Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  “Ida and I promise to clean today, Mums.” She felt this good news would please her shuffling mother and the shuffling would stop.

  “I am surely not shuffling. I am sweeping. There are turds everywhere.”

  “Whose turds?” Lucy asked.

  Ida giggled.

  “Ida, are those your turds?”

  More giggles.

  “We’re going to have to talk about the leaving of turds. Mumsy hates turds. Terrible turds.”

  “Totally terrible turds,” Ida whispered.

  “Tons of totally terrible turds take time to tidy,” Lucy whispered back and Ida dissolved into giggles.

  “Ye could lift yer lumpen legs and lend a hand. Ye’re living in a pig sty.”

  “It’s more of a chicken pen, actually.” Lucy said, looking to Ida for support.

  “A goat shed,” the girl smiled, her sleepy bed-head hair flying in every direction.

  “Exactly.” Lucy sat up. “You got any muffins, kid?”

  Ida shook her head. Muffin-less.

  “Mums, stop sweeping. Mumsy. Mums!” Mums reluctantly stopped sweeping and glared at the two bedraggled bodies tangled in bedsheets and poultry. “Ida and I think you should make breakfast. Muffins. Are you in?”

  Ida leapt to her feet. Kentucky, who had been tucked under her arm, burst upward in a flurry of feathers, protesting both the movement and the muffins. Lucy’s head protested everything, but she squinted and heaved herself to her feet. Early morning was a new thing.

  “With raisins!”

  “What is it with you and raisins?” Lucy put her hand on Ida’s shoulder for support. “Is that why you leave so many turds lying around, because of all the raisins?”

  “They’re not my turds, silly!” Ida pointed into the corner. Goat sniffed, offended at being caught out.

  “Ye’ll be the death of me, sure.” Mums continued sweeping. “Make yer own damn muffins, ye miserable miscreant.”

  Ida’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs, which needed trimming. Lucy smiled. Mums loved her. There would be muffins before the coffee was perked, guaranteed.

  Mumsy was good like that.

  ✽✽✽

  A ton truck load of manure rolled into the parking lot just as Lucy was settling herself on the school steps with a warm muffin in her hand. She blinked ferociously, willing the steaming truckload of poo to fade back into the early morning fog from whence it came.

  Instead, a man materialized from the bowels of the truck, as it were.

  It was Tom.

  Tom of Tom and Jo. Tom of the woodstove. And the wedding.

  “You’ll be glad to be seeing this here load now, won’t ya?”

  Tom of the eternal questions.

  “Will I?” Lucy blinked, sniffing the ripe aroma of his cargo.

  “Only the very best, and free delivery too, ain’t it?”

  Tom swung down from the cab of the truck, grinning.

  “I thought you were a carpenter? Woodstove installer? Now, manure delivery guy?” She waved her hand toward the truck bed where she dimly focused on the dark mound of excrement that seemed to be her new responsibility. “What’s with the poo?”

  “This poo’s fer you!” Tom stepped back, hands on his hips, champion of poo delivery. “The ladies said you’d be expecting it, wasn’t ya?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Lucy grimaced at the buzz of flies. The mossy funk of manure. She wondered if she had a shovel. She definitely didn’t have a garden, so.

  “But,” Tom blinked. “The ladies said you was ready for the manure. For the garden beds. They said you had ‘em all dug up and ready, didn’t they?”

  Ida appeared behind her. She was wearing a fairy costume, complete with gauzy wings and a lopsided head piece with dangling antennae. Dog trotted merrily up to her and licked her face. She giggled, tapping him lightly with her axe.

  “Something smells really bad.” She looked at Lucy.

  “Not me,” Lucy held up her hands and pointed at Tom, winking.

  “Well Miss Ida, or should I say… um… Fairy Princess Ida?” Tom gestured at her wings.

  “I’m a dwarf,” Ida said, sparkles drifting from her antennae.

  “Um, honey,” Lucy said. “Dwarfs are fat little old men with beards…”

  “I don’t have a beard,” Ida said, straight-faced, as though it was just this kind of error that made adults so difficult to bear. “I’m the kind of dwarf who doesn’t have a beard.”

  Tom nodded. Dog slobbered. The flies buzzed.

  “And I am the kind of manure owner who doesn’t have a garden.” Lucy dragged Tom toward the soccer field and the darkened pock marks of holes that had not magically grown into a garden since the Tai Chi accident. Louanne had called just this morning to say she was much improved and that the gang would be returning on Tuesday. The Gang. Like they were the cast of a high school musical.

  “There’s a lot more manure than holes,” Tom noted.

  “Manure is poop,” Ida the dwarf giggled.

  “It certainly is,” sighed Lucy. “And I am in it.”

  Twenty-one

  Dorian had grabbed about an hour of sleep before returning to the police station to check on Connie. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this conversation, but he knew he couldn’t put it off. He’d already left it too long.

  “How you feeling?” he asked when he entered her cell.

  She grunted as she raised herself up on an elbow. The cot was lumpy and grey, barely wide enough for one person, with a grimy blanket and a stained pillow that held the shape of her head as she sat up.

  He passed her a coffee and sat across from her on a bench.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, not looking at him. Her hands were shaking, and there was a crust of filth on her lips where she had been sick in the night. Dorian was only too familiar with the odor in the room. Despair smelled a lot like Connie looked.

  She ran a hand roughly over her face, blinking and groaning as she took a mouthful of coffee. She gagged immediately, coffee spraying across the room.

  Dorian sat still, his hand clasped between his knees, waiting.

  She wiped at her mouth, glancing up at him from the corner of her eye.

  “You come to gloat, or what?” her voice was scraped from the bottom of an ashtray.

  “I’m just waiting for you to ask me the right question, Connie,” he said, squeezing his fists together until his knuckles turned white.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “When you gettin’ me outta here?”

  “That’s not it, nope.”

  “Well fuck off with your twenty questions,” she growled, rising unsteadily to her feet. She threw the coffee cup into the toilet, splashing a wave of coffee onto the floor. “Let’s go.”

  “Not this time,” he said, looking at his hands and unwinding his fingers only to clench them together again.

  “Oh yeah, this time.” She shuffled toward the door to the cell. “Quit fucking around Dorian. I need a goddamn smoke. Got a smoke?”

  She held her hand out, then dropped it to her side when he ignored her.

  “You know where you’re going, Connie. You’ve gone too far this time.”

  She leaned against the door, taking quick breaths like a cornered dog. Her face changed from sick to frightened and he had to look away from the raw fear he saw in her eyes.

  He could do nothing for her. Not this time.

  And she still hadn’t asked about Ida.

  “I ain’t going to jail for just a little joyride,” she argued, her words tangled with denial like a fly caught in a web. “I ain’t. Dorian? Stop fuckin’ around and get me out.”

  “Second offence, Con. Three months in jail, most likely. It’s probably the best thing that can happen to you.”

  “What the? What do you know? I’ll get off,” she hissed, pointing her finger at him. “You’re the one that arrested me! You’ll get me off.”

  “I won’t.”

  “We’re family!” S
he paced the cell, squeezing her head between her hands and moaning. “I can’t go to jail, Dorian. I can’t! You gotta help me!”

  She stopped pacing and flung herself to her knees in front of him. She grabbed his hands and tugged on them. He winced from the rancid smell of her breath, hating that he still wanted to help her. He wanted to save her, but it wasn’t up to him.

  “You have to face the consequences, Connie. You have to want to fix your life.” He stood up as she collapsed onto the floor, her head hanging and her back bowed. “And you still haven’t asked me the right question.”

  She shrugged.

  “I got nothin’ to say to you,” she spoke to the floor. “Just get out.”

  He took a deep breath, the urge to lift her from the floor and hug her battling with the urge to shake her like his father used to shake him when he was little. He turned and opened the door to the cell.

  “I’m suing for custody of Ida,” he said, his words falling like wounded soldiers at her feet.

  “Ida?” Connie lifted her head, looking him in the eye for the first time. “Is Ida okay?”

  Dorian’s nostrils flared as he breathed.

  “That’s the question, Connie,” he said. “The first and only question you should have asked, and until she comes first for you, I will do everything in my power to keep you away from her.”

  He closed the door as Connie dissolved into sobs.

  ✽✽✽

  Dorian drove to Grim’s with the radio blaring and all the windows down. It was the only way he could stop himself from punching something. He yelled along with the radio, hurling the words against the windshield like stones. He was breathing hard as he gripped the steering wheel till his forearms ached, and it helped.

  It didn’t make it better, but it helped.

  “Thank god for country music,” he said, his throat feeling raw.

  He was going to grab a coffee at Grim’s, then go have a shower and feed Wilma before he went back to the school to see Ida.

  Thinking of the conversation he would have to have with that little girl made him want to punch something all over again.

  He pulled into the parking lot at Grims and flexed his hands. He was fairly certain he could win custody of Ida, and he had to believe that Connie would agree once she was truly sober, as long as she had visiting rights when she was out of jail.

  Supervised visiting rights.

  He sat in the cab of the truck, drumming his fingers on the wheel. Writing a plot was so much easier than living the one you were given. He couldn’t pick the highs and lows of Ida’s life or the struggle she would face as she grew up with the burden of a difficult childhood. All he could do was try to help her understand her story and write it in her own hand. He was just about to get out of the truck when he saw Tom drive up with Lucy and Ida in the cab.

  They seemed to be driving an empty manure truck.

  He watched them climb out, smiling when he saw Ida’s signature tutu. Lucy scooped Ida up in her arms as they crossed the parking lot and spun her around while Ida hollered with glee. He watched them troop into the store. He took a deep breath and stared at the dash.

  Lucy drank too much.

  And he was trusting her with Ida.

  Dorian prided himself on his intuition when it came to reading people. It was one of the reasons he was good at his job. And it was one of the reasons he wrote strong characters in his novels. He could see people, even when they couldn’t see themselves. Something in his gut told him he was making the right decision by trusting Lucy. There were lots of other people he could count on to babysit Ida when he was working, but Ida liked Lucy. Ida had chosen Lucy, even before Connie went completely off the rails.

  And Lucy needed Ida. Whether she knew it or not.

  Dorian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was also quite good at reading himself, and his feelings for Lucy were distracting to say the least. Was he putting Ida at risk because he liked the pretty girl? This wasn’t a romance novel, and he didn’t have an outline to follow. He could only follow his heart.

  He needed Lucy. That much was pretty clear to him.

  He just wasn’t sure that she needed him.

  Lucy needed Lucy, and until she found that out, he would have to wait.

  He could pace himself.

  “I bet we dig her outta the bottom of a ditch before summer’s over.” Rory’s words echoed in his head.

  “Not on my watch,” he said, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. There was too much at stake, and he refused to let Lucy slip through his fingers the way Connie seemed determined to.

  Twenty-two

  Lucy was cleaning the giant fridge in the kitchen when she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps in her school hallway. She sighed, elbows deep in sudsy water. Why did no one ever knock?

  No one ever knocks on a school door, they just walk right…

  “I bringed my monkey... and my axe!” Ida shouted, swinging both items around her head like a diminutive ninja. The monkey took flight across the room, narrowly missing the pans hanging from the ceiling. Ida lowered her axe and looked sheepish. “Oops. Sorry, Loocy.”

  Lucy sat back on her heels, seeing Dorian standing in the doorway with a large box in his arms. “Just don’t start axe throwing okay kid?” she said.

  “You look busy,” Dorian said. She was beginning to not notice his lazy eye as much anymore. She decided that he was actually as sexy with his sunglasses off as he was with them on. “We just brought some stuff to get settled, but you can keep doing on your thing. We’ll find a place, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of rooms.” He smiled encouragingly. Lucy smiled back, not sure what she should feel encouraged about. What was being settled?

  “Um,” she said, her hands dripping suds onto the floor.

  “I wanna sleep in Goat’s room,” Ida said, grabbing monkey off the floor and tying its arms around the end of her axe like a hobo stick. She danced off down the hall, chattering away to herself.

  “What’s happening?” Lucy stood up, drying her hands on her shirt. Dorian looked at the floor before setting his box on the table and shrugging his shoulders.

  “We’re moving in,” he said.

  “You’re moving in,” she echoed.

  “I think it’s the easiest way.”

  “Easiest for who?”

  “For Ida, of course,” Dorian said, looking at her like she had just forgotten what year it was.

  “You’re moving in?”

  She had read a book that said good listeners repeat back what is said to them to clarify communication. “You. You’re moving in.” This seemed to be a good point to clarify.

  “Both of us,” he said. “Listen, I know we didn’t specifically talk about this…”

  Dorian obviously had not read any books about communication. Apparently, Officer Wells completely bypassed communication all together and showed up with moving vans and flying monkeys.

  “I think we probably should have talked about this…” she said, gesturing at the box, and the sexy policeman, and the cavernous emptiness of the school. “I probably don’t have room for… um… roommates. At this point. Today.”

  She wanted to be angry. She wanted to insist on her right to privacy and personal space and not putting on a bra until after noon if she felt like it, but she looked at the box and she heard Ida singing from the down the hall and a niggling voice at the back of her head warbled insistently that “a school should serve someone”.

  “Mumsy will love this,” she muttered under her breath.

  Dorian looked at her expectantly.

  “I thought I was just going to be a babysitter? When you were working?”

  “Yeah, but, night shifts, right?” Dorian lifted his hands in resignation. “I don’t think it’s good for her to stay in the house without her mom there. Too many bad memories, and she needs some time to heal. My apartment is just too small. This way, I don’t have to shuffle her back and forth and she can have her own room and she can
feel safe and secure.”

  Lucy took a step back as a giant cat padded softly into the kitchen, stopping at Dorian’s side and stretching up his leg to hook her giant claws into his thigh.

  “Wilma!” he pushed the cat off his leg, wincing.

  “This mountain lion belongs to you?” Lucy asked.

  “Lucy meet Wilma,” Dorian smiled, picking up the massive feline which drooped like a deflated balloon over his arm.

  “I don’t know how Dog is going to feel about…”

  Dog appeared as if summoned, his nose to the ground and his tail wagging. He pressed himself against Dorian’s leg like his long-lost best buddy had just arrived home. Wilma reached out a lazy paw and batted it against Dog’s nose. Dog smiled.

  Dog had no problem with his communication skills.

  Dorian put the cat on the floor and they watched as a careful ballet of bum-sniffing took place resulting in Wilma rubbing herself all over Dog. She purred like a chainsaw running out of oil.

  “I’ll set up my room downstairs,” Dorian said. “I just need a place to sleep and write. And I thought we could make Ida a room across from yours?” He opened the box and lifted out what looked to be curtains with little green leprechauns all over them. “She picked them out herself. I was going for pink with little flowers, but she insisted it was either this or nothing.”

  “What will the HAWC say?” she asked. “I can’t imagine that Belinda, Irenia and Rosalee will approve of us living in sin.”

  Dorian blushed. He shuffled his feet and picked up his box, taking a few steps toward the door. “We’ll tell them you’re thinking of opening a hostel, and we’re your practice guests.”

  “Great,” she said.

  He disappeared down the hall and she kicked herself for not suggesting shared accommodation.

  ✽✽✽

  Lucy adopted a new improved early morning routine as she adjusted to her roommates over the next few weeks. She was up early, showered, bra on, and coffee made to either have a quick breakfast with Dorian before he went to work or a quick snack before he went to bed after a night shift. She packed Ida’s lunch with extra raisins and had even gotten so far as being allowed to braid her hair before walking her out to catch the school bus, with Dog and Wilma close on their heels.