A gray drizzle softened the edges of the city. Quinn huddled under the overhang, savoring the chill in the air. At the far end of the overhang, two other residents, both in blue scrubs like him, smoked cigarettes, their voices muted. He pressed his cell phone to his ear and listened to the rhythmic purr of the phone ringing on the other end.
After a few rings, a woman’s voice reached him: “Cookie’s, how can I help you?” He recognized her voice. She’d answered the last time he’d phoned, too—and that time she’d identified the store as Torelli’s by mistake. She must have rehearsed her lines since then, because she said the right name this time.
“Hey. Is Maeve there?”
“Just a minute.”
He waited, watching tiny raindrops glisten like dewdrops in the hair on his forearm. Then the voice he wanted to hear reached him: “Hello?”
“Maeve. It’s Quinn.”
An SUV cruising down Cambridge Street hit a puddle, spraying water toward the sidewalk. Quinn took a quick step to the left and the water missed him. Years ago, he’d been able to evade linesmen racing toward him on the field; now he evaded cars hitting puddles. He still had the moves.
“Hi,” she said. He might be imagining it, but her voice sounded warm and welcoming.
“Those cookies you gave me last night were great. No, better than great. The best cookies I’ve ever eaten.” That was no exaggeration. It had taken him nearly a half hour to eat them. He’d nibbled them slowly, one luscious bite at a time. Like a wine expert, he’d tasted them mindfully, trying to divine the mix of flavors in each mouthful: sweet, spicy, crumbly, crunchy, chewy.
“Can I put that in an advertisement?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll be your pitchman. Give me a sandwich sign and I’ll march up and down Mass Avenue.”
“I’m not planning to sell my cookies in Boston,” she said.
“Not yet. Wait until word spreads about them. You’ll have to set up franchises. You’ll be bigger than Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks combined.”
She laughed. Her laughter reminded him of that tinkly little bell above the door of her shop. It reminded him of the blended colors of her eyes, green and gray and gold. It reminded him of her kiss.
Then again, pretty much everything reminded him of her kiss.
“So,” he said, “I’m on call in the ER tonight. It’ll probably be a busy night. Bad weather means car accidents, and car accidents mean broken bones. But I’m getting sprung Friday night, and I’m off through the whole weekend. I was hoping we could do another late-night run to the Lobster Shack on Friday.”
“I can’t,” she said.
He refused to be discouraged. “Doesn’t have to be Lobster Shack. We could go someplace else.”
“I’m having dinner Friday night with my father,” she said, the bell-like tinkle gone from her tone.
Another car cruised by, and he once again skip-stepped sideways to avoid getting splashed. “You don’t sound too excited about that.”
“It’s going to be stressful,” she predicted.
“Maybe we could meet afterward and do something stress-free. Grab a drink or something.”
“I’d like that.” Over the dull din of traffic and rain, he heard her sigh. “But I can’t make a late night of it. Saturday is my grand opening. I’ve got to get up really early to bake the final batches of cookies before ten a.m.”
“No problem. I’ve got a big day Saturday, too.”
“Right.” Now she sounded subdued. He wished he could see her. Did she know how expressive her face was when she spoke, how much her eyes told him?
“So…I can get to Brogan’s Point by around nine on Friday. How does that work for you?”
“Fine.”
“Where should I pick you up?”
Another pause, and she gave him an address on Atlantic Avenue. He patted his pocket for something to write on but came up empty. “Why don’t you text your address to me?” he suggested, and recited his cell number. He doubted her store phone would have caller ID.
“Okay.” She repeated his number back to him.
“That’s it.” He pictured her, her hair pulled back, her slim body protected by an apron, a smudge of flour powdering her cheek as she wrote down his number on one of her Cookie’s bags, or a Cookie’s napkin, or the inside of her wrist. He recalled her hands, her slender fingers ending in clipped, unpolished nails. No fancy manicure, no long claws and flashy enamel. Like a surgeon, she had hands that worked, not hands that were pampered and elegant.
“I’ll see you Friday, then,” he said.
“Okay. I’ve got to go. ’Bye, Quinn.”
“Good-bye.” He had to go, too. The smokers at the other end of the doorway had finished their cigarettes and headed back indoors. The duration of a cigarette seemed to be the standard by which residents, even those who didn’t smoke, measured their breaks. If things were calm, you might be able to take a two-smoke break. When the place was hopping, though, the length of a break rarely exceeded the time it took to smoke one cigarette.
He’d taken one-cigarette’s worth of break, and he ought to get back to work. But he lingered outside, standing in the shadowed doorway, inhaling the cool, fresh air and staring at the cell phone in his palm. After a minute, it dinged and the text-message light flashed. He swiped the screen, and there was her address. And her cell phone number.
Grinning, he wiped a raindrop from his cheek and headed back inside.
***
Gus spotted Ed as soon as he swung open the door and stepped inside. He ran a hand through his rain-damp hair and smiled at her. With a nod, she reached for a mug and carried it to the coffee maker. Three-thirty was his usual time to stop by for a cup of coffee, if he wasn’t off somewhere chasing a perp or solving a case, or in Salem testifying in court.
By the time he reached the bar, she had the mug filled and waiting for him. He leaned over the polished wood to brush her lips with a quick kiss. She wasn’t a big fan of public displays of affection, but the few customers scattered around the room in the middle of a sleepy, drizzly Wednesday were busy talking or staring into their drinks. She doubted anyone noticed.
Ed settled onto a bar stool and grinned. “I got Maeve to agree to come for dinner.”
“Really?” That was a major accomplishment. She knew how hard he was struggling to stitch the frayed threads of his relationship with his daughter back together. “When?”
“Friday night.”
Gus raised her eyebrows. “Then you’ll be on your own.”
His grin faded. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t be there on Friday. It’ll be too busy here. All the TGIF people.”
“You could take an hour off,” he said, his tone pleading.
But she couldn’t take an hour off, not on a Friday evening. She couldn’t leave Manny to cover the bar by himself. “Sorry. Can you change the date?”
“Are you kidding? If I suggest changing the date, she’ll change it to sometime in November. I got her to agree to come. I’m not giving her the chance to back out.”
“Then you’ll have dinner with her yourself. That might be for the best, anyway.” Gus didn’t have to repair her relationship with Maeve. They didn’t have a relationship to repair. She’d met the girl once. She cared for Maeve because Maeve was Ed’s daughter, but the Nolan family difficulties, the wounds and the scars, were theirs alone. As a bartender, Gus had long ago learned that she could not fix other people’s problems. She could listen, she could console, and she could occasionally point someone in the right direction. But she was no therapist. If some patrons thought she was, that was because she was an excellent bartender. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut and her customers’ glasses full. Usually, the act of talking and unburdening themselves was enough to help them find their own answers and solutions.
Ed wasn’t drinking anything harder than coffee, and his problem with Maeve was not going to be solved over the bar. He’d hurt his daughter—not deliberately, not with evil in his heart, but because he’d been hurting so badly himself. She’d fled. Now, ten years later, she’d come back. How they learned to be a family once more was up to them.
“I can’t cook for shit,” Ed muttered, focusing on the one thing he’d undoubtedly thought Gus could fix—an edible dinner for his daughter.
“Pick up one of those rotisserie chickens at Shaw’s. And a tub of mashed potatoes, and a deli salad.”
“I finally get my daughter to agree to come for dinner, and I’m going to serve her a meal that was cooked in a supermarket?”
As opposed to a meal that Gus had cooked. She loved Ed, but he could be a little dense sometimes. “If you’d rather cook something for her yourself,” she said pointedly, “then take off from work early and go home and cook.” If Gus had done the cooking, that was what she would have had to do.
He sighed. “She’s so thin,” he murmured. “She should eat some potatoes. I don’t know if she will, though.”
“You know, Ed…” She gave his hand a gentle pat. “She didn’t accept your invitation for the cuisine.”
Ed gave her a long, stark stare. Then he nodded. “Yeah.” He sighed again, looking pensive, even a little afraid. Her big, strong police detective, a guy who went head-to-head with criminals on a regular basis, was actually scared about having dinner alone with his daughter. He didn’t want Gus there so she could be some sort of domestic hostess, preparing a feast. He wanted her there to help him connect with Maeve, to provide a buffer or a bridge. To pick up the pieces if he and Maeve both wound up shattered.
She’d do that for him if she could. She’d do it much more willingly than she’d cook dinner for him. But she couldn’t do it on Friday.
So he would have to do it himself. He’d have to man up and be the father he hadn’t been for his daughter so many years ago. Damage had been done, but Maeve had come back to Brogan’s Point, and she had agreed to have dinner with him. It was time for them both to heal.