Page 11 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

IT SOMETIMES FELT LIKE THIS day would never come.

Standing near the stone bench, Shane brushes sawdust off his jeans, adjusts his newsboy cap and approaches Jason. “Job’s all done, boss.”

“I can see that.” Jason, wearing the same gray sweatshirt and black cargo pants as this morning, stops right there. He nods to the packed-up wheelbarrow and closed-down worktable. “I’m done for the day, too,” he says. “Let me give you a hand getting this stuff back to the house.”

“Come see what I did first.”

“Glad to.”

They head to the stairs, then, and talk some. As they walk through the hidden path to the refurbished stairway, Shane tells Jason how he cut back the wild grasses to keep the stairs clear. For safety. And how he also swept off every single step this afternoon .

When they emerge from the path, they pause atop the bluff where the stairs begin their descent. Jason lets out a low whistle. “Really impressive, man.”

“Can’t take the credit, Barlow. Your father gets it all. That’s a pretty rad stairway, for damn sure. And he accomplished that feat designing and building the original.”

“Did he ever.”

They just stand there near the top step and take it all in. No matter how often Shane’s stood right here, the dozens of descending stairs—and the sea-blue view to the horizon—always take a little bit of his breath.

“What a life your dad lived here,” Shane quietly says. “Breathed here.”

Jason nods. “After the Vietnam War, he made this his world. This was his place—the stone bench, the stairway, the sea, the salt air.”

“I still remember him from back in the day. His dusty bucket hat and workbags from his masonry jobs. And how he’d always put an extra burger on the grill for me and Kyle hanging around.

Let us camp out in his tent in your yard.

” Shane hits Jason’s arm, then motions to follow him down the stairs.

“Want to show you something I added to the stairway,” Shane says over his shoulder. “Hope it’s all right.”

Shane stops about four steps down, with Jason stopped on the top step behind him. “I’m not seeing anything,” Jason tells him. “Not from here, anyway.”

Turning back, Shane squints up at him from beneath his cap brim. “Look again.” Shane climbs up one step. “On the railing posts.”

** *

Jason does.

He sees them right away, too. He looks from one post to the next and the next. Shining copper pennies are embedded in the top of those posts.

“I bought a special drill bit, just the right size for the coins,” Shane explains. “Drilled the holes. Set the pennies in good and straight. Epoxied them in place, too. Those coins aren’t going anywhere.”

“When did this happen?” Jason asks, running a hand over the top post.

“This morning. You know, I wanted to do something to honor your father. And I learned that on military graves? Visitors will leave a penny on top of the gravestone to let the family know someone was there. And paid their respects to the deceased soldier.”

“This is pretty amazing, Shane.”

“Well, my intent was to link the stairs, somehow , to war. After all, your father was a combat veteran in the Vietnam jungles. And granted… this isn’t a gravesite.

But you said how the stairs brought him peace after the war.

The stairs and his stone bench. That he’d sit out here and process his tour of duty, his flashbacks, memories.

So the pennies—with their military connection—are how I tip my hat to his service.

And to the battle experiences he survived.

” Shane moves aside when Jason walks past him and stops at each post.

“Do the pennies go all the way down?” Jason asks.

“No. There’s a dozen or so.” Shane sits and leans against one of the posts. “Let me explain them. Starting with the fact that your wife helped me with this.”

Jason turns back. “Maris did? ”

Shane nods. “The year on each penny designates a timeline from your father’s life.

Yours, too. Maris filled in some of the years for me.

The first penny, at the top, is from the year your father actually went to Vietnam.

The next penny? When he came home. Then?

The year your folks bought this property. ”

As he talks, Jason’s stepping to the next post, next penny. “Year of my birth,” he says over his shoulder to Shane. “And Neil’s,” he says at the next. “Paige.”

“Right. And after that?” Shane stands and follows behind. “That’s the year the Bradfords met the Barlows. Thirty years ago, in the marsh. You bombed our boats.”

“Ha! Very significant.” Jason laughs and moves past it to the next penny-embedded posts. “Two of the same year?”

“Had to be. The first signifies the year of your accident on the Harley. The second—” Shane says, nodding to that next post.

“Same year. My brother’s death?”

“You got it, sir. Neil needs his own post. But both posts deeply significant to your dad.”

Jason keeps descending. As he does, his hand holds the rope railing between each post. “The year of my father’s death,” he vaguely says at one penny.

“The next is the year you moved back here,” Shane explains. “To Stony Point. To your old family home. Which I’m sure, somewhere above, had your father smiling. You were back in your rightful place. The penny after that is the year you married Maris Carrington.”

Jason nods and moves to the next post. “A penny for this year? ”

“You bet. The year I restored Mr. Barlow’s stairway to its past glory.”

“Shit.” Jason walks up a step and shakes Shane’s hand. “Restored our friendship, too.”

“That means a lot, man. And there’s one more post with a penny from this year,” Shane adds. “That one’s yours, my friend. As the keeper of the stairs now. Hoping you’ll have some banner thought or memory to attach to it before the year’s out.”

“Wow. I’m fuckin’ speechless, Shane. You went above and way the hell beyond.”

“It felt important.”

Jason gives his arm a brief clasp before they keep walking to the bottom steps.

The tide’s turned. Small waves of Long Island Sound lap higher on the beach now.

An afternoon salty breeze lifts off the water.

Shane stands on the damp sand. He scoops up some stones; the fabric of his flannel shirt wavers in the wind.

Jason sits on a lower step and lifts his face to that breeze. Closes his eyes. Collects himself before turning and looking all the way up, up, up to the very top step. “What I wouldn’t give for my father to see this,” he says.

“Yeah, man. He built his own peace, step by step.” Shane gets his few stones skipping out over the water. Each skip leaves a spray of silver droplets arching above. “That’s all we can strive to do, brother.”

***

Doesn’t Jason know it.

Know a thing or two about building one’s own definition of peace .

An architect in more ways than one.

“Dad had a tough time after that motorcycle wreck,” he tells Shane now. “It brought him right back to the battlefield.”

“Shit. Tough time for all. I’m sure your father never thought he’d witness those atrocities again—let alone with his own sons. Maimed. Neil killed. You left without a limb.”

“Yeah. Once I was finally home from the hospital, I’d see my dad out here alone a lot.

Sitting silent. Sometimes, before I even had a prosthesis, I’d get my crutches and hobble across the yard.

My stump was all wrapped. My face, stitched up.

And I’d sit with him on the bench. The sea breeze felt so good on my skin.

The sound of the waves below were a tonic.

I’d close my eyes and soak it in. Heal. Just heal, Jason , Dad’s voice would come to me. ”

Standing there at the edge of the sea, beneath a vast late-afternoon sky streaked with wisps of white clouds, Shane takes off his cap.

Pats it on his chest and fights his own emotion.

“Listen,” he tells Jason then. “It’s no secret that I missed these past fifteen years.

Of your life. Your brother’s life. Your father’s.

So for me? Those simple coins I installed?

” he says, nodding to the railing winding up the bluff.

“It’s how I’m paying my respects to you and Neil—my old beach brothers. Your father, too.”

“Hell, there’s more than one way to pay respects.” Jason turns and looks up at that stairway rising high, high up the bluff near the sea. “You did it in spades, man.”