Buck's Landing (A New England Seacoast Romance) (16 page)

For the first few days after they’d fought, she’d watched him come in from his morning runs, unwilling to admit missing him was the real reason she was at the window with her morning coffee. After that, she stopped torturing herself. Even so, she felt more attuned to the comings and goings of Silas’s Jeep, and Theo seemed to cross her path with unusual frequency.

On the Friday of Labor Day weekend she and Judy had a farewell lunch at The Sandpiper Grill, after which Sofia went up to Portsmouth to meet with Kevin Landry and Caroline Barclay. She did some shopping before driving back, buying a piece of local pottery for her assistant at the DeVarona and a pair of nautilus-shaped cufflinks for the next time she saw Elliot. As a thank you for a summer’s hard work, she bought Amy a gift card from Fête. She made a mental note to get small thank you gifts for Charlotte and Gavin, as well.

She was passing a stationery store when she saw the print in the window display.

It was a large ink drawing based on a vintage postcard, tinted with watercolors, showing the Hampton Ballroom and the Bandstand as they’d looked almost a hundred years before. It was perfect for Silas. Assuming he ever painted the apartment or spruced up the old-mannish décor, the print would look beautiful on the wall above where the ratty sofa now sat.

She hesitated, but the urge was so strong that she gave in, buying it and arranging for the shop owner to deliver it to the Atlantis at the beginning of the following week. It was cowardly, she knew, but she couldn’t face him, and it seemed obvious he felt similarly. It would be easier for both of them if she just disappeared. Life would go on. She had healed from Hampton’s wounds before; she could again, and Silas would find someone new, perhaps even Caroline Barclay.

Once invented, the image of the two of them together took root in her imagination. Try though she might to avoid it through the remaining days of the weekend, her mind conjured up pictures of the curvy brunette accompanying Silas to Dex’s bar or the Funarama. When the last of the Labor Day customers left on Monday evening, it was a relief to finally lock the chain-link gate and the steel grate behind the Snack Bar window.

Gavin had hung the panda Silas won for her over the soft-serve machine at some point in the last few weeks. Looking at it in the darkened room, Sofia nearly pulled it down and stashed it in her car for the trip south. Imagining it moldering in a storage locker squeezed her heart; better the panda stay here, where it belonged.

Her employees met her out front to say their farewells. Charlotte and Gavin had pitched in to buy her a Hampton Beach tee shirt, complete with glittery airbrushed lettering, which she promptly tugged on over her tank top.

Amy had commissioned a framed photograph of Buck’s Landing from a friend of hers. The goodbyes were bittersweet.

“If you ever come to Europe,” Sofia began.

“I promise to find you,” Amy finished, hugging Sofia. “Thanks for being a good boss.”

“Thanks for being a fabulous manager.”

“Are you staying in town tonight?” Amy asked. Sofia saw the younger woman’s eyes come to rest on Silas’s dark windows.

“No, I have a reservation at my hotel chain’s Manhattan property. I’m going to leave now, try to make New York by midnight.”

Amy looked at her watch. “You should go, then. Drive safe!”

When her employees were gone, Sofia climbed into the BMW and slipped out of town. She kept the music loud not to stay awake, but to stem the tide of tears that threatened for the first hundred miles.

~~~

Silas closed the Market early all three evenings of the holiday weekend. Mallory and her husband, Ted, had driven up to move Theo out of his summer apartment, and insisted on treating Silas to nightly dinners. One look at him on arrival and Mallory knew there was something wrong. Come Monday night, she sent her husband and son back to the bed and breakfast at Rocky Bend, and suggested her brother get a beer with her.

“Anywhere but the Salty Cod,” Silas said. Mallory raised a questioning brow, but Silas didn’t offer her anything further.

In the end, they drove inland to a brew pub in Hampton Falls.

“Silas, I wish you’d told me about this three days ago.”

“I need a lecture like a hole in the head, Mal.” He picked at the bar napkin under his glass. “I fucked up.”

“You did, little brother.” Mallory perched on the stool next to him, sandal heels hooked over the rails. “You should have stayed there. A woman hurting is like a wild animal. She snapped at you to protect herself and you abandoned her.”

“I abandoned her, Mal? She more or less said she was done with me, that it was just a summer thing.”

“And?” Mallory took a sip of her beer.

“And I love her.” A few heads turned when he nearly shouted. “I love her, and she’s gone, off to a goddamn Greek island with someone named Elliot.”

“Elliot?”

“I heard her on the phone.” Silas raked back his hair. “I went over there to try to at least apologize, maybe part on friendly terms. I ended up leaving. She never knew I was there.”

Mallory sighed. “If you’d told me this on Friday, I would have told you go over there and beg her to stay. On your knees. Warned you that it still might not work.” She downed the remainder of her beer and pushed Silas’s glass towards him. “Why don’t we head back to your apartment? I’ll show you the stuff Teddy put together, and we’ll get that part settled.”

Silas walked his sister up the boardwalk to the Inn at Rocky Bend nearly four hours later. It was well after midnight, and only the stragglers were still awake.

“I’m sorry she broke your heart,” Mallory said, looping her arm through his. “Does this mean you’ll come home and marry one of my friends? I know an adorable single mom with a little boy in Anthea’s class. Very smart girl.”

“Not on your life,” Silas said.

Mallory laid her head on his shoulder as they walked. “I give up. You really are happier here. This place, it suits you, and I think you’re doing the right thing. For the right reasons.”

“With a little help from you and Ted.”

“Ted’s a good man,” she said. “I knew it the moment we met.”

“So you’ve said, almost every day since then.” Silas took a breath. “I thought I knew about Sofia. I thought maybe she was starting to see that her past didn’t need to be her future. I thought she loved me, too.”

“Maybe she does, Silas.” Mallory reached for his hand, squeezing it affectionately. “It’s not always enough.”

Silas squeezed back. “I thought if I could just get her to see that her dad wasn’t the same monster she remembered…”

“Oh, Silas.” Mallory sighed. “You had to know it wasn’t that simple.”

“I let myself believe it would work out.”

“It always has for you, hasn’t it?” Mallory spoke without malice, but her words stung nonetheless.

“So, I deserved this?”

“Sometimes hurts run too deep to mend,” Mallory said. “I just wish she hadn’t wounded you in the process.”

They reached the Inn and Silas hugged his sister. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll come for Thanksgiving? Mom misses you.”

He crossed his heart. “I’ll come for Thanksgiving.”

He waited until Mallory was safely inside the front door before turning back for the south end of the beach.

The moon was up, just past full, sitting high and cool in the sky. The heat was gone from the night air. The last time he’d walked down the boardwalk in the moonlight, he’d had Sofia by his side, carrying that ridiculous panda. The toasty scent of turning leaves was faint in the air, a whisper of snow under it like a secret. Gone was the heavy breeze, redolent with fryolator oil and cinnamon. The season was changing.

Autumn was coming, and beyond it the long winter. At some point during the summer, he’d begun to hope he wouldn’t be spending it alone. Time to turn his energy towards the Market and its upkeep. He had enough put by to spend the winter sprucing the place up, but the Atlantis was no longer his only seasonal asset. There was also the Elena Sofia to see to; he needed to make sure she was somewhere safe for the winter.

Visions of her namesake wintering on the shores of the Aegean soured his thoughts of the little sport fisher.

When he got back to his apartment, he packed up the paperwork Mallory had left with him and fell into bed, fully clothed, with Houdini kneading the duvet cover at his side.

ELEVEN

Sophia dreamed of paper lanterns falling into a glass-calm sea. Each time a lantern touched the surface, it chimed shrilly, the sound wrapping around her ankles as if to draw her into the water. The dream resisted her efforts to reach for the chiming lanterns; wakefulness was sluggish. She disentangled her legs from the twisted sheets and struck blindly out towards her nightstand for her ringing phone. Her fingers closed around it; she squinted at the screen. Nearly ten o’clock in the morning.

She’d arrived at her condo in the early hours of the morning, tumbling into bed exhausted after the drive down from New York. She’d given herself most of the day in Manhattan to catch up with some friends and enjoy the city before returning to Washington, then delayed her departure until well into the evening.

Kevin Landry was on the other end of the call.

“Hi, Sofia. It’s Kevin Landry.”

She forced her voice to wake up. “Hi, Kevin. What’s up?”

“Good news,” he said. “I’ve got an offer.”

Her first reaction was not the bubble of pleasure she’d expected. A panicky flutter in her stomach rose up through her body, a headache blooming fresh at her temples.

“Is it a good one?”

“Very.” Kevin was ready to talk business, she could hear it in his eager tone. “Cash, a group of investors from New Jersey. They’re offering your asking price.” He paused while Sofia turned the information over in her head. “It would be a very fast process if you accept the offer, and I recommend that you do.”

“I need some time to think.” She slid her nightstand drawer open, hoping for a bottle of Advil.

“Not too much time,” Kevin warned. “This is a fantastic offer, Sofia. I’d hate to see you miss an opportunity to sell. Speaking of which—”

Silently, Sofia likened Kevin’s change of topic to a clumsy downshift. Finding a travel sized package of pain relievers, she shook a dose out into her palm.

“I got your email about the change in your situation. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She swallowed three gel-caps dry and shuddered.

“I have a contact in Washington, an agent I’ve done referral work with before. I’ll forward her information.”

“That would be great, Kevin. Thanks again.”

“You need to move on this offer, Sofia,” Kevin warned her gently.

“I know. Now’s just not a great time.” She sank back into her pillows. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”

“I hope that’s not too late.” Kevin’s concern was clear in his voice. “I’ll speak with you then.”

“Wait, Kevin.” She clenched her phone hard in her hand. “I’ll take it. Go ahead.”

“You’re doing the right thing.” Kevin sounded relieved. “I’ll email you the offer for your signature, and you can email or fax it back to me. Either I or a lawyer here in Portsmouth can handle your power of attorney.”

Buck’s Landing had a buyer, which meant one more thing off her terrifying to-do list. Sofia dropped her phone back onto the bedside table. She sank down and let sleep reclaim her.

~~~

With Theo gone and the weather turning, Silas approached his first week of running the Market in the post-season with a casual attitude. After a run on the beach, he showered and brought Houdini down to keep him company. The cat prowled the aisles and sunned himself in the display windows.

He took a mug of coffee outside midmorning, the better to enjoy the last of the hot days. A pickup truck with Massachusetts tags was parked on the grass in front of the Ebbtide Motel, on the other side from Buck’s Landing. He waved at the crew-cut-and-khakis driver, who was unloading tools.

“Morning,” the newcomer said, pausing to come shake Silas’s hand over the low rock wall that separated the Atlantis from the Ebbtide. “You must be the new guy.”

“‘Fraid so,” Silas said with a smile. The two men exchanged introductions.

His neighbor leaned over, casting an eye over the closed sign on the gate at Buck’s Landing. “You see much of Jimmy this summer? Surprised to see the place closed up before Columbus Day.”

Silas’s heart sank. “I hate to be the one to tell you this. Jimmy passed back in late June.”

“Shit.” The Ebbtide’s owner pocketed his hands. “What’s going to happen to it? You know anything?”

Silas sought a diplomatic answer. “Jimmy’s daughter ran the place for the summer, but she’s selling.”

“I used to live over the office here. Was friendly with Jimmy and Elena. Shame what happened to her. How’s their little girl? Sofia? Christ, she was a kid the last time I saw her.”