Page 27 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

AFTER LUNCH, SHANE THINKS THIS will be his easiest goodbye of the day—to Cliff.

Up ahead is the Stony Point Beach Association’s white, flat-roofed modular trailer.

Shane parks his pickup in the gravelled, pot-holed lot and gets out.

His combat boots clomp up the four steps to the steel entry door.

But he surprisingly has to stop before opening that door. Stop and take a quick breath.

Shit, now here’s something he hadn’t counted on.

None of these goodbyes are easy. This time around, every one of them feels so…

permanent. So he hesitates outside the door, standing in front of a wreath strung with faux maple-tree leaves.

No doubt, the seasonal wreath hanging on the steel door is Elsa’s touch.

Clearing his throat then, Shane gives a few raps on that door, opens it and steps inside.

Cliff is working at his tanker desk. He’s in full uniform: khaki pants with long-sleeve black polo shirt.

A gold-stitched Commissioner patch is on his shirt pocket; his brown cowboy hat, similarly inscribed, is on his desk.

Sitting there on his padded chair, he silently motions Shane inside while talking to someone on the telephone.

So Shane closes the door behind him and hangs around.

He stops at the low reception table with a few metal chairs set at it.

Stony Point newsletters are fanned out on that table.

He lifts a newsletter, scans it without really seeing the words, and puts it down again.

Clears his throat again, too.

Shoves his newsboy cap in his back pocket.

Cliff’s telephone voice drones on as Shane then wanders to the Lost and Found bin set on a corner shelf.

He rummages through the found items—a cheap camera; a leather journal with perforated pages; women’s sunglasses; a man’s gold compass pendant—sans a chain; a roach clip key ring with wood beads on the lanyard.

Back in the day, he might have pilfered that key ring. Used it on a joint here or there.

Today, the loose, heavy pendant speaks to him. A gold three-dimensional compass rose is inlaid in the round pendant noted with cardinal directions. The whole piece is edged in a braided-gold trim.

And ends up in his pants pocket.

Next, he wanders to the three-shelf coffee cart.

A box of iced raspberry Danish is there, the pastry neatly cut into narrow slices.

So Shane helps himself to a piece for his lunch dessert and downs it while waiting for Cliff.

He’s still on the phone—apparently to some landscaper about picking up the community’s bagged autumn leaves.

Shane moseys over and sits on the wooden chair beside Cliff’s desk.

The commissioner’s black domino is right there, on the edge of his leather blotter.

Shane picks up that lucky domino and gives it a flip.

The domino is scuffed; some of the white dots are faded.

He toys with the good-luck talisman as Cliff ends his call.

“Okay, Merle. I’ll let the residents know. Send out a mass email. Yep.” A quiet pause. “Okay, appreciate it,” Cliff says. He hangs up and, while jotting a note on a yellow sticky pad, says to Shane, “Sorry about that. Been arranging the fall cleanup here.”

“No problem. I’m just making the rounds to folks today. Saying goodbye. It was nice meeting you this summer, Commissioner.”

“Well, same here, Shane. And, listen,” Cliff goes on, pressing that sticky note on the edge of his computer monitor. “Since you’re leaving, maybe you’d like to take that with you?” He hitches his head to the domino Shane still holds.

“What, this?” Shane gives a short laugh.

“Now hang on there, buster. You’ll be out on the high seas in no time. You might need some of that luck, no?”

“Thank you, Commish.” Shane props the domino back on the worn leather blotter on Cliff’s desk. “It’s a rowdy racket on the boats, no doubt. But I’m good.”

From his squeaking leather chair, Cliff reaches for that domino. “If you’re sure.”

“I am. And I just wanted to tell you… well, I’ve had a swell few months here at the community you diligently work to manage.”

“Diligently… to put it mildly. Some days, I’m tested as folks try to circumvent the rules, wheedle out of violations. Bu t—that’s my job, to ensure that regulations are enforced. Safety and order assured for all.”

“Yourself included?” Shane asks, tipping back his chair.

“Myself?”

“Yes. You getting your own life in order? Putting a ring on your woman’s hand anytime soon?”

“Oh, I’ve got Elsa’s ring all right. It’s hidden away here.” Cliff draws his knuckles down his jaw grizzled with salt-and-pepper whiskers. “It’s the nerve I’m having a hard time finding.”

“Nerve?”

“Indeed. You get one shot to do these things right. And to get a favorable outcome.”

“Roger that. Which is precisely why you have to keep the domino.” Shane stands, pulls his newsboy cap from his back pocket and puts it on. “And I’ll keep an eye on my Maine mailbox for that wedding invitation.”

“Now before you go jumping the—” Cliff begins, then gets cut off by the trailer’s steel door opening and Nick blustering in.

“Shane! Hey, man. Glad I caught you.” Nick walks over in black pants and a khaki button-down. A squawking walkie-talkie is clipped to his belt; a security cap is on his head. He hits Shane’s arm. “Come on, dude. One more spin in the security wheels before you leave.”

“Be sure to buckle up, fellas,” Cliff says, following them to the door. “And no burning out, Nicholas!”

***

Good for his word, Nick comes through. They cruise all the beach roads at Stony Point.

Up this street, down that one, the car tires gritty on the sandy roads.

The early-afternoon sun shines bright. Some of the shingled cottages and gabled colonials are buttoned up for the season.

Others are fully fall-decorated with scarecrows and pots of mums and Halloween ghosts strung from tree branches.

“The night of my brother’s failed vow renewal,” Shane begins, rolling down the security car’s passenger window. He leans an elbow there and tips up his newsboy cap. “I helped you get your sweet Boston Whaler out of the boat basin.”

“Yep. In ten minutes flat, no less. Boss never thought you’d pull it off.”

“Ha! Proved him wrong.”

They talk about Friday night fishing escapades; about good times at The Sand Bar; parties at Elsa’s inn. When Nick’s walkie-talkie squawks, he answers the other security guard patrolling the boardwalk.

And for those few cruising minutes, ten or fifteen maybe, life’s good. They drive the beach roads. They have some laughs. Shane talks about getting back to the lobster boat. Nick wishes him well and tells him not to be a stranger around these parts.

As they pass the marsh and head back to Shane’s pickup at the Stony Point trailer, Shane notices a blue cottage up ahead.

The painted shingles are the color of the sea; faded yellow wildflowers grow in clusters against it.

The window trim is bright white in the sunshine.

Shane can almost picture his and Kyle’s old red sailboat propped in one of those paned windows.

“Yo, Nick,” Shane says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Drop me off at that cottage there. ”

“Walter’s place?”

“That’s the one. Walter’s an old friend of mine,” Shane explains as Nick slows at the blue cottage.

“There he is, raking up around back,” Nick notes, nodding that way.

“Hey, thanks, man,” Shane reaches over and shakes Nick’s hand before getting out. “Good hanging with you this summer. Keep this place in order, will you?”

When Shane hops out and trots across the lawn to Walter, he hears Nick’s voice carry on a sea breeze behind him.

“Be safe, dude!”

***

The thing is, Shane keeps each successive goodbye shorter than the last. Something about them weighs more and more on his mind so that he just finds a way out of them. Finds a way to keep moving. To not get too close, too personal, with anyone now.

And he knows damn well why—but it’s too hard to face just yet.

Because he’s saving his strength for Celia’s goodbye—which will gut him.

So, instead? He stands with Walter in the backyard of this cottage Shane’s family rented thirty years ago. And just like Walter did with his father back then, they chew the fat. They talk about years gone by. They talk about Shane’s father, too.

“The man had his hands full with you two whippersnappers. You and your brother,” Walter says fondly .

He misses Shane’s father. Shane sees it on him, hears it in his voice.

Walter’s wearing a windbreaker with his corduroy pants.

He leans on his idled bamboo rake. In the bright sunshine, his face is deeply wrinkled.

Many years have passed since Shane’s father stood in this yard with Walter.

Since Shane and Kyle met the Barlow brothers and wreaked some childhood havoc on the place.

So much of life has been lived since then.

And it’s like they both—he and Walter—try to hold on tight to some small part of it.

Their voices rise and fall with a vague memory or two. With a nostalgic retelling of a tale.

Right here.

Right now.

Right in the yard of a little blue cottage across the street from the marsh with its whispering grasses.

Right before Shane tips his cap at Walter, claps the man’s back in a hug, and looks over his shoulder at him as he walks away.

***

After retrieving his pickup at the Stony Point trailer, Shane makes a quick stop to see Matt and Eva.

Afterward, he drives to the beach parking lot.

Leaving his truck there, he heads to the boardwalk now.

Texts the next friend on his list. One of his oldest. Can you meet me on the boardwalk? he types.

Be there soon , Maris texts back. Can use a beach walk writing break.