Half Moon Harbor

by Donna Kauffman

  Of course, if he were being honest, Delia O’Reilly had played a pivotal role in his rescue. He was, to a fault, honest—most critically with himself. In this case, the truth was that he definitely wasn’t the man for the job. Or any job that had Delia’s name on it. He was pretty damn sure she’d be the first one to agree.

  He went back to the painstaking and often frustrating task of deciphering his notes on the recently completed nesting season, reluctantly looking up again when a ping indicated another incoming message.

  I’ve only known her a few months, Ford, but I can already state with fair certainty that she’s never going to come out and ask for help. Not from me, and most definitely, not from you.

  “My point exactly,” he retorted. He and Delia had a past, a distant one, some might say a complicated one. They weren’t on bad terms. More like they weren’t on terms of any kind. Hell, he hadn’t seen or talked to her in . . . longer than he cared to figure out, much less admit. Figuring it out would mean admitting he’d been intentionally avoiding her—which meant there was something between them that needed avoiding. Except there was nothing between them. Good, bad, or otherwise. Nothing except for her brother, and Tommy had been gone a very, very long time.

  That didn’t stop a mental scrapbook of photos from flipping through his mind’s eye. Over the past several months, memories of his friend had popped up on more than one occasion. Tommy on his first day out of boot camp being assigned to Ford’s small platoon, and to Ford personally as his battle buddy. Tommy had been a few years older, but in all other ways, Ford was the mature one, the one with more experience. In battle and in life.

  Despite coming from a small town in the northern coastal reaches of Maine, and being about the most unworldly person Ford had ever met, Private O’Reilly had been cocky around his fellow grunts. Around Ford, however, he’d been almost tongue-tied. Ford remembered how annoyed he’d been by that, especially since he’d done his damndest to be more—how had his C.O. put it?— accessible. Less threatening. Ford had had enough self-awareness even then to know he was intense, focused, motivated. It was why he’d been groomed almost from day one for the Army’s special forces unit, the Rangers. But he’d never threatened anyone. Well, not anyone on his side of the trigger, anyway.

  He forced his thoughts away from Tommy, away from the grinning kid who’d weaseled his way under Ford’s skin, and even into his good graces. More shocking, Tommy O’Reilly had managed to do the impossible. He’d found a way to be a friend. Ford hadn’t had many of them—a choice he’d made very early in life. Life was simpler when you didn’t need people . . . or even like them all that much. Especially in his line of work. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t have risked his life for O’Reilly. He had. More than once. Tommy had saved his sorry ass, too, ultimately sacrificing his own while doing just that.

  It was for all those reasons, as well as the ones that, to this day, he’d been careful not to examine too closely, that he’d accompanied Tommy’s body home to Blueberry Cove, intent on making sure his family knew he’d not only died a hero, but a damn good soldier and an even better human being. Those last two things didn’t always go hand in hand. Ford knew that to be true every time he’d looked in the mirror.

  Ford? I know you’re reading this because the little green dot is next to your name. If you don’t want me messaging you, then make yourself invisible.

  Ford tossed his pen on the desk, leaned back in his chair, and scrubbed a hand over his face, wishing he could scrub away the message screen and the voice he heard behind it just as easily. He’d spent the past thirteen years being invisible, goddamn it. He wasn’t used to anyone caring whether or not he was accessing the Internet, much less feeling compelled to communicate with him whenever the mood struck. The folks he communicated with as part of his work knew when information and data needed to be shared he did so via e-mail and responded in kind. Suited them, suited him, don’t fix what’s not broken.

  Don’t make me come out there.

  “Dammit, Grace.” Even as he barked the words, he felt the corners of his mouth briefly twitch upward. She was impossible to ignore when she wanted something. Got right in his face until he responded, too. She was a lot like him . . . in more ways than he wanted to admit or even think about.

  One thing was certain, that name flashing on the screen next to the message bubble was exactly the reason he’d lost control of his carefully contained world.

  Grace Maddox. His baby sister. Not that there was anything baby about her. She might be thirteen years his junior, but she was thirty-two, had a law degree, and was the proud new owner of an eighteenth-century boathouse she was converting into an inn. In Blueberry Cove. Where she’d moved to—lock, stock, and stray dog—four months ago, specifically so she could be near her only family. Namely, him.

  Grace was one of those things he’d carefully removed himself from. He’d told himself at the time he’d done it for her own good. He supposed even then it was something he half expected to come back and bite him on the ass. It was one thing to join the Army at age eighteen, certain he was doing what was right for himself and that his five-year-old only sibling would understand and even be better off without him.

  It had been quite another to see just how wrong he might have been on his first return home . . . but he’d already re-upped for another four and was heading into the type of training that was best done solo, so there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do to fix it. By the time he and the Army had parted ways . . . hell, he could barely fix himself. By then it had been too late for him to mount any kind of rescue. Even if he could have, she’d hardly needed it, not from the likes of him, anyway. She’d gotten herself through grade school and high school, four years of college, and on into law school. She’d made something quite good out of the crap deal life had handed her.

  Staying away, letting her start her life on her terms, do things her way had been the right thing to do. He’d abandoned her, for God’s sake. Why the hell would she want anything to do with him? He’d taken the only chance he’d had, gone down the only path he’d seen available to make a life for himself. She’d deserved no less than the chance to do the same. So, he’d kept track, but he’d stayed away. For her own good.

  You’re so full of shit, then and now. He reached out to flip the screen off, but his hand paused mid-reach.

  Both Maddox siblings had made their way in the world, chosen their own paths, but only Grace had had the balls to reach out for what she really wanted, for what really mattered—family.

  He curled his fingers into his palm and let his hand drop to the top of the desk, her words still staring him in the face. What he saw wasn’t the words, but her face, those eyes, that stubborn chin, the way she lifted one eyebrow as if to say Seriously? You expect me to buy that?

  Grace was his one weakness. When they were face-to-face, there was no way he could deny her anything she wanted. Even if what she wanted was to rebuild a relationship with him. But that didn’t change the fact that he sucked at it, that he was supremely uncomfortable with it. Allowing even the tiniest chink in his damaged and beat-up armor to be revealed was the single most terrifying thing for him. Being vulnerable in any way, on any level, put his carefully constructed new self at risk. He’d survived more than most men could and still lay claim to their sanity, if not their soul. He wasn’t sure he could survive letting her down. Again.

  She’d given him no choice in the matter. She’d simply shown up, making it clear she wasn’t going away . . . and then she’d wrapped her arms around him, hugged the life out of him, and told him she loved him. Loved him. After all he’d done. After all he hadn’t done.

  How was that possible? He didn’t even know what the hell love was anymore.

  He only knew he couldn’t tell her no.

  Now she wanted to drag him into other people’s lives. Namely Delia’s.

  Ford owed a debt he could never adequately repay to his one and only sibling, but he and Delia were square. He would fig
ure out how to continue managing his world and have his sister be part of it, but he’d be damned if he’d open himself up to anything—or anyone—else. Delia knew better than anyone—anyone—even Grace, that was by far the best for everyone concerned.

  He shoved his chair back and stood, too restless to simply sit there and let thoughts and memories dive-bomb him like he was a sitting duck. He strode across the corner of the open loft space he used as an office and climbed down the ladder to the open area below that comprised kitchen, dining, and living area. He crouched down to check the pellet stove that squatted, fat and happily chugging out heat in the center of the home he’d built himself, but it was going along just fine, which he’d known it would be since he’d just reloaded it that morning.

  Swearing under his breath at his uncustomary restlessness, he straightened, then, skirting the corner area that was both kitchen and dining area, he gave the rough bark of the tree trunk that formed the far corner an absent rub with his palm before pushing open one of the triple-paned doors. He stepped out onto the side deck. The dense, coniferous tree canopy provided year-round shade as well as protection against the elements. The unseasonably brisk late August breeze blowing inland through the treetops didn’t bring him the peace of mind it usually did.

  When he’d been working toward his degree, he’d spent almost every minute of his spare time researching alternate living spaces. Initially, it had simply been a brain puzzle, a way to keep his thoughts occupied when he wasn’t studying so they wouldn’t veer into territory better left in the past. But that particular puzzle—off-grid living—hadn’t been so easily discarded. In fact, it had captured his attention so completely that he’d eventually admitted it was more than a casual interest, more than momentary mental distraction.

  The first time he’d laid eyes on a drawing of a sustainable, livable tree house, he’d known instantly that that was what he’d been searching for. In that moment he’d understood that in addition to studying environmental habitats of various endangered species, he’d also been studying his own environmental habitat. Being endangered himself, he’d needed to find the right home where he could, if not thrive, at least survive.

  He’d already begun his work on Sandpiper as an intern to Dr. Pelletier, a man he’d greatly admired and whose wisdom and guidance he missed very much. It had been his first summer out on the island when he’d discovered the exact right spot deep in the white pine forest that filled the center of the heart-shaped surge of boulders, soil, and rock that comprised Sandpiper Island. The whole of it was like a kind of fortress, hugged almost entirely by a rocky, boulder-strewn shoreline. There in the tall, old forest heart of it, he’d found his home.

  By the time he’d graduated and taken over operations on the island full-time after Dr. Pelletier had taken ill, Ford had figured out every last detail of how the tree house would be constructed. Multileveled at the core, then spread out through a sturdy group of perfectly matched pine, naturally spaced, so as not to overly burden any one of them. It had taken him eighteen months, and that was with a mild Maine winter in the midst of it. He’d added to it over the ensuing years, with connected outbuildings, most connected by a combination of decking and rope bridges, others only by swing rope. He’d hewn every log, driven every nail, so he knew every last nook and cranny. It was his aerie and his bunker. It had given him the one thing he’d known he needed to survive—the freedom to feel completely safe for the first time in his life.

  Even his safe haven couldn’t save him from the entirely different set of images that flashed through his mind as he stood under the tree canopy. Images he’d kept tightly sealed, away from all conscious and subconscious thought. They weren’t filled with horror, weren’t the seeds of endless nightmares suffered while asleep and while wide awake.

  No, he’d kept these particular memories under lock and key for entirely different reasons. Polar opposite reasons. He’d learned to live with his past, with the things he’d done. He’d made a certain kind of peace with himself, a deal of sorts, that he was giving back, balancing a score that could never be measured, much less rectified. It was carefully constructed with the knowledge that his work was where he funneled whatever passion he had left in him, where he gave whatever might resemble a heart, if not a soul. It was the only place he could allow himself the luxury of caring, of wanting, of being needed or necessary to something other than himself.

  The flip side of that deal was that he’d never allow those same parts of himself to be touched by another person. He would never let someone in, allow them to rely on him, to need him, or, God help him, want him. He’d most definitely made certain he’d never want those things for himself. He didn’t deserve them, for one, and he sure as hell hadn’t earned the right to them.

  Images of that long-ago night roared in—the storm lashing the windows of the small rooms above the tiny restaurant on the other side of Half Moon Harbor, the lightning strikes illuminating the walls, the twisted linens on the fold-out bed . . . and the woman astride him, gloriously naked, her red hair glowing in the light flashes like some kind of flaming, otherworldly halo. She was completely unapologetic about taking her pleasure from him, wrenching his release in return. Mother Nature relentlessly pounded the shores of the harbor, unleashing her fury, while the two of them pounded just as relentlessly against each other as if the delirious pleasure of release could somehow liberate them from the ripping grief threatening to drown them both.

  Delia, sinking because she’d lost her brother, her only sibling, her only anchor. And Ford, going under because he’d known even then that his grip on what made him human, maybe his grip on his very soul, had already begun to slip away. Tommy was gone . . . yet Ford had been left to live another day so he could take more Tommys from the world, so he could cast more families into the devastating throes of grief he was witnessing firsthand on Delia’s beautiful, heartbroken face.

  She’d been gone when he’d woken up the next morning. When he’d made his way downstairs, she’d already been hustling in the kitchen. Her grandmother had been the one to push his breakfast plate onto the bar, her expression neither open nor shut, but simply vacant. She’d lost a grandson . . . but there was work to be done, one foot in front of the other. Delia hadn’t so much as looked his way, so he’d stayed out of hers. He’d eaten his breakfast, paid the bill, said his good-byes . . . and gone back to hell.

  He’d returned to the Cove nine years later far more broken and damaged than he’d had any awareness was even possible. He wasn’t even sure why he’d ended up there, except . . . there just hadn’t been . . . anywhere else to go.

  Delia had her own place by then, her grandmother having gone on to her peaceful reward and their old restaurant having burned down. She hadn’t seemed all that surprised to see him. Her eyes were the color of the deep, sparkling sea and her hair still a fiery halo. Her grin seemed more naughty angel than pure, but he’d noticed straight off that it was a natural part of her, simply how she took in the world around her . . . not something private, something reserved specially for him. She’d asked after him, friendly, sincere, caring, and yet quite clearly one step back, all the while looking into his face, into his eyes, and finding far more there than he’d wanted her to find. He’d been unable to hide from her the way he’d long since learned to shield himself from everyone else.

  He’d known then that while the Cove had felt like the only safe harbor he knew, Delia O’Reilly could be part of that safe place only as past memories. The kind that needed to stay in the past. She never mentioned that night, and he’d been quite content to leave it at that. He’d eventually moved out to the island and turned his attention forward, always careful not to look back.

  He heard the ping from the other side of the door he’d left open behind him and headed back inside, up to his office, drawn inexorably to the screen, feeling fate wrapping its long, clever fingers around his neck . . . except the tightness he felt was in his chest. He sat down, intending to find the words to expla
in to Grace that while he understood her concern, and appreciated her trying to help Delia, that he wasn’t going to be of any help, not because he wasn’t willing so much as he had no help to give. Only instead of typing, his fingers closed into fists instead as he read the words on the screen.

  She reached out to help me before she even knew me. Because she cared enough about you to want you to have what you really needed. Family. We both should have listened to her then. We both need to help her have what she really needs now.

  He reread Grace’s latest message, unable to find a single thing that wasn’t perfectly true with what she was saying. Another ping came, making him almost viscerally flinch. Memories, so long held at bay, roared in like thundering waves, breaching any and all walls, drowning his futile attempts to block them. Not just of that night, but of all the long mornings, afternoons, evenings, he’d sat in her diner, wallowing in the energy, the vitality, the life of her very presence. Her smile, her loud laugh, listening as she alternately goaded a smile out of a gruff fisherman or a grudging apology from a short-tempered townie. He’d lost count of the number of times she’d leant an ear, offered a hug or a free meal, scolded, sympathized, lectured, loved, bussed cheeks, and even pinched the occasional ass. Dozens, hundreds of moments he hadn’t even been aware were there for the recalling.

  Through the torrent, he read Grace’s final message. This one was simply a cut and paste of a news story in the local Cove newspaper. He clicked on it, trying—failing—to keep his mind blank, open, and noncommittal.

  Local Diner Owner Losing Battle

  With Town Scion Over Land Rights

  He skimmed the article, and the tight clutch of dread in his gut was replaced with two fists clenched in anger. Hasn’t she lost enough in her life? “He has every other goddamn thing. Why can’t he just leave her the fuck alone?”