by Liz Johnson
The pinch of Meg’s nose and her stumbled step back revealed the betrayal she felt, and a sudden punch to Oliver’s gut almost made him refuse the offer. Maybe it should all go to her. Although her dad had said she didn’t want it, and she couldn’t keep her legs beneath her even in the shallows. But she should still have some say in who took over her family’s fishing business.
“There’s no way he’s saved up enough money to buy it outright,” she said.
Whatever inclination he’d had to decline the offer vanished. So he wasn’t wealthy, and he’d wondered more than once how he was going to help support his mom and little brother. He was the one up at four every morning, reeling in traps and breaking his back. And if he worked two jobs in the off-season to make sure he paid every one of his bills and his mom’s lights were never again turned off, what concern was that of Meg’s?
He worked hard, and he’d make sure the Whitakers’ legacy wasn’t tarnished.
Whitaker’s bushy eyebrows lowered over his eyes, his gaze hard on his daughter. “I’m going to give him an interest-free loan. Let him do the job and earn what he needs. He’ll pay me back in five years, and then we’ll be square.”
Oliver patted the folded square of paper in his jeans pocket. He’d worked the numbers, figured out just how many pounds he’d need to sell each season to pay the crew and pay off the loan. The numbers checked out. As long as demand—and the price per pound—stayed high, the license would be his in a few years.
A slow grin inched across his mouth. His mom and Levi would never have to worry about losing their home again.
But the glint in Meg’s eyes promised him it might not be as easy as he’d hoped—not that six years of back-breaking labor and the last year of pinching every penny just to make a down payment had been easy. There was a light in her, a fire that made him shuffle back. Her eyes were wild, unfocused. Every breath she took sounded like it had been scraped over gravel.
Then she opened her mouth and ruined his day.
“Don’t sell it to him. Sell it to me.”
two
It’s not like I definitely want the business. I just don’t . . .”
Meg looked up at her mom, who sat on the sofa in the living room of her parents’ bungalow. Meg couldn’t bring herself to say the words aloud to her mom, even if she’d been thinking them for two days. They sounded so petty even in her own mind. But no one would blame her, would they? Of course she didn’t want to see her family’s legacy passed along to Oliver Ross.
Besides, her mom wasn’t likely to remember even if she did tell the whole truth.
“I know I said I didn’t want the business, but I have to save it.” She snatched a coffee mug from the dishwater and gave it a hard scrub with the sponge in her hand. “I can’t let it just be handed off to you know who. He hasn’t . . . He doesn’t . . . I can’t believe Dad would do this to us.”
Meg rolled her eyes at herself. In all fairness, he was doing this for her mom. No one who knew him would ever assign another reason to his actions, mystifying as they were. And she wanted good things for her mom.
But this still felt very much like a personal affront. Even if she knew they would work it out.
Meg sent an encouraging smile in the direction of her mom’s hunched form. Her parents had had the same blue-striped sofa for as long as she could remember, but it looked different than she recalled as a child. Haunted. Like her mom’s constant presence on the far end was more specter than tangible.
Her mom stared across the room, but her gaze barely made it to the kitchen, stopping short of the sink where Meg stood. “I’m . . .” Her willowy voice trailed off.
Meg held her breath. Maybe this time she’d have something to say. She’d have just the words Meg needed to hear. She’d have a store of wisdom she’d been longing to share.
“What were you saying?”
Meg sighed, plunging her hands into the lemon-scented sudsy water and retrieving another plate. “Nothing, Mom. Just cleaning up the lunch dishes.”
“No. No.” She shook her head and wiggled her shoulders. “You said something about your dad. And the . . . and the . . .” Her fingers came together in a silent snap, but the word was gone. Forgotten.
The boat. Meg had been talking about the boat. Ranting might be a bit closer to the truth, but her mom didn’t need to hear any more of that.
The doctors had said it was best not to agitate her. It could make her condition worse. Not that they had any idea what her condition was or what would or wouldn’t help it. Maybe agitation was exactly what she needed—something to stimulate her brain.
Okay, probably not.
Rinsing off the last dish in the sink, Meg looked directly at her mom and forced a calm smile. “We were talking about how much Dad loves you and how he’s thinking about selling the boat.” Her voice remained low and soothing, and her mom’s shoulders visibly relaxed.
“The boat. Yes. I told him he should do whatever he thought best.”
And he’d thought inviting Oliver Ross into their family business was best. Meg whipped the white tea towel off the handle on the stove but cringed as a sour odor tagged along. She hesitated before pressing it to her nose.
She should have refrained. Her gag reflex nearly took over, and she threw the towel to the ground. It smelled like old eggs.
“When was the last time . . .”
“Hmm?” Her mom tilted her chin up, but her gaze never quite shifted across the room.
Meg searched for a new topic while making a mental note to wash all of the towels in the house before she went home. “Have you had a nap today?”
“No. But that sounds lovely.” Her mom pushed herself up and took two steps before Meg even realized it.
Her heart leaping to her throat, Meg sprinted across the room. “No, wait!” she cried. Her mom looked up just as the toe of her shoe caught on the rug. Her knee crumbled, her entire frame falling forward on outstretched arms.
Meg gasped for air, wanting to dive the last few feet but knowing she couldn’t risk injuring her mom. Instead, she fell to her knees, sliding like a goalie making a last-period save, praying she could reach her mom in time.
Her mom’s weight—light as she was—nearly toppled Meg, and she managed to keep them both from hitting the ground only by some miracle. Arms wrapped around her mother’s slender shoulders, she offered a wobbly, “You okay?”
“Um . . .” Her mom’s gaze drifted. “I think so. What . . . happened?”
“Remember?” Meg maneuvered her mom into a standing position. “You need some extra help when you walk.”
“I do?”
A lump in her throat caught her off guard, and Meg tried to swallow it. It refused to budge, so she savagely cleared her throat. It remained stubborn. She forced a deep breath in through her nose.
Wrapping an arm around her mom’s shoulders, she steered her back toward the sofa. When her mom was comfortably seated, Meg scooped her feet up to the cushion beside her and propped a pillow behind her. Then she pulled a soft throw off the back of the wooden rocking chair and spread it over her mom, tucking it around her shoulders.
“Meggy?” Her mom’s eyes fought to stay open but drooped time and again.
“Yeah, Mom?” Her throat felt raw.
“I’m going to take a little . . . a little . . . um . . .”
Meg swallowed the sigh that threatened to escape from somewhere deep inside. Instead, she leaned over and kissed her mom’s silky forehead. “Get some rest. I love you.”
With an unintelligible mumble, her mom stopped fighting and let her eyes drop closed. Her breaths were so shallow that the slight rise and fall of the white throw was barely discernable.
Only then, when she was absolutely certain that her mom was asleep, did Meg finally gasp against the pain in her throat and the burning at the back of her eyes. Only then did she let the situation wash over her, the sadness piercing holes in her heart.
“Oh, Mom.” The words were more breath than
voice as Meg sank to her knees, longing to give in to the tears, to the crushing weight of the unknown.
No one had an answer. No doctor could explain why her mom had begun to stumble a few years before. Why even simple words sometimes eluded her. Why she’d stopped making eye contact. Why she had disappeared, leaving behind only a shadow of the vibrant, funny, smart woman she’d once been.
Meg sniffed hard against emotions that insisted on showing up despite their terrible timing.
The rumble of a truck echoed up the drive, and she pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes. Swiping at the remnants of her tears, she jumped to her feet and raced back to the kitchen, to the last dishes left in the sink and the rank towel she’d thrown aside. Scooping it up, she tossed it toward the open door of the laundry room just as her dad entered from the opposite side. Meg plastered another smile in place and prayed that it looked at least partially genuine.
“Hey, Dad.” She kept her voice low and nodded toward the sofa and her mom’s sleeping form.
He hesitated, his steps halting. When he reached her side, he kissed her forehead. “You still talking to me?”
She squinted up into his face. He’d given her most of his height but not quite all of it. “Maybe. You make up your mind about selling me the business?”
He grimaced, not meeting her gaze. “I’m not sure you know what you’re asking for.”
Okay, that was fair. She didn’t really know what it would take to run the boat’s day-to-day operations, but she’d learn. It was in her blood, after all. Besides, what she was really asking was for him not to give it to Oliver Ross.
Her lip curled at just the thought of his name. Of his face as it popped to mind. Of his pointed chin and slightly crooked nose. Of his hollow blue eyes. Of his shaggy black hair that matched his heart.
Anyone but Oliver Ross.
And if there was no one else, then she’d figure it out.
“What about school?” he asked.
She opened her mouth for a quick comeback, but the words disappeared. Classes started in six weeks, shortly after the fishing season began. And she couldn’t possibly do both. Or maybe . . .
No. Not even she could argue the sanity in trying to juggle both. She couldn’t possibly teach her students and be out on the water from before sunrise.
There had to be a way. The fall fishing season only lasted for about two months—from mid-August to mid-October. She had double majored in physics and mechanical engineering. This was merely an equation that needed to be solved.
Except at the moment, her mind couldn’t begin to come up with the formula to do that.
“I’ll . . . I’ll . . . figure it out.” She cleared her throat and pushed back her shoulders.
Her dad’s frown deepened, his dark eyebrows dipping in the middle. She clearly hadn’t convinced him any more than she had herself. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans. “I’m still thinking about it. I need to talk with your mom. All right?”
Mom, who hadn’t been able to remember the word boat just a few minutes before.
Meg sighed. She wasn’t going to change his mind by pushing. “I love you. I just don’t want to see you make a mistake.”
“Huh?” It came out more of a grunt than a question, but she jumped to clarify.
“Selling it to Oliver Ross is a mistake.”
Oliver had made a terrible mistake. He never should have told his mom that he was going to get Whitaker’s license. He just hadn’t figured on Meg Whitaker cutting his line.
“I thought we’d make a whole celebration of it next week. Your favorite supper and dessert,” his mom said, her smile competing with the sunshine to fill the tiny kitchen. Hands moving surely and swiftly, she kept her gaze on the simple meal she was preparing. “I’ve already invited Violet. And your brothers.”
Oliver raked a hand down his face and slid it to the back of his neck, letting his chin fall almost to his chest. “Brother,” he mumbled. The word wasn’t plural.
His mom sputtered, mumbling something to herself.
Looking back up at his mom, he shook his head. “It’s not worth making a big fuss just because I might get my own license.”
Her stained fingers stilled, the half-peeled carrot in her hand forgotten. “Might?” Of course she latched on to that word. Brushing a gray curl behind her ear, she caught his gaze and held it fast. He had almost a foot and seventy pounds on her, but she’d never backed down.
He wanted to look away. He might have if she had been anyone other than the strongest woman he knew. Instead, he held fast, staring directly into her face and steeling himself to tell her the truth.
“Oliver James. What is going on?”
He swallowed the bitterness that had coated his tongue since Meg had made her announcement three days before. “Turns out that that sure thing is a little less sure.”
Mama Potts turned back to her carrots, dicing them with an extra firm hand.
She’d been named Debi at birth, but he and everyone else in their community called her Mama Potts. It had started when he was six or seven, and she had been delivering yet another homemade clay pot as a gift. One of the little neighbor girls saw the telltale gift bag and called out a greeting to “Mama Potts,” almost surely an homage to the teapot in the girl’s favorite animated movie.
But at the moment Mama Potts didn’t resemble that sweet, round character. Especially as she wielded her knife and narrowed her eyes. “What happened? Did you lose your job?”
His shoulders jerked back. She probably didn’t mean for her words to feel like a slap in the face, but how could they not when a lobster fishing job had started all of this?
“No. I mean, not yet. But if Meg Whitaker takes over her dad’s company, then I’m pretty sure my employment status will change. Quickly.”
Mama Potts’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Meg wants the Pinch?”
He couldn’t hold back the dry chuckle that leaked out. “I doubt it. She just doesn’t want me to have it.”
Mama Potts’s fists clenched at her waist, and her eyes flashed. “She wouldn’t dare.”
Oliver shrugged a shoulder and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. Kicking his long legs out before him, he sighed. “She did.”
“Well, Walt Whitaker would never be foolish enough to pass his legacy off to someone who knows nothing about the industry. She knows as much about lobster fishing as . . . as I do,” she said, wagging her finger in his general direction.
He couldn’t help but laugh as his mom picked her carrot back up and began hacking at it with her peeler. “I hope not. But you know our history.”
Her back to him, she mumbled, “I know that girl can hold a grudge, is what I know.”
He grunted. She wasn’t wrong. She just liked to conveniently forget that the animosity between them had started with his outburst. He’d been the one to derail her goals. He’d been the one to ruin her project.
“I’m just saying that she should have forgiven you. I mean, you asked.”
“Sort of.” After a mumbled apology in the principal’s office, he hadn’t been able to get any closer to her than he had to a rabid fox. Not that he’d tried very hard. Because he’d wanted to be close to her about as much as he’d wanted to be close to said rabid fox.
Mama Potts turned slowly and jabbed a fresh carrot in his direction, the green tops dancing wildly. “You need to fix that. Start with a real apology. None of this ‘sort of’ business, young man.”
Suddenly he was seven instead of twenty-seven, a child getting the tongue lashing he deserved instead of the grown man who had been beating himself up about the same decision for a decade.
“Mom, she won’t talk to me. She’ll barely look at me.”
“It’s up to you to fix it. You messed up. You have to own up to it. This avoiding her in Victoria is ridiculous. You sit in the pew behind her at church every Sunday.”
True. It was ridiculous. And he was tired of taking her lead. He could fi
x this. He could make her hear him. He could make her forgive him. Or at least learn to tolerate him.
Before he could tell his mom that, his phone rang, and he looked at the screen. His stomach sank.
Ignoring his mom’s motion to put the phone on speaker, he pressed it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Oliver.”
There was a hesitancy in Whitaker’s voice, and Oliver forced himself not to react.
“I’ve had an idea. I need to talk with you.”
Something akin to hope swelled in his chest, but he refused to buy into it. There was no way Whitaker was going to toss his daughter under the boat. But if it was an outright rejection . . . well, he would have said as much. Right?
Oliver took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Sure.”
“Meet me at my place in twenty minutes?”
He eyed the piles of chopped vegetables and the beef his mom had just begun searing. He could be there and back before the stew was done. Probably.
Oliver agreed, hung up the phone, and kissed his mom’s cheek. “I’ll be back.”
“Levi’s home, and I won’t save you any.” If she’d been anyone other than his mom, he’d have waited for her chuckle or the twinkle in her brown eyes. But she wasn’t someone else, and he knew she was serious.
The thought of his younger brother eating both of their portions made him stomp the gas pedal as his truck barreled down the dirt drive.
His mom’s home and garage sat on an acre of grass overlooking the blue bay, which he hadn’t paid much attention to for most of his life. The ocean had just always been there, as close as his right hand. His dad had worked the water. And now he did too. It was his provider. But since he’d fixed up the apartment above the garage and moved into it a few years before, he’d spent more time listening to the sound of the water, the gentle clapping of the waves against the shore.
When Whitaker had taken him on, Oliver had discovered that the sea was so much more than a paycheck. It held a touch of magic. And he wouldn’t give it up without a fight.
He didn’t slow down as he swung onto the paved road, flying through the barely-there town. The bright red and blue shanties at the end of the dock nearly blocked his view of the gray-shingled pub at the far end of the wharf. But the smell of fried fish from it couldn’t be missed. He passed the lighthouse and then turned toward the big white community theater, its windows glowing, the rehearsal running late. It didn’t make for much of a metropolis, but Victoria had one thing going for it that night. It took him exactly three minutes to get from his mom’s place to Whitaker’s.
