Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors

by Donna Kauffman

  “Why doesn’t Winstock take that land then?”

  “We had docks that ran out from the back of the restaurant, but they burned, too. You can still see the stumps sticking out of the water. We could only take small vessel tie-ups, though. It’s not deep harbor, and it guts completely at low tide. That won’t work for the kind of boats Winstock envisions. This place is right in the heart of the harbor, deepwater docks, and a better view. Perfect for what he has in mind.”

  “How did the lease come about? Can’t whoever it was who did the deal or knew about it back then stick up for you? Step in, make a ruling, something?”

  She shook her head. “Eli Compton made the deal. He was mayor back then. He grew up with Gran, passed away a few years after she did. His family had been eating at O’Reilly’s since they were both kids, before Gran had become an O’Reilly. It was run back then by her future father-in-law and by his father before that.”

  “So a longtime Cove tradition, even before you,” he said. His gaze caught with hers, and held.

  She tried, and failed, not to react to the way he’d said that, as if she was somehow the be-all and end-all. She was wading deep into the harshest waters of her past, and yet her body was still happily clamoring for any little crumbs he might toss her way. Even crumbs that weren’t really crumbs at all. He was just being polite. Doing as Grace had asked him to do. She wasn’t the be-all and end-all. She was just going to be the end.

  “Yes,” she said. “Five generations of O’Reillys—four that have actually run the place. My father had other ideas, goals. . . .” She trailed off, then took yet another breath and waded deeper. “He and my mom died when Tommy and I were little, so even if he’d wanted to run the restaurant, it wouldn’t have come to pass. Gran was still running it then, and did until it burned down. My grandfather died before I was born,” she added, sensing that was the next question.

  She forced a brighter tone and continued before he could say anything. She just wanted this conversation over. “Anyway, Eli came up with the deal once he realized the situation we were in. Gran’s health took a major dive after the fire, so I stepped up.”

  “But you were only, what, twenty—”

  “Twenty-three,” she finished, nodding. “But I was all Gran had left, all I had left, for that matter. Working the family restaurant was all I’d ever done. All I wanted to do. I gave up my marriage to stick with our family legacy.” She stopped abruptly, realizing what she’d let slip. Not that it wasn’t common knowledge, but Ford Maddox was not a common man. And for all he’d been in Blueberry a long time now, he didn’t spend much of it in the actual town, and he wasn’t exactly the chatty, gossipy type. About as far from it as they got. She had no idea what he knew and didn’t know. And hadn’t she exposed enough already?

  “I knew about that,” he said, apparently sensing her apprehension. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was, too, at the time. I could take the cop-out route and say I was young and foolish—and Lord knows, we both were—but I also loved him, and I took vows. I just . . . I thought Henry would stay here, work for his family. But he wanted a bigger life, wanted to see the world. Or at least more of it than Blueberry Cove, Maine. His family ran a small fishing company here, and he got this big idea to move to the Northwest—way in the Northwest—and launch a new branch of the business there, a salmon fishing guide business. In Alaska. I . . . I didn’t want that. And I didn’t want to leave Gran. Tommy had enlisted and gone off and I knew he was never going to work at the restaurant anyway. Plus, I knew Gran wasn’t doing that well physically. I mean, I didn’t know the mental stuff she was really dealing with, but restaurant work is hard and it had taken a toll on her body. I just . . . I couldn’t walk away from that. And truth be told, I didn’t want to. I felt a lot of guilt about the breakup of my marriage, but I also didn’t regret my choice once I’d made it, if that makes sense.”

  “I’ve never been put in that position,” he said quietly. “I think you just have to do what is right for you. What you think is best. You can’t make everybody happy, and that’s not on you anyway. That’s on them.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, wondering how he applied that wisdom to his own choices, how he’d felt about the ones he’d made. She knew he regretted—deeply—leaving his sister, but that was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Right after the current topic of conversation. “Well, that’s what I did. And then Tommy was killed not long after Henry left and I didn’t have time to question the what-ifs. I was too busy dealing with what was.”

  “That’s all any of us can do.” He looked around the interior of the kitchen. “Looks like you did what was right. By your grandmother. By yourself. By the town, too.” He looked back to her. “Everyone benefitted from what the town did for you back then. The least they can do is step up for you now.”

  “I think the town and me are even on that score. Or at least, I’m not interested in keeping a score. I’d have caught up with and settled the lease situation when I closed my books at the end of the year, which is when I always paid my dollar, along with license renewals and whatnot. That’s when all the bank loans had started up way back when, and so I always did all that at the same time. It wasn’t like I had to worry about it. It was mine. I mean, it certainly felt like mine. The town thinks of it as mine. I’ve paid taxes on it for twenty years like it’s mine. And I’m fully prepared to buy it and make it properly mine if they’ll sell it to me now that the lease is up. It never once occurred to me, even after the stuff Brodie went through with Winstock earlier this year, that he’d come after my property. Or what I thought of as my property.” She blew out a sigh, and let her hands drop to her sides. “The bottom line is, the twenty-year lease technically ended on the fifteenth of this month, which was last week. First thing the morning of the sixteenth, Brooks Winstock made the town a very, very generous offer on this land. An offer I couldn’t meet in my wildest dreams, not without a substantial lottery win.”

  “And they’re just going to sell it to him? Sell you out?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still here. No one has come to shut me down. Mayor Davis hasn’t made a decision. He’s getting ready to retire after the fall elections and frankly, I really don’t think he wants to be the one responsible for this. The town is very divided about Winstock’s plans. No matter how Davis decides, people are going to be angry with him, and I don’t think that’s how he wants to end his tenure.”

  “I can’t imagine folks here are dying for a yacht club.”

  “It’s not that so much as the money the yacht club might bring with it. Small businesses here do okay, but of course we struggle, as all small towns do. Most of us like things the way they are, struggles and all, because we like the way of life here. More money is never just more money. Along with it comes change, and I don’t think people really understand just how far reaching those kinds of changes could be. Will be, if he builds that yacht club.” She lifted a shoulder. “But with the tricentennial coming, the lighthouse being restored now, the schooner tours in the bay that will start when Brodie’s ship is done, change is already coming.”

  “But those changes don’t affect the fabric of the community,” Ford said. “Brodie’s ship tours—”

  “Brodie’s building the schooner, but Winstock owns it, so they’re his tours.”

  “My point is when the tours start up, that will increase tourist revenue, but that won’t otherwise change the nature of the town. Businesses will do better with the bump in income, and the town might see more small businesses pop up to take advantage of the increased summer tourist flow, but that’s just an enhancement of what’s here now and not a bad thing, all in all. A yacht club, on the other hand—”

  “Changes the nature of the town,” she finished. “And the kinds of services the town offers. It attracts things like chain hotels and resort-minded developers. The kind of bigger money that then attracts other kinds of developers, for shopping centers and housing development, looking to expa
nd the community in hopes of pulling in those deep pockets year-round. Which is exactly what Winstock wants, because who do you think they’ll partner with? My point about the lighthouse, the ship tours, even Grace’s inn, because Langston’s name is associated with it, is that Winstock is using that ‘we’re already changing’ tune right now, using it to his advantage, making people feel like it’s already happening, already a forgone conclusion, and don’t we want someone from the Cove deciding what kinds of things should be developed, and what direction we should take? Like he’s our savior or something.” She swallowed several choice swearwords. “And I’m stuck in the middle of it, though I didn’t ask to be. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I will deal with whatever happens, because that’s what I do.”

  “But if you don’t own this place, technically, then whatever equity you’ve built up—”

  “Goes back to the city as well. Not that that matters, because Winstock is just going to bulldoze the place to the ground anyway. And no,” she said, before he could go to the next logical step. She’d already taken that mental step and long since discarded it as a potential option. “I’m not interested in another charity handout from my town. It was one thing when I was twenty-three and in very dire need and had my grandmother’s well-being to consider. I don’t need or want a handout now. If I have to, I can start over again. Ground up.” The headache that had been building as the conversation continued began to throb in earnest now. The very idea of having to start over again . . .

  “Is it just the mayor who makes the final decision? Or is it a council vote—” Ford broke off and his expression soured.

  Delia nodded, knowing he’d put two and two together. “Mayor Davis decides, but the council has veto power, and he won’t want a veto, so of course he’s communicating with them, listening to their thoughts on the matter. And yes, Winstock’s son-in-law is head of that council. And I know you’ve been out on the island, so you may not know that Ted Weathersby just tossed his hat in the ring for the mayor’s race. He and Stanley Davis have always gotten along well. Stanley is an old golf buddy of Winstock’s and has been touting Teddy for years as his most obvious replacement. I have been pushing Owen Hartley to run—”

  “He owns the hardware store.”

  She nodded. “He’d be wonderful in the role, and though I’ve been championing the idea for the past few months, if he says yes, that would help me, because he’s definitely on the side of the small business owner, being one himself. But I can’t see the town or Winstock letting Davis drag this out until after the election.”

  “And yet Davis hasn’t already accepted his golf buddy’s big-money offer. So . . . what’s holding him back?”

  “His sense of fair play, I think. He’s very close to Brooks Winstock and to Ted, but Stanley Davis has always been an honest man. He’s run the town since Eli passed. He was town council leader back then and he’s very well respected here, fourth generation, his family goes back.”

  “But he doesn’t have the same connection to the O’Reillys that the previous mayor had.”

  “No, not directly. I mean, he may have eaten at Gran’s place back in the day, or his family might have. He’d have grown up with her, too—they’re the same generation. But he comes from money, so he’s always run more in Winstock’s circles.” She smiled briefly. “He’s never eaten at my diner, I’ll put it that way. The problem is I think he knows that everyone assumes he’ll rule for his buddy, and he doesn’t want to be seen as being bought, so to speak.”

  “That gives you some leverage. Have you talked to him?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. It hasn’t even been a full week since all this happened. He hasn’t spoken to me or Winstock; at least that’s what his office is saying. He wants time to go over all the implications, talk to the council, do his own research or whatever. And who knows, maybe he is, but I can’t help thinking he just wants to make it look like he did his due diligence before ruling in favor of his golf buddy. I don’t know what Davis’s plans are for his retirement, but I’m thinking he wouldn’t say no to a lifetime yacht club membership, if you know what I mean.”

  Ford nodded, frowned, but didn’t say anything as he took in everything she’d told him. She’d just opened her mouth to thank him again and more or less kick him out the door when he said, “I still think you have an opportunity. You have to know you have the support of a good percentage of this town.”

  “I don’t necessarily know any such thing. I know they like my diner, and respect me, but money does strange things to people.”

  “All I’m saying is you don’t have to stand there and stoically go down with the ship. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. Or taking it when it’s offered.”

  Says the man who barricaded himself on an island, she thought. And yet, he was here. Offering. “I appreciate that you came all this way, Ford, I do. And listened to my lengthy tale of woe. It wasn’t—you didn’t need to do that, but it was very kind of you to do it anyway. And thank you, but . . . I need to do this on my own.”

  “You don’t need to,” he said, his tone a little sharper now, a thread of impatience showing through. “You’re just too stubborn, or proud, or both to admit you might have to if you want to stay afloat.”

  “Well, if I am all those things, it’s still up to me to stay afloat. If I drown, I drown.”

  “If that’s all you’re thinking about, yourself, then you deserve to lose this place.” He turned to leave.

  Her mouth dropped open at that, and then snapped shut again. “I’m not even sure what can be done,” she shot back, her voice rising to match his. “But I’ll be damned if I’m taking anyone else down with me. This isn’t some kind of military mission where you get to just charge in and play hero—” She could tell herself later it was the snap in his tone that had made her lose her cool, but she knew it was fear. Fear he was right. Her throat closed over in horror at the words that had just pushed past her lips, mercifully stopping any more of them from coming out. But it was too late.

  He’d paused, frozen maybe, for the briefest of moments, his back still to her, and then continued down the short hall that led from the kitchen to the rear door, saying nothing.

  “Ford,” she said, the word more of a croak. “I—that was unforgiveable. I don’t know where that even came from.” Then she hung her head, and felt her throat close over and her eyes burn, even though no tears formed. Shame, however, burned like fire in her gut.

  He turned and walked straight toward her. For once she couldn’t read his face, couldn’t guess his intent. She was rooted to the spot, held there by the sheer power of his presence, his focus, so very specifically on her. Whatever his intent, she would stand there and take it, because God only knew she deserved it.

  He stopped a bare breath away, until she had to tip her head back to look up into his eyes. Eyes so dark gray they looked like a storm at midnight now. “You lost everyone you loved in the span of three years. If you don’t want to let anyone get close, then don’t.”

  She had had no idea what he was going to do or say, but compassion wasn’t it. Wasn’t even close to it. The burn in her gut burned a little brighter still. “I was a kid when that happened, barely an adult.”

  “You were human. Then, and now.”

  “You were a kid, too, barely an adult, and you—I lost people, but you . . . you saw unspeakable things.”

  “Did unspeakable things,” he said, his gaze on hers, as if looking for the flinch, the wince. Or worse, the pity.

  She hoped what he found was compassion. That’s what she felt. And gratitude, for his undeserved understanding. “I must seem so weak, so . . . ridiculous,” she said. “Letting people in, but only so far. Everyone loses people in their lives at some point, and they grieve, and then move on. Most days I think I have. Know I have. Just—you caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting . . .” You. She couldn’t sustain the intensity of his gaze. She looked down. “I am sorry,” she said, and then cleared the
roughness from her throat. “And I do apologize.” She looked up again. “Because you, out of everyone I have ever met, are the very last person I should be afraid of letting get too close. No one has ever been closer. I have nothing to hide from you. You’re the only one who knows that part of me. The only one who was there. Really there.” And even as she said the words, she realized just how true they were.

  She knew the events of that summer, and the eighteen months that had followed, had shaped her entire life, but until that second, she hadn’t fully realized, fully appreciated that he was the only person left who could truly understand why.

  He held her gaze for another long moment, and then whatever else might have been there for her to see receded. And the curtain slid back into place, so silently, so seamlessly, she couldn’t so much see it as feel it.

  “Your reaction was a defense mechanism, and they exist for a reason, Dee,” he repeated, calling her by a name she hadn’t heard in twenty years. The name her Gran had called her, that he had called her when he’d very first come to Maine with her brother’s remains, unaware that everyone else always called her Delia, and were corrected if they didn’t. She’d never corrected him. She didn’t know why then, exactly, and she still didn’t know now.

  “Don’t ever apologize for that,” he said. “Life happens to you, and it keeps happening. It’s relentless like that. So, you either find a way to stand up, or you let it flatten you. You stand up. You stand up just fine.”

  Her bottom lip quivered. Quivered. And, a little mortified, she felt tears start to gather at the corners of her eyes. But she was still rooted to the spot, unable to so much as lift a hand to blot them away before they fell.

  “And because you do, this town stands up for you. And with you. You say this isn’t a mission, but that’s how I was trained to see things. You have a mission, to save your diner, your home. Your life. And you have an army, ready to go into battle with you, stand for you. It’s their diner, too. Their home. Their life. So now, of all times, is not the moment to sit down, to let Brooks Winstock, or anyone else, flatten you.”