by Lisa Shea
Martin stilled - and then he let out his breath. Molly could almost see the progression of thoughts clicking through his brain. Out of all the possible infractions the visitor could be committing, this was fairly low on the list. Hopefully the man would finish his business and be gone.
Ryan gave a grunt of satisfaction and zipped back up. He strode back to his truck and reached in.
He drew out a shotgun.
Molly stepped back against the marsh. Back at the bar, her boss kept a sawed-off shotgun behind the counter, along with a maple bat, for those late-late nights when the drinking crossed from boisterously loud to dangerously edged. There were enough simmering tensions between several Bostonian groups that tense words could escalate and fists could fly. But in the bar there were bouncers - thick-armed local boxers who enjoyed the frequent chance to flex their muscles.
Here it was just her and Martin.
Martin stepped so he was between her and the visitor. “Sir?”
Ryan glanced around in surprise. His voice had the slow heaviness of northern Maine. “Where’d you come from?”
“Sir, I’m afraid there are no firearms allowed on Plum Island. It’s a protected nature preserve.”
Ryan spat, hefting his shotgun and grabbing a few shells off his passenger seat. “Yeah, they tried that up in our neck of the woods, too. Damn government. Tryin’ to lock away land as if it’s got walls on it or somethin’. We been fishin’ and huntin’ the land for generations, you know. Ain’t no government man can step in and say otherwise.”
“I’m afraid it’s the law, Sir. It’s for the safety of the animals. We have many endangered species here.”
Ryan barked a laugh. “So they claim. They don’t want us to fish the fish we’ve fished for years. Endangered. As if the fish ain’t breedin’ and eatin’ like they always do.” He nudged his head at the birds which skittered along the water’s edge. “Damn birds don’t think they’re endangered. They just fly here and there like they’ve always done. Maybe they’re just somewhere else, when you think there aren’t enough of them any more. Driven away by the damn loud cell-phone-carrying nature lovers who don’t know how to hunt. Who ruin all the best tracking areas.”
Martin put his hands in his pockets, giving a gentle shrug of understanding. “I know. Not everyone can appreciate the solitude of the wilderness. They don’t know what it’s like just to be with nature.”
Ryan’s eyes lit up. “You get it! That misty morning when the fog is just coming off the lake. When you’ve been sitting in your blind for three hours, in pure silence, just waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... and then BLAM! You shoot that moose plum between its eyes. Nothing like that in the world.”
Martin nodded, taking a step forward. “But there’s ways to do things right. And if you want to go hunting for duck, this isn’t the place. There’s a good beach about ten miles north where it’s legal, if you have a license for it here. You’re from Maine, right? Near Presque Isle, from that accent? If you’ve got a Maine license, head into York and you’re back in your home state. And there’s a perfect spot along the Little River.”
Ryan spat. “Yeah, I know it, but it’s getting on to dusk already. I’s heading home from seeing my cousin in Salem. Damn wiccan freak, she is, but she had some things of my grandpa that she said she’d give me. So either I stop here or it gets too dark.” His eyes tracked up to a flock that flew overhead, honking in chorus. “And I don’t aim to miss my chance.”
Martin took another step. “I’m sorry, Sir, I can’t let you do that.”
Molly’s throat closed up. She’d known, peripherally, that this was a part of Martin’s job. But she’d never thought he actually got called on to do it. She’d thought of him as quietly strolling along the wooden boardwalks, noting the location of new nests. Of putting a Band-Aid on a scratch of a toddler who wandered into a pricker bush.
Nothing even remotely like this.
Ryan’s brow creased together in annoyance. “Look, man, I’m the one with the gun. I’m just gonna bag myself a duck or two and head north. Get some satisfaction out of this long, screwed-up day. Wash the taste of that tattooed freak out of my mind.”
Molly wrapped her arms around herself, shielding the Celtic claddagh on her arm from his view.
Martin shook his head. His tone remained gentle, but a firmness settled into it. “Put down the gun, Sir.”
Ryan’s fingers rolled more firmly on the grip, his eyes holding Martin’s.
The world drew in a breath -
A ranger F-150 pulled into the parking lot, its lights shining full on Ryan. Jan stepped out of the cab, her gaze serious, a radio unit in her hand. She looked between Ryan and Martin.
Martin calmly held Ryan’s gaze.
Ryan stared ... tensed ...
He finally lowered the gun.
Jan nudged her head. “Sir, please drive back to the entry kiosk. I’ll follow you. There’s some folks who want to have a word with you.”
Molly kept still. They were on an island, after all. There wasn’t anywhere else for Ryan to go besides back through that kiosk. But people sometimes did stupid things when they felt cornered.
Ryan looked at Martin one last time. Then with a growl he turned and sharply tossed his rifle back into his cab. He went over to the driver’s side and climbed in. In a moment he was in motion back toward the entrance, with Jan trailing along behind him.
Molly could barely breathe as she tentatively came up alongside Martin. Deep shadows fell as the headlights eased into the distance. “Martin, you could have been hurt!”
He shook his head, bringing his hands up out of his pockets. “He wouldn’t have hurt us. He just needed someone to understand the way he saw things.”
“Still, we’re lucky Jan came along when she did.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Molly looked at his pocket. “Wait, you called Jan on your phone? In your pocket?”
He gave a wry smile. “I might not know how to text, but I do use it for emergencies.”
Molly tucked an arm into his. “You surprise me every time I see you.”
He gently kissed her forehead. “And that is why we are so good together.” He nudged his head toward the shoreline. “Come on. I still want to show you something.”
Molly looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late. Maybe tomorrow?”
He shook his head. “It’ll only take a minute.”
He walked her through the velvet dusk back to the edge of the marsh. The nestle of nest and twig was barely visible against the waving reeds. He knelt down and lifted something delicately white from within the grasses. His voice grew quiet. “Here.”
Molly reached down.
It was a half-shell, delicately pale, with the faintest brown spots on it. It was a thing of beauty. And within it -
Molly blinked in surprise.
It held a simple, beautiful, elegant diamond ring.
Molly stared at it as if it had materialized out of a golden glow. “Martin?”
He looked up at her. “It’s been exactly three years since we met, Molly. Three years since you tumbled into my life - and I have treasured every day. You bring color into my world. You help me see life differently. Wake me up to the possibilities. Hear a song I’d never have encountered. Marry me, Molly. Be my wife.”
Molly’s throat closed up, and she could only stare at the man kneeling before her. “I adore you, Martin. You know I do. But you hate it in Boston. You hate the traffic, the crowds, and the fast pace. While that energy is what charges my soul. How are we going to make this work?”
His eyes held hers. “The plovers migrate, spending their summers here and their winters in Key Largo. The hummingbirds go even further, nesting all the way down in Costa Rica.” He gave a soft smile. “If our rhythms are simply to spend weekdays on the island and weekends in Boston, then I think we can manage it. Many animals maintain two homes to match their cycles. If they can do it, so can we.”
Molly could bar
ely breathe. “You’d be all right with that?”
He nodded. “Your apartment by BU is right on the green line. We could spend our days at the Gardiner Museum with their peaceful courtyard. The Museum of Fine Arts. I’d read at home when you went to the bar at night. And then the other half of the week we’d come out here. Stay in the my cottage.” His breath drew in. “Our cottage.”
Molly could see it. She could really see it happening. It could work. They could flow and ebb, come and go with the tides, and they’d each have what we needed.
They’d have each other.
She nodded her head, her eyes welling. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
He gently took the ring from her and slid it onto her finger. Then he stood, drew her in, and the soft shushing of the water lapping against the sand became the world.
An eternity later his phone chimed into life and he drew it from his pocket. He glanced at the display. “My sis is nearly here. We should head back up to Hampton Beach.” His gaze shadowed. “I wish she didn’t have to make the long drive alone. I know she says she’s doing fine on her own, but I wish she’d start dating again. Her kids are out of the house and it’s been ten years since the divorce. She needs to move on.”
Molly’s hand drifted to the Native American charm in her pocket, the one Sarah had given to her. The wedding totem. She had taken it to humor her friend - charms and ju-jus were a far cry from her fast-paced modern life. But here, with the soft peeps of the oyster catchers washing over her, it almost seemed real.
A soft smile came to her lips.
“I think I have just the right birthday present for Emily.”
He drew her in against his strength. “You know what Emily would say. What I would say.”
She looked up at him.
He pressed a kiss against her forehead, his fingers gently tracing down her face.
“Your presence will be enough. Your being there, by my side, is all I will ever need.”
Book 5 – Bar Harbor
Emily smiled with contentment as the sun dipped lower into the bank of cottony clouds. There, that was just perfect. Its shimmer sent waves of rich tangerine and gold across the breadth of the sky, dancing off the vast ocean, glimmering off the pale whiteness of the Bass Harbor lighthouse. The dense crowds of summertime at Acadia National Park were finally beginning to ease and she was alone at her perch. Just her, the island of Bar Harbor, the rocky shoreline, and the vast stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, reaching out into infinity.
She looked down at the easel before her and gently added in a wash of deeper blue. A pair of seagulls called high above her, undoubtedly heading home to wherever they would roost for the night. It was that time of day she adored the most. When everything was in its place. When the world was breathing gratitude for its opportunities and blessings.
Back when Ginny and Madison had been young they’d all troop down to the ocean in the evening and give thanks to the universe for something they had learned. In the first years Rich had been with them, too, always a bit zany in what he’d say. Then, after the tumultuous divorce in the girls’ teen years, it had just been the three women. And Emily had been fine with that.
She cleaned her brush and took up a darker color, tinged with crimson. Now to paint in those deepening shadows in the rocks -
A car’s tire ground to a halt on the dirt high above her.
She shook her head with a smile, continuing to build up the crevasses. When Ryan had first reappeared on the island last year, she’d been a turmoil of emotions. After all, he’d been gone for ten long years - since the girls were thirteen and eleven. He’d gone down to Haverhill and by all accounts seeded his wild oats in the Irish bars there. She’d heard snippets of stories from the girls when they went down for their weekends with him.
But time and life had mellowed him. She’d seen it when he joined her for Ginny’s graduation party from high school, then Madison’s. When Ginny had gone off to Bennington, she could see that awareness in his eyes. That a stage had passed that he could never get back. And once Madison had gone to Princeton two years ago, he’d started talking about renting the old Carlwright cabin a short walk away. She’d thought it was a whim that would pass. That he’d go back to his ultimate Frisbee and nights out with the boys. But, sure enough, last September the ‘for rent’ sign had been taken down and she’d had a new, albeit distant, neighbor.
He crested the low hill in the sunset’s glow, a pair of travel mugs of coffee in his hand.
Warmth eased through her. He could still do that to her, after all these years. His cocky smile of his teenage years, the one that had made her run off with him despite her parents’ warnings, had eased into understanding calm. His once jet-black hair was peppered with grey. He was no longer whip-thin and corded with lean muscles; his shoulders had widened, but he still had that strength within him. He wore a blue flannel shirt against the near-autumn chill and jeans over hiking boots. She was dressed nearly the same way, although her top was forest green and her short hair had auburn curls held back by a bandanna.
He smiled as he drew close, looking from the glowing sun to her canvas. “You always manage to bring the scene to life, Emily. Even in high school you had that knack, and it’s just gotten more stunning over the years. That pool of water in the rocks, especially. I can almost see a crab poke his head up out of that.” He handed over the coffee.
She took a sip. It was, of course, absolutely perfect. He brewed it fresh at home each evening, adding in just the right amount of cream and sugar before starting the quiet drive over to wherever she was painting. She remembered being annoyed last fall, that first time he had arrived at her plein air site. She wasn’t sure what to expect from him. Perhaps a rambling conversation about why they never should have divorced in the first place? Maybe a tense review of just why Ginny was so miserable out at Bennington and whose fault it was?
But she’d been surprised. He’d simply brought her a stainless steel mug of coffee, sat back against the rocks, and watched her paint.
It had actually been kind of nice. Like it’d been in their teen years, when the world was fresh and new. When time stretched out in infinite promise.
She put the coffee in its holder and glanced back at him as he settled into position on a rock. So much had changed in those long years. His parents had had him later in life and had seemed ancient when they were teens. They’d passed away just after they’d eloped, and it had always hit Rich hard, that they wouldn’t be around for the children’s milestones. Then her own father had had a heart attack and her mother succumbed to cancer. Fast moving, at least. She hadn’t had to suffer long.
And now it was just the two of them. The girls had left the nest, as the saying went. Lifted up out of the twigs and straw and flown, flown, flown far away and out of reach. Like the seagulls calling out their good-byes as they drifted into a distant dusk.
She spoke without turning, her eyes on the delicate veins of dark which traced through the grey rock. “Hear from Ginny?”
She could hear the shake of his head, she knew him that well. His voice held a lilt of amusement. “Someday we’ll have to get you on Facebook, you know.”
She chuckled at that. “I just don’t like those electronic systems. They feel fake to me. Half the world is presenting a false front where everything is perfect. Where they have the shiniest fire pit and prettiest cocktails. Then the other half is perpetually in a funk because their car isn’t the latest model or their trip didn’t go exactly as planned. It seems few people have simple gratitude for all they already have in life. For the blessings they possess that over half the world can only dream of.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “It’s not all like that, hun. There are many people who share the struggles they face and who receive the help they need. Others post images of beauty which inspire us all.” He nudged his head toward her painting. “You could post your paintings. There are people around the world who would love to see this region through your eyes.”
&
nbsp; She shook her head, looking down. Her works sold well enough at the island’s art gallery to the visiting tourists. Even some locals had her paintings hanging in their homes. But to post them on the internet for the entire world to examine, up along Renoirs and Monets and Michelangelos?
She didn’t think so.
She took up some golden-orange paint and dabbed along the white lighthouse, where the sun reflected off of its neatly painted face. “So … Ginny?”
He let out a long breath. “She’s ... well, she’s the same. Still not quite feeling like she belongs. Like she’s an imposter and that, any minute, they’ll realize it and ask her to leave. Sure, we were all a bit insecure at that age but it seems deeper with her. As if moving away from the island shook her loose from her moorings and she hasn’t quite found her feet again yet, after all this time.”
Emily pressed her lips together, leaning in to add some glimmers to the light house’s windows. “She could always come home.”
His laugh was rich at that. “Ginny? Return to the nest? You know her better than that. She’d sell a kidney before she did that. She’s going to make it on her own, even if it means sinking neck-deep in the mire.” He took another sip of his coffee. “She’ll find her path through this. I know she will. I’ve got faith in her. We simply have to be there for her, to help her along the way.”
Emily’s lips turned down. “I just wish she’d call.”
His teeth shone in the deepening dusk. “You’re a generation behind, my sweet. They don’t call nowadays. They text. They post They message. Calling is interruptive. It demands your attention right now.”
She drew some light blue across the ocean, giving the waves a hint of serene life. “I don’t know, sometimes a call -”
His cell phone rang, its burbling tone slicing into their conversation.
His eyes lit up. “You were saying?”
She shook her head. “Go on, take it. Gotta be about those fall concerts, I’d imagine.”
He took up the phone and spoke into it. “Rich here. Hey, good to hear from you! Sure, sure, the plans are all in motion. Six concerts, one a Sunday. All ages. Yup, perfect. Hold on.” He pressed the phone to his chest. “Hun, this could take a while. I’ll head on back to my house so I can get him some of the details he needs. If you want, later on I’ll stop by and we’ll have some wine on the back porch. Watch the moon rise.”
