by Mary Brady
Many a picnic had been had at the small park by people of all kinds, especially high schoolers, sometimes with groups as big as twenty or thirty. Kids would pair off and disappear out into the darkness around them, but never Hunter and her. They used to joke that they were the fire tenders and the whole group would fall apart without their help.
There would be no one at the cove today.
Ten minutes later she pulled into the deserted parking area, where the snow of the weekend lay plowed in small mounds. In a moment she would be alone in a parked car with Hunter Morrison.
She shut off the engine.
Suddenly, she had no idea why she’d thought she could do this at all. Two days ago her life was on track. Today she felt as if she had no anchor and she definitely could not just sit there and start talking. She got out of the car and Hunter did the same.
The rubber soles of her boots gave her barely enough traction to keep her upright as she navigated the slippery, crunchy snow. She headed for the shoreline. Hunter’s footsteps crunched across the packed snow as he followed close behind.
She stopped a few feet short of the rocky drop-off and gazed out at the never-ending motion of the Atlantic Ocean. Hunter stopped beside her but she didn’t dare look at him.
The setting sun behind them painted a pink cast on the swells as they rose and fell and then flipped over into white caps that crashed into the jagged shoreline. The rocks below had been cleaned of snow by the salty water but could still be slippery, so she did not venture down as she used to do in the summer when she was a teenager.
The beam from the lighthouse shone fragmented across the water. The cold wind whipped at her, and exhilaration swept away all other emotions. The last time she was here in the winter she was still pregnant with Brianna.
After that, it was too cold in the winter to bring the child and they always had so many better places to spend time together. They could go to the sled hill after a snow or the pottery studio and shop, where they threw and glazed ugly pots and globs that vaguely resembled dinosaurs, and the owner fired them anyway. Of course, there was also baking cookies or learning to sew with her mother.
And when she wasn’t with her daughter, she craved to be. The hours she had to spend at work were a painful reality she knew she needed to weather.
Time to herself seemed frivolous these days and she never seemed to have enough hours in a day to come to a place so hypnotic, so meditative, to think, to hope.
Was that why she’d come today? To think? To hope?
No, she’d come to reckon the path before her, to smooth out bumps, to build bridges if she could.
Hunter put a hand on her shoulder. In the faltering light, his dark blue eyes seemed stormy, his face concerned. It was then that she realized she was shivering, her teeth were chattering and she hadn’t bothered to put her hat or gloves on before venturing out in the freezing wind. More, the sun had set and twilight would be short and the darkness harsh.
Hunter held her arm as they made their way back to the car. Once inside, she rubbed her palms together and put her hands over her complaining ears.
“Start the car.”
“What?”
He pointed to the keys still dangling from the ignition lock.
“Oh.” She turned the keys and the engine came to life. Warm air poured from the vents. They had been out near the water for less than ten minutes. Not nearly enough time for the engine to cool or for her to figure out what she had to say.
After a minute or two of listening to the heater fan, she worked on relaxing the hard knot in her chest. “Hunter, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Did you bring a chicken wing or two?”
She snuffled. “For the awkward silent moments? No, but my sister packed a bag for our dinner.”
“How is Christina?”
“She’s doing well.” How much was appropriate to share about her family, her feelings, her plans, Brianna? So she tossed the ball to him. “How was Chicago?”
“Big, exciting at times. Very different from Bailey’s Cove.”
“Wow, that was so not an answer.” She took a chance and looked at him. His brows furrowed as if thinking of something unpleasant. Was that how he remembered her?
“Why aren’t you an attorney?”
“Well, I guess I asked for that.” She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to stop the landslide that was heading rapidly directly toward her. “Can we back up for a bit?”
He grabbed a blanket from the backseat and handed it to her. “Are you hungry, Delainey?”
No, she was not hungry. Her stomach was churning and her head ached. The last thing she wanted was food—no, the second last. The last thing was to sit here and confide in a man she no longer knew.
“Sure. I could eat.”
He reached over the seat this time to pull the canvas satchel up onto the console between them. From it Delainey opened a paper bag containing three votive candles and a book of matches.
Blankets. Candles. If her sister had included condoms, one of them was going to die. She shook her head and put the candles back in the bag. The dash lights would be good enough.
Hunter went for the handle of the satchel.
“I’ll get it.” Delainey tugged the bag into her lap just in case her sister had made that very big mistake. She dug around a bit. No condoms, but Christina had made a definite statement. Delainey pulled out two submarine sandwiches and two large whole dill pickles sealed in plastic.
She handed one of each to Hunter and wondered if he saw what she saw or if she was just a frustrated single mom who had not had a man, no matter how many her mother threw at her, in a very long time.
Oh, she was so pathetic.
“How are things in Bailey’s Cove? I noticed a few stores closed.”
She felt the knot loosen at such a neutral topic and she said a silent thank-you. “The town is struggling. It’s not a new story. Young people leaving and never coming back. The tourist dollars are going anywhere but here. We’re trying to change that but slowly. We don’t want to completely lose the flavor of the town or to become a town primarily made up of people from outside the state looking for a break in the summer.”
“Wouldn’t an influx of tourists help the economy here?”
“Yes, it would, but the fear is that if too many of you people—” She paused and chanced a smile at him. When he smiled back, she turned her gaze to the light from the lighthouse out on the point. “Outsiders, you know. Too many outsiders and the town would lose control, lose many of the valuable assets that mark it as an early New England settlement.”
“I saw the church. The town has done wonders restoring it.”
“The town didn’t do it. Our museum curator, Heather Loch, did it with her family’s money. There’s a great story there involving a pirate and a skeleton bricked up in a wall.”
“Intriguing. Tell me about it.”
“That story is bigger than a sandwich in a car.”
“Were people digging for gold again like they did in the 1950s?” Hunter asked, and then took a bite of his sandwich.
“A bit, but some of the people around here found something better than gold. They found long-lost relatives. Anyway, the Pirate’s Roost, which you probably saw on your way into town, is new, one of the first town improvements. My sister has taken possession of the three Victorian houses on Treacher Avenue. She’ll turn them into a bed-and-breakfast.” She took a nibble of the cheese and lettuce sticking out from the side of her sandwich to keep herself from babbling.
“Each little improvement will grow the town, make the place of more interest to tourists, create jobs for some lucky people who want to live in a small coastal town,” she continued anyway.
“So the town has a plan?”
“Right.” But no
way was the town going to grow fast enough for an extra attorney to make a living for herself and her daughter. “And maybe I can come back someday.”
“Come back? Are you leaving?”
She should have kept her mouth shut. She had just opened herself up for the “Why aren’t you an attorney?” question again.
She took a large bite of her sandwich, too impossibly big to speak around, and she chewed.
They ate in silence. It was shocking how fast a submarine sandwich could disappear when one was trying to make it take a long time.
She frantically tried to open her pickle until Hunter stilled her hands with his and took the pickle from her.
“Do I get an answer?” There was an edge of quiet anger in his tone. The same as when he confronted her at her office earlier, but he opened the pickle, drained the juice into a couple napkins and handed it back to her.
“It’s complicated.” She took a bite and resolutely stared out the window, now icy enough from condensation on the inside to blur the beacon from the lighthouse.
“You have a daughter.”
She couldn’t tell whether it was the vinegar or the surprise that made her sputter.
She shouldn’t have been caught off guard, though. In a casual office environment like Morrison and Morrison one needed only to stand anywhere near the break room to hear about everyone’s life, whether one wanted to or not.
“I do. Her name is Brianna.”
“A six-year-old daughter.” The smoke of a smoldering fire nearly poured from his ears.
Oh, no. He thought Brianna was his child. She breathed a sigh of relief. This was a simple problem, easily fixed.
“She’s not your daughter.”
In the light from the dashboard, horror flooded his features instead of the relief she’d expected. He turned away, and a moment later when he turned back, his face was a sculpture of pleasant disagreement. This would be the face he put on when the opposing attorney presented a shocking and damaging piece of evidence. She knew it was only because his guard had been down so far that she’d seen anything at all.
“You know that for certain. You have DNA results.” They weren’t questions. They were statements, as if this was the evidence he would need for proof. Her verbal assurances would fall short. Dark-haired, dark-eyed Brianna was her proof, but she wasn’t putting her daughter before an angry man for judgment.
“I don’t have to give you any sort of answers.” He had a legal right to his daughter, but with Brianna the only right he had was the moral right to know that a child was not his.
“If she’s not my daughter, then you...”
“Don’t. Don’t you even say those words.” He was her first and the only man she’d loved. Micky had been there after her heart had been broken into so many pieces she’d thought she would never heal. She had not left one man’s bed and gone directly to the other. “If we’re not careful, some of the things we say to each other might not be forgivable.”
He stayed silent, but his gaze never left her face.
“Would it help if I told you Brianna was born prematurely?”
She could tell he was trying to hide the scorn, but it was leaking out through his attempted mask of indifference. She would not fault him for that, either. Scorn had been what she had felt for herself starting the day Micky left. She and Micky had done nothing but combine bodies; there was not the commingling of souls Delainey had always thought making love should be.
She had made love with Hunter.
He did not speak.
He was using the silence technique. Give a witness enough time and she might say something incriminating or at least telling to fill the void.
She had thought they would use the time tonight to reacquaint themselves, maybe to recapture some of their old rapport.
She wasn’t sure there was anything to recapture and silence worked well on her. “You left me.”
He turned and looked out the windshield into the darkness. Silence would not work again. She put her seat belt on and started the car. When they reached the Murphys’ house, he paused before getting out of the car.
“We’ll have to finish this.”
When he bid her good-night and disappeared into Shamus’s house, her only thought was...he’d left her again.
After the first time, it should have gotten easier.
It had not.
CHAPTER FIVE
HUNTER HUNG HIS overcoat in the foyer closet, glad the Murphys’ house was quiet and mostly dark.
You left me.
He’d left her and she’d created a child. A child of hers that could have been his.
He wandered into the kitchen and tossed the wrapper from the sandwich into the trash bin. The trash bin. A real metaphor for the state of his personal affairs these days.
Connie appeared in the doorway with a glass in her hand. When she saw him, a look of concern fell over her face and he let his own relax. He smiled as he crossed the kitchen to where she met him halfway.
“Hello, Connie. I didn’t expect you to be up.”
“Oh, my dear Hunter, don’t give me that smiley look. What’s wrong?” she asked as she put a frail hand on his arm and looked up into his face with true concern.
“Looks as if someone could use a drink,” Shamus added from the doorway. He was never far from Connie except when he went into the office without her.
Connie nodded her agreement and led the way to the den, where a fire burned, reminding him of the one he had just left. Last night they had sat before this fireplace and Shamus and Connie had told him why Shamus had suddenly decided to retire. Connie had been diagnosed with leukemia. She disguised her trips to the clinic in Portland as some of the many trips she used to take with her sisters.
Shamus had wanted to leave the law firm the minute he found out, but Connie would not hear of his leaving Harriet and the workers in the lurch. When Connie suggested he call a Morrison, Hunter, the only attorney from the family, Shamus had.
Without giving too much detail, Hunter had hinted during their first call he might be available for an indefinite period of time. Hunter had become the perfect candidate and the two of them had begun to court him, Shamus in person, Connie on the phone.
At the time, he had no idea why. He would have been on the next plane if they had told him. He didn’t know Shamus and Connie well, but he knew their reputation as good people.
Shamus tended bar for the three of them. Easy enough. Clear still water for Connie and two fingers of neat scotch for each of the two men.
Hunter poked the fire and tossed on another log before he sat down to his drink.
“Now, my boy, your secrets are safe with us and it would not harm you to have someone to tell them to.”
Hunter swirled the scotch around in the tumbler and then put it to his nose and inhaled deeply. The heady fumes went straight to his brain and he took a sip of the smooth, fiery liquid.
“I made a judgment call.”
“A judgment call. The choices must have been big ones.”
Hunter let out a derisive grunt. “As you know, my family moved back to the Midwest after I graduated from high school.”
“The town missed all of you. Your mother was a well-thought-of music teacher and your father would have been wonderful on the town council—progressive,” Connie said between sips of water.
“During Christmas break my senior year in college, my parents asked me to go to law school near them. My dad was having heart problems and my mother said she would feel much more ‘at ease,’ as she put it, if I lived nearby.”
“So you did. Northwestern University was very near your parents’ home in Chicago.”
“Yes. I had already been accepted at all the law schools to which I had applied, including Northwestern, so the process
wasn’t an arduous one.”
“And you did quite well, as I understand it, dear.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Connie waved her glass of water in the air. “You know what I told you about the ma’am stuff.”
“Of course, Connie.
“I came back to close down my grandmother’s estate because Dad hadn’t been feeling well and he knew it might be a long time until he got to it. So I spent almost a month here right after I graduated.”
“Saying goodbye to your friends.” Shamus smiled as if remembering friends of his own.
Hunter hesitated. He hadn’t meant to say goodbye that way to Delainey, but he’d done his best to explain and that was all he’d thought he could do at the time. He’d been so young, ambitious...selfish even, although he didn’t see it then.
“Delainey,” Shamus said.
Hunter looked up at the older man. Shamus’s mostly gray eyebrows stood out on his face almost like wings. His shock of gray hair bristled no matter what he tried to do with it, but Hunter doubted there was a kinder face on the planet. “As you might have figured, the judgment call didn’t turn out well for me.”
He hadn’t been able to see how Delainey would fit in his life, and it wouldn’t have been fair to her on so many levels until he could. Besides, she loved Bailey’s Cove and had had a lot going on here—whereas he no longer had. At least, that was what he’d thought.
She had said the child wasn’t his, but she had offered no real proof. Premature. Who had decided this? The only real way to tell was DNA testing.
If she had still been the same person he knew in high school, he would have taken her word for anything. If she said the child was not his, it would not be. He wasn’t sure he knew this Delainey. What had happened to her since then?
What had happened to him?
If he had always been such a cynic, Delainey would have let him know in her teasing “Are you sure about that?” kind of way.
“She’s a good woman, Hunter.” This was Connie, who was now sitting on the edge of the couch leaning toward him to emphasize her words.