MIA SAT IN her darkening living room. Monique would be shocked at how sparkly and orderly her place looked. She had worked fiercely to clean every trace of Daniel MacCarey from her house.
Conversation fragments kept coming to her mind from the call he had made to her from his car, like I am so sorry and for the best and if there is anything I can do.
Now that she could think clearly, yes, there was something he could do. He could return her building to her. He could love her.
But what she had wished they could have had been a fantasy and the less she thought about him, the better.
Her phone rang. Monique. The perfect distraction.
“Hey, Monique, how’s it going?”
“He’s packing.” Her friend could hardly speak for the tears in her voice. “He’s...he’s...”
“Who is packing, sweetie? Lenny?”
“Grand-père. I stopped over there after work and he’s going to Florida.” Monique only called grandfather by the French term when she was profoundly sad, like when her mother died and left the two of them alone. “It’s the beginning of the end.”
“Monique, is he going for a visit?”
“He’s visiting the Kellys. Says he wants to see how the other half lives.”
“I’m coming over.”
“It’s all right. Lenny’s coming over for his dinner break.”
Mia could hear her friend trying to compose herself.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?”
“I don’t want to scare Lenny. We’re a pretty intimidating pair. I think he took so long to ask me out because he knew he’d be dating a woman and her fierce protector friend.”
“You’re afraid I’ll beat him up if I come over.”
“Something like that. If he’s not breaking up with me, he’s in for a big test. He gets to see me all weepy-eyed and scared.”
“Well, for sure if that scary sight doesn’t send him running in the opposite direction, he’s in for the long haul.”
Monique bubbled a laugh. “I’m so glad I called you.”
“Did your granddad say when he’s leaving?”
“No. He needs to finish helping on Jim O’Connell’s boat, so he doesn’t have a definite date.”
“I’m so sorry, Monique. Are you sure I can’t do anything for you?”
“You already have.”
“Call me back if you change your mind and want me to come over. And about your granddad, maybe he’s scared, too. To paraphrase a good friend of mine, I cannot see Edwin Beaudin sitting under a palm tree with an umbrella drink in his hand.”
“Oh, Mia, I hope you’re right.”
“Now go blow your nose and put a cold washcloth on your pretty face.”
As soon as she hung up, Mia pushed up from the couch and headed for the door. She couldn’t fix her own heart. She couldn’t help with Lenny, but she knew where Edwin Beaudin hung out this time of day with his cronies. Maybe she could go swat some sense into him, or at least feel things out.
In ten minutes, parked in front of Braven’s Tavern, Mia leaned against her SUV, looking into the darkness across the street. Pirate’s Roost would one day attract tourists, provide a few modest jobs and be her anchor. She hoped.
She shook her head.
Well, she couldn’t fix the Roost right now. She strode across the quiet street with purpose and opened the old door to Braven’s, one of those heavy, solid wood doors that held the mystery close until you pushed on the worn brass handles and let yourself inside. The tavern was almost as old as Liam Bailey’s building. Another town treasure serving beer for almost two hundred years.
Inside, there were seven fishermen at the U-shaped bar, three at the bottom of the U and two on each leg. Each with an empty seat or two between himself and the men on either side. “In case a good-looking woman comes along. I don’t want to be sittin’ next to an old bag of wind when I can be sittin’ next to her,” Edwin Beaudin had explained to a twelve-year-old Mia, only he and most old-time Mainers pronounced “her” as a version of “h-ah.” He had gotten a swat from his daughter for such an explanation, but that didn’t make it any less the truth.
The arrangement worked out well tonight. She took the seat on the bottom of the U between Edwin Beaudin and Whister Carmody, ex-brother-in-law of the widowed cat lady who pestered Monique with her fake Persian rug and cat poop.
Both men turned to see who had come to invade the space between them. As one they grinned at her. Whister quickly turned back to his beer, red-faced. Edwin grabbed her in a big hug that made her wonder if her ribs would survive.
“What brings you down here, a beauty among all these hairy beasts?”
“I came to see you, Edwin Beaudin.”
Edwin took a big gulp of his beer. “Well, I’d like to be all kinds of flattered, but what’d I do?”
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, clearly happy to be serving someone that didn’t have bushy whiskers and rumpled clothing.
“Whatever white wine you have open, Michael.”
“My kind of lady. Not makin’ any trouble.”
She didn’t take offence at that. Michael Erickson had been giving her a hard time since they were in the second grade.
“How’s Francine?” she asked.
“The sweetest woman on the face of the earth,” he said and went to get her wine.
Mia sipped her wine and listened as the fishermen talked about what they had brought in that day or hadn’t. Edwin told her his granddaughter could be expecting another lobster soon. Jim O’Donnell was paying him in the catch of the day.
“I could sell ’em, but I get the best kick outta seein’ that grand-daught-ah o’ mine smile when I give ’em to her.”
“I hear you’re going down to Florida,” Mia said and carefully watched the look on Edwin’s face.
He twitched a little and rocked on his stool. “I gotta check out my options, eh. Wint-ahs are hard on a’ old guy like me.”
The conflicted look on has face told Mia he wasn’t set on anything. That should be encouraging to Monique.
She leaned forward and back to see all seven of the men at the U-shaped bar. “Have any of you ever left Maine?”
“Ah-yuh.” Charlie Finn around the corner from Edwin wrinkled up his face in distaste. “My wife made me go to Chicago for our honeymoon—in January. Colder than a— Oh, well, no palm trees growin’ there, I can tell you.”
The other guys laughed.
“I had to go to some tiny lake ne-ah Bemidji, Minnesota, with mine.” Barrel-chested Harley Davies sat near the end of one of the legs of the U, the closed end that abutted the wall, and he spoke without moving his darkly whiskered face from its position of hanging over his beer. “I still don’t know exactly whe-ah that town is. Stayed with a bunch of her cousins at a lake cabin. Good thing I didn’t mind sand in my bed sheets. Bless h-ah, she loved me for goin’ and that was enough for me.”
Heads nodded and beer got sipped.
“Almost left once.” Short, round, white-whisker-faced Bill Schroeder said, piping up from two stools past Whister. “One of my daught-ahs thought we should all go to New Aw-leans for her weddin’. Convinced her we could put on a much prettier show if we didn’t have to pay for all those hotel rooms. Gas wasn’t nothin’ then.”
“Wasn’t that something? Imagine how good life would be if we paid a quarter a gallon again.”
That raised a row of cheers.
“What about you?” Harley leaned forward from his far-flung stool and asked her.
“Ah-yuh, I left Maine for almost six years. In Boston, the university, a job, you know.” She couldn’t help but think she’d be down there still if she hadn’t been downsized out of two jobs and hadn’t failed at romance.
“How’d that go?” he asked.
“I’m back, aren’t I?”
That got a round of chuckles and more sipping.
Mia drank more of her wine because she was getting woefully behind. “Fellas, I had a lot of time to think about what’s important about where I live and I gotta say, it’s Maine things, the families raising children with good stout values, the young people who stay here because it’s home, and it’s you guys and all the older generation.”
There was almost an embarrassed silence. She knew these guys loved compliments as much as anyone, but they had the hardest time taking them.
“Older generation?” This was the bartender. “What about us youngun’s?”
“And who’s you callin’ old?” Whister Carmody did have a voice.
“Sorry about the old crack,” she said as she put a hand on the bar near him. “You have all lived here long enough to be the polished gems of the town.”
“Ah-yuh, that’s us. Gems,” said Stan from the stool around the corner to the right.
“Hey, Edwin, you an opal or a topaz?” Harley called.
“He’s an opal. He’s soft in the head,” white-whiskered Bill piped in. “Me, I’m a nice shiny piece of quartz.”
“Naw, you’re a big old chunk of watermelon tourmaline,” said Charlie around the left corner.
“If I’m a watermelon, you must be—”
“All right. All right.” Mia stood on the rung of her bar stool and raised both hands.
“Careful, Miss,” Michael said as he leaned over the bar in front of her. “If you incite a riot here, I’m gonna have to charge you for a round just to quiet ’em down.”
They all cheered.
She sat back down. “You’re gonna get me into trouble here, Michael.”
“So, how’s that coming over they-ah?” Edwin tossed a thumb over his shoulder toward Pirate’s Roost as he spoke, and Mia felt a pang that she was in no position to hire him and may never be.
“Well, we are trying to figure out who that was in the wall.” Mia stretched and looked exaggeratedly around at them all. “I don’t suppose any of you were around when that guy got himself walled up.”
“Bill was,” Whister said without missing a beat, and Mia knew he was kidding. Apparently when you got him into the conversation it got easier for him.
“Watch out, Whiss, or I’ll collect on that bet I won off you in 1898,” Bill shot back.
Laughter ensued and the guys ordered another round. When the bartender brought her wine he said, “You should come more often. A good-looking woman is very good for business.”
“So you people are pretty hush-hush over there.” A new voice was heard from. Earl Smith, the only man who could be considered skinny in this group, spoke from the opposite end of the U from Harley. “Tell us wha’s going on ’cause if we have to wait for our wives to find out from those two at the yarn shop, we get way behind. We did hear about that man who keeps coming around from the university.”
“Yes, that’s Dr. Daniel MacCarey. He’s a forensic anthropologist.”
“Like that TV show where they study bones,” Whiss said.
“He’s the one who’s going to tell us exactly how old the bones are.”
“Is he a Maine boy?” Bill asked.
“I didn’t ask him.”
“He’s not bad-looking. You might want to snap him up if he is,” Edwin said from her elbow.
“I guess I’ll have to check and see if he’s a Maine boy. But hey, you guys, I’m looking for information about what would make life around here better for people.”
“We were kind of looking forward to that place of yours getting finished, eh,” Harley said as he looked up from his beer.
“Wouldn’t have to drive so far from town to take our wives to a nice dinner,” Stan added with enthusiasm that was seconded by some of the others.
That surprised Mia. She had no idea these men even thought of such things.
“Or maybe a date, eh, Whiss?” Bill teased the other man.
Mia expected Whister to dive into his beer mug, but he grinned. She wondered who the lucky lady was, but she didn’t want to push his burst of extroversion past its limits by asking.
“A hand of cards in a nice warm place in the wintertime, maybe after a warm breakfast and a good cup of coffee.” Harley looked as if he were daydreaming as he spoke. “That might be good.”
She thought of the big windows she would like to have put in the front of the restaurant and the smaller ones in the back. They’d let in a lot of light. She’d planned on supplementing central heat with a large stone fireplace. It should be cozy.
She could even see these guys at a couple tables in the corner in the back laughing, harassing the waitstaff for more coffee. But what if this was the kind of thing that kept them here. Kept the heritage in Maine.
If she ever got it built.
“So what do you think?” Whiss leaned toward her. “Are you gonna make that place over there work for us?”
She hadn’t thought about breakfast, or card games.
“So wha’ if it’s that pirate you’ve got over there in that wall?” Skinny Earl spoke before she could answer. He had moved down to sit at the corner of the bar next to Charlie Finn.
She laughed. “Then I named the Pirate’s Roost well.” If she could deflect him, that might be very helpful for the peace in the town.
She turned away. “You haven’t said much, Mr. Beaudin, what would you like to see the Roost offer?”
“I don’t much care,” Monique’s granddad said and it was almost a mumble.
“Hey, Stan, maybe you could’a had the baptism celebration there for that surprise grandchild of yours,” Earl said louder than he needed to be heard by everyone in the bar.
“Stan, I heard he’s the cutest grandbaby ever born,” Mia said because she knew Earl had just shot a dig at Stan.
“You must have been talking to my wife,” Stan said, maintaining his jovial tone. “Strappin’ boy if I ever heard one.”
“Gave his opinion several times in church that day. Make any granddad proud,” Edwin added.
“So can we come across the street and have a look?” Earl seemed to be feeling his beer and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Mia wanted to talk to Edwin more, but decided the best way to get away from Earl’s questions was to remove herself. She swallowed her last sip of wine and slid off her bar stool.
“I had a great time, fellas. Do you mind if I come back, say Saturday?”
“Anytime, Ms. Park-ah,” and several variations thereof came from the patrons at the bar.
“See ya, Mia,” the bartender added as she heaved open the heavy wooden door.
She hurried out into the cool air. A good night for a walk. She patted her neon green car on the hood and hiked on up the street toward home. One of the great things about a small town. There were a lot of places one can walk to and from.
The closer she got to home, the more the night cleared her head.
Edwin Beaudin seemed to have been prepared for her subtle inquiries, or maybe she hadn’t been as clever as she had wanted to be. She had wanted to be able to report to Monique about which way the wind was blowing with her granddad.
She thought of the darkened windows in the Pirate’s Roost and wondered if she would ever make them bright with life, if folks would ever play a hand of cards or celebrate a baptism there. If they could, would people like Edwin stay?
She smiled when she thought of Stan’s sweet cherub grandbaby. He was the cutest thing ever. Even Father Murray didn’t judge a child for being conceived before marriage.
Her thoughts traveled to another time. Two hundred years ago Archibald Fletcher’s daughter might have married under similar circumstances. If the woman had been in love with Liam Bailey and then married so quickly after Bailey disappeared, maybe there had been a baby involved.
If there had been a baby and if that baby was born, say, six months after the wedding, Liam Bailey could indeed have an heir. Holy cow. Tomorrow she’d have to check the records at the church.
She hurried the rest of the way up the hill to her house. When she got there she sat on the porch swing and looked out over the town and the people she loved. Dappled moonlight shined through the pine boughs and stars twinkled overhead.
Eventually the cold slipped inside her coat and she went indoors for a long warm shower. That and the wine should make her sleepy.
When she finally lay in her bed, she couldn’t keep her eyes closed.
Could she really keep people here if she got Pirate’s Roost open? Could the Roost give the residents of Bailey’s Cove a place to hang out, a place to gather?
Did Liam Bailey have a child?
Could she find out in the church records? Luckily, the priest had kept them in the rectory in the 1950s because the church was so small. That kept them safe from the fire that nearly destroyed the old church. She needed the wedding date...birth date...
Sleep. She needed sleep.
An hour went by and all she could do was think and plan. Try as she might, she could not reckon how she could talk Markham Construction into opening up a new spot for her or if the bank would restructure for her so she could lower her payments.
Sleep!
No. Use.
A good run would help her sort out her jumbled thoughts. She could pick up her car so tomorrow when she was too tired to drag her pitiful self around town, she’d have wheels.
She donned her running gear and jogged down Blueberry Avenue’s hill in the twin beams of her headlamp cap. There were no streetlights on the side streets, but she’d soon be down on the main street and there would be less chance of twisting her ankle or tripping over a night creature. She and a raccoon had almost collided on one such restless night. She wouldn’t soon forget the challenge in those piercing eyes.
As she turned on Church Street, the crisp night air in her face made for a wonderful run. To the old church and back home was her six-mile route. Tonight it would be easy.
The old brown dog that roamed the streets of Bailey’s Cove and that everyone fed met up with her at the corner and loped without effort at her side. He had gotten left behind by someone passing through town, maybe on purpose. He never seemed to pine for whoever left him, he just adapted. Maybe he wasn’t left, maybe he chose to stay.
“Hey, Brownie. You can’t sleep, either?”
The dog trotted on silently, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
“Well, I’m glad for the company.”
She passed the post office. Bailey’s Cove was one of the lucky towns. They still had their own tidy little redbrick post office. After the post office came the hardware store and the small building with paper covering the windows that used to have a deli on the ground floor. She wondered if the people who had owned the deli had left town yet. Rumor was they were going to find jobs that didn’t suck the life out of them.
She wished them well.
As she and Brownie trotted closer to her car, she noticed there was light coming from the windows of Pirate’s Roost, bright light. It was then she realized the car parked on the street across from hers belonged to Daniel.
Her heart thudded hard as she stopped close to the dirty windowpane and Brownie ran on. “See you later, boy.”
Daniel stepped into the half-demolished doorway of the back room holding two of the pieces of granite in his gray-gloved hands. He didn’t look up at her and was trying to see if the pieces fit together. He was reassembling the crypt.
The backlight put him in silhouette, chiseling his features and his fine body into art.
Mia remained perfectly still, so as not to attract his attention, watching as he put one of the pieces on a tarp he had spread out and picked up another. She wondered if he wanted any help.
Suddenly and with only subconscious permission, her hand leaped out and rapped hard on the window.
Silly hand. She stuck it in the pocket of her warm-up suit as the other waved at Daniel, who was squinting to see what mad person was outside disturbing his work at two in the morning.
She let herself in and Daniel met her halfway across the front section, granite pieces in his hands.
“Good morning?” She smiled at him.
“And you’re up in the middle of the night because?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I jogged over to get my car and saw the lights on here.” I wanted to see you, to kiss you and have you hold me in your arms and see where our feelings take us. “And you?”
“Working the 3-D puzzle.”
“Because you always work at two in the morning?”
He put the pieces of granite into one hand and reached the other out to her. When he lightly touched her cheek with the back of one gloved finger, it felt like warm silk touching her and she closed her eyes for longer than a blink.
She had the feeling his hands gave his deepest desires away, too. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. That did not help quench the desire inside her.
“Couldn’t find a way to get to sleep, either. Do you want to help me?” He gestured toward the other room and she followed him in.
“An insomniac’s dream.” She pulled a pair of gloves from the box on the corner tarp. He had set up two lamps and spread out the tarp for serious work.
She hunkered down near where he had separated out the most promising shards.
“Have you found anything?”
He picked up several pieces and crouched beside her. “I started collecting pieces with discoloration on them, but they’re harder to sort out because I think there is discoloration from more than one cause. See the different shades of brown.”
“Where do I start?” Her breath trembled in and out as she tried to function, to think when his body heat seeped into her, his warm scent filled her. Where do I start? To find the strength to resist her feelings for an unavailable man.
“Chances are, when the stones were knocked loose, they flew as a group. So if you pick up stones from the same general area, that might help find matches.”
His eyes moved over her, caressing her, stoking the already blazing fire. Where do I start? To begin to dig him out of her heart, because that is where he was firmly lodged.
“Are you trying to put together the whole thing or just the area with markings?”
“I think the markings will tell us all we need to know for now.”
They sat, hunkered down or wandered, picking up pieces of the tomb and patiently fitting them together.
“Mia, is there a possibility you could move Pirate’s Roost to a different location?” he asked after they had worked in silence for a while.
“It seems like such a simple solution, but I passed the point of no return on this place a long time ago.”
* * *
DANIEL SAT ON the plastic tarp and listened to what Mia had to say. If he was going to destroy her plans, he needed to know how much damage he was doing and if he could help.
“I put a lot of effort into planning Pirate’s Roost. I made and revised a business plan about ten times. I chose the site by looking at traffic flow in the area, the visual appeal and the view, of course.” He remembered that view of the harbor, of the sea birds soaring and the bustle. Great view for a restaurant. “I have given everything I have to Pirate’s Roost, and have too few resources left to move anywhere else.”
She did not seem embarrassed by what she was saying, but sadness was something he knew well, and she radiated hopeless loss at this moment.
“You did everything right.”
“Everything except check the walls for skeletons.”
He studied her face and it wasn’t hard to see there was more. “Tell me the rest of it.”
She looked down at the two pieces of granite in her hands and after another moment, nodded.
“I got a building big enough to do the job. Made sure there was ample parking. Lined up money from the historical society, local citizens, two banks via the small business association, even my granddad has chipped in a little of his savings.”
She dipped her chin.
“What were you hoping for? Not the business, but what did you really want to do with this place?”
She shook her head and turned away.
He pushed up from the floor and pulled her into his arms. She came willingly. He knew she would, and how much of a cad did that make him?
He kissed her silky hair. “Tell me.”
“I want them to stay. I want the families who breathe life into Bailey’s Cove to stay. I want the young people with their imagination and drive. I want the retirees, the people who are the living history of the town to stay and to hand their wisdom and legends down to the next generation.”
He held her against his chest and let her talk.
“I didn’t even know how much until I sat down and started listening to them. I knew I wanted to be here because Bailey’s Cove is a paradise of the normal and...and...I don’t know. I love life here.”
She took a slow breath and continued. “If the folks of Bailey’s Cove don’t reinvent this town, there are only two choices. The town continues to fade away or the outside world moves in and has it their way.”
She leaned back and looked up at him.
He picked up the tail of the long red scarf she always seemed to be wearing. Lady in Red, he thought and the song begin to play inside his head. When he started to sway, she looked up at him.
A smile curved her lips and lit her face, made her more beautiful than he had ever seen her.
“What are we dancing to?”
He brushed her nose with the tail of her scarf and told her.
She put her arms around his neck and her cheek against his and they danced to the creaking of the old building. Daniel had never heard more beautiful music.
“Thank you.” Her whisper brushed his ear and he wondered if he could let himself love her, and if he did, could he keep her from loving him?
And he wondered how many ways he could let himself break her heart before he had to walk away from her and stay away.
“I think the music stopped,” he said as he stepped back.
“Does that mean get to work, slacker?”
“I don’t think I’d have used the term slacker, but it fits.”
After a few minutes of studying the pieces with markings she looked thoughtfully over at him. “What do you think we’ll find if we get all the pieces together?”
“That’s one of the things I like best about this science. Sometimes we aren’t looking for a specific answer. Sometimes we’re just searching for whatever might be there. One thing’s for sure, whoever wielded that hammer after the bones were removed did more damage than necessary to break the tomb apart.”
“Stupid hammer has caused me all sorts of trouble. Maybe the person using it was mad because there was no treasure here.”
“Tomb robbers have all sorts of motives. Sometimes it’s just to destroy things.”
She held up a hand, came closer and whispered, “Did you hear that?”
He listened. “Sounds like old building noises.”
“I know this old building. There’s no wind and it’s not cold enough to make her wood creak like that. It sounds like someone is walking around upstairs.”
He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “We’re not alone.”
She giggled and huddled closer. “Oh, Danny, you’ve got to save me.”
Sudden pain shot through him. He stepped quickly away and clenched his fists.
It was all happening again. Sammy’s face as they put the tiny boy into another scary, noisy piece of high-tech medical equipment. Mandy pleading, “Danny, you’ve got to help me find some way to save him. There must be something we can do. He’s only a baby, Danny.”
Then Mandy trying her best not to lay blame exactly where it belonged.
On him.