Page 26 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

Instead, he just paddles parallel to the crescent-moon-shaped beach nestled into the coast. When he lifts the oars from the water, the rowboat idles.

Seawater drip-drips off those raised oars.

Small waves splash against the boat’s sides.

“There it is, Elsa.” Shane nods at the sight. “A seagull’s view of the beach.”

Elsa turns on her bench and takes in that view. Midmorning sunlight falls golden on the sand. The boardwalk and dune grasses stretch across it. At the far end of the beach, beyond the Fenwick cottage, a patch of woods hugs the rocky outcropping where the guys fish on Friday nights .

“It looks like a watercolor painting from here,” Elsa vaguely remarks. “The way the rays of the sun fall on the beach. Smoothing the sand and sparkling the water.”

The boat still idles there. It would be the perfect time for Shane to confess—if only to Elsa alone. To tell his first friend here all about Celia. That he’s in love with her. That she’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

But Elsa , Shane would go on, his voice serious.

Celia is not aware that I’m telling you this.

She prefers to keep our relationship secret until we know if it can even work.

With the distance between us. With our vastly different lives.

And she cherishes her relationship with you, too, Elsa.

So please, please, he’d plead, don’t be mad at Celia for what I’m telling you.

Hell, as much as he’d like to come clean with the first person he encountered here—who’s showed him nothing but hospitality—he can’t.

He cannot go behind Celia’s back again. He did that once already this past week with Heather, and he barely survived the situation.

“And look! There’s the inn.” Elsa points to beyond the far dunes, where the three-story Ocean Star Inn rises against the blue October sky. Open porches wrap around the inn. Sunlight glimmers on the cedar-shingled turret’s windows. “I’ve never seen it from here. Oh my, it’s really something.”

“It is, Elsa.”

She turns to him as he resumes paddling, steering the vessel back to the channel now. “Well thank you for this gift, Shane. For this view. I’ll always remember our rowboat ride today.”

“Me, too.” Shane pulls on the oars. Again, the boat skims through the lapping water.

“And listen, my first friend. Like I’ve told you before.

If you’re ever up north—you and Cliff, maybe.

Taking a drive before you’re busy with the inn opening.

You be sure to stop by my harbor house in Rockport.

I’d love to see you two up there. Show you around those parts. Take you to dinner.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Shane. I really will.”

They’re quiet a bit then. Until Elsa squints at him with a tipped head.

“Where does the time go? It seems like you just arrived here. And now? Months have passed. Before you know it, a few more months, the calendar pages will turn—and this year will be history. Just like that,” she says, snapping her fingers.

Shane nods. “I’ll be honest with you, Elsa,” he admits while paddling through the channel toward the boat basin now.

“It’s been a year that has the makings of being my best one yet—or the absolute saddest. And that pendulum?

” he continues, dipping those oars in the water and pulling back on them. “It can damn well swing either way.”

Elsa gives a quick, small smile. But that smile fades, too. Fades as she simply watches Shane. There’s something there when she does. It makes Shane feel uncomfortable. Some awareness she might have. Or some suspicion. Or maybe it’s just the emotion of another goodbye.

Elsa reaches to him, gives his arm a squeeze and whispers, “Dio ti benedica, Shane.” When she sits back, she explains. “God bless you. In your travels, in your life.”

** *

When Shane pulls into the diner parking lot an hour later, he takes a long breath. Damn, this is it—saying goodbye to the brother he’d once written off. Kyle’s outside on the loading dock. So Shane parks and meets up with him there.

“Yo, Kyle,” he says, approaching.

Kyle’s leaning against the diner’s rear wall. He’s got on his white chef apron over his black tee and pants. “Shane,” he says, squinting out from his shady perch. “Come in for lunch. I’ve got it all ready for you.”

“Listen.” Shane unzips his black twill bomber, then shifts a large bag he’s holding. “I’ve got a lot of rounds to make today. Can you have Lauren pack the lunch and bring it out here?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Kyle nods, pulls his cell phone from a pocket and texts Lauren inside.

Which is when Shane notices that his brother’s smoking—when he hangs a lit cigarette from his mouth. While squinting through the rising smoke, Kyle taps out the text. And he right away starts puffing on that cigarette once he pockets his phone again.

“Kyle, man.” Shane crosses the loading dock, sets down his bag and leans against the wall beside his brother. “Shit, you’re smoking now? Those things will kill you.”

“Correction.” Kyle takes another drag and exhales a cloud of smoke. “This diner will kill me first. Because it’s a fact that ninety percent of all restaurants fail within their first three years.”

“Seriously?”

Kyle nods while flicking an ash from the cigarette. “And granted, The Dockside’s been around forever—but it’s the do-or-die third year of me owning it. How am I going to beat that stat, bro? With our luck? And all the cards we’ve been dealt?”

“But you’re always mobbed. Business seems pretty good, no?”

“It’s up and down, man. Been on an upswing lately—but in this fickle business?

Things can turn on a dime. A streak of bad weather.

News headlines. A downturn in the economy.

” Kyle takes another long drag before tamping out the cigarette with his foot.

“Shit, the stress of this place is taking a toll on me.”

Same here, bro, Shane only thinks. Only it’s the stress of leaving here.

Of leaving the love of my life. Of losing touch with you.

Of going back on the wild seas day after day.

The stress of uncertainty. Of doubt. Of wondering how long I’m even cut out to lobster.

And then what? Before he can say anything, though, Lauren comes breezing out the door.

Her hair’s pulled back in a low bun; she wears a Dockside Diner tee over cropped black jeans; a waitress apron is wrapped around her waist. Quickly, she delivers the packed-up lunch to Shane.

“We are so sad to see you go,” she says when he takes the insulated tote from her.

“Me, too. I’ll miss the hell out of you guys. And hey,” Shane adds, bending for that bag he’d brought. “I picked up something for my niece and nephew.”

“Sweet, Shane,” Kyle says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to,” Shane lets on. “I’ll miss them, too.”

When he gives Lauren the shopping bag, she takes a glance inside. “What are these?” she asks, lifting out waterproof orange overalls.

“Waders for Evan and Hailey. I got them at that fishing gear shop on Shore Road. They stock children’s sizes, so I just thought…

Well, you deliver them to your kids with my promise to give them an official tour of the lobster boat up north.

Whenever you make it up there. Tell them to be sure they bring their waders. ”

“You do know that the kids will be relentless with us now,” Kyle says, giving him a shove. “To go to Maine.”

Shane looks over at him. “That’s the point.”

Lauren tears up then. She lifts a napkin from her waitress half-apron and dabs her eyes.

“Evan wants to be a lobsterman for Halloween, you know. So I’m sure he’ll wear these then, too.

And Hailey, well,” Lauren says with another dab of her napkin, “she still has your model lobster from Evan’s class talk.

And for Halloween? She says that’s what she wants to be. A lobster.”

“Aw. Send me a pic, would you?” Shane leans in and hugs Lauren. When she backs up, she leaves a light kiss on his face, then brushes her fingers across it.

“Take care of yourself,” she quietly insists, backing toward the loading dock door.

But she stops when Kyle gets a little choked up and first gets Shane in a headlock before giving him a bro hug—back slaps and all. “Get outta here now,” Kyle tells his brother then. “And be safe.”

Shane nods, tips his newsboy cap at them, collects his packed lunch and leaves the loading dock behind. While heading to his pickup in the parking lot, he hears Lauren’s voice drift over.

“See you at the holidays, we hope!”

** *

Now that ?

That See you at the holidays ?

That gets right under Shane’s skin—like nothing else has.

The holidays.

The thought of him being nothing more than a passing guest here.

At Thanksgiving. At Christmas.

In and out of Stony Point from now on.

A day here, two days there.

Until his visits all have a way of just… slowing… fading away.

He gets in his truck, sets his packed lunch on the passenger seat and takes off. There’ll be no more goodbyes for a little while. And for that, he’s thankful. This morning was pretty heavy.

So he drives silently down Shore Road, carefully taking each curve; cracking the window for a breath of salt air when he passes a coastal inlet; waving in a car turning ahead.

Silent.

He says nothing to himself. Thinks nothing, too. He just drives.

Drives around the bend to the stone train trestle.

Drives the winding beach roads to his little rented bungalow.

Parks there and heads down the boardwalk-planked walkway edged with sweeping beach grasses.

Around back, he climbs the seven olive-painted stairs to the porch.

Opens the screen door, unlocks the interior door and steps into the kitchen.

There, he hangs his black bomber jacket on a chairback, washes his hands, unpacks his diner bag at the old cottage table, sits and picks at his lunch alone.