Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors

by Donna Kauffman

  He tamped down the anger she’d triggered. “My apologies, ma’am.” He lifted his gaze to hers, chin firm. “You would be right. I choose not to be responsible for anyone other than myself. You might see it differently, you might think it selfish, or cowardly. I don’t. To me, it simply seems the best choice for all concerned. Not because people are not worth the time, effort, or energy, but because I simply do not have anything left in me to give.”

  “And yet you give, tirelessly, it would seem, to the creatures in need who populate your island.”

  “Because they don’t have anyone else to stand up for them. I don’t think the same can be said for the folks here. At the very least, they can stand for themselves, and each other. They don’t need me.”

  “Grace needs you.”

  Another punch to the gut. He took it, absorbed it, swallowed tightly, but kept his gaze evenly, respectfully, on hers. “Yes. And I’m doing my best to be what she needs me to be.”

  “You are her brother. That’s all she needs you to be. Do you not understand that simply being is enough? Being does not necessarily mean doing. Or owing. Or burdening yourself in some manner. Do you expect Grace to be something more, to do something for you, because she’s your sister?”

  “Of course not.”

  She merely lifted a pencil-thin gray eyebrow in response, and he swallowed another string of words unacceptable for mixed company. Except this time they were directed at himself.

  “And now,” she went on, “here you are, wanting to know what I can do to help you help Delia O’Reilly. My word, Dr. Maddox, aren’t you worried that someone else might barge in on your private little sanctuary of one and expect you to just . . . be you?”

  He wanted to turn and walk straight out the door, never to return. To never look into those all-too-knowing eyes again. “I can’t help Delia. I know what’s happening here, with her diner, with Brooks Winstock, but she won’t accept my help and, frankly, I’m not sure what I could do even if she would. I just wanted to find out if you knew of someone who could help her.”

  “More’s the pity. Perhaps if you joined the land of us self-sufficient folk who don’t need you more often, you’d understand the nature of the fabric of her life. You’d know that it was once neatly and securely woven, but is now unraveling at an alarming rate around her. Maybe you’d even be able to figure out exactly how to stop it from happening, before it’s nothing more than a pile of old thread left forgotten on the floor.”

  “Are you saying because you disapprove of the life I’ve chosen, that you won’t help me? Or at least help her?”

  “Did I say that? I don’t believe I did. Here you are, finally asking for help. Why in the world would I turn you away? You might never ask again. What lesson would that be for either of us? What would anyone benefit from that?”

  Ford closed his eyes against the dull throb that was forming behind his temples and rubbed a hand over the tight knot seizing up the muscles at the base of his neck. A conversation with Eula was always an unpredictable thing, but he hadn’t expected anything like this.

  He took a slow breath, and opened his eyes. “What can I do to get help for her? Who should I talk to?”

  Eula looked heavenward and muttered something he couldn’t understand under her breath. Then she looked back at him. “I should think the answer to that would be obvious. Talk to Delia.”

  “I already did.”

  That surprised her, and he shamelessly took a full measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could even do such a thing.

  “And she told you to mind your own business.” Again, not a question.

  “More or less.”

  “Then you have a choice to make.”

  “I thought by coming here, to you, I already had.”

  “True. You could have returned to your island, tail neatly tucked, patting yourself on the back for trying, absolved of all further responsibility. After all, she said no thank you. No longer your concern. Instead,” she went on, though his expression made it clear that he didn’t appreciate the continued patronization, “you chose to step up. Now you’re here, in the Cove, where your presence wasn’t requested, your help not demanded, nor your protection overtly needed.”

  Then she managed to shock him all over again. She unfolded her arms, and her bony shoulders rounded, and something as close to compassion came into her expression as he’d ever seen. She didn’t take a step closer, but in every way, she was simply closer to him, as she quietly said, “I realize this puts your neatly ordered life at risk. And I realize that the need for solitude, when you came to us, had to have been great, had to have seemed the only answer to your survival, for you to have cut yourself off so completely. But those needs, those choices, were based on things that have now happened a very long time ago. In some ways, a lifetime ago. You’ve made a new life here. For yourself. A good one. You are productive, you are working to do good, to quite literally heal, and be healed. Perhaps it’s time to ask yourself if you’re out on that island, up in that tree, because you still need to be? For your own sanity? Or because it’s simply become the life you live because it’s the only life you feel you deserve.”

  “Ma’am,” he began, undone once more, but this time, not because she’d inflicted a hurt, but rather tried to lift one. “Eula—”

  She raised the tips of her fingers to silence him, her gaze solidly on his, but there was a different kind of intent there now. He saw a depth of caring, and perhaps even concern, that stunned him even more than her blunt speech had earlier.

  “That you’re here, in my shop, asking me for guidance on what step to take next, should be all the answer you need to your question.” She carefully smoothed her palms over her apron and pulled herself up to her full, starched, stiff-shouldered height. “It won’t be easy. It won’t be clear. It will be messy. And loud. And unpredictable. That is what life led among the living is all about. There is no map, other than the one directing you to stick by, and stand up. Do that. Stand up,” she said, and Ford heard the echo of his own words to Delia the night before. Stand up. Had Eula known that? How could she have?

  “I am standing up for her,” he said. “I’m here.”

  She surprised him a final time with an actual smile. “Dear boy, I’m not telling you to stand up for her, but for yourself. Until you do that, you’ll be of no help to anyone. Life doesn’t make promises. But if you want to know what can be? You must first do that.” And with that she turned and went through the blue door to her workshop, closing it behind her with a quiet, yet very final sounding, click.

  Leaving Ford to stand there, feeling as if a giant sea squall had just blown up out of nowhere to batter him, inside and out.

  He’d heard what she’d said, understood every lash, as well as every part that was meant to comfort, to guide him to a safe port. And at some point, when he’d recovered sufficiently, he’d figure out what he thought about it all. And what he was going to do about it. He looked up at the tree, into the branches reaching up to the eaves, feeling the pull, the promise it made. Climb up, escape, never come down.

  “Wise words,” he muttered to the tree. “I should have listened to them and never left the damn island in the first place.” Then he turned and walked out.

  Chapter 4

  “I keep tellin’ ya, come away with me on my fishing boat, leave all this behind.” The creases at the corners of the old fisherman’s eyes deepened with his toothy grin, his dark eyes twinkling above perennially tanned cheeks as he lifted his coffee cup for a refill.

  “Stokey, my darling, be careful what you wish for,” Delia said with a grin as she topped him off. “The way things are going, I might just take you up on that.”

  He clapped his empty hand over the napkin he’d tucked in the collar of his shirt. “I’d live out my years a happy, happy man.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Stoke,” said Arnaud Pliff, his business partner and good friend of at least fifty of Stokey Parker’s sixty-plus years. “She puts so m
uch as a hand on you and you’d drop dead of heart failure. Then where would that leave her?”

  “Why, on a fishing trawler alone with you, Arnie,” Delia said with a wink and a nudge to his beefy shoulder as she moved on to the next table, leaving Arnaud waggling his bushy gray eyebrows to the hoots and hollers of the other fishermen who crowded several of the tables in the small, waterfront diner.

  Delia expertly wove her way, coffeepot in one hand, tray balanced in the other, between the short row of heavily lacquered oak two tops wedged along the bay window at the front of the shop, and the trio of red-linen-covered four tops that filled the center space on wide plank hardwood floors.

  Three booths with Wedgwood blue padded benches and oak tables lined a low wall on the opposite side of the room, with a narrow aisle on the opposite side, bracketed by a row of five barstools lined up in front of the counter that separated the eating area from the kitchen. Napkin holders, condiments, and the like were spaced evenly along the gleaming oak bar; at the far end, closest to the door, sat a mid-century, two-level glass dessert case she’d rescued and refurbished from Gran’s restaurant after the fire. It had been the only thing that had survived, saved by a capricious arrangement of collapsed, charred beams. An antique cash register from Eula’s shop sat on a small stand at the end of the bar, right behind it.

  Delia glanced to the bells jingling on the door as Owen Hartley stepped inside. “Just the man I want to see,” she said, and then smiled when Owen blushed to his ginger-haired roots. She’d known Owen her whole life. He’d been a few grades ahead of her in school, so they hadn’t been close, but she’d always liked and respected him. He’d married young, taken over the family hardware store, so they’d had that in common, too. Then he’d lost his wife when their only child had barely been school age, and the whole town had come together for the two of them. Watching him over the years, seeing his sincere love for the town—he was a walking encyclopedia of Cove heritage knowledge—as well as how seriously he’d taken his role as a parent, her respect for him had only grown. She knew everyone in the Cove felt the same.

  She gestured to the empty booth, then slid in on the bench seat across from him as he sat down, setting her tray on the table.

  “Now, Delia, I know what you’re going to say, and—”

  “Have you talked to Lauren about it?” Delia asked, referring to his daughter. She turned over his coffee mug and filled it, then added the creamers to the tray she knew he liked and pushed it toward him. “She seems really happy with her decision to go to college closer to home. I’m sure she’s excited about the idea of you running, isn’t she?” Seeing Owen’s face crinkle with real concern, Delia reached across the table and put her hand on Owen’s wrist, keeping her voice low. “I know you have reservations about her wanting to come back to the Cove after she graduates next spring, but when she was in just before she went back for fall semester—Owen, she was just glowing with excitement. If it helps, I can assure you, it’s what she really wants.”

  Owen’s expression didn’t smooth. “I know that’s what she says, but I guess I’m afraid she’s just coming back to take care of her old man, that she has some misguided thing about me being alone. That’s not what I wanted for her.”

  “She’s coming back because she loves her home here, and she loves Hartley’s Hardware and the traditions built by you, your father, and his father before him.” Delia beamed. “You provided that strong foundation for her, Owen. You gave her that sense of loyalty and pride. You did a good job with her: she’s smart, she’s happy, grounded. Trust that she’s making the choice for herself, not because she thinks you need her, but because it’s truly where her heart is. I saw her face when she talked about her plans. She couldn’t be more thrilled about her goals.”

  Owen held Delia’s gaze for a moment longer, clearly torn between wanting to believe her and being worried that his only child was making a huge mistake. He looked away, fidgeted with the creamer, then finally tore off the paper lid and added the creamer to his coffee, his thoughts clearly not on his meal. “I hear you, and I appreciate that you’ve been there for her. She—I’ve tried to be both mother and father, but I can only do what I can do and, well, you’ve—” He looked up at her again, sincerity and embarrassment making him flush endearingly. “You’ve been a good shoulder, Delia, and I should have told you sooner how much that’s meant to me. She’s always admired you, you know, running your own place. She trusts your judgment.”

  Now it was Delia’s turn to blush. “That’s—that’s incredibly kind of you to say, Owen. I’m humbled, truly. I’ve always had a soft spot for her, you know that.” Her expression turned serious as another thought occurred to her. “It wasn’t me who was encouraging her to come back, I hope you know that. I just listened—”

  “No, no. I know that. I—” He broke off, smiled, his soft blue eyes warming. “I guess it’s just going to take me a little while to rearrange all those plans I had for her inside my head, try to see things from her perspective. I worked so hard to give her the opportunity to spread her wings and fly.”

  Delia squeezed his arm again. “I know you did, and she is flying, Owen. She’s happy and she’s focused and she knows what she wants. You can’t be anything but proud of that.”

  He nodded, his smile growing wider, pride for his only child clear on his face. “Always.”

  Delia’s smile widened to a grin. “So, you’ll consider then? About running for mayor?”

  Owen’s smile fled and his pale skin paled further. “Now, now, I didn’t say that.”

  Delia slid out from the booth and expertly propped her coffee- and tea-laden tray on her hand. “Talk to Lauren about it,” she said. “Get her feedback. I’ll be back for your order in a few minutes.” Wisely leaving him to his own thoughts, she cruised the tables, topped off half-empty coffee mugs, left another creamer on the booth table for Old Lou, and took orders from a four top that had just filled up with incoming locals.

  Lou lifted his coffee mug and she swung back to give him a refill. “You want some toast to go with your oatmeal today?” she asked him, glancing out the bay window to make sure no one had seated themselves outside. It was early yet, and a bit brisk with the wind coming in off the harbor, but that wouldn’t keep die-hard Mainers from taking their first cup of coffee outside. “I have freshly made blueberry jam.”

  “Tempting,” he said absently, his focus staying on the current issue of The Blueberry Beacon he’d spread over the table. He always took a booth so he could do just that. The Beacon was the Cove’s one and only daily newspaper, which she provided for her regulars. “You read this yet?” he asked, nudging the paper toward her. “Says right there that Brooks Winstock is gonna build himself a yacht club in the Cove. Right here on this very spot, in fact.”

  “That’s old news,” Stokey said from his spot across the room by the front window, listening in, as was the habit of pretty much all of the diner’s regulars. “Never happen. Delia’s is a landmark. Can’t go tearing down landmarks. That’s not what we do.” He smiled at Delia, and she shot him a wink and a smile, even as she prayed the clutch she felt in her gut didn’t show on her face.

  “I might be old, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep up,” Lou informed the room at large. “I know the rumors, but this here article says that Winstock told some news reporter down in Bar Harbor that it was a done deal.” He stabbed a finger at the paper. “Right here. ‘Done deal.’ Quote, unquote. He goes on to talk about how the bay cruises on the new schooner will launch by Memorial Day weekend next season, and that he hopes to have the Half Moon Yacht Club up and running by July Fourth. Says he’s already hired some big-name, hotshot architect who designed that new private resort down in the Hamptons.” He looked up at Delia. “He even brings up Langston deVry, and how he’s designing Grace’s inn here, talking about how Blueberry Cove is the next Martha’s Vineyard. ‘The place where people will want to be.’ His words.” He snorted in disgust. “If a body needs some fancy club t
o want to be in the Cove, well then, we don’t need them. That’s what I say.”

  Somewhere during Lou’s spiel, the chatter in the diner had gone from a sudden burst in response to Lou’s revelation, to murmurs, to complete silence. All except for Lou, who continued on, seemingly unaware of the sudden silence, or thinking it was in deference to his ongoing commentary. “Of course,” he said to Delia, “you’ll be telling deVry about this, seeing as you two have been cozying up. Can’t be too happy about these goings-on, especially after Winstock went after the Monaghan property.”

  The sound of the bell jingling as the diner door closed had everyone turning their heads, everyone, that is, except Lou, who kept on talking. Everyone else watched Ford Maddox slide quietly onto a stool at the end of the counter by the register, his back to the room.

  “When is he due back up here?” Lou was saying. “Soon I hope. He’ll set this right for you.” He gave her a wink, which she only caught from the corner of her eye.

  Everyone’s attention was currently playing ping-pong, going from Ford, to her, back to Ford.

  “Good friends come in handy,” Lou said with a bit of devil in his grizzled grin. “Good friends with deep pockets even handier.”

  “Lou, for the love of—” Stokey hissed. “Shut up already, will ya?”

  Lou blinked myopic eyes through Magoo-thick glasses. “What?” He finally looked around the room. “What did I say? Everyone knows the two of them are an item. I was simply stating facts. Man like that isn’t going to sit around is all I’m saying. He’ll step up and—”

  “Thanks, Lou,” Delia cut in, smiling sincerely as she patted him on the shoulder, while simultaneously trying not to send everything on her tray crashing to the floor as she resumed her slide and glide through the tables.