Moonshell Beach: A Shelter Bay Novel

by JoAnn Ross

  And not just Quinn, he noticed as they entered a lobby that had been painted in a buttery yellow he imagined would look like sunshine year-round. A small bronze plaque on the wall listed Mary as one of the hospital’s patrons and a member of the board of directors.

  Which was readily apparent by the warmth in how she was greeted by the nurses at the front desk. Not as some local girl who’d gone away and become rich and famous, but still one of them.

  They were walking down a hallway lined with photographs of Irish scenery, which by now J.T. was guessing had been taken by Michael Joyce, when Nora paused and turned to her sister.

  “Please,” she said, “be gentle. Because as hard as this is on all of us, it’s been ten times as difficult for John.”

  Mary’s face was as pale as the whitewash on the cottages they’d passed. “I don’t doubt that,” she said, her voice tight. “Which is why he has to save her.”

  43

  Back home in Shelter Bay, unaware of the drama taking place with Mary Joyce, Phoebe had taken the day off Maddy had given the kitchen staff and was spending it with Ethan.

  “It was so wonderful,” she was telling him, as they strolled on the wet sand between the surf and the cliff. Evening fog had come in, which, to her mind, only added to the romanticism.

  “You were wonderful,” he said.

  Not wanting to let her out of his sight, he’d stayed in the new kitchen Chef Madeline had designed and Lucas had built. At first she’d been nervous, with him watching her, as if she’d been performing for an audience of one. But then, as she got into the rhythm she’d been taught, she’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “I’ll bet once the execs at the Cooking Network see that video, they’ll want to spin you off onto your own show.”

  She laughed at his exaggeration, even as she felt so happy, she could float right up to the sky. “Hardly. But we did keep service running smoothly, just the way Chef Maddy taught us.”

  Not once had the staff of women from Haven House allowed any of the buffet servers to go empty. Phoebe knew that part of their diligence had been a lingering fear of imperfection, which many, if not most, might never completely overcome. But she also knew that the main reason for the successful reception had been the pride they’d all achieved. Pride that had once been cruelly stripped away.

  “You know what?”

  He smiled down at her, his heart in his eyes and on his sleeve. “What?”

  “At first I was nervous with you in the kitchen.” She’d learned that she could share her insecurities without having them be used against her. She’d also learned, by saying them out loud, they no longer possessed as much power. “But then I felt proud to have you see how far I’ve come since I was that terrified mess the day you first showed up at the house.”

  “Not a mess.” Taking her hand, he helped her over a log that had fallen from the top of the eroded cliff. “You were so beautiful, you stopped my heart.” He put the hand that wasn’t holding hers over his chest, as if to make his point.

  “I was too thin, I shook like a leaf in the wind, and my face was bruised.”

  “You weren’t as strong as you are now,” he allowed. “But you were special. So much so, you frightened me to death.”

  “Me?” She stopped and stared up at him. “How on earth could I have scared you?”

  He might be a farmer now, but she’d immediately sensed the strength and power that lay beneath the surface. The steely core that had made him a good Marine. The same strength that had allowed him to overcome such personal tragedy.

  “Because I knew I was going to fall in love with you. And I wasn’t certain I could ever be so lucky to have a woman like you love me back.”

  “Oh, Ethan.” Her eyes misted as her arms lifted up to twine around his neck. “Don’t you know?” She went up on her toes. “I’m the lucky one.”

  Just as her lips touched his, there was a loud sound, like a firecracker going off on the beach. Or a car backfiring, Phoebe thought.

  Until she saw the bright red stain blossoming on Ethan’s chest.

  He cursed. A rough, harsh curse she’d never heard from him. And then, as his legs began to fold, he said, “Call 911. Tell them you’re on Moonshell Beach. And while you’re calling, Phoebe, run. Run like hell.”

  “I won’t leave you!” She was looking around, frantically trying to get her bearings and see where the shot had come from as she struggled to hold him up. But he was so heavy. And the blood was flowing all over her hands. “You need to come with me, Ethan. So we can get you to a hospital.”

  He yanked her hands from his arms. “Dammit, this isn’t any fucking time to argue.” Another word she’d never, ever heard escape his lips. Lips that had turned the color of the whitecaps. “Don’t worry about me. Just run.”

  That said, he collapsed onto the wet sand at her feet, atop a pile of tangled green kelp.

  44

  As she’d feared when she’d seen that blood on Ethan’s shirt, Peter came walking out of the swirling fog, an ugly black pistol in his hands. He was, inexplicably, dressed like Johnny Depp’s Captain Sparrow.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.

  “The police are looking for you, Peter,” Phoebe said. “You’ll never get away with this.”

  “Of course I will.” He was calm. Seemingly reasonable. Insane. Or maybe, she thought as she glanced down at Ethan, unconscious at her feet, purely evil.

  “I have two passports back at the inn.” When her eyes widened at that, he smiled. “Yes, the Whale Song. Where I’ve been able to keep a close eye on you and your dirt farmer.” He kicked Ethan with the toe of his black pirate boot. “You realize I have to kill him. For putting his hands on you.”

  “That would make you a murderer,” Phoebe said. She stepped toward him, stopping when she heard the quick, deadly click of the pistol. “He’s nothing to me. I’ll go with you, Peter. Right now. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

  “And where have I heard that before?” He cocked his head. “I remember. Right before you had me arrested.”

  “You shot an elderly lady,” she reminded him.

  “Because she got in my damn way!” The gun was steady, but wild hatred raged in his eyes. “I’d come to take you home, Stephanie.”

  “I’ll go now,” she tried yet again to get him away from here. Then she’d figure out how to help Ethan.

  “Too late. Do you realize what you did to my reputation? To my family’s good name? You made the Fletcher name a laughingstock all over the Internet.”

  “Nobody believes anything they read online.”

  “So you say. Then why did you testify in court that I was some sort of monster?”

  Because you are.

  When she didn’t, couldn’t, respond, he kicked Ethan again. This time hard in the ribs. When that drew no reaction, Phoebe’s heart sank.

  “The tide will be coming in soon,” he said. “It’ll wash your farmer’s body away. And crabs and sharks will eat him.”

  If a snake could smile, it would look exactly like Peter Fletcher did at that moment.

  He bent over, pressed the barrel of the gun against Ethan’s head, and just when he looked as if he was about to pull the trigger, this time for real, Phoebe leaped on him at the same instant Ethan’s fingers curled around his booted ankle and pulled him off his feet, which sent the gun flying into the surf.

  Which was the good news.

  The bad news was that Peter had no sooner tumbled to the ground than a sneaker wave, which Ethan had taught her was like a mini-tsunami, engulfed them all.

  It was dark. And icy cold. Phoebe was tumbling in the water, totally out of control, sand scraping across her skin like shards of glass as she felt herself being pulled out to sea. Although she was a good swimmer, the power of the wave was too strong, and even as she fought against it, she couldn’t get up to the surface to breathe.

  Just as she was certain that she and her baby were going to die, she felt
a strong arm wrap around her waist.

  Her first instinct was to fight; then, as she was pulled to the surface, breaking the water, she realized it was Ethan. Somehow holding her up with his single good arm.

  “We’ve got to stay away from those rocks,” he shouted against the roar of the surf. “But don’t worry, Phoebe. I have you.”

  And he did. As he held her and as he kicked his way down the beach, away from the outcropping of rocks and back to the shore, she kicked along with him.

  Twice, they were sucked back under. Twice, he pulled them to the surface. Like when she’d been unable to tell which way was up as she’d been tossed wildly in the surf, time ceased to have meaning. Even when they were above water, it was difficult to know where they were because of the thickening fog.

  Until they hit the beach and he pulled her to her feet with his good arm, and, staggering, began dragging her away from the water.

  Out of nowhere, another man suddenly appeared. With his face indistinguishable from a distance in the fog, at first Phoebe feared Peter had somehow managed to survive.

  “Dillon Slater,” the deep voice said as the man quickly took in the situation, braced Ethan beneath his wounded shoulder, and added heft to the rescue. “I was on the cliff when I saw the wave hit you guys and called 911.”

  Just as they reached the grassy dunes, the sound of a siren cut through the fog.

  “Thanks,” Ethan said. “Appreciate the help.”

  The man shrugged. “You would’ve made it on your own. I just provided backup.”

  “You called for help,” Phoebe said. “Which neither one of us could have done.” Then she turned on Ethan.

  “How did you do that?” she gasped. “With a bullet in you?”

  “No way was I going to lose you.” Breathing heavily, one arm hanging limp at his side, he lowered his head and finished the tender kiss that had been so cruelly interrupted.

  The man who’d introduced himself as a basketball coach at the high school gave his report to a Shelter Bay deputy, and Ethan and Phoebe were put into the back of the ambulance. As they lay on the gurneys, the EMTs taking their vital signs and tending to Ethan’s wound, he reached over and took her hand.

  And in that moment, as she held on tight, Phoebe truly knew that she and her baby would be all right.

  Just as she and Ethan would.

  45

  John Joyce was standing beside their grandmother’s hospital bed, when the others entered. As upset as Mary was, one look at the pain on her brother’s face, and the anguish in his gentle brown eyes, had her anger dissolving like sea foam.

  They exchanged a silent message in the way of siblings. His offering apology, hers telling him that none was needed, before she turned to her grandmother.

  Fionna had always been the most vital woman Mary had ever known. Her passion for her Bernadette campaign had blazed like an eternal flame. And even as she was grateful that the quest had been fulfilled, a part of her wondered if only Fionna Joyce still had that mission left to fight for, if she might fight harder for her own life in order to achieve it.

  “Gran.” She pasted an indulgent, slightly scolding smile on her face as she walked over to the bed. “What are you doing, scaring us all to death like this? If you were that eager to have me come for a visit, you’d have only needed ring me up.”

  “Well, you’re here now, which is all that matters. I’ve said my good-byes to Nora and the other children. I just was waiting for my famous movie-star granddaughter to arrive before I joined my dear Declan and your father and mother in heaven. And, of course, St. Bernadette.”

  “As happy as I am about Bernadette becoming a saint, I suspect, after all the work you’ve done on her behalf, she’d be wanting you to have some time to enjoy yourself and your great-grandchildren.”

  After Quinn adopted Nora’s son, Rory, they’d gone on to have twin girls. While Michael and Erin had three sons. Celia, who was finishing art school, had yet to have a serious boyfriend, from what Mary had been told. And John had been so busy, first with his medical studies, then establishing a practice, he’d not married, either. Mary suddenly realized, with a little stab to her heart, that if she was ever to have children, they’d never know this very special woman.

  She picked up her grandmother’s hand from where it limply lay on the white sheet. She’d grown up seeing those hands in rapid-fire motion, wielding steel knitting needles like heroes in her father’s fanciful stories had wielded their magic swords. Now that same hand, which was an unhealthy blue hue, felt as dry and frail as a bird’s claw.

  “Although it’s glad I am to be back home, the only place you’re going at the moment is to the farm. Where you belong.”

  “Oh, Mary, darling.” Her grandmother sighed. Then began to cough, struggling dangerously for breath. John moved forward and helped her sit up and readjusted her oxygen tube. It was obvious that talking took a major effort.

  “You don’t have to talk, Gran,” Mary said, feeling a familiar knee-jerk guilt at causing her grandmother additional discomfort as the elderly woman’s eyes fluttered closed.

  “Aye, I do,” Fionna corrected with a bit of her familiar spirit. “And I will.” She glanced past Mary to J.T., who was standing just inside the door. “Come here, young man, so I don’t have to shout.”

  He immediately joined Mary next to the bed. “You’d be the man my daughter-in-law sent to our Mary,” she said.

  John shot a quick, questioning look at Mary, who felt color, the bane of the Irish, flood into her cheeks. “He’s just a friend from America, Gran.”

  “Don’t be wasting the short time I have left with foolish arguments,” she said. “What’s your name?” she asked J.T.

  “J. T. Douchett, ma’am.”

  “Douchett?” A brow lifted. “Eleanor sent Mary a Frenchman?”

  “Cajun, ma’am.”

  “Ah, well.” She nodded at that. “And didn’t your Acadian ancestors suffer the same diaspora as we Irish? Which gives you both something in common.”

  “I suppose that would be right,” J.T. said.

  “Well, of course it is.” She coughed again. “You’ll take good care of our Mary,” she instructed him. “She might be rich and famous now, but money can’t keep you warm at night, and fame is often fleeting. She needs a man who’ll stick. In good times and bad.”

  Even as Mary desperately wished her grandmother would find someone else in the family to focus on, Fionna seemed bound and determined to say what was on her mind. So what else was new? In a way, as embarrassing as it was, Mary found her grandmother’s behavior reassuring. Perhaps everyone was exaggerating her condition. And even if they weren’t, wasn’t Sister Bernadette’s canonization proof that miracles did happen? Why couldn’t the saint pull off one now?

  “Something tells me you’re that type of man,” she said. “Though, like Quinn”—she shot a look at her eldest granddaughter’s husband—“you look as if you’ll prove a challenge. Which will be good for the girl. No Joyce woman would ever want a man who’d let her run over him. We’re strong-willed females, J. T. Douchett. It’s best you know that going in.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “And I promise you that I’ll take good care of your granddaughter.”

  “Aye, of course you will. Eleanor hasn’t made a mistake yet.”

  Seeming satisfied, now that she’d settled that, Fionna lay back onto the pillows. As her eyes drifted closed yet again for the very last time, a single tear trailed down Mary’s cheek.

  46

  Even out in the west, the preburial Irish wake, which they’d held when Mary’s father had died, had mostly gone out of fashion. Quinn, whom the family had come to count on to take care of things, had made arrangements with Dudley’s Funeral Home. The father and son had come from Dublin some years ago, looking for the slower and friendlier pace of Castlelough life.

  After the funeral mass and burial held the next day, the family went home to the Joyce farmhouse, which Quinn had expanded to a
llow for his writing office and more living space for Nora; their three children; Celia, when she was home from school; himself; and Fionna, who’d spent all but her last forty-eight hours in the house she’d been born in.

  Urged by Nora to rest, Mary had gone upstairs to the room her sister had readied for her and J.T., and, still jet-lagged and emotionally spent, immediately fell like a stone into sleep.

  It was evening when she awoke to find J.T. sitting in a chair by the window, watching her.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked.

  “Long enough to decide that you’re the most beautiful woman God put on this green earth.” He stood up and crossed over to her. The mattress sighed as he sat down on it and brushed a tender hand over her hair.

  “How are you doing?”

  “As well as can be expected.” She felt the dreaded tears rising again behind her lids and momentarily squeezed her eyes shut as she dragged a trembling hand through her hair.

  “I know she had a good and full life, and she accomplished her life’s goal, but even when I was in America, it was comforting to know that she’d always be here, with her knitting and her tea, and her sharp and clever tongue, whenever I’d come home.”

  “She’ll still be with you,” J.T. said. “Just here.” He touched her temple. “And here.” Her breast over her partially broken heart.

  Which was when, after doing her best to hold her pain in, Mary finally lost it. She pressed her cheek against his chest, clung to him, and let the flood of tears, more than the single one that had escaped at the hospital, flow.