Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  His phone buzzed on his desk and he frowned. He was off duty and it was the middle of the night. There was only one person who might need him at this hour. He grabbed the phone and read the text.

  Connie.

  Again.

  “Stay where you are,” he texted back, getting to his feet as Wilma jumped down with a grunt of disapproval. “Be right there.”

  He headed toward the door before realizing he was wearing a tattered pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He shrugged. He doubted his cousin would mind, or even notice. When Connie texted at this time of night, it was never a social call.

  It was desperation.

  There was no dress code for desperation.

  ✽✽✽

  “You’re not always going to be able to save her,” Rory said. Dorian was glad his partner was driving. It had been a rough night and the early morning sun was beaming directly into their eyes as they pulled the cruiser out of the depot parking lot. “Have you tried to get her into rehab?”

  “Tried, failed, tried again,” he sighed. He rubbed his sunglasses on his shirt before slipping them on gratefully. He would need to get some sleep tonight. Luckily, Connie rarely went on a bender two nights in a row.

  “What about the kid?” Rory asked. “She okay?”

  “Not sure how she can be. Mother’s a drunk, father’s a no-show. Poor little Ida was curled up in the corner of her bed under a pile of stuffed animals, wide awake while her Mumma was throwing dishes at the wall and cursing like a sailor,” Dorian looked out the window. At least Connie hadn’t left her home alone again. Or maybe that would have been better. He just didn’t know any more. “After Connie passed out, I read her ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ until two in the morning when she finally fell asleep.”

  “That’s rough,” said Rory, the king of understatement. “Connie’s gonna end up in jail. No kid deserves that kinda life.”

  “Connie named her after my mom,” Dorian muttered. He bristled at Rory’s dire prediction of the future, but it was an old argument. Rory didn’t have a lot of faith in humanity. “When we were kids, Connie used to call mom Auntie Ida, and she practically lived at our house. I know I can’t save her, but I can at least try to catch her when she falls.”

  Mom would expect it. It was his duty, and his choice.

  Rory shrugged and turned the cruiser down the shore road that ran beside the river all the way to the center of town. They drove in silence, Dorian thinking of little Ida asking him if her Mumma was going to stop yelling.

  “She yells a lot,” Ida had said, a stuffed monkey wrapped tightly in her arms.

  “She’s upset, Ida. But it’s not your fault. Sometimes grown ups get upset and they act up and then they get over it.” It was so hard to find the right balance between reality and reassurance. He wished he could just write her a story, so he could get all the words right and she could read it every time her mother went off the deep end.

  He doubted it would be enough. A mother like Connie wasn’t the stuff of bedtime stories.

  “Is she gonna go away again?” Ida’s eyes were huge.

  Connie had run off a few months ago, leaving six-year-old Ida alone for a whole day before she had wandered out into the playground of the abandoned school next door and a neighbor had called Dorian to come check on her. Connie had been gone for five days that time. He wished he could guarantee the little girl everything would be fine, but he could tell just by looking at her that she knew better.

  He could never lie to anyone, especially not someone he loved. And he loved Ida.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he had said, tucking her into his arm and hugging her. “But I will always, always be here for you, okay? You are my little Warrior Princess, and I am always here for you.”

  It was thin comfort, knowing she would be waking up this morning with a hung-over Mother and the memory of a terrifying night that would never go away. But how did you take a child away from their mother? Especially when that mother loved that little girl…when she was sober.

  When she was drunk it was a different story.

  And it was not the kind of story that Dorian wanted to write. Dorian was determined to see a happily ever after for Ida, despite her mother’s past. Drinking wasn’t hereditary, as Dorian was living proof.

  They drove on, looping past Grim’s Feed and Seed, and the post office and the bridge over the river. Rory chuckled as they passed the old Heartswell Elementary school.

  “Look, there she is.” He nodded toward the playground where Dorian caught a glimpse of Lucy sitting on the slide with a goat on her lap. “The crazy goat lady.”

  “She’s not crazy,” he said, and Rory gave him a raised eyebrow and a snort. “She’s just lost.”

  “Well, I sure don’t want to be the one to find her,” Rory chuckled. “Bat-shit crazy, I’d say. I guess she had a fiancé who died, and now she’s got some crazy idea to keep goats in the school. Just a matter of time before the HAWC gives her the boot. Bought the place for a dollar and been drunk ever since.”

  Dorian didn’t say anything. He knew only too well the ravages of drink and despair, but he couldn’t shake the sense that Lucy was different. He was good at reading people, a skill honed through years on the police force where being able to create a mental profile of an individual had become second nature. Lucy wasn’t a drunk, not really. Even just meeting her once, he could see it in her eyes.

  Dark chestnut eyes. Beautiful. Tarnished, but beautiful.

  “I betcha she ends up in the back of this cruiser, just like most of the drunks in this town,” Rory nodded in agreement with himself. In all the years that they had been partners, Rory remained steadfastly determined to see the worst in people. Dorian was equally dedicated to proving him wrong.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m telling you, she’s not really a drunk. It’s just a place she’s chosen to be for a while. You’re wrong about this one.”

  “Uh huh. Like I was wrong about that guy we picked up last week with the stolen car? And I was wrong about that kid lighting fires? What did you say about him? Oh yeah, I remember… “he’s just a kid”… while the shed in his parent’s back yard burned to the ground?”

  Dorian grunted. Rory knew exactly what buttons to press, but Dorian was too tired to engage in their usual debate. Doing bad things doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person. It was an old argument between them.

  “Like I was wrong about Connie?”

  They had been partners for too long for there to be many lines between them that shouldn’t be crossed, but his cousin was one of them. Dorian knew Rory too well to give him the satisfaction of punching him in the face, but he felt the flush of anger wash through him all the same.

  “Everyone deserves another chance,” he said, forcing his hands to relax. “Remember that whole justice thing we signed on for? Innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Losers are losers, man. That chick at the school? Loser.”

  “And you get to decide, do you? You take one look at someone and write them off? Judge, jury and hangman?” He couldn’t help it. Rory always managed to get under his skin. He was a great partner, and Dorian trusted him as a solid cop, the kind of guy you want at your back in a tough situation, but it was a constant battle between the two of them regarding human nature.

  “There we go,” Rory smiled. “Bleedin’ heart Wells, defending the great unwashed!”

  “You’re the only one who stinks, Ror. At least Lucy’s pretty. You don’t have any redeeming qualities.”

  They descended into schoolyard taunting every time. It made Dorian feel better, the comfort of the ridiculous in the face of a tough reality. He was terribly afraid he was wrong about Connie, despite all his efforts to save her, and Rory’s comments rubbed sorely on an open wound. What if he couldn’t save her? What if he couldn’t help Ida?

  “Pretty, is she now? This drunk-ass Lucy woman?” Rory snorted, turning the cruiser into the parking lot by the big Lighthouse in
downtown Heartswell. He parked and turned to Dorian, grinning. “I bet we dig her outta the bottom of a ditch before summer’s over.”

  Dorian thrust open the door and stood up, Rory’s words summing up his exact fear for Connie, for Ida. For people he knew he needed to protect.

  “I bet she drowns in her own bottle.” Rory leaned across the top of the cruiser like a school yard bully poking him with a stick. Dorian was tired, worried, and too easily goaded.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said, wondering if he was talking about Connie or Lucy. “And you’re an asshole.”

  Rory laughed. “Hundred bucks.”

  “What?”

  Rory hauled out his wallet and waved a handful of bills in his fist. “Hundred bucks says that chick with the goat… your pretty little drunk Lucy girl… hundred bucks says she tanks before August.”

  “You really are an asshole.”

  Rory shrugged and made a show of putting his money back in his wallet. “Thought so. Thought you were just full of shit. You know that lady is trash.”

  Dorian’s fist clenched at his sides and he spoke before he thought.

  “Done. Bet’s on. Lucy will be fine, I’ll make sure of it, and you can go to Hell.”

  Rory threw back his head and laughed.

  Dorian kicked the tire of the cruiser like a frustrated child. Rory was an idiot, and now Dorian felt like one too. But a bet was a bet, and there was no way he would back out of it now.

  Three

  “It’s not really built for wood stoves, ya see?”

  He was about twenty, long and thin like a rope that school children tie themselves to so they don’t get lost. She imagined this bean-pole youth breeding a bevy of babies, but then she stopped, afraid she was channeling her mother in alliterative excess.

  She could see their reflection in the big windows of the library, empty of desks but still housing shelves of dusty books and echoing with the doubt in his voice. He, long and wiry and breedable, she…well, she preferred not to look.

  “It’ll be a question of codes, ain’t it?” he continued, the easy roll of his Nova Scotia dialect making her smile. “Can we do an installation, up to code, through that?” He gestured at the ceiling lurking above them, defying codes.

  Lucy was undaunted. She didn’t hold much with codes. Building or conduct.

  “How will I be able to heat this place, without wood?” she asked. Everyone in the world had a wood stove. That was a given. This was Heartswell Harbour, Nova Scotia. Wood stove capital of the universe. “Didn’t they used to have wood stoves in schools, like, back in the day?

  “Well, now, that’s the question, ain’t it?” he said, scratching facial hair that competed with dimples for manly cuteness.

  “What’s the answer, smartass?”

  He blinked at her, then laughed.

  She wasn’t kidding.

  “They told me you was a piece-a-work. Yes, they did, didn’t they?” He chuckled, enjoying proof of the warnings that apparently were necessary when a visit to Lucy was part of a day’s labor.

  She said nothing.

  Dog trotted in, sniffed at the young man’s boots and sat, gazing longingly up at him as if all he wanted in the world was a man.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. Dog was not alone.

  “They tell me you got this place for a buck.”

  He leaned down and scratched Dog’s ears. Dog went limp with pleasure. It was like watching a couple kissing on a park bench. With fur. And a thumping leg. “They say you’re gonna turn her into a hotel, don’t they?”

  “They seem woefully misinformed.”

  She turned away, the urge to rub herself against this tall boy’s leg becoming uncomfortable. A hotel. That was a new one. She’d heard that she was going to make the old school into an art gallery, a restaurant, a retirement home and a yoga studio. The only thing she seemed to actually be using it for was a goat sanctuary. And there was going to be one very cold goat this winter if she didn’t get this young man to install a wood stove.

  “I’m actually going to turn it into a strip club and brothel,” she said, waggling her eyebrows alluringly. “That’s why I need a wood stove. Because of the nakedness. Can’t have the ladies freezing their tassels off.”

  His hand paused above Dog’s belly, mid-scratch. Dog’s leg stopped thumping. The young man, whose name was Tom, who had gone to school in this very building when he was a child, cocked his head at her and frowned.

  “That seems kinda wrong, don’t it?”

  “Or terribly, terribly right.”

  She could suddenly envision a stripper pole in the middle of the grade three classroom, the alphabet still painted merrily around the edge of the wall above the chalkboard.

  He laughed at her again. Apparently, she was an hilarious piece-a-work. She could just imagine how “they” would react to Tom’s recounting of this moment. All she really wanted was a wood stove and someone to rub her belly. Was that too much to ask?

  “I’ll see what I can do for you, Ma’am. Gotta keep the strippers warm, right?” He blushed slightly. It was quite appealing.

  “It’s all about the strippers, Tom. That’s right.”

  She wondered if he realized he ended every sentence with a question, or if he ever knew the answer. She was used to living with unanswered questions herself. Like life was just a huge question mark, hovering over her head, waiting to crush her the moment she was foolish enough to think she’d found the answers.

  “Wait’ll I tell the boys about this,” he chuckled to himself, taking a tape measure and moving into the corner where the stove would go. “Won’t they get a kick outta this, what?”

  She was about to answer him when her cell phone rang. She stared at it for several seconds, frowning at it as if that would make it stop.

  “You… gonna answer that?” Tom, the chuckler, asked.

  “Do I have to?”

  “It’s the polite thing to do,” he answered, with a face that suggested that the polite thing was really the only thing and that she was dangerously teetering on the edge of propriety if she allowed the call to go unanswered. Tassels and stripper poles were one thing, but apparently an unanswered cell phone crossed a line somehow.

  It was the HAWC.

  “It’s the Heartswell Association of Women who Care,” she hissed at Tom.

  He blinked.

  “They’re terrifying,” she insisted, whispering and bulging her eyes at him to no avail. He simply took a step back away from her, shaking his head.

  “Hello Lucy, dear. Irenia Crawley here. President, Public Relations Manager and Social Chairwoman of the HAWC.” Mrs. Crawley’s voice was quietly calm, like a gentle breeze before the tornado ripped through your home and scattered your goat, your dog and your hidden whiskey bottles to the four winds. “We’re just wondering how your plans are coming along?”

  “My plans… um.”

  She wiped her forehead.

  She had no plans.

  Nothing.

  Whatsoever.

  “You know, with the school?”

  She walked out into the hall, giving up on Tom as a source of support. She looked around, the turning of her head echoing in the empty building. Somewhere down the hall, a goat bleated.

  “The school?”

  Ah, yes. People had expectations of her, living here in the school. She suddenly felt slightly less alone in the world. She warmed to the voice on the phone. A lonely goatherd reaching down the mountainside to civilization. She wondered if she should yodel to show her appreciation of the contact.

  “Lucy? Are you there?”

  “Oh yes, must be a bad connection, due to the altitude.” The air was thinner, up here with the goat and the decaying chalk dust.

  “Altitude? Hello?”

  Mrs. Irenia Crawley’s voice was becoming less friendly, less like a cheerful villager and more like a concerned citizen. She remembered suddenly, concerned citizens were the bane of her existence.

  “My plans for the
school are moving ahead snappingly.”

  She nodded into the phone. Smiled. She could win this conversation, like it was a gameshow and the big prize behind Door Number Two was being left alone to go about her staggering demise. “As in, like, snap.”

  She snapped her fingers twice at the cell phone for emphasis.

  “The Community Garden, Lucy? It is mid-May already, and I drove by yesterday and I couldn’t see…”

  “Yeah, the community garden will have to wait till next year. Manure shortage. You need manure, you see, and with the shortage this year it just wasn’t…” She searched for the word. She knew there was a word that fit the statement that would make her sound competent. “Doable?”

  “Manure shortage?”

  “Uh huh. You know, since we had such a bad winter. Not doable. Next year.” She put her hand over the receiver as she walked past the music room. Goat manure wasn’t particularly pungent, but you never knew with these new cell phones just how many senses were being transmitted.

  “Lucy… you know the conditions of sale included community involvement in the space. There are specific conditions that must be met if you are to fulfill the contract. The community garden, the yoga space, the café. I had a call from one of the church ladies, you know the Women’s Auxiliary from St. Andrews down the road from you? She seemed to think there were going to be… ahem… strippers? Something about erotic dancers and a brothel?”

  She started giggling, snorking into her fist as she wandered down the hall that still smelled like thirty years of bologna sandwiches and children’s sneakers. “That’s just a misunderstanding,” she said. “They probably won’t actually dance much.”

  “We’re going to have to have a meeting.” Mrs. Crawley’s voice definitely changed. There was an edge to her voice now that implied that Lucy was in danger of a detention.

  “I’ll give myself a detention. I’m outside the Principal’s office right now, so I’ll just get on that right away,” she said. An interjection of humor was sure to deflect the looming sense of disappointment being expressed by this stalwart member of the HAWC. The member with obvious expectations. Lucy wasn’t prepared to live up to expectations this morning.