Then Zoe had arrived at Sea-Tac airport in a flag-draped casket.
And two years after the worst day of his life, the room remained unpainted behind a closed door Seth had never opened since.
MANNION’S PUB & BREWERY was located on the street floor of a faded redbrick building next to Honeymoon Harbor’s ferry landing. The former salmon cannery had been one of many buildings constructed after the devastating 1893 fire that had swept along the waterfront, burning down the original wood buildings. One of Seth’s ancestors, Jacob Harper, had built the replacement in 1894 for the town’s mayor and pub owner, Finn Mannion. Despite the inability of Washington authorities to keep Canadian alcohol from flooding into the state, the pub had been shuttered during Prohibition in the 1930s, effectively putting the Mannions out of the pub business until Quinn Mannion had returned home from Seattle and hired Harper Construction to reclaim the abandoned space.
Although the old Victorian seaport town wouldn’t swing into full tourist mode until Memorial Day, nearly every table was filled when Seth dropped in at the end of the day. He’d no sooner slid onto a stool at the end of the long wooden bar when Quinn, who’d been washing glasses in a sink, stuck a bottle of Shipwreck CDA in front of him.
“Double cheddar bacon or stuffed blue cheese?” he asked.
“Double cheddar bacon.” As he answered the question, it crossed Seth’s mind that his life—what little he had outside his work of restoring the town’s Victorian buildings constructed by an earlier generation of Harpers—had possibly slid downhill beyond routine to boringly predictable. “And don’t bother boxing it up. I’ll be eating it here,” he added.
Quinn lifted a dark brow. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Meaning that, by having dinner here at the pub six nights a week, the seventh being with Zoe’s parents—where they’d recount old memories, and look through scrapbooks of photos that continued to cause an ache deep in his heart—he’d undoubtedly landed in the predictable zone. So, what was wrong with that? Predictability was an underrated concept. By definition, it meant a lack of out-of-the-blue surprises that might destroy life as you knew it. Some people might like change. Seth was not one of them. Which was why he always ordered takeout with his first beer of the night.
The second beer he drank at home with his burger and fries. While other guys in his position might have escaped reality by hitting the bottle, Seth always stuck to a limit of two bottles, beginning with that long, lonely dark night after burying his wife. Because, although he’d never had a problem with alcohol, he harbored a secret fear that if he gave in to the temptation to begin seriously drinking, he might never stop.
The same way if he ever gave in to the anger, the unfairness of what the hell had happened, he’d have to patch a lot more walls in his house than he had those first few months after the notification officers’ arrival.
There’d been times when he’d decided that someone in the Army had made a mistake. That Zoe hadn’t died at all. Maybe she’d been captured during a melee and no one knew enough to go out searching for her. Or perhaps she was lying in some other hospital bed, her face all bandaged, maybe with amnesia, or even in a coma, and some lab tech had mixed up blood samples with another soldier who’d died. That could happen, right?
But as days slid into weeks, then weeks into months, he’d come to accept that his wife really was gone. Most of the time. Except when he’d see her, from behind, strolling down the street, window-shopping or walking onto the ferry, her dark curls blowing into a frothy tangle. He’d embarrassed himself a couple times by calling out her name. Now he never saw her at all. And worse yet, less and less in his memory. Zoe was fading away. Like that ghost who reputedly haunted Herons Landing, the old Victorian mansion up on the bluff overlooking the harbor.
“I’m having dinner with Mom tonight.” And had been dreading it all the damn day. Fortunately, his dad hadn’t heard about it yet. But since news traveled at the speed of sound in Honeymoon Harbor, he undoubtedly soon would.
“You sure you don’t want to wait to order until she gets here?”
“She’s not eating here. It’s a command-performance dinner,” he said. “To have dinner with her and the guy who may be her new boyfriend. Instead of eating at her new apartment, she decided that it’d be better to meet on neutral ground.”
“Meaning somewhere other than a brewpub owned and operated by a Mannion,” Quinn said. “Especially given the rumors that said new boyfriend just happens to be my uncle Mike.”
“That does make the situation stickier.” Seth took a long pull on the Cascadian Dark Ale and wished it was something stronger.
The feud between the Harpers and Mannions dated back to the early 1900s. After having experienced a boom during the end of the end of the nineteenth century, the once-bustling seaport town had fallen on hard times during a national financial depression.
Although the population declined drastically, those dreamers who’d remained were handed a stroke of luck in 1910 when the newlywed king and queen of Montacroix added the town to their honeymoon tour of America. The couple had learned of this lush green region from the king’s friend Theodore Roosevelt, who’d set aside national land for the Mount Olympus Monument.
As a way of honoring the royals, and hoping that the national and European press following them across the country might bring more attention to the town, residents had voted nearly unanimously to change the name to Honeymoon Harbor. Seth’s ancestor Nathaniel Harper had been the lone holdout, creating acrimony on both sides that continued to linger among some but not all of the citizens. Quinn’s father, after all, was a Mannion, his mother a Harper. But Ben Harper, Seth’s father, tended to nurse his grudges. Even century-old ones that had nothing to do with him. Or at least hadn’t. Until lately.
“And it gets worse,” he said.
“Okay.”
One of the things that made Quinn such a good bartender was that he listened a lot more than he talked. Which made Seth wonder how he’d managed to spend all those years as a big-bucks corporate lawyer in Seattle before returning home to open this pub and microbrewery.
“The neutral location she chose is Leaf.”
Quinn’s quick laugh caused two women who were drinking wine at a table looking out over the water to glance up with interest. Which wasn’t surprising. Quinn’s brother Wall Street wizard Gabe Mannion might be richer, New York City pro quarterback Burke Mannion flashier, and, last time he’d seen him, which had admittedly been a while, Marine-turned-LA-cop Aiden Mannion had still carried that bad-boy vibe that had gotten him in trouble a lot while they’d been growing up together. But Quinn’s superpower had always been the ability to draw the attention of females—from bald babies in strollers to blue-haired elderly women in walkers—without seeming to do a thing.
After turning in the burger order, and helping out his waitress by delivering meals to two of the tables, Quinn returned to the bar and began hanging up the glasses.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You ordered the burger as an appetizer before you go off to a vegetarian restaurant to dine on alfalfa sprouts and pretty flowers.”
“It’s a matter of survival. I spent the entire day until I walked in here taking down a wall, adding a new reinforcing beam and framing out a bathroom. A guy needs sustenance. Not a plate of arugula and pansies.”
“Since I run a place that specializes in pub grub, you’re not going to get any argument from me on that plan. Do you still want the burger to go for the mutt?”
Bandit, a black Lab/boxer mix so named for his penchant for stealing food from Seth’s construction sites back in his stray days—including once gnawing through a canvas ice chest—usually waited patiently in the truck for his burger. Tonight Seth had dropped him off at the house on his way over here, meaning the dog would have to wait a little longer for his dinner. Not that he hadn’t mooched enough from