It was a scene from a Disney movie with one exception: the streets were nearly empty of people.
• • •
Tommy Porter, his uniform jacket smelling of wet polyester, stood in front of Jake Risso’s Gull Tavern, just beneath the green awning. The rain had turned into a freezing drizzle and he pulled up his collar against the wet cold. Snow, Tommy predicted.
He thought about his fiancée, Janie, helping out at the big community center party in Anya Angelina Park, and he wished for the umpteenth time that night that he was with her. But then, he always wished that. And the wish made him smile. It was okay—Janie’d be ultrabusy tonight, helping run the darn thing, too busy to pay attention to him. She’d pulled her brother, Zack, into helping tonight, too—trying as always to keep the college kid on the straight and narrow path.
He couldn’t complain about not being there anyway—he had volunteered to take the Harbor Road shift tonight, knowing no one else wanted it. It’d be a cinch, there’d be no crime. The weather was too bad for bar fights. Too cold for thieves or derelicts passing through. Too close to the holidays for people to entertain ill will.
He half listened to the canned music escaping from the bar as a few fishermen straggled out. Tommy waved and watched them lumber across the street, then spotted an unfamiliar car out of the corner of his eye. It was driving toward him on Harbor Road. Not that Tommy knew every car that came in and out of Sea Harbor, but this one didn’t look homegrown. A red BMW, not new but well cared for, stood out.
And it was going too fast for the slick streets, was his second thought.
He took a few steps from beneath the awning, but before he could register anything, the car pulled over to the curb and came to a sudden stop, water spitting up around the wheels and sloshing over the curb.
Drunk driver? Probably not. Unless he was so drunk it didn’t register to him that he was pulling up in front of a policeman in full uniform.
The driver left the car running, but opened the door, stepped out, and pressed his gloved hands on the roof, calling over to the policeman, “Hey—where is everyone? It’s like a ghost town around here.”
Tommy hunched up his shoulders against the drizzle and walked over to the car, his eyes not leaving the driver. He was a decent-sized guy, shoulders wide and with a thick head of hair that blew in all directions as the wind picked up. A little older than himself, he thought. Nice-looking in a collegiate sort of way—strong cheekbones and chin, a straight nose, inquisitive blue eyes set wide apart—features that probably got him carded in a bar now and then.
Not that thieves or killers or lowlifes had a certain look, but Tommy suspected this guy wasn’t one of them.
Just then the passenger door opened and a woman climbed out, boots and jeaned legs coming first, then followed by a parka-clad figure that seemed to unfold with a certain grace from the car. Her hood was pushed back and she swept away strands of brown hair from her cheeks and eyes as she looked around, her gaze settling finally on the policeman.
She nodded, a brief and silent greeting.
Tommy held out an umbrella, but she shook her head, looking up into the black sky and letting the icy rain fall onto her cheeks.
The driver still stood on the other side of the car. Tommy looked back at him. “There’s a big event at our community center. Most everyone’s there. What do you guys need? Who are you looking for?”
It was the woman who spoke up. “Esther Gibson.”
Tommy’s eyebrows lifted. He looked more closely at her. She was attractive in a rough-around-the-edges way, maybe a little too skinny. “Esther?” He’d worked with the longtime police dispatcher since joining the force as a rookie ten years before—and he knew Esther’s granddaughter. Nieces. This woman wasn’t any of them.
“She’d be at the party.” He pointed a finger toward the far end of Harbor Road, where signs pointed out to a spit of forested land that held the center, a park, hiking trails, and picnic spots along the shore.
“Party?” Amber said.
“Yeah. It marks the beginning of the holiday season. Everyone’s there, out at the community center.”
“Is that where the free clinic is?” Charlie asked.
Tommy nodded. “Yep. Why? Are you sick?” Silly question. The dude’s driving a BMW and looks healthy as a horse.
“No. Just wondering.”
“The community center sits at the edge of a park—close to the water. They have all kinds of programs out there, parties, a great place for cross-country skiers to get warm. But the big to-do tonight is to make money for the free health clinic. It’s a great program Doc Virgilio brought to town. I guess you’ve heard of it?”
Tommy nodded. Dr. Virgilio. That was Charlie’s contact, the doctor who had spoken to his nursing school class and passed out her card. She could always use volunteers for her free clinic, she’d said. The clinic was in Massachusetts, a little town right on the water. Sea Harbor. That was when he had raised his head that day—at the words Sea Harbor.
So Charlie had taken a card when she passed them out and stuck it in his wallet. He looked out toward the water, remembering. But right now, at this very moment, he had no idea why he’d finally pulled out the card when he did all those months later. And even less why he had given the doctor a call. He must have been crazy.
He shook away the thoughts and concentrated on the man standing on the curb. The cop had answered one question anyway. He wouldn’t be able to reach the doc tonight even if he wanted to. She’d most certainly be at the benefit. “So, is there a motel around here?” he asked. He glanced over at Amber. She had pulled her backpack out of the car and was standing on the sidewalk, taking in the gaslights along the street, the sheets of rain changing the glow into panels of light. He wondered what her plans were. She seemed unconcerned about where she would be spending the night.
“Yes and no,” Tommy said. “There’s a great B and B not far from here. Ravenswood-by-the-Sea. But it’s booked solid, probably until after the New Year. There’re some places in Rockport and Gloucester, but my bet is they’re filled, too—there is some convention going on over in Gloucester, plus, people came in for our benefit here.”
Charlie looked up and down the street, thinking. It wouldn’t be the first time he had spent the night in a car. Maybe not in this weather, but it wouldn’t kill him. He’d find a parking lot somewhere, pull out the blanket in the backseat that his dog used to use.
“Hop back in your car and follow me,” Tommy said. “The community center has a few cabins that might not be full—they’re rustic, bare-bones, but they have heat and beat the sidewalk or beach. Or I can find someone at the party who can put you up. Not usually a problem.”
Amber shrugged, but Charlie didn’t move. “Yeah, well, thanks, but there’s no need for that,” he said. “Maybe you can take the girl there to find Eloise or whoever she’s looking for. I’ll be fine—”
“Call me Tommy,” he said, “and let’s go. Neither of you should be wandering around in this weather. Besides, you were driving too fast and it’s my bet you don’t have a clue where you’re going.”
Before Charlie could argue, Tommy turned and headed over to a police car parked in a narrow drive beside the bar. In the next minute he had backed out, and was waiting in the middle of the empty street for Charlie to follow.
Charlie glanced inside the car, then looked over the roof to the curb.
Amber was gone.
Chapter 2
Amber Harper stood against the side of McClucken’s hardware store in the narrow alley that ran alongside the stone building. It wasn’t more than a slice of gravel, wide enough for a Dumpster, leaving just enough room for a skinny kid or two to hide with a pack of stolen cigarettes.
A skinny kid with wild hair who didn’t quite fit in Sea Harbor.
Amber’s thoughts slid uneasily back to those years of feeling lost a
nd angry. A gangly teenager, mad at the world. Her once-edgy hormones were more level now, her mind clear, her anger under control. And she didn’t smoke any longer; she’d grown up. But the feelings seemed to lurk in the shadows, sneaking up on her and reminding her that it’s difficult to revisit one’s past. And maybe not even a good thing.
She rummaged through her pockets for gloves but came up empty. The car, she remembered now. She had pulled them off to warm her hands on the car vent. Good gloves, too.
She stepped out from behind the metal refuse can, rubbed her hands together, and looked through the sleet and wind, watching the taillights of the police car and BMW driving away from where she stood. The cop drove slowly, carefully, probably looking for her, until both cars finally disappeared around the bend in the road.
She wasn’t sure why she’d walked away. The cop was friendly enough and wanting to help. But facing a mass of people celebrating good cheer in a community center that hadn’t existed in her other life wasn’t where she wanted to be tonight. Not to mention the possibility of seeing people she had worked at avoiding nearly her whole life, even when she lived under their roofs. Tonight was definitely not the night to break her pattern.
She needed time to adjust, to figure out why she’d even come.
She shivered, hunched her shoulders up to her ears, and walked into the wind, her backpack moving slightly back and forth.
Harbor Road was the same—but different, she thought.
The old bookstore across the street was still there. Her gray eyes lingered on the familiar sign and took her back to the hours and hours that she had spent sitting on the floor on the store’s upper level, her legs folded like a pretzel. She’d lose herself in Nancy Drew, Anne of Green Gables, A Secret Garden, and every Judy Blume she could get her hands on.
There were new stores, too—a yarn shop across the street where a beat-up bait shop once stood. Amber stared at it, thinking about Esther Gibson and her piles of yarn, the fat needles she’d used to teach Amber to knit as they sat side by side in the nursing home.
Amber shook off the memory and concentrated instead on a brightly decorated sign with a giant scooper. It was outlined in lights—an ice-cream shop. SCOOPERS, it read. Nice. And it didn’t close for the winter as some on Cape Ann did. That was nice, too. A coffee shop with a patio was nearby. Apparently life hadn’t stood still since the night that she packed the North Face backpack Esther Gibson had given her and hitchhiked her way out of Sea Harbor and into a new life.
Her hometown had grown up some.
Amber pulled up her hood and tucked a handful of wet hair beneath it, then shoved her hands into her pockets and began walking again, down Harbor Road toward the Gull Tavern. It would be warm at least. And unlike the many times she’d snuck up to the bar’s rooftop patio, this time she’d be legit. Photo ID and all. Not that anyone would card check an almost thirty-year-old who looked every bit her age and then some.
Maybe she should have gotten back into the car with the Charlie guy. He was nice enough, even in the face of her rude behavior. Lack of sleep had a habit of bringing out the worst in her. At first she hadn’t been able to gauge his age easily—something she was usually good at. The few freckles sprinkled across his nose didn’t fit well with the worried look in his blue eyes or the concerned wrinkle in his forehead. So she’d flipped open his wallet when he was concentrating on the highway signs. Half a dozen years older than she was, if she’d read it right.
The cop reminded her of some of the nice people she’d known in Sea Harbor. He’d have found Esther for her, probably, and Esther would have hugged her close against her big ample breasts, the light flowery scent of her lavender lotion bringing a strange comfort. She would have insisted on giving her the wide bed in the back of the house—and probably a glass of warm milk.
It was an easy answer to the freezing rain and no place to sleep.
But she’d be fine, she’d find a place to sleep somewhere. And she would stay in town long enough to do what she had to do—to meet with the lawyer Esther had mentioned in the e-mail, and the priest her grandmother prayed with and confessed to, and all those other things church people did.
Father Northcutt. His name came to her suddenly. He was the only person in Amber’s recollection that Lydia Cummings ever deferred to. And he was probably the reason Amber hadn’t ended up in an orphanage.
So she’d see them, sign some papers, collect whatever it was that her grandmother had left her—a toothbrush, maybe, if she was lucky.
But mostly she’d say a final good-bye to her mother.
And then she’d be on her way.
The door to the Gull Tavern opened and a noisy group of kids younger than she exited into the night. Amber slipped in as the door closed behind them, cutting off the harsh wind.
She paused just inside the door, sinking back against the wall as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Small groups sat around the tall round tables scattered throughout the room. The long shelf that ran along the window wall was partly full, couples passing baskets of calamari and fried clams between them and washing it down with beer. Others stood or sat at the bar, elbows rubbing against elbows as they drank beer and screamed at a football game playing out on the big-screen TV above the bar. The smell of grilled burgers and fried onions filled the air.
Some were college kids home for the winter break, feeling their oats with the relief of finished exams behind them, Amber guessed. The older guys in slickers had probably come right off the lobster, cod, and tuna boats, now moored in the choppy waters near the harbor. It was a good crowd—one that wouldn’t have any idea who she was: the college kids would be too young, the fishermen too old and unconcerned.
She made her way to the bar and ordered a beer.
But Amber hadn’t considered the person behind the bar. A sudden jolt shot through her and she held back a gasp. The bartender’s shoulders bent forward as he pulled down on the tap handle, filling a mug with beer. His hair was white, thin, and straggly, his profile etched with age. He turned around slowly and set the beer in front of her, its froth curling over the mug and running down the sides.
Amber waited for him to look up.
Finally he did, his eyes scanning her face, his large nose filling a ruddy, weathered face. He kept his head still and then his eyes locked in to hers, holding her there as his face softened in recognition. His lips pulled up into a wry, lopsided smile, deep wrinkles spreading out in all directions. His voice was raspy, more weary than Amber remembered.
“So,” he finally said, “you still trying to sneak your way into my bar, you skinny rascal? Got your ID ready?”
In the next breath he leaned over the sticky bar, pushed the beer and a bucket of peanuts to the side, and wrapped Amber in a hug.
Jake Risso never forgot a face.
Chapter 3
No matter that winds howled through the pine trees and freezing rain continued to pelt Sea Harbor, inside the lodgelike community center, a winter fairyland warmed the welcoming lobby.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” sang Birdie Favazza, her small, veined hands keeping rhythm with the band playing in the distance. She smiled up at Ben Endicott and coaxed him into joining her as she wound her way through the crowd, a slight jig shaking her body.
“Holiday fever or holiday punch?” Ben said, his words warm with affection for the woman at his side, her white cap of hair barely reaching his shoulder.
“Maybe a bit of each, Ben, dear.” She moved toward an elaborate display a few feet in front of them. “How could you not feel good holiday vibes looking at this magical sight?”
A low round platform was set up in the middle of the foyer. But looking at it, one didn’t see a platform; instead a magical scene hovered directly above the wooden floor. It was a replica of the parklike space near the town pier—the Harbor Green, as locals called it. But tonight the miniature scene wasn
’t green, it was wintry white, created from soft yards of snowy fleece. A gazebo stood in the center, its gables bright with tiny lights. Doll-sized park benches and picnic tables sat in the snowy folds, and narrow pathways meandered through the park, lit by black lampposts casting shadows across the snow. The entire scene evoked memories from every single person who had ever walked the Harbor Green, the well-loved wide-open space that hosted Fourth of July fireworks, summer picnics, seafood fests, open markets, and winter carnivals. It was where children would gather in a few weeks to cheer Santa on as he approached Sea Harbor in a lobster boat filled with cheery elves. Scattered throughout the snowy park, around the gazebo and among the benches and tables, were miniature Christmas trees, no more than ten inches high. They mirrored the recently planted trees down on the harbor, waiting to enter into the field of battle—waiting to be trimmed. A small white card rested at the base of each miniature tree, bearing names of the decorating teams.
Magical. Sea Harbor. Christmas.
“Well, what do you think?” Laura Danvers walked up to Ben and Birdie just as Sam Perry and Nell inched their way in to see the display. “The Canary Cove artists built the whole thing. It’s amazing. And thanks to Cummings Northshore Nurseries, each of those tiny trees has a real counterpart planted over at the harbor.” She stopped for a breath, her excitement coloring her cheeks, and looked at the faces of the crowd as people gathered for a glimpse of the scene.
“It’s beautiful,” Nell Endicott said. “You have such a gift for tugging on people’s memories, their emotions, and their purse strings, all at the same time—and you do it in such a charming way, Laura.”
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