Solace Island Read online

  “I’m different from you, Eve. Solace Island might seem like the answer, but it’s important for me to be pragmatic. I need to think things through logically before leaping in with both feet. I admire that about you. I do. But it doesn’t work for me. I did that once before, dropped out of university, moved to Phoenix with Brett, and started our business. Look how that turned out—”

  “You did the right thing, Maggie. Look at me: I got my stupid degree, and for what?” Eve said, her face alive with passion. “You took a chance on yourself and built a thriving business. That’s an amazing thing, Maggs. I’m sure no one in your graduating class has been able to accomplish what you have. You’re twenty-seven years old—”

  “And what do I have to show for it?” Maggie said, cutting her sister off. “A business that I poured everything into, that I care about and now need to walk away from, because to stay would be untenable. A failed relationship—”

  “You were with the man for more than five years! The longest I’ve ever lasted with anyone was three—”

  “He cheated on me and bailed the night before our wedding!” Maggie bellowed.

  Silence dropped over the kitchen as the two sisters stared at each other, breathing hard.

  “There is that,” Eve said. She dropped into a chair and sighed. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m being selfish. I shouldn’t pressure you.”

  “It’s okay,” Maggie said. “I shouldn’t have yelled. It’s just . . . I don’t feel very good about myself right now, and when you started painting me as a success—”

  “I know, poppet,” Eve said. “I’m sorry. I was so wrapped up in what I wanted. Whatever you decide to do is fine with me. Although, for the record, I do think that moving here and working together could turn out to be a very positive thing for both of us.”

  “I think it could, too,” Maggie said, “but I have to make sure. And, Eve, I need to know that if I decide not to move here, you’ll still love me. That you won’t hold it against me.”

  “Oh, Maggie,” Eve said, rising and going to her. “Nothing in the world will ever stop me from loving you. You’re my little sister and I’ll love you until the day I die.”

  Twenty-one

  EVE WAS OUTSIDE painting. The cottage was quiet, so Maggie decided to use the time to try to sort out how she felt about the decision she was facing.

  She sat down at the small Victorian desk in the living room, removed a piece of paper and a pen, and placed it on the desktop.

  “Okay,” she said, and puffed out a breath. The paper was so white and blank.

  “Right.” She uncapped the pen and wrote: Move to Solace.

  She underlined it.

  Maybe she needed a cup of tea.

  She went into the kitchen and brewed one up and then returned to the living room. She took a sip of her drink. There was something so warm and comforting about a nice mug of tea. She took another sip, placed the mug down, and began to write.

  Pros:

  —It would be fun to start a business with Eve.

  —I’ve missed my sister, and this way we would get to see each other all the time.

  —I love it here.

  —I love baking, and one of the key things you should look for when starting a business is something you love and are good at.

  —I’m a good baker.

  —Luke.

  Maggie paused. Just looking at his name written down on her sheet of paper caused a little tremor of warmth to pool low in her body. No, she chastised herself. You’ve done this before. Luke should not come into the equation. You either want to move here or you don’t. Having the hots for a guy should not be a part of your decision-making process.

  —Luke.

  —A fresh start.

  —I love the topography of the Pacific Northwest.

  —Seasons! Clearly delineated seasons. Winter, spring, summer, and fall.

  —Great hikes.

  —The Saturday market.

  —The ability to purchase locally grown, organic produce and free-range, antibiotic- and hormone-free eggs, chicken, etc.

  —It would be nice to have Luke as a friend. He’s smart and funny and generous and kind and I like his dog, Samson, too.

  —I think Eve and I would make good friends here. Real friends.

  —Solace has that small-town feel, but the grocery stores are stocked with gourmet items, etc.

  Maggie read over her list as she took another sip of tea.

  “Oh!” She’d thought of more to write down.

  —There are no rattlesnakes, bobcats, tarantulas, scorpions, or Gila monsters on Solace Island. There is a cougar, but apparently it doesn’t bother people.

  —I won’t have to fall asleep at night serenaded by the howls and yips of coyotes closing in on some poor, hapless cat or stray dog.

  —Brett doesn’t live on Solace Island.

  —If I moved here, I wouldn’t have to worry about running into mutual friends and business acquaintances and dealing with the awkwardness and sympathetic looks.

  A tidal wave of embarrassment and humiliation at the whole failed wedding fiasco engulfed her. Maggie dropped her head into her hands and tried to catch her breath. How could she have been so stupid, so blind? Clearly, several people at the office had known what was going on between Brett and Kristal. Why didn’t anyone say something? Did his friends know, too?

  She straightened slowly. His friends. Not ours. Not really.

  She leaned back in her chair, her mind flipping through the last three weeks of voice messages, texts, e-mails—other than Carol’s unwanted updates, there were none from the Phoenix crowd.

  Maggie took a sip of her tea, then bent over her list.

  Cons:

  She waited for the deluge of possible negatives to descend on her, but when none were forthcoming, she decided to take a walk.

  Twenty-two

  SAMSON LIFTED HIS nose, his ears pricking forward, his body quivering. Must have caught the scent of a deer nearby. “Okay,” Luke said to him, and Samson took off like a rocket up the bank and disappeared into the woods.

  Luke returned his attention to his task, digging his hands into the gritty sand, turning it over and sorting through it. Seven littleneck clams. A couple of the clams were too small, so he tossed them back into the hole. The others joined the ones already in his bucket of seawater. He could taste the tang of salt on his lips from the slight breeze coming off the ocean. This is satisfying, Luke thought as he dug into the wet sand again. To be able to go out the door and, within minutes, be gathering food for dinner.

  “Hey there.”

  Luke looked up and saw Maggie coming toward him on the beach. She was wearing an oatmeal-colored cable-knit sweater, jeans, and hiking boots. Her hair was pulled back, but the wind had tugged a few tendrils free. He was envious of the strands of glorious hair for their right to caress her face at will.

  “Hi.” He straightened to greet her.

  “Whatcha doing?” she asked.

  “Clamming.”

  Her eyes widened. “I mean, I know clams come from the ocean and all, but . . .” She peeked into his bucket. “Wow! There they are.”

  He understood the clams were the excitement, but still, the expression on her face made him feel as if he’d given her a wonderful gift.

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” he said, “if you don’t mind getting mucky.”

  “Are you kidding?” she said, grinning at him. “I love getting mucky.” She pushed up her sleeves. “What do I do?”

  “Just dig in,” he said, bending over and scooping up a handful of sand, “and then sort through it and . . .”

  “Holy cow!” Maggie said, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve got some.” She squatted down and dug through the sand. “Look at this! There are tons of them. This is a really great spot. Are t
he clams all over the beach?” she asked, digging with one hand and gathering clams in the other.

  “Some places seem to be more fruitful than others. This particular strip of beach is really good. Oh, that one’s too little. We need to throw back any that are smaller than one and a half inches.”

  “Look at this. Oh my goodness.” In the palm of her hand, Maggie was cradling a baby clam that was around the size of the tip of her pinky. “It’s so tiny.”

  “We’ll cover the little ones up with sand before we leave, to make it harder for the seagulls to get them,” he said, rinsing off a few more clams and tossing them into his bucket.

  “I’ll bury this one now,” she said, poking the little clam into the sand with her finger. “Have a good life.”

  “Yeah, until you grow big enough, and then we’ll eat you,” he said.

  “It’s terrible, but true,” Maggie said, shaking her head ruefully. “And to think, I used to be vegetarian.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, rinsing the larger clams off and dropping them in his bucket. “Seven years of no meat, poultry, seafood, and then last Christmas, I just snapped. Eve and I were staying with our parents for the holidays. They’d just retired to Florida. Needed to for Mom’s arthritis. Took a little while for them to adjust to living there. Mom was feeling blue, missing our old family home. So Eve and I hopped on a plane. We wanted her to know that her health was way more important to us than an old house full of memories and a white Christmas.

  “Brett wasn’t pleased with the change of plans. He’s always hated Florida with a passion. So, he decided to go skiing with a couple of his buddies.” Maggie paused, scrubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. “Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps he wasn’t skiing with his ‘buddies’—more likely boffing his brains out with Kristal.” She contemplated that for a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever.”

  That’s progress, Luke thought. She’s talking about Brett without crying.

  He watched her squat down and dig in the sand, enjoying the delight on her face when she discovered more clams.

  “I think,” she continued, “if Brett had come to Florida with me, I probably wouldn’t have fallen off the herbivore wagon.”

  “He was vegetarian?”

  She laughed. “Hell no. He was always complaining about what a pain in the ass vegetarians are.” She gathered the littlenecks up. “I wouldn’t have caved because I wouldn’t have wanted to give him the satisfaction. Actually”—a mischievous look danced across her face—“he still doesn’t know.”

  “That you’re eating meat?”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head, looking very pleased with herself. “I probably shouldn’t be admitting this.” She chuckled. “What kind of person pretends to their fiancé that they are still vegetarian—January, February, March”—she counted out on her fingers—“for almost three months?” Maggie started laughing. “A bad person. A very bad person.” Big belly laughs were tumbling out of her now.

  “He didn’t notice?”

  “No.” She chortled. “In the beginning, I hid it. If I was staying over at his place, I’d still cook a vegetarian meal, and he’d poke at the tofu and complain.” She had to wipe her eyes, she was laughing so hard. “And sometimes I would be racked with such ravenous cravings for meat, I’d offer to pick him up some beer and then I’d zip into a hamburger joint and chow down.” Her laughter started to subside. “After a while I didn’t even bother hiding it. I didn’t tell him, mind you, but I didn’t hide it, either.” She shook her head, quiet now. “I even ate a salami and provolone sandwich during a lunchtime office meeting. I was sitting right beside him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nada.” A flicker of sadness crossed her face. “In hindsight, I think we didn’t know each other very well. Weird, huh? To spend all that time in a supposed relationship and not really know”—she softly thumped her chest with her fist, looking up at him, muted anguish in her eyes—“who that person is.”

  Luke started to step forward, wanting to wrap her in his arms and extinguish the sorrow that had risen up, but stopped his forward momentum. She needed a friend in this moment. If he hugged her, she would become aware of the raging erection that her full-body laughter had called forth. He, who had always taken pride in his self-control, apparently had none over that particular appendage, as far as she was concerned. Thankfully, his hard-on was hidden underneath his fisherman’s sweater. He would stay where he was, and listen, and let her sort through the wreckage at her own pace. He could do that. He knew what she was going through. He’d been through a version of it himself. Time was what she needed. Time to heal. Time to replenish.

  “So, what was the trigger?” he asked, hoping to change the trajectory of her thoughts. “What did you eat first? Give me the blow-by-blow.”

  Her expression lightened, and she nodded like she knew what he was trying to do and had decided it was the best course of action. “Well, Dad was showing off his new grill. He had some juicy T-bone steaks sizzling and the aroma was absolutely intoxicating.” She rinsed the clams and added them to his bucket. “He also had the usual array of marinated veggies on the grill. My parents were real supportive that way: bell peppers, asparagus, cauliflower, et cetera. Mom had baked potatoes roasting in a bed of salt and she’d set out cheese and crackers.”

  Luke could envision the scene: outdoor barbecue, family, smiling faces in the Florida winter sunshine.

  “A delicious dinner,” Maggie continued, “for any vegetarian, and yet all I could see were those steaks. The next thing I knew, I’d bypassed all the veggies, thrown a huge honking steak onto my plate and devoured the whole thing in around five seconds flat. My family was shocked.”

  Luke started laughing. “How was it?” he asked.

  “Best damned thing I’d ever tasted in my life,” she said, looking up at him, her amazing, almond-shaped eyes twinkling again with humor. Their color seemed different today: the emerald green was even deeper, and there was a touch of blue. Was that bluish tinge always there, or a reflection off the ocean?

  “And that was that,” she said. “I feel a little guilty sometimes, but I’ve never gone back. If anything, I’m more carnivorous than I ever was before. Go figure.”

  They clammed for a while in companionable silence, each of them deep in their own thoughts, the seagulls circling overhead.

  Samson came back and the tide was coming in, so they gathered the clams and headed home.

  “Can I ask you something?” Maggie said, as they started up the switchbacks that led to the bluffs above.

  “Sure, anything.”

  “What made you decide to move here?”

  A million things flew through his mind. Adyna, the explosion, regret, lying in that hospital bed, day after day, with nothing to do but watch the clouds drift by. You’ve gotta stop blaming yourself, Jake had told him when Luke had stepped away from his business, from the life he’d built in Washington, DC. You’ve had too much time confined to your bed, obsessing with “should haves” and “could haves.” It’s messed with your mind.

  Or sorted it out, he’d replied.

  Samson nudged Luke with his wet nose, bringing him back to the present. “I needed a change,” he said, shifting the clam bucket to his other hand. “I traveled for a few months, not sure where, or what I was looking for. Then I arrived here and . . .” He hadn’t really thought about the reasons why he’d chosen Solace Island, or put them into words. “It’s hard to explain, really. It just—” He paused and looked at her. “The place felt right. When I drove off the ferry that very first time, I had a sense of coming home.”

  She nodded, staring down at the dirt path, clearly deep in thought.

  “So,” he continued, “two days later, I made an offer on my house.”

  “Just like that?” She looked at him now.

 
“Yeah.”

  “Were you scared?”

  He laughed. “Hell no. Look, if it didn’t work out, at least I gave it a go. I’ve found regret only visits when I chicken out and don’t take a risk.”

  “Did you know what you were going to do, work-wise?” she asked, a slight furrow in her brow.

  “No. That came later,” he said. “Why all the questions?”

  She looked back out at the water. Was quiet for a moment. He wasn’t sure she was going to answer.

  “Eve and I are talking about maybe making our stay permanent. Eve’s pretty much made up her mind, but I still have questions. Practical ones. Solace is a beautiful place to vacation, but will we be able to support ourselves? Where would we live? You know, that kind of thing.”

  “You could make a list of pros and cons—”

  “I just did!” she said, swinging back to face him, her expression lightening. She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and waved it at him. “My list,” she said. “So, you do that, too?”

  “I do.” As the words left his mouth, he felt as if he was acknowledging something much deeper that was occurring between them. Like a chord had been struck, back at the ferry, when he’d first laid eyes on her. And ever since that time, the sound had been quietly resonating and realigning all his molecules to hers.

  Twenty-three

  MAGGIE HESITATED FOR a second outside her sister’s bedroom, listening. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the hall light. The moon through the skylight was enough. She couldn’t hear any sounds of movement coming from Eve’s room that would indicate her sister was awake, but the warm illumination that spilled out from under her door meant that her bedside lamp was on.

  She tapped softly on the door. “Eve? You awake?”

  There was a rustling noise. “Huh? What?” Eve said loudly. “Everything okay?” Her sister’s voice had that groggy urgency of someone who’d woken abruptly and was trying to pretend they hadn’t been asleep.