Pelican Point (Bachelors of Blueberry Cove)

by Donna Kauffman

  “Why don’t you let me have a look at it?” Logan set his uniform hat on the bar and unzipped his jacket.

  Fergus waved him off. After scrubbing his hands clean at the small sink, he set two short glasses on the bar instead, smacking the bottoms on the varnished teak surface. “We’d be better off warming ourselves with a sip than swearing at that auld heap. I’ll put a call in to young Broderick. Boy’s a wonder with a wrench, or so I hear.”

  “Broderick. You mean Brodie Monaghan?”

  “One and the same. Have you spent any time with the lad since his arrival? He’s about your age.”

  Logan smiled. “I’m a bit too old for afterschool pals and playdates, Uncle Gus.”

  “Well, it’s never too late to make a new friend,” Fergus went on. “He’s a good lad. Sharp mind, good with his hands, not afraid of hard work.” He smiled. “Quite the charmer, too. Good with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

  “So I’ve heard.” In a town the size of Blueberry, it would have been impossible not to. Brodie Monaghan had come over from Ireland just the previous spring, intent on restoring his family’s centuries-old shipbuilding business. Monaghan’s Shipyard had been one of the founding businesses in Half Moon Harbor centuries before, but over the course of the previous three decades, it had slowly become a run-down relic, a mere ghost of its former glory. “Wouldn’t mind hearing a story or two of home,” Fergus went on, “or just a bit of the brogue.” He grinned. “After all, ’tis no fun swearin’ alone.”

  Logan eyed the glasses Fergus had set on the bar, and was tempted, but tugged the zipper back up on his jacket instead. “If you’ve got the problem in hand, I’m going to try and get out to the Point before another call comes in. I’ve got a stone wall needing some attention.”

  “I didn’t call you here about the furnace.” Fergus set a bottle on the bar anyway and motioned to the stool. “Park yer bum there, laddie. We need to talk.”

  Logan paused, his hat halfway to his head. “About?”

  “You know how there’s all this plottin’ and plannin’ going on, for the town tricentennial.”

  “Which is almost two years from now. But yes, I’m very well aware.” It was another looming headache as he tried to quell the tensions already brewing as folks began taking sides on how the town should best celebrate such a monumental occasion.

  “Well, then you’ve been hearing talk about the lighthouse.”

  Surprised, Logan leaned back. “The lighthouse? You mean our lighthouse?”

  “You know of any others in Blueberry?”

  Pelican Point was not only the sole lighthouse in the Cove, it was the only one on all of Pelican Bay. The only one left, anyway. The tower was a big part of Blueberry Cove’s history and Maine’s rich seafaring history. A book had been published by one of its keepers—Logan’s great-great-great grandfather, in fact—with an account of his life on the job as its first keeper during some of the more turbulent years of the bay’s history. It was still available in several shops dotting Harbor Street.

  The lighthouse had been decommissioned in the early 1930s and listed for public auction by the early ’70s. A member of the McCrae family had manned the Pelican Point light during all of its years in service, all the way back to 1821 when it had first been built, and the family had continued to maintain a residence there even after decommission, so they’d made a deal and bought it outright before the auction. The family had been struggling to keep the place from crumbling down around them ever since, but at least the burden was on them, and not the community.

  “Folks have been talking about wanting to get the lighthouse up to snuff in time for the town celebration. Blueberry’s tricentennial coincides with the lighthouse’s bicentennial, give or take a handful of years. Close enough anyway.”

  “Up to snuff?” Logan laughed. “Gus, it would take an army and a state lottery win just to get it up to code, much less functional or safe enough for the public. And what ‘folks?’ I haven’t heard any talk.”

  “You would, if you spent any time in here. This is where all the real chatter happens. You spent enough time tending bar here through your college years to know that.”

  “Gus, I have—”

  “A job. I’m well aware. What you don’t have, boy-o, is a life. One that includes things like socializing. When was the last time you shot a game of pool, threw a dart or two, or, God forbid, bought a woman a drink? Wouldn’t kill ye.”

  “I have two jobs,” Logan said. “One, seeing to the people of Blueberry Cove, and the other to trying to keep two hundred years of McCrae history from crumbling into the sea. Both are full-time.”

  “I know, and we’re all proud of ye, working so hard like you do. But you could do with a bit more socializing. Can’t hide out there all the time.” He eyed Logan. “Would help curb that irritability of yours.”

  Logan smiled. “I’m only cranky when some people bug me about living my life as they think I should rather than leaving me to live the life I already have and am liking just fine, thankyouverymuch.”

  He rose from the stool and leaned over the counter to give his uncle a one-armed hug and hearty buss on the head. McCraes were, by nature, huggers and kissers and he realized it had been far too long since he’d done either. With anyone.

  He picked up his hat. “I’ll be in, okay? Scout’s honor. Now, I need to be getting on the road if I want to—”

  “Have a seat there, laddie. We’ve a bit more to discuss.”

  Logan lowered his hat once again.

  “We haven’t finished discussing the lighthouse.” Fergus grabbed a towel and was making quite a business of wiping down the perfectly clean bar.

  Ah, so now we’re at the real reason I’ve been summoned to the bar. Eyeing Fergus’s too innocent expression, a knot of tension started to ball up in Logan’s gut. He put his hand on the towel. “What did you do, Uncle Gus?”

  “Now, now, I did this with your best interest—with all of our best interests—in mind.”

  The knot jerked a little tighter. “What did you do?”

  “I . . . hired on some help.”

  “You hired on help where? Here?”

  “No, laddie. For Pelican Point. I hired someone who specializes in lighthouse restoration. Now we’ll find out exactly what needs to be done. Alex MacFarland is—”

  “A waste of your good money. Gus, I can tell you for free that the list of what needs to be done is longer than any of our bank accounts is deep—even if we combined them.”

  “You’ve got the trust.”

  “Yes, there is the trust, but that’s not enough by itself. Get your money back, Gus, and invest in a new furnace.”

  “If the lighthouse is as bad as you say, then let MacFarland’s report prove it. You can use that as your final word with the council and the townsfolk, and the matter will be put to rest.”

  “I’m confused. I thought you were trying to get the thing repaired.”

  “I said it would be a wondrous thing, but I’m nothing if not a realist.”

  “So, this is helping me out . . . how, exactly?”

  “They’ll listen to an expert with generations of experience in such things whereas they might not so quickly with you. Or, more to the point, Weathersby and the council won’t. Teddy will make it his personal mission to make life hard on you.”

  Logan eyed the older man, not believing for one second that Gus had spent a dime of his hard-earned money to hire someone to prevent a headache that hadn’t even happened yet.

  “Just keep an open mind, okay, laddie?”

  Change is coming. Be open to it.

  Logan did rub the back of his neck this time, but he knew better than to argue. Not with Eula, or with Fergus. He drained the ale and tucked his hat under his arm as he rose to leave. He was halfway to the door when he thought to ask, “When is this MacFarland due to arrive?”

  Fergus suddenly got busy again, ducking his chin as he wiped perfectly clean glasses with a fresh towel. “Shoul
d be waiting on you out at the Point as we speak.”

  “What? He’s—at the house? Please tell me you didn’t give him a damn key to the place.”

  “Didn’t have to. Since when do you lock up, anyway?”

  “And you told him that?” Logan opened his mouth to say something else, then snapped it shut. He pushed through the door of the pub, climbed in his truck, and decided he could get some satisfaction out of this lost cause of a day by heading home . . . and firing Alex MacFarland before he even started. What Fergus had done could just as easily be undone. Logan could have the guy on his way and still have a bit of daylight left to do a bit more surveying on the stone wall.

  “What the . . . ?” Logan braked as he rounded the final bend on the coast road before crossing the causeway over to the Point.

  An old truck with an even more beat-up trailer on the back had broken down on the short ramp leading to the bridge, blocking it completely. In fact, the back end of the trailer was jutting out onto the main road.

  So much for getting to the damn wall. Hell, he’d be lucky if he managed dinner before eight—which reminded him that in his frustration with Fergus, he’d forgotten to stop by the grocery and pick up a few things. Preferably edible things, as he was presently all out of those.

  Swearing under his breath, as much at himself as at the latest thorn in his day, he rolled closer and angled his truck behind the trailer before flipping on his lights. It would be dusk soon and he didn’t need anyone zipping around the bend and slamming into the damn thing.

  Then he saw the sign painted on the side of the truck, chipped and peeling, but clearly legible. MACFARLAND & SONS.

  “Seriously, Gus? This is our expert?” The old pickup truck and dented trailer looked more like they’d been abandoned by a gypsy caravan, than the work vehicle of a trustworthy restoration expert.

  Yes, he loved Blueberry Cove, but, oh, there were days. As he climbed out of his truck, he thought there are days.

  Chapter 2

  Alex MacFarland should never have taken the damn job. What had she been thinking, attempting something like this on her own? Except . . . she was on her own. And that wasn’t going to change. So, it was either figure out how to keep MacFarland & Sons afloat for yet another generation—specifically hers—or . . . what? Give up? Lie down and die? Both of those had been pretty tantalizing options fifteen months ago.

  Losing her father, so abruptly, so . . . horribly, how was she supposed to get over that? Much less figure out business stuff? She couldn’t give less of a damn about business, about restoration, about any of it. All those things she’d loved for as long as she could remember, all the satisfaction, the dreams, the challenges, the hard work, every last bit of it, all of which had defined her . . . had died right alongside her father.

  She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to find a way to resurrect it.

  But, plain and simple . . . she needed to eat. And though her skill set was broad by some definitions, it was ultimately good for only one thing—building things. More specifically, restoring things someone else had built. Even more specifically, things that happened to be lighthouses. Not just everyone had one of those in their backyard, so she could hardly be choosy.

  It had been a long, painful, frustrating, and very exhausting year. The lawsuit and the estate—if you could call it that—had finally been settled. What could be sold off had been sold off to resolve the debts her father had owed, none of which she’d known about, and the rest had gone to the lawyers. Thank God there’d been some life insurance money to cover the medical costs from the day of the accident, and, later, her father’s burial. She’d been grateful to have had that much, but nothing was left.

  Less than five days after packing up and moving out, she sat in her grandfather’s banged-up sideboard truck a thousand miles away on a wind-whipped coastal road on the edge of Maine. Their oldest and only remaining trailer was hooked on the back. Between the two, she was carrying pretty much everything she owned. Well, everything worth hauling anyway. Except for four generations’ worth of accumulated tools and her laptop, she’d sold off everything else of value, including their newer and sturdier work trucks.

  No one had wanted Grandpa Mac’s old truck or trailer, which had been parked at the house back in Thunder Bay after he’d passed four years ago. She’d hung on to them, then used every trick she had to get the damn truck running again. But running it was, and had been—with a few additional nudges and a steady string of swearwords along the way—all the way from her home on the shores of Lake Huron. The home that someone else lived in now.

  She’d made it all the way to this ramp, leading down to the beautiful old stone causeway that ran across a corner of Pelican Bay and out to a rocky point jutting into the sound, atop which sat Pelican Point lighthouse. The entire vista was picture postcard perfect—from the boats dotting the water, the shops and homes lining the harbor across the sound, to the weathered keeper’s house perched on the promontory, fronted by the lighthouse itself, a proud, majestic old sentinel, keeping watch over it all.

  It was hers to rediscover, to heal, to make whole.

  After everything she’d been through, all that she’d had to arbitrate, settle, overcome, and simply live through and survive . . . and with the answer to her most pressing needs sitting right there in front of her . . . the very last thing that should have undone her was a blown tire. She even had a spare, buried . . . somewhere in the back.

  There was no reason, none at all, to be sitting there, blubbering like an idiot. Or, her little voice piped in, like a woman who’d lost one too many things and just didn’t have it in her to lose so much as a single tire more.

  She was working her way through the onslaught of tears, knowing that at some point she’d surely get her act together, climb out, and do what she always did, what she’d been taught to do since before she could walk, and what she’d been doing ever since . . . she’d fix it.

  A big, white, sports utility truck pulled in behind her, with official-looking blue lights flashing on the roof. It looked like someone else was going to beat her to it. Or try, anyway. They’d soon discover it wasn’t the busted tire that needed assistance . . . it was the broken-down mess of a driver sitting behind the wheel.

  Alex instinctively scrubbed at her face only to realize she’d crumpled up the paper with the names, contact information, and directions on it into her fist. She smoothed it out, thinking she should have stopped in town and talked to Fergus McCrae directly before finding her way out to the Point. That had been the plan, actually, but she’d arrived early, a full day early in fact. Sleep hadn’t been her friend for quite some time, so she’d driven on. She hadn’t felt like talking to anyone as she’d pulled into Blueberry Cove any more than she had on the long drive.

  She had called the number, however, and spoken to Mr. McCrae. She’d asked if it would be okay to head straight out to Pelican Point to take a cursory look around, then come back into town and meet up with him later, around dinnertime, when they could discuss business. It was the smart thing to do, but in complete honesty, she didn’t care what kind of shape the place was in, or what shape the McCraes were in for that matter. The job came with a guaranteed roof over her head for the duration, and, at the very least, would put grocery money in her pocket. She was going to take it.

  She’d really only headed out to the Point first as a means of putting off the inevitable—having to open herself up to a new set of people. She wasn’t sure what anyone knew about her, or the job she’d been hired to do, but with small towns, she’d discovered everyone knew everything. So she had to brace herself for that inevitability. And she didn’t have much left with which to brace.

  There was also that other part. The part she hadn’t admitted, even to herself. At least, not until the moment her tire had gone out on the ramp, giving her some extended viewing time of the lighthouse and no way to avoid thinking about it. The part where she was hoping, praying, maybe even begging her soul a little, that j
ust seeing the lighthouse would open something back up inside her. Or prove, once and for all, that it was truly dead forever.

  To be more brutally honest . . . she wasn’t sure which one she’d been hoping would happen.

  So, she’d skipped stopping in at the Rusty Puffin. What the hell kind of name is that anyway? Weren’t puffins cute, cuddly little penguin-looking birds? If it had to be a rusty bird, why not the Rusty Pelican? The brown, ungainly creatures were the state bird, after all—so a sign in one of the endless small towns she’d driven through had told her, anyway. Except she was pretty sure it was the state bird of Louisiana. What had that sign said? It was all a blur now.

  Now that she had made the stupid decision to bypass both meeting up with Fergus McCrae and grabbing a much-needed bite to eat, she had a grumbling stomach to quell along with the red eyes, swollen nose, tear-and-mascara-streaked tragic clown face that looked back at her from the rearview mirror as she tried to do some basic repair before her good Samaritan made an appearance.

  A light rap on the driver’s side window of her truck got a choked squeal of surprise—stealthy Samaritan he was—causing her to spin toward the window a little too quickly. Her forehead connected with the glass.

  Oh, yes, this was so how she wanted her first meeting in Blueberry Cove—her home for possibly the next year or so—to go.

  Her Samaritan was tall, so much so she couldn’t see his face, just his torso, and hips, and . . . thighs. All of which looked quite sturdy and muscular and . . . um, well-packaged. Wow, she really shouldn’t have skipped lunch. Or breakfast for that matter. When had she eaten last, anyway?

  A hand appeared, making a rolling sign with the forefinger.

  He’d yet to speak. Weren’t officers supposed to announce themselves when they approached? Of course, he hadn’t pulled her over, exactly. Wouldn’t it be her luck to be stopped by some rural coastal psycho who dressed up like a cop, then preyed on women along a distant, lonely stretch of road nobody traveled? Maybe she should have looked up local news reports.