Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  “Why would he leave me his books?” she asked, finally stepping forward and lifting the typed sheets of the manuscript off the top with trembling hands. “And this. It’s his most recent one, look… “Goats in the Gloaming”...” Her hands shook as she read the title. He would come back in a minute. He’d just gone for coffee. That was the rule, no early mornings without coffee. She swallowed her rising sense of dread. “What kind of romance novel is called ‘Goats in the Gloaming’? No one knows what a gloaming is.”

  “It means twilight, ye twit,” Mumsy said, appearing like the pot of gold at the end of a very dour rainbow.

  Ruby put her arm around Mumsy’s shoulder and smiled sadly at Lucy with her eyebrows raised. It was easy to love Mary McMahon if she wasn’t your mother. Squat old Irish ladies in tweed were everyone’s idea of the perfect comforting granny. Lucy felt she was allergic to tweed. And allergic to the look of disappointment on her mother’s face.

  “Lucy, we have work to do,” Ruby said, guiding Mumsy down the hall and speaking over her shoulder. “Take a moment and then get your sorry arse outside to help load the trucks. Brunch at Grim’s in an hour, and no, you’re not going to hide out here and wallow.”

  “Wallowing won’t win ye what ye want,” Mumsy intoned, her voice disappearing down the hall in a lilting echo.

  Lucy sank onto her bed and read the hand-written note. It was one paragraph, written in looping letters with ink smudges where he had pressed too hard with the pen.

  She read it again.

  “The thing with Happily Ever After is that it’s never that easy. It doesn’t just show up on your doorstep offering you peace and harmony for the rest of your days in exchange for a kiss. Happily Ever After demands that you slay the dragons to reach the treasure. The thing that no one ever tells you is that the dragons aren’t hiding in a cave or lurking on a mountain, and it isn’t the knight in shining armour who has to kill them. The dragons are inside of you, and only you can defeat them. Be the heroine of your own story, Lucy. I hope that Ida and I can be your treasure, but you have some slaying to do first.”

  A tear found its lonely way down her cheek and she brushed it away before rubbing both hands fiercely over her face, heat rising to her cheeks.

  No wallowing.

  She carefully folded the paper, creasing it firmly until she’d made a tidy square which she laid on her pillow. She looked at it quietly, running her hand over the words she had framed with her folding.

  “Love, Dorian,” she read it out loud.

  Love. Dorian.

  She nodded to herself, sniffling.

  Yes. Indeed.

  Twenty-Nine

  Lucy found Tai Chi surprisingly soothing.

  “This is surprisingly soothing,” she said to Louanne as they glided and flowed on the soccer field under the warmth of the July sun.

  “You sound like your mother,” Louanne whispered, nodding her head toward Mary McMahon who moved stiffly in the front row. Lucy was certain that Mumsy had joined the Tai Chi group in an effort to keep her fierce Irish eye on her wayward daughter, but since Lucy had been a paragon of virtue for the past month, she decided that Mumsy might just enjoy the company.

  She had even acquired the flowing silky pajamas that made her look less like a cranky leprechaun and more like an angry angel.

  “I think she’s flirting with Mr. Jacobs,” Lucy whispered back. Mr. Jacobs was easily a hundred and five but more limber that Lucy herself. “We’ll have to watch those too; they may need a chaperone.”

  Louanne laughed.

  It was nice. The sun, the grass, the easy movement and peace that Lucy found in being sober. Joining the Tai Chi group had been a gradual progression from sulking on the slide when they arrived, to gradually taking baby steps toward wholeness. It felt good.

  After Dorian left, she spent days in a deep gloom, but Ruby and Mumsy had insisted on dragging her, kicking and screaming, back out into the daylight.

  Usually to bake muffins.

  “I can’t wait till Ida tries these,” she said to Jo later as they took a steaming batch of muffins out of the oven to feed the Tai Chi ladies who regularly stayed after their practice.

  “She’ll only eat the ones with raisins, won’t she?” Jo said, rubbing a hand over her barely rounding belly. Tom hadn’t been kidding when he told Lucy Jo wanted babies. Jo worked in the school kitchen a few days a week to help Lucy keep up with the café. Together they had created a simple menu and even mastered the complicated coffee grinder that had been donated to her when people heard that things were changing at the school.

  The café had become Lucy’s twelve step program. She threw herself into renovations with the same fierce determination she had previously only applied to floundering in her sorrow. She worked ceaselessly over the first few weeks of Dorian’s absence to clean and paint and put up curtains. The library was now a warm creamy yellow, with billowy curtains and plants hanging from the high ceiling. She had even framed a few of Ida’s colorful drawings she had found scattered in the grade three classroom, running her fingers over the glass and wishing the little girl were there to giggle and skip through the halls.

  She had dragged out a dozen old school desks from the basement and sanded them until her arms ached. With every stroke of sandpaper on wood she felt she was scouring herself of grief. Her tears mingled with the sawdust, and there had been one particularly difficult day when she had launched a desk across the playground, screaming.

  But she hadn’t had a drink.

  She had wielded tools and nails, refusing to let anyone help her as she dismantled the desks to make new tables, repurposing the old wood and preserving the well-worn carvings of the bored students who had sat at them. She stained and varnished them, repairing wobbling chairs and stools until her café was furnished with warm care-worn wood that gave it a homey feel. She felt like she was rising from the ashes as she dusted and cleaned and painted.

  She decided that hammering wasn’t stupid after all.

  She had decided to rename the school The Heartswell Hub, and her favorite room became the Hub Café and Book Room. She had sorted through the old books that had been left behind and had canvassed the community for donations, so the old library shelves were slowly filling again. In the evenings she liked to run her fingers over the spines of all the stories lining the shelves and listen for the echo of school children in the settling creaks of the old building.

  Her favorite shelf was reserved for the novels of Vanessa Ryder. She read each one that he had left her, picking them randomly from the canvas bag she kept beside her bed, shelving them with care when she finished.

  Every story was full of hope and happy endings, but not without struggle. Dorian wrote with great compassion and insight, crafting strong female characters who Lucy respected, even when they swooned predictably into the arms of their true love at the end of each story.

  He had called it a literature of hope, and she found herself uplifted every time the conflicted couple found each other. She embraced his words, finding comfort in their presence even as she missed the man himself.

  The books gave her hope for Dorian, and herself. She was beginning to ask herself if she could be a character she respected, and she was becoming pleasantly surprised by her answer. She felt she was successfully slaying her dragons, as Dorian had hoped she would.

  “Do you think he’ll be back soon?” she asked Ruby one evening after they returned to Grim’s from their daily walk around the river.

  “Can’t say,” was Ruby’s constant answer, since Lucy asked her every day. Dorian texted Ruby occasionally, letting her know how Ida was doing, but the location of their camping trip was a secret, as was their return date. All Lucy knew was that Ida loved fishing and they would be home when they were ready.

  “I can’t believe he took her camping,” she said for the fiftieth time. “For a whole month? I mean, that’s a lot of bugs, isn’t it? Who would want to go camping for a whole month?”

  Ruby
just smiled.

  “Lucy wants to go on zee camping for a whole month,” Sven ruffled her hair like a wayward puppy as he strode up to them outside the entrance to Grim’s and embraced Ruby. “‘Cause Lucy has zee hots for zee nice policier.”

  “She does,” Lucy agreed. “I mean, I do. Have zee hots. It comes from watching you two making out all the time.”

  “We is not making out, we is making zee love!” Sven said as Ruby ran her hand through his blonde hair, making it stand on end.

  “Exactly,” Lucy groaned. “And very publicly, too. So, when do you think he’s coming home, Rubes?”

  “He’ll be here when he’s ready, Lucy,” Ruby said, letting Sven hoist her up onto his shoulder and carry her into the building. “I just hope you’re ready when he decides to come back.”

  Lucy nodded. She hoped so too.

  ✽✽✽

  She was standing on a desk watering one of the hanging plants in the Hub Café when Dog suddenly lifted his head from where he was lounging and took off howling through the hallway of the school. Lucy frowned.

  Dog really needed to learn how to relax.

  She finished watering the plant, wondering if it was time for her to come up with a real name for Dog, since he had been her most stalwart companion through the thick and thin of the past several months. Maybe she was ready to make a commitment that involved some kind of ritualistic naming ceremony.

  She smiled. She would ask Ida. Ida would come up with a good name.

  She was still smiling when she turned to find Dorian standing in the doorway to the café. Her body went limp and the watering can in her hand tipped, emptying a steady stream of water onto the floor. He was tanned, smiling and very real.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Um,” she said.

  “You’re spilling water, Lu.” He gestured at her hand and she fumbled to upright the spout, wrenching her eyes away from him and catching her breath. She looked at the small puddle on the floor, willing her voice to work. She was afraid if she spoke, she might break apart and he would disappear.

  “The place looks awesome,” he said.

  “Um,” she said.

  “And you look good too,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and looking at her ‘til she blushed.

  “Where’s Ida?” she managed to croak. She had a million things to say, a million thoughts and explanations and questions, but this wasn’t about her. Not anymore. She smiled as the thought finally, truly took root inside of her as she filled her gaze with his face, his smile, his presence.

  This was about… them.

  “I left her with Ruby. I wanted to make sure…”

  “That I was sober?” she interrupted him.

  He looked at his shoes for a moment, but then back at her, holding her gaze softly with his own.

  “Yes. I had to make sure you were ready to see her,” he said. “To see if you were ready to be part of her life. Because if not, then…”

  “I read all your books,” she said. She walked over to the bookshelf and he took several steps to join her. She ran her fingers over the spines of all his novels, neatly settled with his pen name displayed on the shelf. “I loved them.”

  He touched the shelf and smiled.

  “Did you read ‘Goats in the Gloaming’?” he asked.

  “No. I had to wait for you to come home,” she said. Home. She suddenly knew how much that meant to her, for him to think of her as home. “I wasn’t sure I was ready to see how it ended.”

  “Lucy,” he began, but she held up her hand.

  “Will you come with me?” she asked, taking his hand in hers. “I have to do something, but I needed to wait for you before I could do it.”

  He nodded, a tiny frown creasing his brow before he stood aside and let her lead him out of the café. She let go of his hand and walked purposefully down the hallway. She stopped outside the girl’s bathroom.

  “I can’t go in there,” he said as she pushed open the door.

  She laughed, propping open the door and letting him stand awkwardly in the doorway.

  “Have you always been this well-behaved?” she asked. “It’s just a bathroom.”

  “The door says ‘girls’, hellooo?” he pointed at the sign on the door.

  She smiled at him, her eyes roaming over his face.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “I hoped you would,” he answered, ducking his head and shrugging. She loved how his big shoulders shifted under the thin cloth of his t-shirt and how his dimples deepened when he grinned.

  She took a deep breath and walked into the bathroom, glancing back at him before she entered the third stall. She reached into the toilet bowl and wrapped her fist around the neck of the half-full whiskey bottle. It dripped on the floor as she considered it.

  She felt no pull toward the amber liquid. No thirst, no screaming need to obliviate her pain. Her pain, she realized, was nestled deeply inside her, curled up and asleep, but part of her. Part of her that she could embrace and live with, without giving in to the darkness that had brought it there.

  She faced Dorian with the bottle in her hand.

  His face clouded, and she felt her pain flex itself inside her chest before it settled once again.

  “Come with me?” she asked.

  ✽✽✽

  They drove in Dorian’s truck down to the wharf where Ida liked to fish. It was a cloudy day and a strong breeze whipped the water into whitecaps that sprayed a chill over the end of the wharf. The sun was trying to break through the clouds and random sunbeams broke in shifting patterns over the water as they stood side by side at the end of the dock.

  Lucy held the whiskey bottle in one hand.

  “I’m glad you left,” she said. “I never would have figured it out if you had stayed.”

  “What did you figure out?” he asked gently, folding his arms on his chest as the breeze tugged and danced around them.

  “That I was feeling sorry for myself, that I allowed my shame to consume me instead of learning from it,” she said. “I thought I would feel better if I hated myself, and if I could make everyone else hate me then I would be justified, but I think what I really wanted was for someone to save me.”

  Dorian nodded, giving her space.

  She pulled the cork from the bottle and Dorian uncrossed his arms, turning slightly toward her as if to snatch the bottle away if it approached her lips. She looked at him, and he took a step back, his face stern.

  She upended the bottle and emptied it into the sea, the wind catching stray drops and scattering them in a golden plume as it poured out and away.

  “I’d been hiding that in the bathroom for months, thinking I was super clever and no one could stop me if they tried to get me to stop drinking,” she said. “It’s a weird kind of deception, when you think you have all the power but you actually have none. That you have given all your power away in the name of what? Oblivion?”

  She shrugged and took a deep breath. She settled the empty bottle on the wharf by her feet and dug her hand into her purse. She pulled out the small box and gently ran her fingers over the lid. Dorian looked at her questioningly.

  “It’s Jeff,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, his eyes growing wide.

  “I guess you didn’t see this coming, eh?” she asked, smiling.

  “Wasn’t really in my plans today, nope,” he said. “I kinda just hoped for lunch and a cuddle, but whatever. You’ve certainly never been predictable.”

  She lifted her hand to his cheek and ran her thumb over his jawbone. She smiled when he shivered.

  “You are such a good man,” she said.

  He smiled and she felt his dimples in her palm. He took several steps away from her, nodding as he gave her space to do what she had come to do.

  She turned toward the water and opened the box. She lifted out a tiny urn which shone briefly as the sun broke through the clouds.

  She opened the urn and carefully tipped the contents into the oc
ean, watching the plume of ashes drift on the breeze over the open water.

  “I’m sorry, Jeff,” she whispered, able for the first time to speak his name without tears. “I choose life. I choose sober. I choose love.”

  She turned and smiled at Dorian.

  “I choose us.”

  The urn dropped into the waves as he lifted her in his arms and drew her to him.

  Epilogue

  Seven months later

  Ida lifted her head off Lucy’s belly, frowning.

  “Jellybean Finnegan,” she said, nodding her head like the decision had been made. “The baby says yes.”

  “Baby did not agree to be named Jellybean Finnegan,” Lucy said. “No one would agree to being named Jellybean Finnegan.”

  “It’s better than ‘Baby’,” Ida said.

  “Well... yes.” Lucy had to agree. Since Ida had turned seven, Lucy seemed to be losing more arguments with her, but since most of their disagreements were about what was the best topping for pancakes, or what color mittens to wear, she still felt she was mostly winning at the parenting game. “What about Isaac?”

  “It’s a girl,” Ida rolled her eyes.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  “It could be a boy,” Lucy cautioned.

  “I doubts it.”

  “Well, what if it is a boy? That’ll be okay, right?” Lucy asked, smoothing her shirt over the mound of her belly as the tiny passenger inside swished around like a baby whale.

  “It’s a girl,” Ida stated flatly. “I’m a girl, so its a girl.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Dorian said, bringing an armload of wood into the café and depositing it by the woodstove. “But we’ve made great progress by finally giving Raisin a name, so I’m sure we’ll come up with something better than ‘Baby’ before the child is ten at least.”

  Raisin wagged his tail upon hearing his name and Ida jumped off the sofa to lie full body on top of him.