by Lizzie Shane
She’d screwed things up with him in more ways that she could count—and screwed things up with Bree too, asking the decoy to claim responsibility for some of the stupider things Maggie had done, like making out with her ex while engaged to the nicest man on the planet.
Demarco had never forgiven her—not that she could blame him—but by some miracle Bree was still speaking to her, and in an additional miracle they were actually sort of friends now.
Bree had quit working as Maggie’s decoy, focusing instead on her art career, which—thanks to her undeniable talent and a little publicity Maggie had quietly thrown her way—was really starting to take off. They didn’t talk all the time, sometimes not for weeks at a time—Bree had a tendency to fall into her work for weeks at a time and Maggie’s hours could be ridiculous when she was filming—but when they did it was nice having someone to talk to who didn’t have an agenda.
She sank down onto Lolly’s sofa and Cecil leapt up beside her, making himself at home in her lap as she dialed Bree’s number.
It rang until voicemail picked up and Maggie hung up without leaving a message, reminding herself that Bree tuned out everything when she was working. It didn’t necessarily mean she was ignoring her on purpose—words it was easy to think, but hard to believe. Just like it was easy to tell herself that Ian had overreacted and he didn’t really think she was unfit to be around his daughter, but hard to convince herself that it was the truth.
The room grew darker as the sun set and still she didn’t move. Her body seemed to grow heavier on the couch the longer she sat there, like an oak tree slowly taking root. As if she could just stay here forever, plant herself, sink into the earth.
She might have sat there forever if Cecil hadn’t whined, wriggling into her lap to remind her that he hadn’t had dinner yet. “Okay, baby,” she murmured, forcing her heavy arms and legs off the couch. Cecil leapt down with a bark, wagging his tail, his head tipped up to her, eyes glowing adoringly. At least he loved her.
She found the bag with her salad and Cecil’s food, frowning at the can. She couldn’t just give it to him in that, could she? He might hurt himself on the sharp edges. Normally Cecil traveled with as much luggage as she did—doggie beds and ergonomic dishes designed for a dog exactly his size—but all of that had been left behind in LA.
Relying on memory so old it felt like instinct, she opened a cupboard and found a familiar mismatched array of dishes—the same hodgepodge Lolly’d had twenty years ago, chipped and cracked over the years.
She found one small stoneware bowl that looked sturdy and set it on the counter next to Cecil’s food. When was the last time she’d actually fed him herself? She had people for that. People who made themselves useful, and then they made themselves indispensable. And she let them. Because if her entourage was big enough, if her house was constantly filled with people, she never had to be alone, never had to feel the quiet pressing in on her like an anvil.
It hadn’t worked though. She still felt alone. No matter which celebrity she was dating or how many people lived in her house.
Cecil was the only one who seemed to lighten the weight of that. He barked at her ankles, that high shrill bark of his to remind her that she was taking entirely too long with dinner. She dished up his food and set it on the floor, watching him dive into it as she grabbed a fork and sat at the table, poking at her salad.
She’d told Mel she wanted to do this herself, but she didn’t have the first clue where to begin. The cottage was small—a three room shack, really, with paper-thin walls, floors that seemed to slant ever so slightly and finishes that hadn’t been updated since the seventies. It had never been fancy, but it had gotten even more run down in recent years and Maggie wondered again if Lolly had needed money.
She’d been in LA, sitting on a mountain of money while Lolly had been living here, in a hovel that looked like it might collapse in a stiff breeze.
It wouldn’t be a small project to make it attractive to buyers. Not that she needed the money from the sale, but she felt like she owed it to Aunt Lolly to spruce it up before she sold it.
Not that she had idea one about how to do that.
She hadn’t always been this way, letting other people do things for her, helpless and stupid in the face of any obstacle because she was so used to obstacles being removed from her path. She’d been driven once. She’d had to be as an actress trying to get auditions in LA. No one had done that for her. She’d had to fight for every opportunity, working as a waitress and a barista to pay the rent. She’d been good at it too, the hustle. Before her ship came in, before she got everything she’d ever wanted, she’d been the kind of person who knew how to work. Who knew no one was going to give her anything so she would have to fight for everything.
Where had that person gone when people started giving her things? When life became easy, had that part of her just died?
Cecil whined at her ankle and she realized he’d finished eating while she was staring at the cracks in the Formica countertop, her salad all but untouched. She set down her fork, leaving the salad out for when she got hungry later, and bent to pick Cecil up before standing. “Come on, baby,” she said, cuddling him close. “Let’s see what we can do.”
Chapter Seven
“How come you didn’t tell me you know a famous actress?”
Ian glanced up from the fajitas he was grilling when Sadie flung herself onto one of the breakfast bar stools, tablet in hand. The last thing he wanted to talk about was Maggie Tate, but he couldn’t blame Sadie for being curious. They didn’t get many celebrities in Long Shores. He turned his attention back to the vegetables sizzling in the pan, hoping if he kept his reaction low key Sadie would lose interest. “Because I don’t know her.”
“But you did,” Sadie insisted. “I feel like if I had played with the ninth highest paid actress in Hollywood when I was a kid, I would maybe mention it.”
“You are a kid. Who knows what your friends will be when you all grow up?” He frowned at the specificity of her knowledge, turning to eye the tablet she was only allowed to use when she’d finished all her school work. “Why are you Googling Maggie Tate? Don’t you have homework?”
“Finished it. And you’re avoiding the question,” his entirely too perceptive daughter reminded him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He turned away from his daughter and the beach view behind her. He’d always loved this kitchen. When you stood at the breakfast bar, you could see the entire expanse of the beach, the sunsets painting the water in a thousand shades of orange and pink. “You knew about Maggie.”
“I knew she was Miss Lolly’s niece, cuz Miss Lolly told me. I didn’t know you knew her. Because my loving father withheld that information.”
“Your vocabulary is getting really good. Is withheld a word of the week?”
“Were you guys a couple?”
Ian choked, trying to cover it with a cough he knew wasn’t fooling Sadie. “I saw her a few times in the summer. That’s all.” He kept his head down and his back to her, trying to smother anything that might stoke her curiosity higher. They hadn’t technically been a couple, after all. Summer flings hardly counted.
“What was she like?”
He leaned over the sizzling pan, wondering if he could claim selective deafness. “What?”
“Maggie Tate,” Sadie said, enunciating clearly. “What was she like as a kid?”
The first word that popped into his head was sad, with lonely following quickly on its heels—and all at once he felt like a total dick for being hard on her this afternoon.
Yes, they’d lost touch, but that had been as much his fault as hers. And yes, she’d had a falling out with Lolly, who had been his salvation more times than he could count when he abruptly found himself trying to navigate life as a single father with a toddler, but he didn’t know all the details there. He’d just assumed Maggie was in the wrong, that she’d gotten famous and thought she was too good for her
family. But she was here now. And she had that same sad, vulnerable look about her she’d had that first summer.
She’d been small for her age then, looking closer to six than eight. He’d heard his parents whispering with Lolly about her situation and knew something was up, though at the time he hadn’t understood what overdose meant or why there was so much concern about where she would go when the summer was over. He just knew his parents were cajoling him to play with her, that tiny sad girl who never seemed to speak.
She hadn’t looked like a movie star then, with her mousy brown hair in scraggly braids.
They both knew he’d only invited her to ride bikes that day because his other friends weren’t free and the adults had not-so-subtly suggested it—but she’d kept up. Small, but determined. That was Lori. He hadn’t wanted to be stuck with the girl. Daring her to jump into the lake had been an attempt to scare her off. He hadn’t expected her to actually do it. Or to climb out covered in leeches, defiantly picking them off and flicking them on the ground as if to prove she wasn’t just some girl.
She’d been fierce. And he’d been a little scared of her.
But after that he hadn’t had to be coerced quite so much into inviting her to come play. By the end of the summer when she went home, he was trying to keep up with her. She was a lot tougher than she looked, though she looked plenty fragile now.
“Dad?”
Ian shook himself, pulling the fajitas off the stove before they could burn. “She was a lot like she is now. Come on. Grab a tortilla. We can watch the game while we eat.”
It was none of his business how fragile Maggie Tate was now. She’d be leaving in a few days, weeks at the most, and she wasn’t Lori Terchovsky anymore. He needed to remember that.
* * * * *
Maggie hesitated at the mouth of the path. The beach access led right past the Summer house.
She’d loved that, once upon a time. The summer she was thirteen she used to put on her bikini and her cut-off shorts and walk as slowly as possible past that house, hoping Ian would look out and see her. But now, the idea of him spotting her gave her pause.
It was mid-morning. Sadie would be at school, but she didn’t know if Ian would be home. She didn’t have the first clue what he did for work. Something with a uniform of ratty t-shirts and jeans? Or did he work odd hours and yesterday had been his day off?
Cecil bounced off down the path, chasing some smell and Maggie shook herself. “Stop it,” she whispered to herself. “He’s just a guy.”
A grumpy, judgmental guy who didn’t deserve an inch of her mental space. And she wanted to see the beach again, damn it.
Cecil disappeared around the corner and Maggie hurried to catch up. She moved quickly through the trees, coming out into the tall grass that covered the back of the dunes just in time to see Cecil vanish into the brush, visible only by the shivering of the grass. To her right, the Summer house perched high above the dunes, looking out over the stretch of the beach.
She’d wondered, when she saw Lolly’s house, if the Summer house wouldn’t seem quite so massive when she saw it again or if the beach would be smaller than the miles and miles of sand in her memories, but the house was as impressive as ever and as she crested the last dune and looked down over the beach, it really did seem to stretch out to forever.
The tide was out, leaving the vast expanse of sand wet and shimmering in the sun. Cool wind pressed her borrowed jacket against her chest, but with the sun shining it didn’t feel nearly as cold as it had yesterday. It was May—blustery cold days intermixed with sunshine hints of summer.
Maggie inhaled, filling her lungs with air and closing her eyes, silently thanking the powers that be that it was the off-season and there was no one on the beach as far as she could see in either direction. The water was so distant at the low tide she could barely hear it, but she could smell it. That smell she hadn’t realized she missed. Salt and the vaguest hint of fish on the breeze.
Cecil cavorted in the tide pools, dragging his ears in the water and then the sand until they looked like they’d been dipped in batter. He held his tail high in the air, prancing on the beach, and Maggie smiled, tripping down the edge of the last dune and chasing him across the flat expanse of beach, her feet sinking into the sand, running until her lungs ached.
It had been tempting this morning to stay in bed. She hadn’t slept well last night. There wasn’t a bed up in the loft anymore and it had felt wrong sleeping in Lolly’s bed. At first she’d planned to curl up beneath a comforter on the couch instead, but restlessness had eventually driven her into Lolly’s room. She’d opened the closet, meaning to use her restless energy to get started going through Lolly’s things, but she hadn’t even been able to make herself touch them. It didn’t feel right. As if Lolly was going to come back and be mad at Maggie for moving something, even if she’d never been that protective of her stuff in real life.
If she moved something in Lolly’s house, was that acknowledging that the house was really hers? That Lolly was really gone?
So she hadn’t touched a thing. She’d flitted from room to room with Cecil padding sleepily behind her, his dark eyes watching to see where she would settle so he could relax too. She’d finally grabbed one of Lolly’s books, a mystery with a quote on the cover claiming it was “utterly engrossing,” but even that couldn’t engross Maggie. She’d read the same page a dozen times before resigning herself to staring at the ceiling.
She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she’d woken up in the dark cave of Lolly’s bedroom and hadn’t wanted to move. If not for Cecil, she might not have gotten out of bed at all. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But there was no one else to take care of him here. She had to do it. So she’d forced herself to throw back the comforter, forced herself out of bed to let him out and then into the kitchen to give him breakfast. The salad she hadn’t eaten last night was still sitting on the table and she’d nibbled absently while she watched Cecil eat.
She’d been wearing the same clothes too long, but the idea of going shopping felt like too much of an odyssey so she’d told herself it was okay to borrow a hoodie and an ill-fitting pair of jeans from Aunt Lolly’s dresser.
Once she was moving, it was easier to keep moving, but she still didn’t feel right going through Lolly’s things so she decided to take Cecil to the beach instead. Now, as she ran until sand filled her shoes, she was glad she hadn’t let the fear of bumping into Ian stop her.
When had she become so cautious? So fearful? When had she started living her life trying not to make waves rather than trying to make them? She used to be fearless, didn’t she? She’d wanted to make the world stop and stare, no matter how outrageous she had to be to accomplish that. She’d been daring. Hadn’t she?
But it was like the second she’d gotten where she wanted to be, she’d grown so scared of losing it all that she’d stopped being herself.
How did you get that back once it was gone? Any other version of her felt like a distant memory.
Cecil had stopped, panting hard, and Maggie bent to slip off her sand-logged flats. The sun-heated sand was surprisingly warm against her bare feet as she started back toward the house. She’d never actually walked all the way down the beach—the locals said it went for over ten miles—and she would have loved to keep walking until she found the end, but Cecil was already wheezing. Her baby wasn’t getting any younger.
They were about halfway back when she saw a figure moving toward them on the beach—right as Cecil decided he’d had enough. He flopped down on his belly with his legs splayed out like a frog mid-leap and refused to go any farther—right as Maggie identified the broad shoulders and rolling walk of Ian Summer, approaching down the beach.
If there’d been somewhere to hide, she would have.
Conversations with Ian seemed to leave her feeling raw and unworthy and the last thing she needed right now was more of that. But the beach left her exposed and s
o when he raised his hand in a wave, she waved back, putting on an isn’t it lovely to run into you act.
If this were a movie, she’d be calm. She’d be poised. The camera would be tight on her face, catching her reaction.
And if her smile was a little forced, Ian wouldn’t be able to tell. No one ever seemed to be able to tell. Maggie was, if nothing else, an excellent actress.
“Good morning!”
Chapter Eight
Her smile was fake.
Not that he could blame her. He had been kind of a dick since she arrived. Hence his reason for coming down here after he’d told himself he would keep his distance. Ian had been standing on his deck when he’d seen her playing with her dog on the beach, reminding him of all those times he’d seen her on the beach when they were kids, and he’d started down the steps toward her on impulse. He could be civil and distant again after he apologized.
“Hey,” Ian called in response to her fake-cheerful greeting as he approached her and her pancaked frou-frou dog. “Sorry to disturb you. I saw you walking down here and wanted to apologize.”
The false smile slipped, her jaw lowering an inch in surprise. “You don’t need to—”
“Yes, I do.” He stopped a couple feet away from her, hooking his thumbs into his pockets because he suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I was a jerk yesterday. Sadie invaded your yard and I acted like you were out to get us. You have every right to come here and clean out Lolly’s place and I owe you an apology.” He looked straight into those turquoise eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Um, thanks,” she murmured, biting her full lower lip. “If it’s any consolation you aren’t the only one who thinks I don’t have the right to touch Lolly’s stuff.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s your house. You can do what you want with it.” He frowned, taking a step closer. “Who else is giving you shit?”
“I am,” she said, with a short, self-deprecating laugh. “I haven’t been able to touch any of her things. It feels wrong, like she’s gonna come back and wonder where I put them.”
