“Twenty years.”Hannah’s eyes widened. “Wow. I’m officially old as dirt. I should go see her. I need to anyway. We’re co-maids-of-honor. Maybe Alex will let her carry that ball—or bouquet, as it were—given—” She gestured to her face. “Where is she? Did she get a new place? When did this—?”“Delia’s fine, still has her grandmother’s little cottage. Happier than I’ve ever seen her, in fact. You’ll hear all about that soon enough.” Barbara stood, and tugged Hannah to her feet, hugging her before Hannah straightened fully. Barbara was a fierce force to be reckoned with, and it always surprised Hannah because she barely hit five-foot-five, and that was in her uniform-issue heavy-soled shoes.“I’m going to get Deputy Dan to give you a lift,” Barbara said. “Sal said your car—well, that’s for later. I’m sure he’ll be in touch, and between Logan, Alex, and Fi, there will be a car available when you need it.” She picked up her radio and flipped the call button.Hannah put her hand out. “Don’t t
Calder swallowed a sigh and perhaps a swear word or two as he pulled into the gravel lot and spied Jonah Blue standing at the ready, on the dry-land end of Blue’s Fishing Company’s main pier. The sun was setting over the pine tree–dotted ridge that fringed the hill rising up behind High Street at Calder’s back, casting Jonah’s tightly pinched features in a stark, mauve-shadowed relief that didn’t warm his expression in the least. Calder told himself he should feel lucky the old man wasn’t toting a shotgun. Although he supposed that didn’t rule out something equally lethal. Like a nice, sharp gutting knife.Feeling a little too close a kinship to a lobster swimming into a trap, he slid out the cab of his truck . . . and tried not to grimace when the sharp briny scent hit him. Calder had discovered that the air had a salty tang anywhere you went in Half Moon Harbor—in most of the Cove proper, for that matter. He liked it well enough, thinking it added a more immediate, visceral element
Surprised, Calder wondered where the man could stuff a wad of chew, his jaw was so damn tight.“Might as well head on back up your river,” Jonah said, at length. “Your like isn’t wanted here at Blue’s.”He said it as if Calder’s being a Blue was somehow . . . less Blue.“Once the town folk find out why you’re here, you won’t be wanted by them, either. Seems you River Blues still haven’t figured out how to tell the difference between where you’re wanted and where you’re not.”It was quite a speech, Calder thought. But rather than put him off, or piss him off, it did quite the opposite. The old man wants me gone, and it’s not because I’m a St. Croix Blue, he thought, surprised yet again. Calder didn’t know Jonah Blue from Adam, but he did know people, how to read them, how to work with them, for them, or get work out of them as the case may be. The success of the family business depended on it. Same could be said for Blue Harbor Farm. Jonah might well hate Calder with the kind of deep-s
“This has nothing to do with you and yours,” Jonah said tersely. “Done quite well without interfering in each other’s business now for well on a hundred years. I expect we can manage a few more without you riding to the rescue.” He all but spat the last words.“With all due respect, it’s not up to you what I do or don’t do, or why I choose to do it. You don’t know me. Never met me. Nor I, you. I was raised to think about Jeremiah’s branch of the family much the same as I imagine you were raised to think about Jedediah’s. And you know, I thought it was a pile of horseshit then, and nothing I’ve heard or learned since has ever changed my mind. Holding the sins of the fathers against their offspring, who haven’t so much as laid eyes on each other in generations? What possible good does that do?”“Stops them from doing any more harm to each other,” Jonah said, his eyes flat, his tone even flatter. “All that matters.”“Seems to me it’s more a bunch of stubborn old men who’d rather sacrific
“Oh . . . wow.” Hannah let the car roll to a stop along the Cove road as she stared down the short stretch of Pelican Bay shoreline, then out to the Point, where the McCraes’ lighthouse stood, a proud old sentry, historic and beloved. The sun was just rising above the horizon line behind it, casting it in a pinkish-golden halo of light.Just shy of two hundred years old, and long since decommissioned, Pelican Point had been in the care of the McCrae family from its inception, both an honor and a burden. Hannah had always felt a little guilty that Logan had been left to somehow find a way to maintain the lighthouse, the keeper’s cottage, and the rambling main house. “But look at you now,” she breathed, astonished by the end result of the renovation that had begun a little more than a year and a half earlier.Even from this distance, she could see that the uniquely shaped exterior, a sort of boxed-out square with angled corners, had gotten a complete face-lift. The salted-over and weath
Hannah smiled, winced as it pulled bruised skin, but didn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, that might fall into the category of TMI, at least as it pertains to older brothers.” She shifted her gaze from Alex to the house, stunned all over again by just how much had been accomplished in such a relatively short time. “I meant thank you for this.” She took in the new shakes, the renovated and freshly painted frames around all the dormers inset into the roof, the siding, the porch . . . all of it. She looked to Alex. “You fixed my heart, my soul,” she said. “The house, but even more, the tower. It’s . . . majestic now. Like it should have always been. I can’t believe you did that.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “How did you do it?”Alex beamed with pride, clearly pleased by Hannah’s reaction, and maybe a little relieved as well. “It’s what MacFarlands do,” she said simply. “We let the lights shine again.”Hannah could only shake her head. “You have no idea how much that—” She paused, let o
“She had options? Like . . . she had to decide which one was worse? Than that?” Hannah immediately raised a hand. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know. Am I the only one who has never been subjected to such horror? I mean, there has been the occasional too-lemony shade of yellow or unfortunate butt bustle, but . . . what kind of friends do you have, anyway?”Fiona was laughing now. “Hey, you should have seen that dress yesterday before she helped me fix it. Oh my God, we were laughing so hard, so I just kept it on.”“You . . . fixed it?” Hannah said, dubiously, trying not to recall the unnaturally shiny monstrosity her sister had had on the day before and failing. Spectacularly. Where was post-accident amnesia when she needed it? “Really? What part?”Fiona’s topaz eyes gleamed. “Yours is even more delicious.”Alex was watching the interplay between the sisters with open interest. “I can’t decide if I am hating that I was an only child, or if I owe my dad yet another debt of grati
“I’ve missed you so much,” Fiona said, sniffling again, her face pressed against the annual police picnic T-shirt Barbara had given Hannah yesterday so she could get out of her Willy Wonka death-by-chocolate shirt.With the memory of her now-ruined silk blouse, Hannah’s thoughts went immediately to Calder Blue’s twinkling, whiskey-colored eyes as they’d shared that private joke grin. Bastard, she thought, but realized she was grinning again now, even as tears pricked at the ends of her eyelashes.“I have, too.”“It’s so good to have you home. To be home.” Finally, Fiona loosened up her death grip and noticed Hannah’s T-shirt. “Barbara?”Hannah nodded. “My blouse—well, you saw it. Everything happened so fast, and I guess I was more out of it than I realized. I didn’t even think about my luggage until I got to Barb’s last night. It was still in the back of my car. I picked it up this morning from Sal and he loaned me his nephew’s car to use.”“So, I saw,” Fiona said, waggling her eyebro