Page 30 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

HOP IN, LOSER,” JASON YELLS.

While putting on his black twill bomber, Shane trots off his front porch.

He rounds Jason’s vehicle idling at the curb and climbs in the passenger side.

Glances over at Jason behind the wheel. He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater, faded jeans and black overcoat.

“Looking very beatnik, Barlow,” Shane remarks.

“That’s what happens when your wife’s a fashion designer. Maris really gets into styling me, especially for the show.” Jason puts the SUV in gear and takes off. “Had meetings at CT-TV in Hartford. Couple of client appointments afterward.”

“Busy day.”

“It was. And how about you?”

“What about me?”

“What’ve you been up to now that the stair gig’s done?” Jason asks as they drive beneath the train trestle. “Busy being Stony Point’s resident beach bum?”

“Eh. Something like that.”

“No, seriously.” Jason turns onto Shore Road as they head out to the restaurant. “What’ve you been doing the past few days?”

“Packing. Hanging out.” Shane looks at the twilight view ahead.

Beyond a marsh edged with sweeping golden grasses, the calm water’s dark.

The sky above it—all the way to the horizon—is a deep violet now.

“Saying goodbye to folks,” Shane continues.

“Feeling really low packing up Aria’s portable crib. ”

“Oh, man. That’s a tough one.”

“You have no idea. Lately, they feel like family. Aria and Celia.” Shane just turns up his hands as Jason keeps driving. They pass the bait-and-tackle shop; the take-out seafood joint; a white-steepled church. “So it’s been a hard day,” Shane goes on. “Seeing everyone and saying farewell.”

“Shit. The way you say that, it sounds really final.”

Shane nods as the SUV cruises over the pavement. “Feels it, too.”

***

In The Captain’s Lounge, Jason stops at the hostess station.

As Shane waits, he looks around. The restaurant is filled with dark wood square tables and ladderback chairs.

The large room is painted sea-foam green above a white chair rail, and paneled in ocean-blue planks below.

On all the walls except the back one, dim light from sconces illuminates large framed photographs of ships and seaports.

The back wall is another story. End to end, it’s filled with floor-to-ceiling windows.

And Shane can tell from here. He can just sense it—there’s no sneaking the sea past him.

Long Island Sound is right on the other side of those windows.

The hostess seats them at a window-side table and leaves two menus. Shane looks out now at the closer view of the Sound. “Nice place,” he says, pulling in his chair. “You’ve been here before?”

Jason nods. “Earlier this summer with Elsa. When I was pretty effed up.”

“Elsa? What’s she got to do with things?”

“She ordered me here, then called me out on my decisions. When I was separated from Maris.”

“Seriously?”

“You bet. It was a low point for me, and Elsa didn’t mince words that night,” Jason admits while shifting out of his black coat and draping it on a chair beside him. “Some of her words got through to me.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s see. For one…” Jason waits as a waitress walks past holding a tray toppling with dishes. “Elsa accused me of struggling with survivor’s guilt.”

“Do you?” Shane asks.

“I do—sometimes. Elsa also declared—”

“In no uncertain terms, I’m sure,” Shane interrupts.

“Absolutely. She declared—probably accurately—that I was sabotaging my life just to cope with that survivor’s guilt. Which had really kicked me in the ass with the ten-year anniversary of Neil’s death.”

“Shit. How’d you change course?”

“Not without almost hitting bottom first. Before it was too late, I reached out to Maris.” Jason glances out the tableside window, then looks back to Shane. “It was a slow climb out after that. But she pulled me up.”

A waiter arrives just then with glasses of iced water. He’s also ready to take their orders.

“What’s on the grilled salmon?” Jason asks.

Their waiter looks up from his order pad. “A nice lemon dill sauce.”

“Sounds good,” Jason decides. “With sweet potato fries and the steamed zucchini.”

“Very good. And you, sir?” the waiter asks Shane.

“Lemon parmesan chicken. What are the sides?”

“Rice and a vegetable medley.”

“Okay.” Shane folds his menu, collects Jason’s and hands them to the waiter. “That’ll do it.”

“And a bottle of wine for the table?” the waiter asks then.

“Yeah, man. That’d be good,” Jason says. “My friend here just finished a pretty commendable construction project for me,” he tells the waiter. “So, Shane. What’ll it be?”

“All right. Let’s go with… a good oak-aged Chardonnay,” Shane decides. Afterward, he hangs his twill bomber over his chairback. Sips his iced water. Turns to Jason once the waiter walks away. “Can I tell you something, Barlow?”

“What’s up?”

“My last goodbye to Celia was this afternoon. In the laundromat.”

“You kidding me? The laundromat?”

Shane turns up his hand. “A safe place, you know?”

“All right, I guess. ”

“Anyway, we didn’t say it, but the goodbye… it felt… damn it . It felt permanent, man. And I know Celia felt that, too. I could just tell.”

“Permanent? Why?”

“Like it’s all a dead end, our relationship. I’m there working and living in Maine. She’s here working and living in Connecticut. And neither of us has a solution to bridge that.”

“So did you end it?”

“No. Not with words.” When Shane pauses, there are only the sounds of the restaurant: silverware on plates; voices talking; chairs scraping. “But with things left unsaid, with a look… it just felt like the end. And I really can’t shake it, either.”

The waiter approaches with a bread basket, the Chardonnay and salads. He half fills their wineglasses before turning away.

“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Jason says while stabbing at his salad.

“Maris and I didn’t have to choose like you two.

We could have our jobs and our lives right here.

” Jason lifts that forkful of salad to his mouth.

“Same with Kyle and Lauren,” he says while chewing.

“Eva and Matt. Nobody’s had to wrangle a decision about a livelihood not being feasible here. ”

“Hell, my biggest fear’s come home to roost,” Shane says, lifting a fork and plucking a cherry tomato from his salad. “The fear of not being able to make it work with Celia.”

“This isn’t like you—throwing in the towel. Come on .”

“ You got any answers?” Shane asks, then lifts a forkful of salad .

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“Hey.” Jason takes a drink of his wine. “Maybe you just have to get busy. You’ll feel different when you get back on the boat, out to sea.

Your day will fill up and… well, you’ll work it out—you and Celia.

You two will get into a groove with the long-distance thing.

See what happens.” Jason spears some lettuce and cucumber slices then looks across the table at Shane.

“But idle time’s no good, man. Being in limbo. ”

“Yeah.” Shane lifts his wineglass. “It’s hell,” he says, then throws back a long swallow of his liquor, nearly emptying the glass.

***

In the busy, dimly lit restaurant, their dinners are served.

Jason cuts his grilled salmon; Shane digs into the lemon parmesan chicken.

They drag warm slices of buttered Italian bread through the juices on their plates.

Jason stabs his fork at his sweet potato fries.

Shane scoops his vegetable medley. More wine is poured.

All the while, they talk. Shane talks about going back to work.

And about how regulations on increasing the lobster-gauge size have been valiantly fought by the Maine lobstering community—and the increased gauge size requirement has been tossed.

And of starting up on the big federal boats later on in the winter.

And Jason sees it. Even talking about work, and lobstering, lightens Shane’s mood. He’s not dwelling on the emotion of the day .

“And this dinner here is to thank you for the work you did for me ,” Jason reminds him. “It means a lot to see my father’s stairway restored to its glory.”

“You know something?” Shane pushes away his spent dish and sips his wine. “I found I actually liked the job at Stony Point. At your place. It felt like really important work.”

“It was, I can assure you,” Jason answers as he sits back in his chair. He also glances around the nearby tables. Those wall sconces throw soft light on the room. At square tables near them, couples and families and friends sit, dine, talk.

Shane nods. Swirls his wine, too. “Plus, I never knew who’d visit me during the day.

Hang around, bullshit some. You. Elsa. Celia.

Even Ted Sullivan.” Shane reaches for a scrap of bread on his plate and eats it.

“Then?” he goes on. “I actually had a dog for a few weeks. Now that is something I can’t do in Maine. ”

“Ha! I guess you couldn’t. Being gone so much.”

“And just so you know, Barlow. Because I’m sure this was your original intent when I was feeling pretty bleak after losing my buddy Shiloh. But your father’s stairs tremendously helped me through my own head these weeks.”

“Don’t be so humble, guy. You did it for my dad, too. And me. It was a job I could never tackle.”

“Was proud to do it, man.”

“And you have my gratitude. Because that is a slice of earth that I’m never leaving. It’s my plot of land, brother.”

** *

They have dessert next. Jason also pulls a folded check out of his wallet. He slides it across the table, past their dessert dishes and half-empty coffee cups, to Shane.

“What’s this for?” Shane asks.

“Hell, you earned that cash. That was some backbreaking work on those stairs.”

Shane, with a mouthful of strawberry cheesecake, nods. Without unfolding the check, he then pockets it.

“And before you head north,” Jason continues while forking off a hunk of his chocolate java lava cake, “I want to tell you I’m really grateful you came back to Stony Point this summer. And not just for taking on the stairway job.”

Shane sips his coffee. “For what, then?”

“Listen,” Jason says, pausing to lift that chocolate cake to his mouth.

“This summer was a bitch for me,” he goes on.

“Mostly because that ten-year marker since Neil’s been gone?

It was a milestone chugging at me like a freight train.

But… hell, you were tight with Neil, and it’s like I got a little bit of my brother back with you here.

” Jason raises his coffee cup to Shane. “Talking about old times. Hearing things Neil did hanging out with you up north.”

Shane raises his own coffee and takes a swallow. “Life’s a helluva road, aint’ it?”

“No shit. Put it there, man,” Jason tells him, extending his hand across the table.

After Shane shakes his hand, he actually stands to leave, too.

“Hey, not so fast.” Jason flags their waiter. “Bring me two drafts, would you?”

“Now that sounds good,” Shane says, sinking back down onto his chair .

And when the alcohol is quickly delivered, Jason stands and swings his chair around to face the window. The sun’s set outside; Long Island Sound is nearly black beneath a dark, starlit sky.

Shane joins him in angling his chair to the large window. To the sea. He tips his glass of beer toward Jason. “Cheers, man,” he says. “To not killing each other this summer. Lord knows we came close.”

“Yeah.” Jason gives a slight shake to his head.

“Cheers to that,” he says, then takes a long swallow of the cold, frothy brew.

“But I’m not saying goodbye. Goodbye feels too much like losing another brother.

I already lost Neil. And you didn’t know Sal, but that took something fierce out of me, too.

So I got to tell you something this time. ”

“Now what?” Shane asks, cradling that beer as he looks outside at the black water. “Lay it on me.”

“Okay. I know you’ve got that cottage rented through the end of the month. Which means that after this weekend, you actually have one more here. Might as well get your money’s worth on that place.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” Jason sips his beer. “Get ready to rack up more miles on your pickup.”

“What’s going on? A Halloween shindig?”

“No. I’m putting you to work again.”

“All we do is work.”

“Yeah, and this time it’s for Trent.”

“Your producer?”

“Right. I told you he wants more of those abandoned building segments?”

“I remember. ”

“Trent’s getting the paperwork and releases all complete.

We’ll be good to grab some footage for Castaway Cottage next Saturday.

” Jason glances through the shadows to Shane beside him.

To Shane looking a little lost. A little unsure.

Unsure of Jason’s question. Of himself and Celia.

Of his whole life. “We got some dope ruins to explore. You game?” Jason asks him.

Shane, well, he takes a long breath. Then—yep—he laughs. “Right when I thought I was outta here—”

Jason sets down his beer, clenches his fists and pulls his forearms in close. Puts on his best mafia voice, too. “I pulled you back in.”

***

Forty minutes later, Jason parks curbside at Shane’s cottage. The SUV idles there as Shane thanks him for the dinner, opens the passenger door and gets out.

Before he closes it, though, Jason leans across the front seat. “Yo, Bradford,” he calls.

Shane bends back into the truck but says nothing. He stands there in his black bomber jacket looking pretty fatigued in the dim interior light of the SUV.

“Not gonna say goodbye,” Jason tells him, still leaning somewhat across that seat. “Just… you know. Until next time, you worthless motherfucker.”

A slow, wry smile comes from Shane. “Ha! Likewise, you good-for-nothing, son-of-a-bitch scumbag.” Then, “Love you, man.”

“Same, guy. Same. Take care, my brother,” Jason answers, giving a salute .

With that, Shane slams the door shut and heads to his cottage front porch—looking back in the shadows right as Jason takes off.