave her a nod, then the boat swung in a wide arc and he chugged across the open water, heading back toward Half Moon Harbor.

  She took another steadying breath that sounded a lot more like a gulp, and turned around, forcing herself to look at her brother. “I’m sorry. You probably feel ambushed.” She’d thought her heart would explode with joy . . . or shatter into a million pieces. Neither happened. It felt more like she’d entered some weird purgatory or limbo, where nothing was quite real. Yet. “I was afraid if I let you know I was coming, you’d find a way to keep me from getting out here.”

  He looked at her for the longest moment.

  Face-to-face, with a clear view of him, all of him, she still couldn’t read him. In fact, she had to search for the brother she knew, the one who’d worn his hair in a military buzz, with that hard but fresh-faced jaw, stiff neck and even stiffer broad shoulders. At least that’s who he’d been when he’d gone off to war.

  He’d come back different, but she’d done her best to block those memories. Instantly, they all came rushing back, flashes from childhood. Him making her grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast, reading her old beat-up copies of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and Captain Underpants that had somehow found their way to the shelves in the family room of their house, though neither of them knew why or how. Memories of him saying good-bye to her when he got on the bus that would take him to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for basic training. Memories of him showing up suddenly with no warning at the latest in a long line of houses and strangers she’d been shuffled off to, looking so handsome and rugged . . . with eyes so empty and sad.

  Memories of the last day she’d seen him, when she’d screamed at him to get out, that if he loved her, he’d never have left her to live such an awful, horrible life. Screaming that she hated him.

  They stared at each other without speaking. He looked . . . distant. Unapproachable. And yet, maybe it was because she’d distorted reality over the years, or maybe it was because he’d found peace in his new life, but forty-four looked a lot better on him than twenty-two had. Or twenty-nine. He was still ruggedly handsome, but he’d matured into his good looks. The haunted eyes were gone, the sadness, too . . . though it was hard to tell, honestly. It was more a feeling than anything specific she saw.

  He was tall, a few inches over six feet. She’d always thought he was this giant hero, and was almost surprised to discover she hadn’t exaggerated the height part. He was still broad in the shoulder, trim in the waist, but in his short-sleeved T-shirt and loose jeans, his physique looked more sinewy and lean than the pumped-up muscle he’d had back in his Army days.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked finally, his voice so gruff, so quiet, she could barely make out the words.

  The sound of his voice, after so, so long, made her heart skip . . . and suddenly purgatory was over and seeing him was very, very real. “Because of what I said. What I did. Ford, I know you must—”

  “No,” he said, cutting her off almost angrily. He seemed to catch himself, steady himself, but his tone was still tight when he added, “You don’t know what I must. You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you don’t want me here, or . . . in your life. I left you alone, even convinced myself I was doing it for you, because you obviously wanted it that way. But the truth is . . . I was afraid. Scared to death, really. You’d walked away once and I . . . I didn’t—couldn’t—give you the chance to do that to me again. And . . . yeah,” she added more quietly, squinting against the sun as she crumpled Brodie’s baseball hat into a ball in her hands. “Because I was still mad. At myself and at you. Even when I knew it wasn’t fair, I still was.”

  There was another long silence; then he said, “What changed?”

  “Me.” Grace shrugged then let her arms go limp. Truth was, she could have easily crumpled to a little heap on the dock or dissolved into tears, or both, the emotion of the moment was so suffocating, so . . . choking. “I guess I grew up. I had a career—a very good one as an estate lawyer. I’ve spent the past eight years doing probate for the final wills and testaments of my clients, which is akin to tiptoeing through a minefield of seeing that the deceased’s wishes are carried through in the spirit of the will and the letter of the law while simultaneously watching families tear each other apart, or fall apart, even when they didn’t want to, and I . . .” Her words trailed off.

  She should have all the right words; she’d only imagined this moment a hundred times, a thousand. But it was coming out all stilted and disjointed and not at all the way she’d planned. “I thought I was the lucky one because I’d never have to go through what they were going through. I’d already lost my family, lost everything, so I was bulletproof to that particular pain. It was what made me so good at my job, I think. I understood their loss, but I was distanced from it personally, unaffected. Smug in my own safe little cocoon. So very lucky.”

  “You were always pretty smart. Sounds like that didn’t change.”

  Her expression sharpened, her focus tightened. She was unsure of his meaning, so she took his comment at face value. “For a long time, no, it didn’t. Then I realized that safe doesn’t always equal happy. It’s just . . . safe. My family wasn’t gone. It was just tucked away somewhere. And I wasn’t okay with that. When I was finally honest with myself, I knew I had never been okay with that. I’d just accepted it. Partly because I didn’t know what else to do, and partly because not accepting it meant . . . well, it meant doing something crazy like this. Something crazy that could end up hurting me all over again. Maybe I just had to wait until I was strong enough, or confident enough”—she let out a half laugh, only the sound was a bit choked—“or crazy enough, desperate enough, that being hurt didn’t matter. Not compared with the pain of never even trying.” Grace looked at her brother, really looked at him, and tried to find something, anything, of the guy she’d so worshiped as a child. “I should have tried sooner, Ford. And frankly, you should have, too. We should have had each other all this time, in whatever way we could. It would have been better than having nothing at all.”

  “That’s where you’d be wrong.” He paused, planted his hands on his hips, looked up at the sky for a long moment, then final
ly back at her. “For a long time, it was better I wasn’t around anybody.”

  “And when that time was over?”

  “You had your life. It was good. You were good. You didn’t need me.”

  “First of all, you don’t know a damn thing about my life. Or what—or who—I needed. I know I yelled at you, screamed at you, when you came back that last time. I’ve regretted it so—” Her voice broke, and she worked hard to get a grip. Losing it now wouldn’t help either of them. “I wish I’d been more mature, less angry. But I was a pissed-off teenager. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “Sure you did. And you were right. You should have been pissed off at me. Then and now. I did abandon you, Grace. I deserved everything you threw at me.”

  “Then, perhaps. But”—she lifted her hands, gesturing toward the island behind him—“now? Now you’re not that man, not that guy. When did that happen? And why didn’t you come back? Apologize if you felt you should have. Or at the very least, just made sure I was okay.”

  He held her gaze for the longest time, and she searched his face, looking for . . . something. Anything. She wasn’t finding it.

  “I should have come to see you, when your girlfriend asked me to,” she said. “And you should have come seen me graduate. She reached out for you and that kind of pissed me off all over again. To know you were back in the world, doing okay. You never even bothered to let me know. But I got past it. I mean, I didn’t come, but I did send that invitation.” She folded her arms and finally looked away, blinking back tears of regret, of sadness, of anger. “You should have come or at least sent a damn note.”

  When the silence spun out again, she looked back at him. He was frowning and looking confused.

  “What?” she finally asked, her voice flinty from anger and the threat of tears.

  He unfolded his arms, lifted his hands in a confused gesture, then let them drop, propping them on his hips again. “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. What girlfriend? And I never got any damn graduation invitation.”

  “I-I got a letter, telling me you were here, what you were doing. She said you’d told her about me, and that she knew you’d never reach out, so she was asking me to make the first move, take the first step.”

  He shook his head, raked one hand through his long, shaggy hair. Grace almost smiled at the gesture. It was the first familiar thing he’d done, and she flashed back to one of her earliest memories of him, when he was in high school and he’d grown his hair long because he hadn’t played sports in his junior year . . . or his senior year. It had gotten even longer over that last summer before their mother died. She knew he hadn’t played sports because he’d been taking care of her, taking her to preschool and then kindergarten, picking her up from the sitter every day after school. He couldn’t make practice, much less the games, because he had to take care of her. He’d get exasperated, at her, at their mom, at . . . well, at life. And he used to rake his hand through his hair, just like that.

  “I guess you were an angry teenager, too,” she said quietly, having something of a small epiphany. “All this time, I thought about you abandoning me, walking away. But I guess—” She stopped, her breath hitching. She made herself take a long, slow breath in, then let it out the same way. She looked at him again. “If I was an angry teenager, I can only imagine how you felt when you were that age. Actually, no, that’s not true. I can’t. I only had me to be responsible for. You had your whole life to live . . . and you were saddled with me. And Mom. You must have resented the hell out of me. I mean, I thought a lot about the burden I was to you, but I never thought about it in the context of your being a teenager then.” She shook her head. “I-I couldn’t not be a little kid, had no choice in the role I played way back then, but still . . . I should have put it all together sooner. It might have helped me understand better. Be less . . . angry.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Not the part about my feelings as a teenager. Yeah, sure, I was angry at the whole damn world. But that wasn’t your fault. I mean, I never blamed you. Hell, I took all of that on my own shoulders. Who sent you that note? What was her name?”

  “I—don’t remember. I was, what, twenty-one? That was ten years ago. Who was your girlfriend ten years ago?”

  “I didn’t have a girlfriend. Ten years ago I’d only been here for—” He broke off, then swore under his breath, something that sounded like, “Dammit, Dee.” He paused, raked his hair again, then asked, “So, what invitation did you send? Your graduation from Mason? Or Georgetown?”

  Her gaze flew to his as he lifted his head and her heart stuttered, stumbled. “GMU, before I started Georgetown. How did you know where—” She couldn’t finish the question.

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then swore under his breath again. “You didn’t need me in your life again, Grace. I was just figuring out how to survive back then, and . . . I’d already let you down once. Badly. Unforgivably. But that didn’t mean . . . ah, hell.” He turned and paced a few steps away. Propping both of his hands on his head, he stood and stared at the island for several long minutes.

  Grace didn’t say anything, mostly because her throat had closed over completely. He’d . . . what? Kept track of her? But had never come to her? She didn’t know whether to feel joy that he really had cared enough to keep up on what she was doing . . . or get pissed off all over again that he’d done it all from a distance, and left her thinking . . . well, all the five thousand different things she’d been thinking all these years—ranging from he didn’t care to he hated her.

  He finally turned around. “When I started getting my shit together, really together, I tracked you down. I intended to come back, to make things right, which . . . I quickly realized was a complete joke. There was no making right what I did to you. I figured it was best, that you were better off. You were in college then and you were doing great. Then it was law school, and . . . well, you’d figured it out, you had this huge life ahead, and I guess I felt like you’d accomplished all of that despite what I did. The last thing you needed was me, coming back and possibly turning everything to shit.”

  “How can you say that?” she asked, voice wavering.

  “Because I was deep in the shit, Gracie. I was . . . I used to use the phrase ‘in a bad place’ but that’s bullshit. I was in hell. Trust me, it was better that I left you to continue the life you’d made for yourself. I thought you wanted it that way. I mean, why wouldn’t you?”

  Gracie. No one had ever called her that but him. Tears finally trickled from the corners of her eyes. “So we both fucked up. Repeatedly.” She stopped talking and pressed her fingers to her eyes. She had to do something, anything, to stop the tears. Once they started, she knew it would be a full-on, cathartic, big sloppy cry. Now was not the time for that. This was her one chance, and she needed to get the words out. “I quit my job. I was good at it . . . but it was sucking what soul I had left right out of me. I came to Maine, to Blueberry Cove, to start over.”

  Shock crossed his face, then it became that careful mask again, Despite the fact that he was a good ten yards away from her, she could feel him withdrawing again.

  “I want something different. I want family, a place that feels like home. I want friends, a life that I actually enjoy, a reason to smile every day. And dammit, I want you.”

  “So you just . . . up and moved here?”

  She lifted her hands and let them drop by her sides. “This is the only place I can have all those things at once. I-I bought a boathouse. I’m turning it into an inn.”

  He plowed both hands in his hair, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind, but not saying anything. Maybe wisely so.

  “I don’t know the first damn thing about running an inn. And if that’s not crazy enough? I got the idea because I read a book about a woman who’d gone searching for meaning in her life and that’s what she did. It just . . . it resonated with me, somewhere so deep inside I . . . I don’t know. I could
n’t get it out of my head. It became my fantasy dream life. I did all this research, half hoping it would bring me back to earth, back to reality. Half hoping it would, I don’t know, give me the nerve to just go and do what I knew I really, really wanted to do. Needed to do. But I had spent all that time getting my degree, passing the bar. I had this great job. I had money in the bank. Who walks away from that because they read some stupid book and got this wild hair up their ass? I mean, honestly . . . I thought maybe I was losing my mind.” She let out a laugh that held a lot of emotion, but almost none of it humor. “I thought maybe I was becoming like Mom.”

  “You’re nothing like Mom.” He said it quite fervently, almost angrily.

  Grace lifted her hand to her throat as if by touching it she could make the ache swelling inside go away. “See, that’s just it, Ford. I don’t really remember her. I don’t know what I’m like. Or who I’m like.” She shook her head and looked away, out over the water. “I’ve never told a single soul about Mom. About . . . worrying that something like that would happen to me. That maybe it was happening to you and that’s why . . .” She let the sentence drift off, and dipped her chin, then shook her head. When she lifted it again, she was smiling. It was a forced smile, but dammit, she wanted to be done crying, done feeling sad. And angry. And lonely. “I sure as hell never told anyone I changed my whole life around because of some stupid damn book I picked up at the library. I didn’t even go there looking for it. I was there doing research on one of our cases and somebody was returning it just as I was checking out. It had a lighthouse on the cover, and it just”—she rolled her eyes—“looked peaceful. And tranquil. It reminded me of you. Of you being in Maine. Maybe with a lighthouse like that. I don’t know. It was completely insane. More so when I started reading it and it was like a story of what my life could be, if only I was brave enough to do what I wanted, instead of what was safe.”

  Ford didn’t say anything to that. In fact, he was silent for so long, she wasn’t sure there was going to be anything left for them to say.