Hawthorne Harbor Box Set

by Elana Johnson

  “What’s he doing back?” Anabelle asked.

  “He’s working for the ferry system,” Adam said. “He’s their lead engineer. Started last week.” He wanted to blurt out that he’d be starting with the police department on Monday, but neither Anabelle nor Janey asked.

  They both couldn’t seem to tear their eyes from Matt, and Adam frowned. He lifted his drink to his lips and in that brief flash of time, both women slipped away from him and out onto the dance floor.

  Janey danced with a man named Clint that Adam recognized from the automotive shop on the edge of town. His mood darkened by the moment as she laughed and spun, her dark locks spraying out behind her when her fourth dance of the night twirled her.

  He finished his cider and threw both cups in the trash.

  It was his turn.

  No more sitting on the sidelines, watching.

  He’d taken two steps onto the dance floor when the people parted to give him an unobstructed view of Janey. Her face was flushed and her smile captivated him.

  A man stepped up to her and half-bowed to her, his hand extended as he asked her to dance. She ducked her head, the flush turning into a full-blown blush as she put her hand in his and they situated themselves for the next slow dance of the evening.

  Adam stared, sure he’d be able to ask Janey to dance after Matt finished with her. After all, neither of them had danced more than one song with the same partner.

  But the song ended, and Matt kept his hands on Janey’s waist. They danced another song, and then one that wasn’t even meant for couples as the beat took the music into the rock category.

  Adam’s feet seemed to have grown roots. He couldn’t move them though he desperately wanted to. He couldn’t look away either.

  So he saw Matt lead Janey off the dance floor, her hand tucked securely into his, and watched them disappear into the night.

  Fourteen Years Later

  Janey Germaine stood in front of her mirror, wondering when the lines around her eyes had gotten so deep. Or when the bags underneath had become some dark.

  “Mom!” Her twelve-year-old son yelled from the kitchen, and Janey startled away from her reflection. So much had happened over the past decade and a half, and each line probably had a dozen stories to tell.

  So don’t be embarrassed by them, she told herself as she exited her bedroom and found Jess standing in the kitchen, the pantry door flung wide in front of him.

  “Do we have any blueberry Pop-Tarts?”

  “If we do, they’ll be in there.”

  “I don’t see them.”

  “Then we don’t have any.”

  Jess grumbled and frowned and slammed the pantry door, shaking the old house. She’d bought it the first summer she’d returned to Hawthorne Harbor, fresh out of college and with a job she’d been lucky to get.

  She still had the job at Olympic National Park, something she was grateful for every day. She filled a coffee mug as she kept one eye on Jess. He’d started complaining that she watched him too much, so she’d been trying to do it on the sly these days.

  “What are you doing after school today?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” he mumbled.

  “I’m off today, and we can get Dixie when the elementary kids get out and go out to the lavender farm.” She lifted her mug to her lips and took a sip of the bitter liquid. “I mean, if you want.” She didn’t want Jess to think she really cared about what he did or who he spent time with. She hoped he wouldn’t veto the idea just because she’d suggested it, something that had been happening a lot since he started at the junior high a few weeks ago.

  He picked up his backpack and threaded his arms through the straps. “Sure, whatever.” He stomped on the end of his skateboard and caught the front of it as it popped up. “Bye.”

  “Bye,” she called after him. “Have a good day!”

  She used to drive him to school every day, or her best friend Gretchen would stop by. Both single moms, they’d been watching out for each other for years. But with Gretchen engaged now, and to be married by Christmas, Janey stared out the window and wondered if she should get back into the dating pool.

  Problem was, she didn’t even own an appropriate swimming suit for such things. She had no idea who was available in town, or how Jess would take the news of her dating again, or why anyone would be interested in a thirty-seven-year-old woman with a twelve-year-old son and a husband who’d died thirteen years ago.

  Everyone had loved Matt. It was always “Matt and Janey,” never “Janey and Matt.” He had a laugh that could fill the sky with fun, fill her heart with joy, fill anything that needed filling.

  She saw so much of him in Jess and she stepped into the living room and ran her fingertips along the top edge of a gold frame. The picture inside showed Matt, with his trademark smile on his face. He sat with a very pregnant Janey at the Silver Lake Lodge, a commercial venue inside the National Park where she worked.

  She got one free night at the lodge every year, and that year, she and Matt had used it for their anniversary getaway. Little did anyone know that he’d be dead within four months, drowned and presumed lost at sea after the ferry he’d been on had caught on fire and simultaneously gone up in flames and sank into the bay.

  Janey turned away from the picture, wondering if it was time to purge the house of them. She’d lived in this space with Matt for exactly thirteen months before he’d left for work and never came home.

  She hadn’t been able to move, because the scent of his skin was still in some of his shirts. At least back then. She’d brought Jess home to this house. She loved the neighborhood, and everything about the small cottage spoke of home to her.

  Carefully, so she wouldn’t break the glass, she pushed the frame face-down. Matt’s face no longer watched over the happenings in the house, and Janey paused, trying to find her feelings.

  One breath in, and everything was okay. Just fine. Two breaths and a sense of...strangeness flowed over her. By the third breath, she could barely get her lungs to expand from the guilt crushing them.

  She lifted the picture frame and stared into the handsome face of her husband, the man who had captivated her that night at the Fall Festival all those years ago. Boy, had her older sister been maaad.

  Anabelle had apparently had a crush on Matt Germaine for a couple of years, and when he’d barely looked her way, Janey wanted to leave the dance with her sister. After all, she and Anabelle had always been close.

  Matt had put a wedge between them for the first six months, and then Anabelle had come to terms with the relationship. Meeting her own husband had certainly helped, and she’d gotten married only two months before Matt’s accident. Anabelle had been Janey’s biggest support during that time, and then her life had moved on. She had three kids now, and while she stopped by often and called or texted Janey everyday, Janey had learned to rely more on Gretchen if she needed help with rides, homework, or babysitting for Jess.

  She stared at the picture, the all-too familiar questions flowing through her mind. Do I have to grieve for him forever? Can I ever love someone else again? Should I start dating again?

  Sometimes her life felt absolutely unfair. So unfair that it would be hard to breathe and she’d press her hand against her heart to feel it firing against her ribs. Other times, she existed in the world without a care. The taste of butterscotch in her mouth as she hiked, or the scent of pines as she helped junior rangers earn their badges, as easy as anything.

  Most days, she oscillated between the two feelings, and the worst part was she never knew when one would strike or how long it would stay.

  She listened to the analog clock in the kitchen tick, waiting waiting waiting for something to happen. What, she wasn’t sure, and she turned away from the pictures neatly lined up on the mantle and returned to the kitchen.

  Janey got a couple of days off each week, but it usually wasn’t Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday seemed to be one of the slowest days at the park, so she had t
hat day off. And usually Mondays as well. Jess didn’t seem to mind going out to the Loveland’s Lavender Farm, but he’d become surlier and surlier in the past couple of months.

  On her days off, she usually went back to bed with her cat, Princess, as she had a hard-to-break habit of staying up until all hours of the morning reading. With a bowl of chocolate chips and pretzels nearby, no less.

  Surprisingly, it wasn’t nighttime that haunted her, but the early morning hours just before the sun rose. She imagined the ferries getting prepped and ready for the day and wondered why her mechanical engineer husband had to be on the only ferry that had malfunctioned in the past two decades.

  With a piece of toast and a banana in her hand, she retreated to her bedroom to eat and enjoy her second sleep. As she drifted from consciousness to unconsciousness, she wondered how she could meet a man in this town who didn’t know everything about her.

  Impossible, her hazy mind thought.

  Might be easier anyway, she told herself. Then you won’t have to explain everything about Matt.

  * * *

  That afternoon, fresh from her morning nap, and showered, and done with the yard work for the season, Janey sat on the front steps, waiting for her son to come home. When he didn’t show up by three-ten—his usual arrival time—she started flipping her phone over and over.

  Worry ate at her, first in small bites and then in huge, sweeping waves. But she didn’t call. Jess didn’t like it when she “babied him” by calling if he was ten seconds late. Sure, they’d had a talk about why it was important to be on time, and that he should send a text, even if it was only five minutes.

  Five minutes could mean a lot. So many things could happen in five minutes.

  Janey glanced both ways down the street, her heart catapulting to the back of her throat when the police cruiser eased around the corner and headed her way. She knew it was Adam Herrin—the Chief of Police himself—just by the way the car stayed right in the middle of the street and came to a simple stop at the end of her driveway.

  With the tinted windows, Janey couldn’t see into the backseat, and she didn’t want to rush the car anyway. If it was an emergency, Adam wouldn’t have driven four miles an hour down the street and he wouldn’t have gotten out so slowly a moment ago and be stretching his back like he’d been driving for days now.

  She’d known Adam Herrin for almost four decades. Her whole life. They’d been friends in elementary school, a relationship which had lasted all the way through high school and into adulthood. Matt had been his best friend, and Adam had been the best man at their wedding.

  He opened the back door of the cruiser and Jess got out, his face set into an angry scowl. Adam said something to him and Jess nodded before he marched up the driveway to where Janey sat on the porch.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “He took my board,” Jess said, taking the steps two at a time and disappearing into the house with a slam of the front door.

  Janey flinched, a sigh leaking from her body as Adam popped the trunk on his cruiser and extracted Jess’s skateboard. He came up the driveway and sidewalk too, his broad shoulders and mirrored sunglasses so police-like Janey stood and straightened her hair.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. This was Adam. He’d seen her at her worst, all red-eyed and leaking from everywhere after Matt had died. It had been Adam who’d come to get her, to tell her about the fire. Adam who’d driven her to the dock. Adam who’d held her hand, and kept her close, and helped her stand when it was declared the ferry was a total loss.

  Adam who’d stayed on her couch that night, listening to her sob and then dealing with a three-month-old Jess when he screamed and fussed in the middle of the night.

  “Afternoon, Janey,” he said in that deep, delicious voice of his. He’d sang in the high school choir, and now she imagined that no one dared to disobey a voice as powerful as his.

  She sighed as she looked at him, something...odd firing in her. What was that? Her stomach felt like it had been flipped over and she had the strangest urge to reach up and trace her fingers along Adam’s three-thirty shadow. He’d no doubt shaved that morning, but he’d started shaving when he was fourteen and it was a constant battle to have smooth skin.

  She marveled at the maturity of him and a realization hit her square in the chest. He’s your age. And single.

  Her heart started beating irregularly, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the attractive silver she saw in his beard and hair, or if the sunglasses he wore made him so attractive, or if she was losing her mind.

  Because Adam Herrin?

  He’d never been on her romantic radar.

  But it sure was screaming a warning at her right now.

  “You okay, Janey?” he asked.

  She pressed one hand over her heart, willing it to calm down, while she shoved her phone in her back pocket. “Yeah, fine.” She took the skateboard from him and sank back to the steps. “Why’d you bring Jess home?”

  “Oh, there was a little trouble at the skate park.” He exhaled like he carried the weight of the world and Janey glanced at him, the word trouble bouncing around between her eardrums.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Rough day?”

  “Sort of.” He positioned himself next to her, and she got blasted with the scent of his cologne. Fresh, and beachy, and minty, she wondered if she could sprinkle some on her sheets and fall asleep with such a delectable smell in her nose.

  “Is Jess in trouble?” She focused on her son, trying to figure out where all these traitorous thoughts about Adam were coming from. Jess was who mattered. Jess who’d been brought home by the Chief of Police himself.

  “I know he didn’t do it, but he’s not sayin’ who did.” Adam gazed out across the front yard she’d just finished mowing and getting ready for the winter. She hoped she wouldn’t have to do much more before the spring. Though she loved being and working outdoors, sometimes shouldering everything alone took its toll.

  “What happened?” she asked, wishing she were as even and calm as Adam always was. She’d literally never seen the man get upset.

  “There was some vandalism on the back of the building that borders the skate park,” Adam said, finally swinging his attention to her. He took off his sunglasses, and wow, had his eyes always been that particular shade of brown? One step above black, liquid, and deep. Janey lost herself for a moment, quickly coming back to attention when he continued with, “And Jess was there, a spray paint can only a few feet from his backpack.”

  “He—he didn’t say he wasn’t going to skate park today.” She wondered who he’d been with. “I was going to take him and Dix out to your brother’s farm.”

  Adam looked at her steadily, and dang if that didn’t make her pulse riot a little harder. “It looked like they’d been there a while, Janey.”

  “But school just got out, and—oh.” She let her hands fall between her knees. “You think he skipped school.”

  “At least fourth period,” Adam said. “He wouldn’t say anything to me.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Which isn’t normal for him. Everything okay here, at home? You’re not....” He cleared his throat and for the first time, Janey saw a blip of discomfort steal across his face. “Datin’ anyone new or switching jobs or anything that could disrupt his normal schedule?”

  Dating anyone new. Dating anyone new?

  Janey threw her head back and laughed.

  Chapter Two

  Adam had no idea what he’d said that was so darn funny. But Janey couldn’t stop laughing. Just when she started to quiet, she’d look at him again and dissolve into more giggles. After several seconds, Adam smiled, the infectious nature of her laughter too much to ignore.

  Oh, how he loved the sound of her voice. He wished he could erase the stiffness in her shoulders and the worry from her eyes. If she’d ever given him any indication that his presence in her life as more than a friend would be welcome, he’d do it. But she’d been as closed
off to men since Matt died as anyone he’d ever known.

  “Nothing’s changed,” she finally said when she could stop laughing. “I have the same schedule I’ve had for five years, since I was promoted.” She added a smile to the statement that left Adam concentrating on what should be an involuntary function: breathing.

  “And I’m not dating anyone.”

  Do you want to start dating? He swallowed the thought and said, “Maybe it’s just the hormones,” instead.

  Janey moaned and swatted his bicep. Was that flirting? The sign he’d been hoping for? The touch was so light and so quick, he had no idea.

  “Don’t tell me I have to deal with that already,” she said.

  “He’s in seventh grade,” Adam said. “I guarantee his brain’s already fallen out of his head. It’s probably rollin’ around under his bed.”

  She laughed again, and this time Adam joined his chuckle to hers. “He’s a good kid,” he said. “I told him he needs to be careful who he chooses to hang around with. Even if he’s not the one doin’ anything, people can get the wrong idea about him just by who he’s with.”

  Janey cut him a nervous look. “Who was he with?”

  “A couple of older boys I couldn’t see as they ran off. The Fenniman twins, who are also in seventh grade and not bad kids.” Adam shrugged, not wanting to alarm Janey too badly. He knew she was a huge worrywart already, and while he would like to thump Jess on the noggin for causing worry for his mom, the boy hadn’t actually done anything yet.

  “Will you keep an eye on him?” Janey asked, peering at him now with those intoxicating eyes. He was a sucker for those big brown eyes of hers, and he found himself nodding. While technically, it was his job to keep an eye on everything, he could spare a few minutes every day for Jess. For Janey.

  “So are you excited about the planning weekend?” she asked.