The Legend of Bailey's Cove

“I might stack up now. I didn’t then. I was too skinny and Mom insisted I wear those long shirts and khakis to school.”

“But you’ve always had a great smile and you used to be lots of fun.”

Delainey took a feeble swing at her sister. “Shut up.”

“And—you have a great personality.” Guffawing, Christina flopped over on the couch to duck the retribution.

Delainey reached out and helped her sister sit back up. “I don’t know what we really have to talk about, but we have to work together and can’t go around flinching and ducking when we see each other.”

“So what did you two do all those years when you spent time together besides study?”

“We saw movies, fireworks, ate too many burgers and pizzas to remember, but he never even tried to kiss me until after college. The only time he held my hand before that was when we walked on those big rocks along the shoreline and he was afraid I’d fall into the ocean.”

“And now?”

“I’m picking him up at the Murphys’ at five-thirty and we’re having dinner at the diner out near the Interstate.”

“Ooh, that sounds like fun.”

“Yeah, at least I’ll have my own car so I can run away when I need to.”

“No, wait.” Christina sat forward on the old chair cushion. “Make sandwiches and get a bottle of wine. Go to the ocean.”

“It’s winter.”

“Talk in the car. It doesn’t get much more private than that.”

“Um, it’s cold this time of year?”

“Um, that’s why they invented blankets.”

“And the sun goes down at five-thirty.”

“Oh, stop. Maybe he’s looking for another chance with you and doesn’t know how to ask. It’s been a long time in coming, you know.”

“I don’t think so.” Delainey remembered the wonderful feeling of Hunter’s lips on hers, his hands on her body. No time at all had passed in that memory file. “I think he’s messed up because of something that happened to him in Chicago. It’s got him, I don’t know, edgy. Today he stood in the doorway of my office and twice he looked over his shoulder to make sure there wasn’t anyone there.”

“Maybe he didn’t want anyone from the office to overhear the two of you.”

“He could have come into my office and closed the door.”

“Life in the big city has made him jittery. Maybe you can calm him down. Lawyer’s big-city trauma healed by small-town girl.” Christina waved a hand in the air as if outlining headlines.

Delainey didn’t want to talk about Hunter. The more she thought about him, the more the pain of his leaving surfaced. “Did you do any of the work you were supposed to do before I got back here?”

Triumphantly Christina held up a pink legal tablet. The pages were mostly ruffled and wrinkled, meaning they had been flipped over so the next page could be written on.

Delainey took the tablet. Granted, the writing was scribbled and a lot of it was crossed out, but there was an impressive list of things to be done. Something was going right.

“The ones with the asterisk beside them are ones Sammy and I can do ourselves.”

“Wow, most impressive.”

“Ha. Baby sister grows up.” Christina threw her hands up in the air and wiggled in celebration.

“It’s not as if I didn’t think you could get work done. You were Bandal’s top engineer for over two years. That’s nothing to sneeze at, sis. You just—”

Christina eyed her with suspicion. “What?”

“You just never seemed to have time to do things for yourself, and this project seems to be for you.”

“Oh. I...um...guess I never expected you to notice.”

“Big sister finally wakes up to the fact that little sister is an outstanding human being.” Delainey waved her hand across the imaginary headline. Then she dropped her hand to her lap. “It’s true, Christina. Once I stopped seeing you as a five-year-old, you know, last year—” her sister smiled, as she had hoped she would “—I recognized you are a most amazing woman with the most amazing talents.”

Christina looked shocked and then amazed and speechless.

“I think you can thank Brianna. She made me realize how strongly I felt about the people around me, the people I’ve been closest to my whole life and maybe taken for granted at times.”

“Well, thank you, Brianna.”

“I even forgave Hunter. He never meant to break my heart. Whatever he did at the time was the best he had that day.” Delainey sighed. How she wished their best had been different that summer.

“I guess it comes down to whether or not we can live with the best they have to offer on any given day,” Christina said, and smiled.

“Does that mean you heard from Sammy?”

Christina’s smile held a bit of dreaminess. “He called last night and did a phone tour of the houses with me. He’s excited to get here. He gave his notice and in two weeks he plans to arrive on my doorstep.”

Plans, hopes, wants, dreams. Sammy dealt in all of these, often at her sister’s expense. Delainey hoped his best was good enough to deserve Christina. “Do I get to meet him this time?”

“Meet him. Greet him. You just don’t get to date him.”

Delainey laughed. “Deal.”

“So I plan to start in the kitchen.” Christina’s tone was pure excitement. “I’ll get it stripped and buy some secondhand appliances so in a couple months I can live here. The bathroom on this floor still works. The furnaces are all still running, so the water pipes haven’t frozen.”

“I brought these blank contracts as samples. They can give you ideas of the kinds of things you might want to include.”

Christina took the contracts and tucked them on the clipboard with her tablet. “Thanks. I’m so eager to get started. I had to stop myself from stripping the wallpaper here and now. Thanks for getting all this for me.”

“You’re welcome. I’m having fun watching you get so worked up, but I guess I’d better get going.”

“They’ll all think you’re a slacker, ducking out to visit your sister two days in a row.”

“Yeah, but the food is great.”

“Are you up to it?” Christina asked.

“Up to what?”

CHAPTER FOUR

DELAINEY TURNED SIDEWAYS on the couch and gave Christina a suspicious glare.

“Are you up to facing Hunter Morrison all day, going on a date with him tonight?” Christina asked.

“I’ll hide in my office with the door locked all day and it’s not a date, but I need a favor.”

“Sure.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“You want me to pick up Brianna from Mom and Dad’s at, oh, about six o’clock so she doesn’t wear them out. I can do that. She and I will have so much fun.”

“She thinks you’re the coolest aunt ever.”

“That might be because I am. Let’s see. I’ve got computer games. I’ve got makeup and jewelry to play with and I’ve got gum. What more could a six-year-old kid want from an aunt?”

“Nothing.” Delainey laughed and picked up her keys from the coffee table.

“You’ll figure things out with Hunter,” Christina said as they walked to the door.

Delainey stopped. “That’s just it. I can’t come up with a scenario where this works out. He seems angry with me and I don’t know what I did. And whether or not he’s justified in feeling that way, he gets a say in whether or not I continue working for Morrison and Morrison. If it turns out he’s just angry at something else, I’ll try to help him like I used to. It would make things easier for the both of us.”

“Don’t tell me you—”

Delainey nodded. “When someone broke his heart, I’d fix it for him. When he panicked about an exam, I’d come to his rescue. Well, you get it.”

“Then everything can get just peachy between the two of you.”

Delainey put her hand on the old brass doorknob and her head on the doorframe. “Ah, my optimistic sister. If everything gets peachy, I can’t forget that they were heavenly between us the first time when he just walked away. I have Brianna to think of and if I brought a man into her life that broke her heart, I could never forgive myself.”

“Brianna has a great mother.”

“Thanks.”

Delainey stepped out into the brisk air of another sunny late-February day and Christina closed the door behind her.

Ten minutes later and safely tucked in her office, she straightened the stack of files on her desk. There seemed to be more than when she left earlier.

She pulled the one off the top with a hot pink sticky note on it in Carol’s hand that said Important.

In the file was the picture of a boy, perhaps Brianna’s age but probably younger, maybe four and a half or five. Stevie Anning, the label read.

The boy had a bruise down the side of his face that looked to be a few days old and a fat lip that seemed to be very fresh.

The information had been provided by a neighbor of the child, who was living in the custody of his uncle. Apparently, Child Protective Services had been to the home and deemed the injuries accidental. They’d subsequently determined the child was safe and happy. The neighbor said the state was there for what seemed like ten minutes, emphasizing, “And that’s all the time they gave to this little boy.”

The neighbor had also called the police twice and when they arrived, they could find no wrongdoing at the uncle’s house. They had taken the uncle into the station and removed the boy from the home both times. Each time, the uncle had been able, according to the neighbor, to talk himself out of being charged with any crime.

Delainey wasn’t sure she believed that. The Bailey’s Cove Police Department was very responsive to domestic abuse. Every officer had been to sensitivity training and had attended the intervention initiative education program to help them to recognize the signs of abuse and the responses of an offender who is good at getting off the hook.

In the file was a request to assist an aunt from the child’s mother’s side of the family to get custody away from the uncle on the father’s side.

Very apparently, none of the parties involved had much in the way of resources to pay for legal representation.

The uncle had the law behind him. If the investigating parties had it wrong, then the aunt had the welfare of the boy on her side.

Another pro bono case. A worthy case. What she wanted to do was to go speak with the uncle herself, but she knew that could lay her and the firm open for a harassment claim.

She’d have to chat with the officers and see what she could find out on behalf of the boy.

She called Carol and asked her to come up and then quickly unlocked the door to her office. Locking it was silly anyway.

A short minute later, Carol appeared.

“Hey, Carol, nice glasses,” Delainey said as they each took a seat. Carol bought glasses the way some people bought shoes. She had some snazzy purple-and-green ones on today.

“So we’ve all been wondering what the scoop is about Shamus and Hunter.”

“Did you ask either of them?”

“Both of them. But neither of them gave even a hint.” Carol looked at her hopefully. “I thought you would know something.”

Delainey laughed. “You give me far too much credit. I don’t have very much information these days.”

“Didn’t you know Hunter when he lived here?”

“I did. We went to school together.” Delainey had no intention of giving even the slightest hint that she and Hunter had had a brief time when they were more than friends. She barely liked to admit the oh-so-short and ill-fated affair to herself. But she threw Carol a meatless bone. “He was every bit as good-looking when he was in high school. Not as well built but cute. All the girls liked him.”

Carol beamed. “Do we know anyone who went out with him?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

Now Carol blushed and Delainey felt a little silly for being up-front.

“The case involving the Anning boy.”

“Yes, Shirley and I set up Stevie’s file, but that was before...”

“Before what?”

“Before we got told we do too many pro bono cases.”

“Told by Mr. Morrison?”

Carol nodded.

“He says we all need our jobs and if we don’t choose these cases based on true need—including the need of the Morrison and Morrison employees, we are going to give away too much business and end up having to cut back on staff.”

This wasn’t anything Delainey was not aware of, but Shamus always made things work somehow. “This one seems to have merit even considering all those things.”

Carol sighed in relief. “That’s what I thought. You see, it’s my sister’s best friend who filed the complaints in the first place.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do about it.”

“Thank you so much. Thank you.” Carol had already leaped from her chair and was hurrying out the door.

Delainey spent the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon reviewing cases, updating files that needed info added and placing phone calls to clients and prospective clients. She finished up her notes and closed the book on another day at the office.

When she did, she found herself hoping Stevie Anning was safe for the night.

An hour later, nervous but determined to be open and honest with Hunter, Delainey pulled into the Murphys’ long gravel driveway. She stopped outside the house to consider if she should go up the sweeping front steps to fetch Hunter. Her hands trembled, and she was glad she’d changed her mind about going to the diner.

When she got home from work, she had found a bag on her kitchen table from Christina. “A thank-you dinner for two. Christina,” the note had said. Delainey had snatched out the bottle of wine and put in a thermos of hot tea. She’d collected a couple blankets so they could eat and talk in the car. Whatever Hunter had to say to her, she was sure she would be able to take it better without an audience of any kind.

The front door to the house opened and Hunter emerged, so she could breathe a sigh of relief that she didn’t have to get out and test whether her legs could hold her up.

Instead of getting in the passenger door, Hunter came around to the driver’s side. He was going to chicken out. Good—she didn’t want to do this, either. She opened the window.

“Hunter?”

Hunter leaned down until Delainey could see his face. He was close enough that she could have reached out and cupped the strong angle of his jaw with the palm of her hand. He was close enough that she could smell his shaving cream and soap, smooth with an edge of spice.

Too close. She leaned her head back against the headrest, hoping the feelings stirring in her would go away. She didn’t want to feel anything for him. Even friendship would be dangerous.

“The Murphys have offered their living room to us. They’ve also invited you to dine with us,” he said, his breath coming out in puffs of steam.

All she could do was stare at him, panic-stricken. She could not let this thing grow bigger. She needed to get this, whatever it was between Hunter and her, settled. He would work in the Morrison and Morrison office and she would work alongside him if she got the chance.

One thing she knew for sure, she was not going in there to talk about her personal life. She loved Shamus, but she didn’t want to bare her secrets to him.

“I thanked him and Connie and assured them we’d be fine. I did tell them I’d ask you before I refused for both of us.”

“Thank you.” She put both hands on the steering wheel and squeezed hard. “I mean, I was trying to figure out how to diplomatically refuse that offer.”

Hunter straightened and sprinted in his familiar long-legged stride back to the house and up the steps. Connie met him at the door and waved to Delainey. Connie looked her usual lustrous self. She might not be the reason Shamus quit, but there was probably little to be gleaned from a glimpse so far away.

Shamus, what’s wrong? she wondered as Hunter strode back to her car and climbed in the passenger side.

“The diner it is,” he said as he pulled the door closed.

“We don’t have to go there, either. I brought food. I thought we could go someplace private and talk in the car.”

He looked over his shoulder to the blankets in the backseat where Brianna’s booster would have been if she hadn’t left it with Christina.

“Little Cove Park?” Little Cove Park was a small inlet where the waves often washed in quietly. There wasn’t a beach, only rocky shoreline and shallow caves, dangerous when the tide was in. A lighthouse stood on the right side of the cove on a point of land reaching out into the ocean.

Many a picnic had been had at the small park by people of all kinds, especially high schoolers, sometimes with groups as big as twenty or thirty. Kids would pair off and disappear out into the darkness around them, but never Hunter and her. They used to joke that they were the fire tenders and the whole group would fall apart without their help.

There would be no one at the cove today.

Ten minutes later she pulled into the deserted parking area, where the snow of the weekend lay plowed in small mounds. In a moment she would be alone in a parked car with Hunter Morrison.

She shut off the engine.

Suddenly, she had no idea why she’d thought she could do this at all. Two days ago her life was on track. Today she felt as if she had no anchor and she definitely could not just sit there and start talking. She got out of the car and Hunter did the same.

The rubber soles of her boots gave her barely enough traction to keep her upright as she navigated the slippery, crunchy snow. She headed for the shoreline. Hunter’s footsteps crunched across the packed snow as he followed close behind.

She stopped a few feet short of the rocky drop-off and gazed out at the never-ending motion of the Atlantic Ocean. Hunter stopped beside her but she didn’t dare look at him.

The setting sun behind them painted a pink cast on the swells as they rose and fell and then flipped over into white caps that crashed into the jagged shoreline. The rocks below had been cleaned of snow by the salty water but could still be slippery, so she did not venture down as she used to do in the summer when she was a teenager.

The beam from the lighthouse shone fragmented across the water. The cold wind whipped at her, and exhilaration swept away all other emotions. The last time she was here in the winter she was still pregnant with Brianna.

After that, it was too cold in the winter to bring the child and they always had so many better places to spend time together. They could go to the sled hill after a snow or the pottery studio and shop, where they threw and glazed ugly pots and globs that vaguely resembled dinosaurs, and the owner fired them anyway. Of course, there was also baking cookies or learning to sew with her mother.

And when she wasn’t with her daughter, she craved to be. The hours she had to spend at work were a painful reality she knew she needed to weather.

Time to herself seemed frivolous these days and she never seemed to have enough hours in a day to come to a place so hypnotic, so meditative, to think, to hope.

Was that why she’d come today? To think? To hope?

No, she’d come to reckon the path before her, to smooth out bumps, to build bridges if she could.

Hunter put a hand on her shoulder. In the faltering light, his dark blue eyes seemed stormy, his face concerned. It was then that she realized she was shivering, her teeth were chattering and she hadn’t bothered to put her hat or gloves on before venturing out in the freezing wind. More, the sun had set and twilight would be short and the darkness harsh.

Hunter held her arm as they made their way back to the car. Once inside, she rubbed her palms together and put her hands over her complaining ears.

“Start the car.”

“What?”

He pointed to the keys still dangling from the ignition lock.

“Oh.” She turned the keys and the engine came to life. Warm air poured from the vents. They had been out near the water for less than ten minutes. Not nearly enough time for the engine to cool or for her to figure out what she had to say.

After a minute or two of listening to the heater fan, she worked on relaxing the hard knot in her chest. “Hunter, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Did you bring a chicken wing or two?”

She snuffled. “For the awkward silent moments? No, but my sister packed a bag for our dinner.”

“How is Christina?”

“She’s doing well.” How much was appropriate to share about her family, her feelings, her plans, Brianna? So she tossed the ball to him. “How was Chicago?”

“Big, exciting at times. Very different from Bailey’s Cove.”

“Wow, that was so not an answer.” She took a chance and looked at him. His brows furrowed as if thinking of something unpleasant. Was that how he remembered her?

“Why aren’t you an attorney?”

“Well, I guess I asked for that.” She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to stop the landslide that was heading rapidly directly toward her. “Can we back up for a bit?”

He grabbed a blanket from the backseat and handed it to her. “Are you hungry, Delainey?”

No, she was not hungry. Her stomach was churning and her head ached. The last thing she wanted was food—no, the second last. The last thing was to sit here and confide in a man she no longer knew.

“Sure. I could eat.”

He reached over the seat this time to pull the canvas satchel up onto the console between them. From it Delainey opened a paper bag containing three votive candles and a book of matches.

Blankets. Candles. If her sister had included condoms, one of them was going to die. She shook her head and put the candles back in the bag. The dash lights would be good enough.

Hunter went for the handle of the satchel.

“I’ll get it.” Delainey tugged the bag into her lap just in case her sister had made that very big mistake. She dug around a bit. No condoms, but Christina had made a definite statement. Delainey pulled out two submarine sandwiches and two large whole dill pickles sealed in plastic.

She handed one of each to Hunter and wondered if he saw what she saw or if she was just a frustrated single mom who had not had a man, no matter how many her mother threw at her, in a very long time.

Oh, she was so pathetic.

“How are things in Bailey’s Cove? I noticed a few stores closed.”

She felt the knot loosen at such a neutral topic and she said a silent thank-you. “The town is struggling. It’s not a new story. Young people leaving and never coming back. The tourist dollars are going anywhere but here. We’re trying to change that but slowly. We don’t want to completely lose the flavor of the town or to become a town primarily made up of people from outside the state looking for a break in the summer.”

“Wouldn’t an influx of tourists help the economy here?”

“Yes, it would, but the fear is that if too many of you people—” She paused and chanced a smile at him. When he smiled back, she turned her gaze to the light from the lighthouse out on the point. “Outsiders, you know. Too many outsiders and the town would lose control, lose many of the valuable assets that mark it as an early New England settlement.”

“I saw the church. The town has done wonders restoring it.”

“The town didn’t do it. Our museum curator, Heather Loch, did it with her family’s money. There’s a great story there involving a pirate and a skeleton bricked up in a wall.”

“Intriguing. Tell me about it.”

“That story is bigger than a sandwich in a car.”

“Were people digging for gold again like they did in the 1950s?” Hunter asked, and then took a bite of his sandwich.

“A bit, but some of the people around here found something better than gold. They found long-lost relatives. Anyway, the Pirate’s Roost, which you probably saw on your way into town, is new, one of the first town improvements. My sister has taken possession of the three Victorian houses on Treacher Avenue. She’ll turn them into a bed-and-breakfast.” She took a nibble of the cheese and lettuce sticking out from the side of her sandwich to keep herself from babbling.