by Mari Labbee
She had been planning on the gym after this, but they were so beautiful that she decided to she’d go to Ryan’s instead to show him; he’d be so pleased. She and Ryan had barely spoken in the past few weeks, other than passing each other in the halls during work, and she was feeling a little guilty about that. Recently, most lunch hours, nights, and weekends were spent on wedding arrangements, food, wine, flowers, music; there was so much to do. The wedding planner had become too good a friend; that couldn’t be good for her or for anyone. Ryan was working late again tonight, but usually, he didn’t go past nine, and it was almost nine. And Pat had canceled on her—again—and Bri decided she didn’t feel like working out anyway, so she hailed a cab instead.
A little over a year ago, Ryan Grady had joined Restart, a specialty consulting firm that worked with developers in all five boroughs of New York City in the conversion of old buildings into modern lofts or condos. Bri was working as a mid-level project manager there. She had a talent for herding cats and bringing projects in on time and usually on or under budget, which was worth something.
Ryan was square-jawed, broad-shouldered, charming, and funny; and whatever other adjective you wanted to throw on top of that pile, he was that. He was young, a little brash, and there was something else about him that Bri couldn’t quite put her finger on.
He came into Restart as a junior project manager but walked in as if he owned the company. And none of the senior partners seemed to mind; in fact, he was always having lunch with one or another of them. The women in the office threatened to bring swooning back into style because of him. Ryan was drama, and she avoided drama. Relationships and work were never a good mix, and she was professional above all, and she didn’t take relationships lightly. They weren’t on the same teams, so there was little chance they’d be working together, but then the unthinkable happened.
It might never have happened, though, if Greg Wesfeldt hadn’t gone to Germany to decompress just before the start of his big project and hadn’t tried to ski the Alps.
“Good morning, Mr. Lipton. You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, Sabrina. Please come in.”
Lars Lipton, president of Restart, waved her into his cavernous office, where the view was spectacular and achieved what it was designed to do, which was to make one feel small. She was always careful to keep her movements to a minimum while in there to keep from echoing all over the place.
Lars was standing behind his desk. He had set up an early morning meeting with staff, which was very unlike him—mornings were always reserved for clients. If Lars Lipton was anything, he was rigorous about routine; everything ran like a Swiss watch. He could be condescending, but he was brilliant, and he liked her, which was good for her.
Ryan was already there when she arrived and was sitting in one of the chairs across from the boss’s desk.
“Have you met Ryan?” Lars gestured without looking as he shuffled through notes on his desk.
“Um…yes, I have. How are you?” she asked.
Ryan rose halfway up with his hand extended. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard great things about you,” he said, smiling.
Really? What had he heard? She wondered, and that’s when she first saw his smile close up. It was perfect, symmetrically staggering. His hand, when she shook it, was warm and soft; textbook perfect, not too much of anything and just enough of everything.
Mr. Lipton, impatient to get on with his day, looked up but didn’t sit down, and quickly got to the matter at hand.
“Sabrina, I know you’re on the Cole Brothers job over in Brooklyn, but I need to turn that over to Emily.”
“But Emily is—”
Mr. Lipton didn’t let her finish.
“I got an e-mail from Greg last night…he’s still in Germany; broke his legs snowboarding. Both of them. Can you believe it?”
Sabrina gasped, and her hand flew to her chest. “Oh my God! Is he all right?”
Lars nodded dismissively. “Yes, yes, he’s fine, but he won’t be back in time, as you can imagine.” He paused and sighed. “The Urbanite project starts next Monday, and Greg was leading that. I need to turn that over to you and Ryan. Greg won’t be home for another couple of weeks; he can join you then, but he’s not in the best shape to handle that job when he gets back anyway, so I need you two on the team with him. I know Ryan just started with us, but you’ll be able to show him the ropes. I’m counting on you.”
Sabrina coughed lightly and cleared her throat. “Is this the paint factory project?”
Lars nodded.
Was he joking? It was Friday. There would only be a week; this was an impossible task. It took months to prepare for the start of any project, let alone one this huge, and she’d never handled anything remotely this big.
Sabrina started, “I’m not sure I’m the right—”
Lars jumped in. “I’m sorry to do this to you, but you’re the only one I can give it to. You’ll do fine, and you’ve got Ryan here.” He gestured and continued, “I want you to get him acclimated to the Urbanite Group and how they work—ASAP. You can start over the weekend.”
With that, he dismissed them; there would be no more discussion on the subject.
The Urbanite Group was one of Restart’s biggest clients—the golden goose, as it were. She had worked with them on one of their smaller projects, a rare one, located outside of Manhattan in Upstate New York near New Paltz. She had barely made it out alive—big egos, big opinions. They were an intense, demanding outfit, which was bad enough, but add to it that the project was the conversion of an old paint factory (booby-trapped with decaying hazardous waste and God knows what else) into residential lofts, and that she’d be doing this without Emily. It was enough to make her head explode. It meant all of next week would be devoted to reviewing Greg’s notes from countless meetings over the last four months and some (hopefully productive) Skype sessions with him.
She and Emily had worked on many projects together, and they could read each other’s thoughts. So on top of everything else, she had to figure out how much Ryan knew (or didn’t know), and she would have to double-check him every step of the way. With the tight timeline this project was on, this was definitely not good news, and she wasn’t very happy about it.
Turned out Ryan knew plenty and was quite capable. They managed to pull off the impossible beautifully. They did that together. At Restart, she had been propositioned continually, avoiding and evading suitors who included one vice president. Relationships and work were not to be mixed; it was her rule. But Ryan changed all of that. That first weekend began a slow burn that she resisted in vain, but then fears be damned, she had fallen completely by the time the paint factory project was complete.
It turned out that Ryan had been guarding a secret that explained that unseen thing she couldn’t quite figure out about him. He had come to Restart to learn the business from the bottom up. His father and uncle had demanded that he do so if he were going to join the board. They owned Restart’s parent company (Bri hadn’t even been aware there was a parent company). It was all hush-hush; only Lars and one other VP knew who he was and what he was doing there, and that’s the way it needed to stay. He was a Grady. The name was scattered on buildings throughout the city and beyond, but it was a common name; she never imagined he was related to it. He was old money, and he wore it casually, like an old but very expensive cashmere sweater.
The cab hit a pothole and jostled her back to the present. It stopped on Eighty-First, right in front of Ryan’s building. She hopped out of the cab and bounced into Ryan’s building, grinning at the doorman, a dour little fellow who smiled only because he had to. He grimaced as a gust of frosty air hit his face when he opened the door for her, and then he gave her a half nod.
“I’m very fine. Thank you,” she chirped, even though he hadn’t asked.
She hummed in the elevator, as it whisked her up to the twelfth floor. She peeked inside the box again. Giddy, she closed it—he would be so pleased. On the twel
fth floor, she skipped out of the elevator and turned right. The faint smell of something familiar drifted in the hall. It barely registered in her cluttered mind, and she continued blithely on. At the end of the corridor, she pulled Ryan’s apartment key out of her jacket pocket and unlocked the door. As she stepped in, she was vaguely aware of the same scent that was in the hall. Smell is stronger in here. It was just one of a hundred thoughts firing at the same time, and it quickly got lost in the shuffle. As she set her key down on the counter, she stopped. The thought had finally surfaced.
Where do I know that smell from? She couldn’t place it, a barely there wisp-but it didn’t belong. Ryan’s bedroom door was closed. He must be in the shower, she thought and walked over. She opened the door to the bedroom and stepped inside. The mystery of the familiar scent was solved moments later, just as she dropped the box scattering hundreds of wedding invitations across the polished teak floor. It took the thud of the box hitting the floor for them to look up and see her.
Ryan and Pat.
Pat, her maid of honor, her closest friend, and confidante; and Ryan, the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with; and the scent of Shalimar.
What happens after that?
You run away. Go to a place you’ve never been, a place far away from everything, a place with no memories.
CHAPTER FOUR
She had never been to Maine, and the website sold it well, with dreamy pictures of neat whitewashed cottages; cute little shops along a lovely little harbor; and bright, smiling faces, inviting you to visit their unspoiled, picturesque little town. Pegottie was on the southern coast of Maine, a place she had never been to, knew nothing about and had no connection to. Once she found it, she couldn’t get there fast enough. She could have gone to Bermuda—it was all paid for, after all—but the thought of it left her nauseous. It would be too depressing. Honeymoons weren’t built for one. A quick phone call and she had confirmed her beachside cottage at the Cutter Inn.
East-coast beaches were never a sure thing in the spring. It could be rainy, stormy, or idyllic; one could never be sure, so she packed accordingly. Fortune had decided to shine upon her and had served up idyllic for her stay. Weather this beautiful could not have been imagined. No leftover winter storms, no spring storms, just crisp sunny days tailor-made to soothe an ailing heart.
The Cutter Inn was as cute as it had advertised itself to be. Six cottages with blue-shuttered windows were scattered in no particular order on a spit of beach under a lush pine grove just outside of town. The main cottage housed the office; it was the closest to the road. From there, footpaths led guests to each of the cottages. Bri was one of only two guests; it would be ten days of near solitude.
Her laptop stayed behind in New York, something that hadn’t happened in years. In fact, she couldn’t remember a vacation in the past few years when she had not lugged it along with her. There were always e-mails to check and problems to resolve, but why bother this time? There would be no e-mails, no emergencies, nothing that would need her attention. Whatever came up would be handled by someone else at Restart. After all, she didn’t work there anymore, not that she had to resign formally. Her direct superior hadn’t even called her. Safe to say she no longer worked there, and, it turned out that quite a few people knew who Ryan was and what he was doing there.
That night had been a Friday. On Sunday, a messenger had knocked on her door with a letter from Lars. It was a short, cordial letter and attached to it was an outline of her separation package. All of it entirely legal. The part about company policy on fraternizing in bold was a particularly nice touch. Her perfect world had crumbled so completely in so short a time, she could hardly believe it. Faced with a choice, the company would not choose her.
Her cottage at the Cutter Inn, on the other hand, was perfect. Just yards from the water, she could hear the waves lapping up on shore all day and night. At high tide, there were no more than twenty feet between the cottage’s porch and the water. The cottages had been built during the postwar boom when environmental concerns were mythical, and the shoreline had likely been a good distance farther away than today.
Within a few days, she’d fallen into a comfortable routine. Every afternoon just before dusk, she poured herself a glass of wine and took it out on the porch. There she sat in one of two rocking chairs to wait for the daylight to fade. The tide would come in, gently—as it did here—and the sky would turn a kaleidoscope of corals and reds as the sun set far in the west. A cool breeze would roll in, and there she would wait for the night sky to fill with stars before going inside to climb into bed to fall into a heavy sleep. It became a calming end-of-day ritual.
Rising late and retiring early made for short days, but even so, she was barely able to fill up the time. There was little else to do except walk along the beach and pick up seashells or meander through the shops in Pegottie. She hadn’t had this much time to herself in a long time and didn’t really know what to do with it. And all that time and solitude was dangerous. It gave her too much time to think.
What might have happened if she hadn’t walked in on Ryan and Pat? Would he have gone through with marrying her? Why would he want to if he weren’t in love with her? And when exactly had he fallen out of love with her? When the hell had the affair started? Had he ever been in love with her? Thoughts ran in a frustrating loop as she scoured them for what might have been clues.
And what about Pat? That had been an even bigger shock, and Bri hadn’t been able to move past the betrayal. Were they still together? She didn’t want to know; really she didn’t.
On the morning before she was to go back, she walked along the inn’s beach as she had done almost every morning except for the one when it rained. She was actually looking forward to getting home now to tie up loose ends, mainly settling the matter of the townhouse.
She and Ryan had bought it together. She’d spent all her savings on the down payment. Even though Ryan was going to pay for the remodel, she’d put up all the deposits and more. All of it, everything she had, was tied up in the townhouse. In fact, knowing how efficiently the Gradys worked, they might have already handled it. Perhaps she would only need to show up to sign closing or settlement papers upon her return. She hoped that was the case. It would be a relief to have it all behind her.
The end of the Cutter Inn’s beach was marked by an outcropping of boulders. When she reached them, she would always turn and go back. But this morning, as she neared the boulders, she wondered what lay beyond. She could wade out to where they ended in the water and go around, but it looked deep, and she didn’t like being in deep water. There was a tall fence along the other side, so to get there, she would have to climb over the boulders. She thought about it for a moment. The rocks were large, smooth, and slightly flat on top. It didn’t look complicated.
While the Cutter Inn’s beach was lovely and manicured, this beach was its opposite. Thick ropes of seaweed delineated the shoreline. Pinecones, broken seashells and chunks of driftwood dotted the beach. Tiny sea creatures skittered over everything running for cover as she approached. The smell of brine was sharp and stung going down. She followed the gentle curve of the beach, wading ankle-deep in the water when it became difficult to navigate over the cords of seaweed lying on the shore. She had walked a long way before coming around a bend and saw the cliff for the first time. It jutted out sharply into the sea, and there was a lighthouse at the edge.
CHAPTER FIVE
From where she stood on the beach, she saw the side of the cliff was overgrown with thorny brambles, and where it met the water, it was nothing but solid rock. She held a hand up to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare. She wondered why nobody had mentioned there was a lighthouse out here. She would have come out and taken one of their tours. It would have been an excellent day trip. But as she was looking at it, she thought something was not quite right.
Chris Cutter-the inn’s owner-would probably know something about it, she thought.
“Oh gosh, that place,” Chris said when Bri asked. “It’s been boarded up for years.”
“Really?” Bri asked, surprised. “Aren’t lighthouses usually historical monuments—you know, places of interest?”
“Not that one. That one’s always been part of the property.”
“Property?” Bri asked.
“Ayuh, there’s a house up there too. But nobody’s lived there for a long time.” Chris paused. “The last time anyone lived there was during the 1960s or 1970s—not too sure. And that lighthouse hasn’t been used in years. There’s another one out there,” she said, gesturing with her chin in the general direction of the ocean. “I don’t know when they stopped using the one on Jackal’s Head Point, but it was a long time ago. I never knew it to be in use, and I’ve been here…well, a long time.”
“Jackal’s Head Point?” Bri repeated.
“That’s what they call it—because it sticks out like a jackal’s snout.”
Bri smiled, thinking about how accurate that was.
They were in the Cutter Inn’s small office, and Chris had just taken a load of towels out of the dryer. The smell of clean linen filled the small space. Chris Cutter was a slender woman of advancing age but defied it by wearing flowing batik-print tunics over leggings and lots of handmade jewelry. Her hair was completely gray and cut short in a practical but modern style. The bangles on her arm clanged against each other musically as she folded the towels. Except for the slight hippie vibe she gave off, Bri got the impression that Chris Cutter was utterly practical and no-nonsense, so what came next was a surprise.
“I’ve heard it’s haunted,” Chris said matter-of-factly while shaking out one of the towels before setting it back down on the table for folding.
“What?” Bri asked, wondering if she’d heard correctly.
“The house up on Jackal’s Head Point.”