Page 22 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

SHANE’S EAVESDROPPING.

Thursday evening, he waits in the high school hallway outside Celia’s adult-ed staging class.

He’s got on his gray pullover sweater, dark jeans and trail shoes.

His olive utility jacket hangs open over it all.

It’s one of his few outfits not yet packed away.

Against the hallway wall, there are two metal folding chairs.

He quietly sits on one—not too near the open classroom doorway.

But close enough to listen.

Celia’s voice carries well. It’s also so similar to Heather’s voice—something Shane would never have known if he hadn’t gone to San Francisco.

So there’s that now.

A recognition he gets from Celia’s voice. A connection to her mother.

Presently, Celia’s talking about the necessary task of decluttering early in the staging process. Her voice lulls him. It soothes. Any tension he might’ve felt dissipates with her subdued tone.

Before you begin, prepare yourself. Have boxes, bags and markers for labeling …

Start small, one room at a time …

Take everything out of drawers, off shelves, to assess what you really need …

What is excess? What is unnecessary?

As you go, choose whether to keep, toss or donate each item …

Target sentimental items. What has real value? What’s just taking up space?

Don’t overthink. If you haven’t—or won’t—use something for a while, let it go.

Well, now. Shane shifts on his chair. All Celia’s tips strike an uncomfortable nerve with him.

Because, hell, his mind can use some decluttering.

Lately, it’s been filled with excess worries, unnecessary emotions.

His cottage lease expires next week. His lobstering work resumes next week, too—permanently.

Which all means he’s leaving Stony Point—for good, this trip.

There’s no denying it. No sugarcoating it.

It’s time to get back to his responsibilities, his commitments.

His income, his home, his bills, his yardwork, his doctor appointments, his pickup truck maintenance, his laundry, his grocery shopping, his neighbors, his fellow fishermen.

In the meantime, he’s also saying goodbye to the brother back in his life again. Saying goodbye to the folks he really cares about here. The Barlows. The Gallaghers. Cliff. Nick. Elsa DeLuca.

All good people.

But there’s one, especially .

He’ll be saying goodbye to Celia. There’s no way around it.

And it’s tearing him up. He can’t sleep. Can’t really focus.

So how do you declutter your head? Is there a way to do it? How can he prepare? Where does he store his feelings for Celia once he’s gone? Should he be taking everything out of drawers in his mind? Writing thoughts down? Assessing what he really needs? Decide what’s taking up space?

Lord knows, he’ll have a long, five-hour drive to Maine on Saturday to contemplate it all.

Five hours to choose what in his life to keep.

What to toss.

To decide if something or someone was just… taking up space.

If people and places here bring any real value to the lobstering life he chose twenty years ago.

To the only life he knows.

Or were the past few months just a blip… A dream starting when he got Lauren’s invitation to her and Kyle’s vow renewal ceremony. A brief chance to simply revisit the life, the place, he left long ago—and nothing more.

Celia’s wrapping up her class now. He hears the students standing, gathering their things, chatting with her, too.

Openly chatting in a way he can’t.

He can’t admit his conflicted thoughts to her—not after she’s been through the wringer with Heather.

He can’t admit that he’s not finding a way for this to be anything but a permanent goodbye.

Once all the students have filed out and are heading down the hallway, Shane walks into the classroom. Celia’s back is to him as she’s wiping off the whiteboard.

“Hey, teach,” he says, not letting any of that clutter into his words. “Got a question for you.”

“Shane!” Celia says, turning from that whiteboard.

“You free?” he quietly asks. “From nineteen thirty to twenty hundred hours?”

“Your note …”

He nods. “It’s military time. Seven-thirty to eight o’clock. Figured that’s all you could spare—a half hour after your class.”

“Oh my gosh. I’d have never figured that out,” Celia tells him while setting aside the eraser in her hand. “ Ha! A half hour in military time.”

Shane nods. He also packs a painted mailbox and faux mum plant into Celia’s large, maple-brown canvas tote. The whole time, he can’t stop looking at her either. She’s his everything, standing there in a cropped khaki blazer over a faded denim shirt, tailored black pants and leopard-print flats.

His beautiful Celia. In a way, it taunts him, looking at her—with their lives about to diverge.

She shuts off the classroom lights now, locks up, and they walk down the high school corridor.

While heading outside through the dusky parking lot to her car, they talk some.

Shane tells her how he’d just finished Jason’s stairs.

And how they were so important to his father, Mr. Barlow—as a Vietnam combat veteran.

How Shane often felt that war connection on the stairs, especially while talking to Jason about his father.

“Thus the military time in your note?” Celia asks as Shane sets the packed tote in her car trunk .

“Roger that.” Shane closes the trunk then. “And when I wrote those numbers, nineteen thirty to twenty hundred, I knew,” he says, taking her hand and leading her to his pickup parked nearby.

“Knew what?”

“Knew that this would be the best half hour of my entire day.”

***

And it is the best half hour of his day.

Shane hopes it is for Celia, too.

While driving to a coffee shop, he asks how her class went. Listens as she tells him it felt good—not only getting back to her work, but setting an example for Aria. He notices that in her, and says it’s really nice to see her happy again.

With take-out coffees now, they stop at a town gazebo on a little center green.

The white gazebo is strung with orange harvest lights.

Miniature pumpkins line the railing. Potted mums are set off to the side on the gazebo’s wide stoop.

Dried leaves crunch beneath their feet as they walk to a bench beneath the gazebo’s peaked roof.

The sun’s gone down; a waning half-moon hangs low in the dark sky.

Shane brought a fleece throw from his pickup. He drapes it over their laps. On the bench beside them, someone left behind a local newspaper. He picks it up and Celia leans close as he pages through it. In the glow of the harvest lights, Shane scans some headlines.

“Woman Uses Fake IDs at Local Bank,” he reads aloud. “In the latest fraud scandal. ”

“Tsk-tsk,” Celia says beside him.

Shane recites from a list of small businesses new to the town this year. “There’s a pediatrician’s office. A taxi and ridesharing company. And hey, a construction company specializing in finish carpentry. Wonder if it’s an outfit Barlow can work with.”

Celia sips her coffee and takes a look at the recipe-swap page.

Shane reads the editorial page headlines.

And they finally land on the cartoons-and-puzzles pages.

Celia fishes out a pen from her purse and they tackle the word jumble.

They laugh while sounding out word possibilities.

They twist one jumbled word this way, that way.

Shane takes a swallow of coffee while scrutinizing the jumbled word.

Finally, Celia gets it and jots in the paper margin all the circled letters of the four unjumbled words.

“ Hmm.” She looks at the random letters in the margin, then studies the jumble’s drawing of two cows sitting in upholstered chairs. They both wear glasses and hold big books in their laps. In a moment, Celia recites the caption beneath the drawing. “What kind of books do cows read?”

“Got it.” Shane takes the pen and rearranges the margin letters in the empty bubbles. A- MOO -SING NOVELS, he writes.

They nod at the clever comic, and sit back, and return the folded newspaper to the bench.

For the next few minutes then, they just watch the evening world go by outside the gazebo.

Walkers in jackets stroll along with a friendly nod.

Traffic stops and goes on the nearby street.

Dried autumn leaves skitter past in a light breeze.

Celia loops an arm through Shane’s and leans into him. Shane presses a kiss atop her head.

And the whole time, as they have the best half hour together, neither one of them broaches the fact that Shane has only one day left in Stony Point.