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Twenty-Five Years Ago
Joseph Keating wasn’t exactly pleased with his twenty-one-year-old daughter Brittany’s decision to spend the summer in Boston. To him, a Bar Harbor “born-and-raised” who’d never traveled much of anywhere, Boston was half the distance to the moon away, and the urgency reflected in his eyes spoke of his fear that Brittany would never come back. Brittany tried her darnedest to console him but found soon that her words weren’t enough. It was a father’s duty to worry, and it was a child’s duty to grow up. Those were the facts.
“You’ve always had a wild streak,” her father finally said, disgruntled as he watched her slip her suitcase into the back of her best friend Mary’s clunky second-hand car. “I’ve always known the day would come when I had to say goodbye.”
“Dad, you’re so dramatic,” Brittany teased, falling into the familiar warmth of his bear hug. “It’s only two months, and it’s not enough time for me to develop a Boston accent.”
Truth be told, Brittany’s heart lifted with the volatility of freedom as Mary pressed her foot on the gas. Together, they raced out of that tiny town on the coast of Maine, away from the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery, away from her responsibilities at the family-run inn, away from wiping tables and vacuuming under beds and from wearing that ridiculous maid’s uniform.
“When will you tell your dad that you don’t want to take over the Keating Inn when you’re older?” Mary asked as they made their way further south.
“The man’s delusional if he thinks I just want to pick up where he left off. The inn was him and my Uncle Adam’s dream, not mine.”
“But what do you want to do?”
June sunlight caught the tops of barns as they whipped past, careening toward a summer they would never forget.
“One thing I’ve adored about the Keating Inn.” Brittany began, “Is picking out some of the furnishings for the rooms. Dad let me take over that portion of the business a few years back, and I researched antiques and vintage furnishings until my head spun. And now, I have a firm grasp of what to look for in historical pieces and how much they’re worth.”
Brittany let her head drift back against the headrest as her thoughts spun toward this impossible dream.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever have the money to put together a space for a little antique shop,” Brittany breathed. “But I can’t imagine a better idea than building a business from my deep-rooted passion.”
**
BRITTANY AND MARY HAD a two-month sublease in an apartment in East Boston. They’d been hired to work at a popular shoreline restaurant, which always looked for extra staff members during the heavier tourist season. Over those first few days, Brittany was delirious with all the new sights and sounds as she learned the ropes at the restaurant (along with who to joke with and who to avoid and who was willing to go out dancing afterward) and how to dig into the Boston scene. After twenty-one years in Bar Harbor, her heart and mind were more than ready for the renewed energy of a brand-new world.
It was this bright-eyed optimism that opened her heart to love.
Conner Radley was a handsome twenty-four-year-old fisherman who’d been born and raised in Boston and hired at his father’s lobster fisherman company. Because of the nature of his job, his muscles were curved, thick, and refined, and his skin glowed with a healthy tan. When he first offered to buy Brittany a drink at a little seaside bar after Brittany’s shift at the restaurant, Brittany’s knees knocked together fearfully.
“I felt it— the thing they always say you’ll feel when you meet the one,” Brittany explained to Mary later that night after she returned home, bleary-eyed from one too many beers.
“All right, honey. Just don’t get carried away,” Mary teased her.
“I swear, Mary. This is different. When he looks at me, I can see our entire future and picture our babies.”
“Your dad will kill you if you stay in Boston forever.” Mary grabbed a large bag of potato chips, yanked it open, and placed a delicate chip on her tongue.
“Who knows...” Brittany returned, throwing her hand into the bag. She was a ferociously hungry, tipsy twenty-one-year-old girl with too much on her mind, and chips hadn’t yet begun to cling to her hips. “Maybe he’ll love me so much that he’ll come with me back to Bar Harbor. Or maybe... he’ll never call me at all.”
“Either story is currently possible,” Mary pointed out. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out.”
Even with all the imagination in the world, Brittany couldn’t have written out the beauty of her and Conner’s love story. What began at that seaside bar flourished into long nights of whispered words, kisses beneath the moonlight, and late mornings of sleeping in (often resulting in Conner getting into wicked trouble with his father for missing his lobster fishing shift).
When the time came for Brittany to return to Bar Harbor, she spent all night weeping alongside a sleeping Conner, wishing for a different world. The restaurant didn’t have any shifts left for the extra girls they’d hired over the summer, and if she was brutally honest with herself, she ached with homesickness. Mary already had her bags packed, ready to flee back to their Bar Harbor coast. Brittany knew that her love would remain here— toiling until it died altogether.
“Come with me.” She whispered the words through the grey light of the morning, mere hours before Mary expected her back at their apartment for a final clean-up and check-out. “I don’t know if you know this, but there are lobsters in Bar Harbor, and in fact, it’s one of the things we’re most known for.”
It was like pressing fast-forward on life.
Within the next month, Conner Radley’s father suited him up with a job with a friend-of-a-friend in Bar Harbor’s lobster fishing ring. Conner moved into a studio apartment in downtown Bar Harbor, one with a mattress still on the ground and a bunch of boxes stacked in the corner. What did Brittany care about what his place looked like? She was head-over-heels for this man, and he’d decided to abandon his life altogether and build one there, with her.
There was just one problem with all of this.
Brittany hadn’t yet gotten up the courage to introduce Conner Radley to her father, the at-times-difficult Joseph Keating. Since Brittany’s arrival back to Bar Harbor, her father had pushed her deeper into the Keating Inn, even as her simmering hatred for a career in hospitality grew. Her father also tried to have professional meetings with her about the future of the inn, ones that she often daydreamed through or flat-out skipped.
In Mid-October, as violent purple clouds descended over Bar Harbor, Conner surprised Brittany outside the Keating Inn at the end of her shift. She rushed to leap into the front of his truck and press her lips against his, shivering with longing. But instead of driving them immediately back to his place, Conner said he had a “surprise” for her, one that couldn’t wait.
On the southern-most tip of downtown’s Main Street sat the law offices of Goggins & Stanley. The same two persnickety and old-fashioned lawyers had resided in that historic building, making fat stacks of cash year after year, since Brittany could remember.
“What the heck are we doing here, Conner?”
Conner stopped the engine and wiggled his eyebrows. “You know I deliver lobsters exclusively to Goggins’ and Stanley’s wives.”
“I didn’t. But what’s that got to do with—”
Conner cut her words off. “The wives are forcing them to retire this fall,” he informed her simply. “Mrs. Goggins wants to move to Florida, and Mrs. Stanley wants to spend more time with the grandchildren.”
“And?”
“Come on, Brittany.” Conner wrapped his strong hands around the base of her head and gazed into her eyes lovingly. “This building was built in the late 1800s during the whaling boom. It has more cultural significance than even the courthouse. And by the beginning of December, it’ll be empty, and it will be ready for a brand-new business. And the way Mrs. Goggins and Mrs. Stanley talked about it... They would be very interested in hearing your plan for the place.”
Brittany’s lips parted in surprise. Never in all her days had someone gone so far out of their way for her and her silly little dream.
“They would, of course, maintain ownership over the building,” Conner continued, filling in the blanks. “But they want a local business person to take over. And the way Mrs. Goggins talks...”
“She was always more gossipy than Mrs. Stanley,” Brittany quipped.
“The fact that their husbands were the go-to lawyers in town means that several people have turned their backs on them. One person would use Goggins to sue a friend; that friend would use Stanley to sue the guy back... It turned into a mess that left them with very few friends.”
“But plenty of money,” Brittany added.
Conner’s hands wrapped tenderly around hers as he blinked his large, hopeful eyes. “Tell me you’ll think it over.”
“I have to talk to my father,” Brittany told him simply, her shoulders falling forward. “He has this image of us working at the Keating Inn, side-by-side.”
“All you’ve done is complain about that old place since I met you,” Conner said with a laugh. “Just promise me you’ll get up the nerve to talk to him about it. You owe it to yourself. And you owe it to our future.”
The conversation with Joseph Keating didn’t exactly go “well,” per se. Her father’s eyes avoided Brittany’s as she outlined her business plan and strategy for paying off the loan she required to pay the initial rent and fill the building with antiques. She’d never lived anywhere but the Keating House on the Keating property (besides Boston for two months), she’d saved up most of her Keating Inn pay checks and tips. Still, it wasn’t enough for a young woman of twenty-one to open up an antique shop. Not even with all the talent in the world.
Joseph Keating’s parting words were simply: “Let me think about it.” And then, he added, “I guess it’s about time I met that boyfriend of yours. Why don’t you have him over for dinner?”
Two weeks later, only minutes before Conner arrived to meet Joseph Keating for the first time, Joe gave his daughter a bank slip which read that he’d deposited a twenty-five-thousand-dollar loan into her account. Brittany gaped at the number, one with far more zeros than she’d ever seen in her life, and thanked her father with stuttered words and many tears.
“Why did you change your mind?” Brittany asked him after their hug broke.
“I recognized me and your Uncle Adam in your eyes,” her father told her. “I realized this meant just as much, if not more than the Keating Inn ever did to us. I couldn’t stand in the way of that. Not when I knew I could help.”
Brittany stood in the Keating House foyer watching as the love of her life and her father locked eyes and shook hands, performing the dramatic ritual of men. Conner had brought a half-decent bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers, which he handed to Brittany tenderly. Still, a darkness unfurled from the back alleys of Joseph Keating’s eyes. From the moment they met, it seemed clear that Joe didn’t trust Conner whatsoever. It was as though he smelled something on him, a sort of sour flavoring that Brittany didn’t catch.
Ever the optimist, Brittany pushed them through dinner with bright conversation, speaking excitedly with her hands, so much so that she nearly toppled a glass of wine. They ate salmon that was seasoned with lemon, mashed potatoes and broccoli, and all the while, Joseph continued to gape at Conner with a mix of distrust and disbelief. By contrast, Conner was on his best behavior, asking all the appropriate questions, performing the act of “good boyfriend meeting the father for the first time.”
To distract her father, Brittany told Conner with enthusiasm about moving forward with the deal for the Main Street building. “I already have a plan drawn up for that main room,” she stated. ”And I’ve researched a number of local antique auctions to get myself started. Maybe you two can come with me? Help me lift some of the heavier furniture?”
Joseph Keating’s smile waned. Conner arched an eyebrow as he forked a white wad of mashed potatoes across his tongue.
“I’m sure one of us could help you out, Brittany,” Joe told her. “We’ll make it work.”
“I’m happy to do it,” Conner returned, his tone sharp.
The men puffed out their chests almost menacingly. Brittany had never sensed this “territorial” nature in Conner before. She wanted to point out how silly he was acting, that these weren’t the regency times— that she had no dowry and no real prospects to trade over to the interested marital party.
The three of them made their way through the rest of dinner. Joe half-mentioned something about dessert, but Brittany jumped at the chance to excuse herself from dessert. “I’m not eating sugar right now,” she announced.
Joe looked relieved. Conner jumped to his feet and headed for the bathroom, leaving Brittany and her father in a tunnel of tension. Brittany twiddled her thumbs as the clock on the wall performed its sixty-second dance.
“Are you sure about this, Brittany?” Her father suddenly asked it, point-blank.
“Am I sure about what?”
“About...” Joe cast his eyes toward the gloomy hallway where Conner had disappeared.
“Conner and I are in love,” Brittany hissed. “You were always so resistant to anyone I brought home. Boyfriends or friends or even study partners for that matter.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” Brittany told him firmly. “I need you to give Conner a chance. He moved here for me, and he will be around a long, long time.”
The bathroom door shrieked, and, a moment later, Conner appeared in the foyer, reaching for their coats.
“Are you ready to hit the road?” Brittany called.
The color drained from Joe’s cheeks. He stood and followed Brittany like a lost dog, all the way to the foyer. Brittany pulled the zipper of her coat to her chin and thanked her father for dinner and all of his help.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told him, indicating, with a slight hesitation, that she’d made her choice. Probably, she and Conner would soon have enough set-aside to get a one-bedroom apartment of their own. She knew everything would work out.
And she hoped that Joe and Conner would someday find common ground.
Conner and Brittany drove back downtown to meet up with Brittany’s friends in one of the local bars. Since his arrival, Conner’s charm and good looks had placed him within the folds of Brittany’s social life. He joked around with Brittany’s guy friends and was protective and warm with Brittany around her girlfriends. Not one of them had pulled Brittany aside to say, “Are you sure?” In fact, more than one of Brittany’s girlfriends had said, “Should I go to Boston to get my own Conner?”
Conner stopped the engine outside the bar and blinked through the darkness before them. The music filtered out through the frame of the building. Brittany began to ask if he was all right, but before she could finish the sentence, he lifted a hand and smashed it against the side of the steering wheel so that the truck quaked beneath them.
Brittany had never seen Conner so violent. She placed her hand over her mouth to suppress her harsh squeal of surprise. When she blinked over at Conner, she found his face blood red.
“What the hell is wrong with that guy?” Conner demanded, speaking still toward the front glass of the truck.
Brittany’s heart pumped with sorrow. Slowly, she lifted a hand toward Conner’s, her fingers quivering with surprise. She wanted to tell him it would get better; she wanted to tell him this was only the beginning of the rest of their beautiful lives together. She wanted to tell him that Joseph Keating could be difficult but was almost always worth it.
But instead, Conner whipped his face toward her, his eyes as hungry as a wolf’s. “You want to tell me it’ll all be okay? Is that what you want to say?”
Conner had never used such a harsh, sarcastic tone with her. She yanked her head back as shock shivered in her stomach.
“Conner...”
“No,” Conner told her firmly. “Don’t. The way you and your father looked at me in there, it was like I was being picked apart for everything I stand for. No, I don’t come from money. My father was only a fisherman, and I’m the same, nothing more than a fisherman.”
“Conner, you know I don’t care about that,” Brittany told him.
“You? Growing up in that big house on the hill? You care about that much more than you know,” he told her. “And you’re lying to yourself if you don’t see it.”
“Conner, I love you, and I want to build a life with you. I...”
“I don’t even know if it was worth it,” Conner spat. “Coming all the way to this bottom-of-the-barrel town. You don’t even know the kind of women I could have had, and I could have had anyone I pleased. And I came here, and I came here for you.”
Brittany kicked out into the dark chill and hustled, bleary-eyed, for the back door of the bar. She ran inside, shivering, on the hunt for a friend, anyone to curl against as she shook against his frantic and hurtful words. She saw her friends in the corner, in the midst of a comical uproarious laugh. They looked like they belonged in a beer commercial.
But before she could reach them, a warm hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. When she turned back, her eyes found the glorious love reflected back in Conner’s eyes. The monster from the truck was no more. Her lip quivered as she dropped against him, allowing herself to be wrapped up in a hug.
“Why are you crying?” he whispered into her ear as she shook against him. “We’re going to work this out, Brittany. I love you. I love you more than I ever thought was possible to love anyone. I’m scared, that’s all.”