Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  “You smell nice,” Ida grinned at Dorian. “You smell liiiiike…um….”

  “Licorice,” Lucy helped.

  “And boogers!” Ida crowed.

  “Boogers?” Lucy twisted around Dog to look at Ida. “Gross. He does not smell like boogers. Dorian, you definitely smell like licorice.”

  “I like booger smells,” Ida insisted.

  “You’re weird,” Lucy tickled her.

  “What does Lucy smell like, Ida?” Dorian grinned. “And don’t say anything gross, like cat pee or something!”

  Ida giggled and reached over to stick her finger in Dorian’s ear. He shivered

  Lucy laughed, causing Ida to throw her head back and guffaw like a donkey. In the weeks since they had moved in with Lucy, Ida had blossomed into a bright-eyed bundle of energy. Connie had grudgingly signed the custody papers from her cell at the women’s prison and, while Ida still asked about her regularly, she seemed content with the new arrangement. She looked healthy and she slept well, and Lucy could barely remember what it was like to not have a chatty six-year-old following on her heels all day.

  “Lucy smells like the first day of summer vacation,” Dorian said, studiously staring at the road. Lucy looked at him. It was silent for a moment, just the rumble of the motor and the hum of tires on hot pavement.

  Dorian shrugged again, blushed again and looked entirely pleased with himself.

  “Dorian smells like the first page of a new book,” Lucy said.

  “Do-wian smells like a toad when you catch one and goo slimes out from its bum-hole!” Ida squealed. Ida was on a roll.

  “Ida!” Lucy and Dorian exclaimed together, while Ida cackled like a toad. Ida waggled her fingers in front of her face, bright pink nails with a fierce Jolly Roger painted on each one. It was amazing that Mad Maddie was able to paint on such a tiny canvas.

  “Tiny Ida smells like the fuzzies between a giant’s toes,” Dorian said.

  The cab of the truck was filled with laughter as Grim’s appeared ahead of them, cars parked on the side of the road and people sitting in the shade of the outdoor patio drinking coffees. Lucy was so full of warmth and happiness and so content with Ida snuggled beside her, her first reaction when she saw Sarah at one of the patio tables was a rush of love and welcome and she started to lean over Ida to wave at her before the crushing memory of loss ripped her breath from her chest and replaced it with hot pincers tugging at her insides.

  She dropped her hand and hunched down in her seat, gripped with terror. She squeezed Ida until the child wriggled uncomfortably out of her grip. Oblivious, Dorian drove the truck around to the back of the store, and Ida tumbled out, still expounding on odors and giants and toads. Lucy cringed in the cab of the truck, immobilized.

  Sarah.

  Jeff’s sister.

  Her oldest and closest and now, most ex-est friend.

  She would never leave the cab of this truck. She would mould here forever, turning to dust. She squeezed her eyes shut, rocking back and forth. The feeling of a body climbing in beside her forced her to look up… Ruby had joined her the cab, looking as calm and solid as only Ruby could be.

  “Someone here looking for you,” Ruby said gently. “I take it you saw her already.”

  “Sarah.”

  “Yes. She’s quite lovely.”

  “I killed her brother.” Lucy’s voice was a hundred miles away, coming from someone else’s throat.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Don’t know, but I think it would be good for you to talk to her.”

  Lucy thought of all the drunken phone calls, all the desperate pleas for forgiveness, atonement, blame… something, anything but silence. Maybe she should speak to her. Maybe in person, there would be no hanging up, and she was sober.

  “I’m sober,” she said, looking at Ruby for confirmation.

  “You do seem to be, yes,” Ruby smiled. “It looks good on you.”

  “I’m sober…” It was a mantra that sustained her. Sarah would listen, because Lucy was sober. They could talk it out, they could have that moment of… what was it… closure?

  “Yup, that’s what it is,” Ruby handed her a miraculous cup of steaming coffee that appeared out of nowhere.

  “How do you do that?” Lucy clutched the warm mug like a baby lab monkey whose mother had been replaced with a towel.

  “She may not be able to hear what you have to say, Lu,” Ruby said. “She isn’t here to meet your needs, she’s here for her own agenda and you may not like it much.”

  “I know, I know.” Lucy suddenly felt that she distinctly did not know, but the glimmer of hope was too distracting for her to ponder it too deeply. Sarah was here because she wanted to talk to Lucy. It could only be to talk about Jeff and be friends again. “Why would she come all this way, if she didn’t want to talk about it?”

  “Oh, she definitely wants to talk about the loss of her brother; I just hope it’s what you want to hear, honey,” Ruby removed the empty cup from Lucy’s grasp, and got out of the truck. She closed the door and leaned in the open window. “I’m here for you, when it’s over. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Rubes,” Lucy blinked. Tears. She sniffled and dragged herself over to the driver’s side and got out. Dorian and Rob, with Ida like a tiny shadow, were collecting chairs from the back of the store. Lucy could hear the murmured conversations of the people sitting on the patio, just around the corner of the building. She would walk around the building, she would sit beside Sarah, they would order coffee and croissants and discuss the death of a man they had both loved… it was time.

  Taking a deep breath, Lucy headed toward the patio. Sarah looked up as Lucy approached, filling Lucy’s vision with memories. She barely registered the woman sitting at the table with her. She stopped by Sarah’s chair, her mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.

  “Lucy,” Sarah said. “I was going to come directly to the school, but your mother suggested we have coffee first…”

  Lucy blinked.

  Mumsy.

  Impossible.

  “Ye look like a looney, love,” Mumsy grumbled. “Sit down before ye inhale the entire table.”

  Twenty-Six

  Lucy felt as if the entire universe had betrayed her. Mumsy belonged in one tidy compartment of Lucy’s life, preferably at the kitchen table or in front of the stove making the gelatinous suet dumplings that haunted Lucy’s thighs all through high school.

  Mumsy belonged steadfastly outside of Lucy’s personal life. She thought that was the way Mumsy preferred it. Don’t talk about the past. Don’t talk about feelings. Preferably, don’t have feelings at all.

  She did not belong at a coffee table on a patio bedecked with flowers and sunshine, drinking iced tea and chatting alliteratively with Lucy’s bestest ex-est friend about, no doubt, death.

  “Mums, why…?” Lucy couldn’t form full sentences. Of course, Mumsy knew Sarah. Hadn’t the two of them spent half of high school eating oatcakes at Mumsy’s kitchen table?

  “Sarah has news, Lucy.” Mumsy patted the chair beside her. “A sad story for a sunny Saturday.”

  Mumsy looked grimly at the sun, the flowers, Lucy. The look implied an abiding disappointment in all three. Lucy sat down.

  She decided to ignore her. Mind over matter. It was like an eleventh commandment from the Book of Mumsy. Ignore that which givest thee pain.

  “Sarah, I’m so glad you’re here,” she began. “I can’t even begin to tell you…”

  She drifted into silence. Sarah looked older than when Lucy had last seen her, two years ago at Jeff’s graveside. Her dark hair was laced with silver at the temples and her eyes, so much like her brother’s, were care-worn and tired. She studied Lucy as if looking for the seed of destruction that lurked in her heart.

  “My mother passed away this winter, Lucy,” Sarah said softly.

  “Oh.”

  “It were the cancer, weren’t it?” Mumsy offe
red, shaking her head as if The Cancer were sitting with them rubbing it’s hands in triumph. “Pernicious pestilence.”

  “It was, yes. It was quick.” Sarah looked at her glass. Lucy noticed the lines around her eyes, the dark circles. She lost her brother two years ago. Her father a year before that. She was now alone in the world. Lucy recognized the familiar dark shadow that reached deeply into her chest and drew the breath out of her lungs.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Lucy felt tears on her cheeks, and was overwhelmed with guilt for shedding them. How dare she, when she was partly responsible for Sarah’s pain? “I’m just so…”

  “This isn’t about you, Lucy,” Sarah looked at her suddenly and Lucy knew she would not be shriven today. Not at this moment. And worse, that even thinking about it made her a bad person. It was not about her. As so many things weren’t, but she made them so as an excuse to drink, or behave badly, or dig herself a little deeper into her own personal hell. She was a tiny cog, and the sorrow emanating from the woman sitting at the table with her was larger than life.

  Mumsy took a drink of iced tea and looked meaningfully at Lucy. The look implied that it was high time Lucy got over herself and got a real job and a husband and bore a bevy of grandchildren that Mumsy could terrorize with suet and cable knit sweaters.

  “She made me a sweater once,” Lucy babbled into the silence. “I still have it. She was a wonderful woman, Sarah. She loved everyone so freely. She was always so kind to me.”

  Even when I didn’t deserve it, she didn’t say.

  “She left you something.”

  Lucy’s heart turned to ice, melting rapidly at the edges like an ice sculpture in the hot sun until it was barely recognizable.

  “I don’t deserve…” she whispered.

  “I know you don’t,” Sarah’s voice was sharp, but then she sighed and reached into her purse. “Mom didn’t blame you, Lucy. She knew you and Jeff had an argument, and she knew he was drunk… I don’t think she realized how much the two of you drank and fought. I never told her. I don’t know if I regret that or not.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy managed to croak. Mumsy was giving her dagger eyes. Mumsy didn’t know, either. “I mean, I loved your mom… I would have hated to…”

  “Yes, well, you said you loved Jeff too, for whatever that matters…” Sarah wiped fiercely at her eyes, stuffing a tissue back into her purse and shuffling through the contents as though what she was looking for was playing hide and seek. Finally, she grabbed a small box and thrust it at Lucy, rising to her feet at the same time.

  “Sarah, I’m so sorry,” Lucy said again. She felt she would be saying it for the rest of her days.

  “It’s his ashes,” Sarah said.

  Even Mumsy gasped. Lucy placed the small box carefully on the table like it was about to detonate.

  “Just a portion of them,” Sarah went on, putting on her sunglasses and gathering up her purse. “She felt it was important for you to have them, I’m not sure why. I had to bring them, whether I wanted to or not. It was her wish, and now… well. Now you have them.”

  The three women looked at the box sitting on the brightly colored tablecloth, shadows flitting across it like memories. Lucy swallowed, tears blurring her vision.

  Sarah turned to leave. She walked several steps before stopping and taking a deep breath. She turned abruptly and came back to the table where she sat down, leaning close to Lucy for a moment.

  “I know it’s not your fault Lucy. I do,” she whispered, tears thick in her throat. “But I have to blame someone. I have to be angry at someone and I just can’t be angry at Jeff, because he’s gone. So, I am angry at you. It’s not fair, but there it is. Mom said I should forgive you, but I’m still angry. Can you understand that?”

  Her look was so intense, like she was peering into Lucy’s deepest fears. Lucy nodded, unable to form words around the lump in her throat.

  Sarah grabbed Lucy’s hands and held them for a moment, then she was on her feet and walking away. Lucy sagged against the table, breathing in little gasps.

  Mumsy let the silence stretch for a long Irish mile, then she tapped the box lightly with one finger.

  “If this t’ain’t closure, I don’t know what is,” she said. “She’s given ye a gift here, girl. Mind ye take it to heart.”

  ✽✽✽

  Lucy made a lame excuse to Dorian when he found her staring into space, sitting with Mumsy on the patio. The chairs were loaded on the truck, and he was heading back to the school to finish setting up for the wedding, Ida swinging off his arm prattling about flowers and Jolly Rogers and cake.

  “I’ll go back with Mums,” she said, staring at the cold cup of coffee in front of her. “We need to… talk… about wedding things…”

  Talking to Mumsy was the last thing she wanted to do, but she couldn’t talk to Dorian and she definitely couldn’t face the frothing joy of the wedding party overrunning the school. She felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder and the murmur of his voice saying something, then he was gone, Ida’s voice fading as they headed back to the truck.

  “T’isn’t a day for despair,” Mumsy grumbled. “Gird up yer loins and git ye going.”

  “No one girds up their loins these days, Mums,” Lucy replied by habit. She barely recognized her own voice. “Girding up of loins is highly overrated.”

  Mumsy grunted and pushed in her chair. “Ye’ve got a wedding to host, not woes to wallow in.”

  “Not wallowing.” Lucy somehow rose to her feet, her entire body feeling weighted by stones. “You go ahead, Mums. I’ll walk back. I just need a minute, okay?”

  Her hand hovered over the small box on the table. She wondered if she could just walk away and leave it behind her. Leave it for Ruby to find and take care of. Ruby would know what to do with it, while Lucy didn’t have a clue. She thrust it unceremoniously into her pocket, feeling the weight of it threatening to pull her back down where she belonged.

  Mumsy said something, then was gone. Lucy realized people were beginning to stare at her as she remained standing by the table. She willed herself to turn and walk away, toward the road that would lead her back to the school, to Dorian, to Ida. To the comfort she didn’t deserve.

  She began walking in the opposite direction.

  She shuffled along the shoulder of the road, her feet scuffed puffs of dust into the air with each footstep, like ashes being disturbed from their rest. She didn’t notice the car pull up beside her until she heard her name through the fog of thoughts clouding her mind.

  “Hey, Lucy, what’s up?”

  It was Rory. Dorian’s partner with the ridge on the back of his head. Good old Helmet Head interrupting her descent into despair. She frowned at him.

  “Wedding’s back that way.” He gestured with one hand as he leaned across the seat and popped open the passenger side door. She stood blankly looking at him, then shrugged and climbed in. “I got the flowers, thought I’d bring them up now before the day gets too hot, you know?”

  She nodded, dimly recognizing the smell of gardenias wafting from the back seat. Gardenias and grief, she thought. The car smelled like a funeral parlor.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said, her mouth running on autopilot. Jeff’s ashes were in her pocket. She could feel the sharp corner of the box poking into her hip.

  “I’m not a big fan of weddings, usually,” Rory pulled the car back onto the road and headed toward the school. “But Tom’s a good kid, and I’ve known Jo since she was a baby, so.”

  “I’m not a fan either,” she agreed. She felt she could get through the day if she just repeated what was said to her. Nod and smile. She could fake it until she got her hands on a bottle.

  “Not doing that anymore.” The thought whispered into her mind like a warning from Mumsy, and then out again. She couldn’t hold onto anything. She blinked, forcing herself to pay attention to Rory, who seemed to be telling her a story.

  “… but I guess maybe he was right, eh? You’re doing okay.
He said you would, so I lost that one. Have to suck it up, I guess, although he’ll never let me live it down. He’s a good man, you know, just a bit too naïve about women and booze and like he says, human nature.”

  “Human nature?”

  “Yeah, like, how we do things. He’s always trying to fix what’s broken, you know? Guess that’s why he took you on.”

  “Took me on?” she was trying, but the threads of his conversation were flying past her like cobwebs and she couldn’t seem to grasp them.

  “Hundred bucks, I said,” Rory chuckled. “Hundred bucks says she tanks, that was the deal, but here you are. Looking good, getting your shit together. Maybe he’ll take you out to dinner with it, what? My loss, your gain.”

  “Rory, what are you talking about?” Clarity hit her between the eyes and everything was suddenly sharp and edgy and clear as ice. “You’re talking about a bet, aren’t you? A bet on…me?”

  Rory laughed, turning the car into the school parking lot where chairs were being unloaded and a tent was going up on the soccer field. She could see Dorian carrying chairs onto the field, and Ida skipping between the rows. The smell of gardenias threatened to gag her.

  “Sure was, but I lost. Bet Dorian a hundred bucks he couldn’t save you, but here you are.”

  She stared out the windshield as Rory got out of the car and began taking the flowers out of the back seat.

  Here she was, all right.

  A bet.

  She wondered if she should tell Rory to keep his hundred bucks, but instead she climbed stiffly out of the car, her hand sliding into her pocket to grip the weight of her grief.

  “Gimme a hand with these, will ya?”

  She heard Rory’s voice but she ignored him, walking slowly up the stairs of the school instead. She closed the big doors behind her and headed straight for the girl’s washroom.

  Third stall from the door.

  Chilled to perfection.

  “Here I am,” she whispered.