Take the Long Way Home

by Judith Arnold

  Well, hell—the context was Brogan’s Point. He’d probably known her when he’d last lived here. He and Ashley were twenty-eight, and the woman on the dance floor looked a little younger. Maybe she’d been a couple of years behind them in high school. Not that he’d ever paid much attention to underclassmen.

  He hadn’t paid much attention to anyone back then, other than his coach, his friends, and Ashley. He’d been such an asshole in those days.

  Across the booth from him, Ashley presented him with a cute little pout. She’d loved having his undivided attention when they were in high school, and she seemed to want it again now. But they were different people today, older and—he’d like to think—wiser. She was still beautiful, still blond and curvy, stylishly dressed and impeccably made-up. Maybe that was why the woman ambling toward the exit looked younger. She wore no make-up.

  “Quinn?” Ashley only uttered his name, but in her intonation, he heard, Look at me! I’m here. She’s no one.

  That woman wasn’t no one.

  His gaze had locked with hers the instant the song had erupted from the jukebox on the far wall of the bar. An old rock number, probably from the seventies. Dave Herschberg, one of the most gifted orthopedists Quinn had ever had the privilege of working with, liked to blast old rock and roll tunes in the OR when he was performing surgery. Thanks to Quinn’s residency at Mass General, he’d learned almost as much about seventies rock as he had about repairing torn ACL’s.

  “Take the long way home,” the singer crooned. “Take the long way home.”

  Yeah, Quinn knew about that. He’d taken the long way, for sure. Maybe that was why the woman was gazing at him. Maybe she was seeing him and thinking, there’s a guy who took the long way home.

  Maybe she was looking at him and thinking, there’s a first-class asshole who took the long way home.

  The possibility made him want to confront her, to assure her he had changed. Except, of course, that she might not be thinking anything of the kind. She might just be staring at him because he had bird shit on his shoulder.

  He glanced at his shoulder, just to be sure. Just a few wet spots where the rain had caught him on the way from the car into the tavern.

  “Quinn, pay attention,” Ashley said, rapping her knuckles against the table as if it were a door and she demanded entry. “I went through a lot of effort to make this happen. I want Saturday to go smoothly. They’re giving us as much of halftime as we want, and—”

  The song was winding down, fading out. As if released from a spell, the woman started moving, resuming her stroll toward the exit, averting her gaze as if she could no longer bear to look at Quinn. He sprang to his feet.

  “Quinn!”

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Ashley, ignoring the indignation in her tone. Several long, quick strides brought him to the door one step ahead of the woman. Before she could pull the door open, he touched her wrist. “I’m sorry, but—do I know you?”

  She raised her eyes to him. She looked bewildered and uncomfortable. “How should I know if you know me?”

  “You look familiar, that’s all.” That wasn’t all. She had shared that song with him somehow, the song about taking the long way home.

  “We were classmates in high school,” she said.

  “I thought that might be it.” He extended his hand. “Quinn Connor.”

  “I know who you are.” But she let him shake her hand. Her fingers were cool and delicate, so slender his hand seemed to swallow hers.

  Of course she knew who he was. Back then, everyone had known who he was. “I know you, too,” he said, feeling guilty that he really didn’t know who she was. “But I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

  “You never knew my name,” she said, not sounding terribly judgmental about that. “Maeve Nolan.”

  Maeve Nolan. He did know her name. She’d been…God, she’d been a head case in high school. A cop’s daughter. Everyone had been afraid to break any laws around her—no drinking beer in her presence, no lighting up a joint—and she hadn’t seemed to mind. She’d dressed in black a lot. Rumor had it she’d sometimes walk out of a classroom in the middle of a lecture; Quinn hadn’t had any classes with her, so he had no idea if that was true. Rumor had it she would sometimes hide in one of the girls’ bathrooms and cry; Quinn had never been in a girls’ bathroom, so he had no idea if that was true, either. But yes, he’d known who Maeve Nolan was: a sad, gloomy loner.

  He’d never looked closely at her in high school—he’d been blind to anyone outside his inner circle—but damn, she was pretty. A lot prettier than a whack-job loner ought to be. Maybe she hadn’t been that pretty in high school. More likely, he’d been too much of a jerk to notice.

  He noticed now. Her skin was pale, and it looked as soft as freshly fallen snow. Her golden-brown lashes were astonishingly long. Her lips were a dusky pink. There was naturalness about her, something clean and fresh, and a spark of determination in her wide hazel eyes. If he had to describe her now, sad and gloomy would not be the words he chose.

  Wistful, maybe. Apprehensive, yet curious.

  And damn, really, really pretty.

  “So…you still live here?” he asked.

  It didn’t seem like a difficult question, but she took a minute to mull over her answer. Finally, she said, “I recently moved back.”

  “Yeah. Me, too—well, not exactly. I’m in Boston.” He tilted his head slightly in the city’s direction, as if Boston were one town over and not thirty miles south of Brogan’s Point. “I don’t know if you remember Ashley Wright from our class—” he tilted his head again, this time toward the booth where Ashley waited for him, visibly seething because he’d abandoned her to talk to Maeve “—but she’s living right here in town. Working for her dad.”

  “He owns that car place on Route One,” Maeve said.

  More than one car place. Ashley’s father owned multiple dealerships along the North Shore: Wright Honda, Wright Buick-Cadillac, Wright BMW. “Get the Wright Car at the Wright Price!” his ads used to scream from radio speakers, TV screens, and billboards. “Looking for a new car? You can’t go wrong with Wright!” Ashley had been one of the rich kids in town, living in a sprawling mansion with an ocean view on the north end of town. Now she lived in a condominium she was dying to show Quinn, but he’d thought it best to avoid that, at least until he figured out what he did or did not want to happen if he crossed the threshold.

  “So…are you working in the area or just visiting?” he asked.

  Her gaze flickered left and right before centering on him again. She appeared dubious, as if not quite sure how to answer, or why he’d even asked. He wasn’t sure why he’d asked, either, except that he felt…something. A need to become acquainted with her. A need to connect with her in some way. Just because he’d never gotten to know Maeve Nolan, the cop’s crazy daughter, in high school didn’t mean he couldn’t get to know her now.

  “I’m not sure,” she finally answered. “I’m planning to open a cookie store, but we’ll see how it goes.”

  A cookie store. That struck him as a little strange. People might open a bakery, or a doughnut shop, or an ice-cream parlor. But a cookie store?

  All right. She’d been weird in high school, and she was weird now. Despite her weirdness, he was enjoying this conversation. He felt that this moment, this meeting, was why he’d taken the long way home. That made no sense, but not everything in the world had to make sense.

  She peered past him once more, then gave him a smile that tugged his heart in an odd way. “You should go back to Ashley. She’s waiting for you. And I have to get back to work. Nice talking to you.” She turned and reached for the door.

  He touched her wrist again, and her gaze fell to where his fingers rested against her skin. “Nice talking to you, too,” he said, then winced at the banality of their words. She’d said them because she wanted to leave, to get away from him. He’d said them because he meant them. He wanted to talk to her some more. He
wanted to prove to her that he was no longer a self-centered dick who believed his value as a human being lay in his ability to throw a football. He wanted her to understand that he was open-minded now, and hard-working, and humble.

  Why impressing Maeve Nolan mattered so much to him, he couldn’t say. But it did. He wanted her to see that he’d come home a better man than the person he’d been when he left town.

  She slipped her arm from his light grip, gave him another smile that twisted something inside him, and swung open the door. Watching as she vanished into the rain, he thought, Cookies. Why not?

  Chapter Two

  When the Torellis had owned the bakery, they’d attached a bell above the front door so it would ring whenever anyone entered the premises. Now that the place was hers, Maeve had decided to leave the bell there. If she was back in the kitchen and Joyce, the counter clerk she’d hired, was busy with another customer, the bell would alert her if more customers entered the place. Nothing she might be doing in the kitchen could be as important as prompt service. Never leave a customer waiting—one of the many lessons she’d learned during her years in Seattle.

  Besides, she like the way the bell sounded when the door opened. A cheerful tinkle. It made the place feel homey and welcoming.

  Her shop—which she’d named Cookie’s after her cat, who in turn had been named after the cookies Maeve loved to bake—wasn’t yet open for business. But she must have forgotten to lock the door after the delivery man had shown up with her coffee and cappuccino machines, because while she was arranging the machines on the back counter, the bell let out a cheerful tinkle, announcing that someone had opened the door.

  She spun around in time to see her father enter the shop.

  He looked much better than he had when she’d left town ten years ago. Chatting with him on Skype during her years away, she’d been able to view his evolution from grief-shattered wreck to human being, a process for which she supposed Gus Naukonen deserved a fair amount of credit. His eyes were clear and gray, missing the webs of bloodshot that used to plague them chronically. The laugh lines crimping their outer corners were deeper than she remembered, although during those ghastly years after her mother’s death, he hadn’t laughed enough to have laugh lines. Was there such a thing as cry lines? Mourn lines?

  That morning, he looked like a man who smiled. He was still handsome in a bluff, rough-hewn way, his jaw square, his forehead high. His hair had more silver in it than she’d remembered, but his waist didn’t appear any thicker than it had been when Maeve had left.

  The first few years she’d lived in Seattle, she’d refused to tell him where she was. She’d kept in touch enough for him to know she was alive and well, and that had been all he’d deserved—and all she’d allowed. He’d respected her need for distance then, but eventually, they’d both healed enough that Skype chats were possible. A few times, he’d asked if he could visit her, but she’d always said no. Seattle was her new life. Her father was the old life she’d fled three thousand miles to escape.

  Now she was back in that old life, and her father stood in her shop, clad in a business shirt and tie, khaki trousers, and a windbreaker with “Brogan’s Point Police Department” embroidered above his heart. “Maeve,” he said, opening his arms.

  She wasn’t ready. But she couldn’t not hug him. She emerged from behind the counter and let him wrap his arms around her. His embrace didn’t feel bad. It felt warm and safe. Hesitantly, she returned his hug.

  They held each other for a long moment. Then, as if they’d perceived the same signal, they stepped apart. “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “I’m a detective, honey. I know how to find people.”

  “I thought I would see you yesterday,” she said. “I went to Gus’s bar, figuring you would be there, but you weren’t.”

  “I’m here now. How long have you been in town? Why didn’t you call? What are you doing in Torelli’s?”

  Last question first. “I own it now,” she said. “I’m opening a cookie store.”

  “What?” Ed Nolan looked flabbergasted.

  “A cookie store.”

  “You own the building? How did you manage that?”

  “It’s kind of complicated.” She gestured toward one of the café chairs she’d set up around two small tables that morning. Her father ignored the chair and gave her a skeptical look—the kind of look he used to give her when she was five and had crumbs stuck to her chin, or a muddy smear on her good dress for church. The kind of look she imagined him giving the criminals he arrested and brought into the station house.

  She tried to defuse that look by asking, “You want some coffee? I was about to try out my new machine.”

  He nodded, but his expression didn’t change.

  She busied herself with the coffee machine, inserting one of the jumbo filters, scooping in some grounds, adding water from a pitcher. “I had a friend in Seattle,” she explained as she worked. “He thought I should move back here and sell my cookies.”

  “Some friend,” her father scoffed. “He wanted you to move away?”

  “He didn’t live in Seattle. He just came to the city a few times a year on business. He’d always stop by the Stoneworks Café when he was in town. He was in love with my cookies.”

  “In love with you, probably.” She heard the overprotective-father vibe in his voice, as if he would shoot any man who messed with his precious daughter.

  “No, Dad. We were just friends.”

  “Right.”

  “He was old. In his seventies, or even his eighties. I don’t know—he was kind of ageless. But really smart. I didn’t know it, but he was also seriously rich.”

  Her father’s face softened. “Maybe you should have made him fall in love with you, then.”

  “Dad.” She laughed, her gaze fixed on the machine. It gurgled and hissed pleasantly as the coffee brewed. “He was the nicest man I ever met,” she said, a layer of sorrow muting her voice. “He said I belonged home with you. He said I was too smart and too talented to be working as a waitress. I was more than a waitress at Stoneworks, but he thought I should have my own place. And…” Her smile faded and her eyes filmed. “He died. I didn’t know it, but he’d already bought this place and was intending to sign the deed over to me. Just to get me to move home. He thought I should be with my family.” She didn’t look at her father then. She didn’t want to see if he was tearing up, too.

  “He bought this place for you? Just like that?”

  “We’d known each other for years. And he was very rich.”

  “How does a very rich old man get to know a coffee shop waitress?” An ominous rumble of suspicion still darkened her father’s tone.

  “Like I said, he would come into the café whenever he was in Seattle. I think he had an office in one of the buildings nearby. He used to just come in for coffee, but then he tried one of my peanut-butter crunch cookies and swooned.” No need for false modesty. “They’re wicked good.”

  Her father nodded, although he still looked dubious. “So an old man eats your cookie, swoons, and buys you a bakery.” What did he get in return? Maeve saw the unspoken question in her father’s frown.

  “Not right away,” she said. The coffee machine had stopped making noise, and she filled two cups with coffee. “At first we just would talk. He’d ask me about the cookies, about where I was from. He was so easy to talk to—because I knew he didn’t want anything from me,” she added, returning her father’s glare with one of her own. “He never told me he’d bought the bakery. He did encourage me to take some on-line courses on business management, and I learned a lot from Lenny.”

  “Lenny?”

  “The manager of Stoneworks. I wasn’t thinking of opening my own place, just learning how things worked. Harry had more ambition for me than I had for myself.”

  “Good for Harry,” her father muttered, then took a sip of coffee and nodded. Maeve tasted the brew in her cup and smiled. It was delicious.

  �
�He did tell me all the time that I should move back home. He said family was important. For that alone, you should love him.”

  “I adore him,” her father grunted. “I’m eternally indebted.” Despite the sarcasm underlining his words, Maeve sensed that he was softening slightly.

  And he damned well ought to soften. It was because of Harry that she was in Brogan’s Point. If her father wanted her here, he should be grateful. If he didn’t, then he could let the bell ring him out the door and out of her life.

  She was here for Harry, she decided. Not for her father.

  But then her father smiled, making those little lines in the corners of his eyes pleat like a geisha’s fans, and it was her turn to soften.

  “The sign on the door says your grand opening is Saturday.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Saturday is a big day over at the high school,” he told her. “Homecoming game. I’ll spread the word that you’ll be open for business. Maybe you’ll get some spillover. Not everyone likes the rubbery boiled hotdogs they sell at the games.” He slugged down some more coffee. “This is delicious,” he said.

  She wondered if, once Cookie’s opened, he would be dropping by her shop for his afternoon coffee, instead of the Faulk Street Tavern. Somehow, she doubted it. Maybe he could send some of his colleagues on the force her way, though. Why should they drive all the way to Dunkin Donuts on Route One when they could support a local business like Cookie’s?

  “So, when are you coming over for dinner?” he asked.

  Going to his house for dinner meant going to her childhood home. She shrugged.

  Her father didn’t pressure her. “Maybe you and Gus and I could have dinner at the Lobster Shack,” he suggested. “I can convince her to take an evening off every now and then.”