Page 19 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

SHANE MOVES ROTE THROUGH HIS morning.

At the hardware store, he fills his shopping cart with a big sponge and household cleaners. He pauses in the paper goods aisle to answer a text message from Celia about his note, then adds garbage bags to his cart and checks out. It’s all for the final cleanup of his cottage.

It’s time.

On the way back to the cottage, though, he takes a detour.

Anything to put off the inevitable. To put off leaving.

So he drives to the parking lot behind the boardwalk, parks his truck and crosses the beach.

So many memories come to mind as he follows the meandering tideline.

When he passes the last-standing cottage on the beach, he can hear the racket of hammering and men’s voices inside.

Pickup trucks loaded with construction gear are parked behind the rambling cottage.

There’s a CT-TV van there, too. So some Castaway Cottage footage is surely being filmed .

But Shane keeps walking.

At the rocky ledge at the end of the beach, he sits on a boulder in the sun. Remembers the fishing nights here with the guys. The good times bullshitting and having something to eat, to drink, as the hours whiled away with lures and fishing lines bobbing on the water beneath the summer moonlight.

Good times, indeed.

Heading back toward the boardwalk now, he thinks of Celia.

Thinks of the first time he saw her on the beach.

It was on the Feast of the Assumption in August. Two months ago.

Celia, dressed in denim shorts and a navy tank top, dipped little Aria’s toes in the water that warm morning.

As she did, Shane told her how some lobstermen actually jump fully into the sea on this holy day.

That they hope for some of the water’s blessings to keep them safe from injury to life and limb.

And now?

Now he’s not sure how to leave Celia behind.

***

Back at his cottage, Shane gets to it.

Gets to the business of leaving it.

Starting with lunch. He first grabs an old chipped dish from the tall aqua-painted kitchen cabinet.

Then he uses up some food he’d otherwise have to toss.

A few slices of stale bread. Some deli-sliced chicken breast. Cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo.

A tub of potato salad. Canned corn that he heats on the stove. Sparkling water .

When he sits down to eat, it’s to a full spread, for crying out loud.

He cuts his heaping sandwich in half. Scoops potato salad on the chipped plate.

Gets up and adds a ladleful of warmed corn niblets.

Sits again at the old table and digs in, taking a bite of one of the sandwich halves while eyeing that silver dove cuff dangling from the knob of a kitchen drawer.

The dove’s tail forms the silver band ending in a curlicue of intricate silver.

All of it’s a work of art crafted by Heather Gray.

Funny, but Shane actually feels a little like Heather must have when she left here. In two days, off he’s going into his own world—separate from everybody else.

He’s not really comfortable with that feeling, either.

But while scooping a spoonful of potato salad and corn, and taking a swallow of water, he knows. There is no stopping the inevitable. The leaving. He owes his captain—who’s giving him one more chance.

And Shane has to make a living.

So off he’ll go—to the Atlantic Ocean.

And maybe it feels like the world here will turn just fine without him.

“Shit,” Shane whispers. Shifting on his wooden chair, he lifts that sandwich half he’s working on. Takes a bite. Lifts a forkful of corn niblets, drags that half-sandwich through some potato salad drippings. Just keeps at his feast until there’s a knock at the screen door behind him.

***

“Hey, man,” Kyle says when Shane opens the door. Beneath a fleece jacket, his brother’s dressed in his standard chef fare—black tee and black slacks, sans the white apron. Two empty boxes are stacked in his arms. “Got your text looking for packing cartons.”

“Ah, excellent.”

“Some food deliveries came in at the diner. Good thing you caught me before recycling day.” As he says it, Kyle drops the two boxes inside, then reaches for a few more on the back porch.

“You here on your lunch hour?” Shane asks him.

“Yeah,” Kyle answers while hefting the boxes into the kitchen.

Shane holds the door, then goes out on the porch for the rest of them.

By the time he adds them to the stack Kyle left near the utility closet, Kyle’s standing at his lunch dish at the table.

He’s also lifting the untouched second half of Shane’s chicken club sandwich.

“Hey,” Shane tells him with a slight shove out of the way. “Make your own sandwich.”

“Eh, I make food all day,” Kyle argues, taking a double bite of the lunch. “This is better,” he says around the mouthful. “What’s in this, anyway?”

Shane sits at his dish and lifts what’s left of his own sandwich half. “Had to clean out the fridge before I leave,” he explains, biting into the bread. “Stuffed just about everything in there.”

Kyle, still eating, walks to the refrigerator.

He pulls out all the sandwich ingredients and sets them on the counter.

After finishing the pilfered half-sandwich of Shane’s, he first hangs his fleece jacket on a chairback.

Then he heads to the aqua cabinet, pulls open the sticking door and finds a plate.

Back at the counter, he drops two slices of bread into the toaster.

That silver dove cuff hanging on a drawer knob catches his eye, too.

“What’s this?” he asks, lifting the cuff and giving it a spin on his fingers.

From where he’s sitting at the table, Shane watches Kyle.

Hell, now here’s an opportunity. He can come clean, brother to brother.

Can score some true bro points. Shane could tell Kyle every damn thing attached to that one piece of jewelry.

Yeah, they could finish lunch in the salt air out on the back porch.

Sit there with Shane spilling everything .

Spilling the story of Celia and her mother and Shane’s illicit trip to California.

And how he’s in love with the abandoned daughter.

His brother would be floored.

Instead, Shane glances at the silver cuff and tells Kyle, “That? Something left behind in the cottage, I guess. From some other renter.”

“Oh.” Kyle looks closely at it, then sets it further down the counter next to Shane’s harmonica. “Pretty cool.” When the toast pops up, Kyle begins assembling his sandwich, layer by layer, on his own chipped plate. “So,” he says over his shoulder. “You’re really heading out.”

“Roger that. Barlow’s stairs are done. And the captain calls.”

“When you leaving?” Kyle asks while setting a tomato slice on his sandwich.

“Saturday. First thing.”

“And that’s it?” Kyle squeezes a swirl of mustard on the sandwich, then adds lettuce. “For good this time?”

Shane sips his sparkling water, then tips back in his chair. “Rental’s up next week. So, yeah.”

“You’re not coming back?”

“Hell, I’ll stop by when I can. Here and there. But… you know. Our lives are worlds apart. ”

“Yeah, they are.” Kyle slathers mayo on his sandwich, presses on the top slice of toasted bread and cuts the mega sandwich in half.

“Well, swing by the diner before you leave, bro. Maybe tomorrow,” he says, carrying his lunch to the table now.

He also grabs a can of soda from the fridge and snaps it open at the table. “I’ll feed you—on the house.”

“Could use a good meal before I’m on the water again.” Shane gets up to put the cold cuts, mayo and mustard back in the fridge. “I’ll be on the federal waters pretty soon, too. Come winter.”

“Oh, man.” Kyle bites into his sandwich, then stretches back to the counter for a few napkins in a wire basket there. “How the hell do you do it? That ocean water? Shit,” he goes on, scraping what’s left from the potato salad tub onto his plate. “In the winter? That water’s got to be frigid .”

“It is,” Shane says with a glance at Kyle—whose back is to him. So Shane opens the freezer now and quietly grabs a handful of ice cubes. “ Bone chilling, man,” he says, then pulls out Kyle’s shirt collar from behind and dumps the ice down his back.

Which gets Kyle lurching up, his chair nearly clattering to the floor. “What the hell !”

“ Ice cold, the sea is,” Shane says while laughing and jumping out of the way. “Like that.”

Kyle’s loosening the back of his shirt and shaking out the ice. The cubes clatter to the floor. “You son of a bitch,” he says, scooping up the fallen ice and flinging a cube at Shane.

Shane laughs again, catching that ice cube and throwing it in the sink. “That’s for the whoopee cushion, asshole. Embarrassing me in public like that. Now we’re even—almost.”

“Yeah, well…” Kyle’s putting on his fleece jacket. And grabbing up what’s left of his sandwich. “Gotta run, dude. Jerry’s covering for me.” After one last sandwich-bite, Kyle shakes hands with Shane out on the back porch.

“Till next time, brother,” Shane says, watching Kyle hurry down the seven olive-painted steps.

***

Then? Shane wastes not a minute. He grabs the brooms and vacuum from the utility closet. Scoops up the rags and furniture polish he got at the hardware store.

And gets busy.

He scans the departure chores task list stuck to the fridge.

Except for a load of laundry he has to take to the laundromat, his clothes are pretty much packed.

So he starts with checking all the dresser drawers in the cottage.

Celia might’ve left something behind. Or the dresser in the spare bedroom might have something of Aria’s.

He dusts, too. First, the old needs-a-painting windowsills in the bedrooms. His antique dresser and tarnished mirror, too.

Dusts the living room next. The mantel where Heather’s letter once leaned.

The tarnished lantern and wooden sandpipers standing sentry there.

The hanging blue and green glass fishing floats Aria liked to touch.

The painted trunk where he and Celia left a checkers game idled until they met again.

The silver tin pitcher filled with dried beach grasses. His rag runs over it all.

He fluffs the couch pillows next .

Dusts the lamps.

Check, check, check.

After that, he sweeps and vacuums grains of sand from the bedroom floors. The living room, too.

Takes some rag rugs outside and gives them a beating.

Lets the dust fly.

The memories fly.

The past two months fly.

Each broom-thwack sends it all off into the blue sky.

Check, check, check.

He has enough time then to clean up the back porch. The outside windows facing the kitchen are foggy with sea salt—just like the wheelhouse windows on the lobster boat. And just like on the boat, he’ll get that glass shining.

Time passes quickly now. With his hands occupied, his mind is, too.

Today’s a good day to make a dent in that cottage cleanup list, because tomorrow? He’s got a full roster scheduled.

Tomorrow is his day of goodbyes.