She stopped a few feet short of the rocky drop-off and gazed out at the never-ending motion of the Atlantic Ocean. Hunter stopped beside her but she didn’t dare look at him.
The setting sun behind them painted a pink cast on the swells as they rose and fell and then flipped over into white caps that crashed into the jagged shoreline. The rocks below had been cleaned of snow by the salty water but could still be slippery, so she did not venture down as she used to do in the summer when she was a teenager.
The beam from the lighthouse shone fragmented across the water. The cold wind whipped at her, and exhilaration swept away all other emotions. The last time she was here in the winter she was still pregnant with Brianna.
After that, it was too cold in the winter to bring the child and they always had so many better places to spend time together. They could go to the sled hill after a snow or the pottery studio and shop, where they threw and glazed ugly pots and globs that vaguely resembled dinosaurs, and the owner fired them anyway. Of course, there was also baking cookies or learning to sew with her mother.
And when she wasn’t with her daughter, she craved to be. The hours she had to spend at work were a painful reality she knew she needed to weather.
Time to herself seemed frivolous these days and she never seemed to have enough hours in a day to come to a place so hypnotic, so meditative, to think, to hope.
Was that why she’d come today? To think? To hope?
No, she’d come to reckon the path before her, to smooth out bumps, to build bridges if she could.
Hunter put a hand on her shoulder. In the faltering light, his dark blue eyes seemed stormy, his face concerned. It was then that she realized she was shivering, her teeth were chattering and she hadn’t bothered to put her hat or gloves on before venturing out in the freezing wind. More, the sun had set and twilight would be short and the darkness harsh.
Hunter held her arm as they made their way back to the car. Once inside, she rubbed her palms together and put her hands over her complaining ears.
“Start the car.”
“What?”
He pointed to the keys still dangling from the ignition lock.
“Oh.” She turned the keys and the engine came to life. Warm air poured from the vents. They had been out near the water for less than ten minutes. Not nearly enough time for the engine to cool or for her to figure out what she had to say.
After a minute or two of listening to the heater fan, she worked on relaxing the hard knot in her chest. “Hunter, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Did you bring a chicken wing or two?”
She snuffled. “For the awkward silent moments? No, but my sister packed a bag for our dinner.”
“How is Christina?”
“She’s doing well.” How much was appropriate to share about her family, her feelings, her plans, Brianna? So she tossed the ball to him. “How was Chicago?”
“Big, exciting at times. Very different from Bailey’s Cove.”
“Wow, that was so not an answer.” She took a chance and looked at him. His brows furrowed as if thinking of something unpleasant. Was that how he remembered her?
“Why aren’t you an attorney?”
“Well, I guess I asked for that.” She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to stop the landslide that was heading rapidly directly toward her. “Can we back up for a bit?”
He grabbed a blanket from the backseat and handed it to her. “Are you hungry, Delainey?”
No, she was not hungry. Her stomach was churning and her head ached. The last thing she wanted was food—no, the second last. The last thing was to sit here and confide in a man she no longer knew.
“Sure. I could eat.”
He reached over the seat this time to pull the canvas satchel up onto the console between them. From it Delainey opened a paper bag containing three votive candles and a book of matches.
Blankets. Candles. If her sister had included condoms, one of them was going to die. She shook her head and put the candles back in the bag. The dash lights would be good enough.
Hunter went for the handle of the satchel.
“I’ll get it.” Delainey tugged the bag into her lap just in case her sister had made that very big mistake. She dug around a bit. No condoms, but Christina had made a definite statement. Delainey pulled out two submarine sandwiches and two large whole dill pickles sealed in plastic.
She handed one of each to Hunter and wondered if he saw what she saw or if she was just a frustrated single mom who had not had a man, no matter how many her mother threw at her, in a very long time.
Oh, she was so pathetic.
“How are things in Bailey’s Cove? I noticed a few stores closed.”
She felt the knot loosen at such a neutral topic and she said a silent thank-you. “The town is struggling. It’s not a new story. Young people leaving and never coming back. The tourist dollars are going anywhere but here. We’re trying to change that but slowly. We don’t want to completely lose the flavor of the town or to become a town primarily made up of people from outside the state looking for a break in the summer.”
“Wouldn’t an influx of tourists help the economy here?”
“Yes, it would, but the fear is that if too many of you people—” She paused and chanced a smile at him. When he smiled back, she turned her gaze to the light from the lighthouse out on the point. “Outsiders, you know. Too many outsiders and the town would lose control, lose many of the valuable assets that mark it as an early New England settlement.”
“I saw the church. The town has done wonders restoring it.”
“The town didn’t do it. Our museum curator, Heather Loch, did it with her family’s money. There’s a great story there involving a pirate and a skeleton bricked up in a wall.”
“Intriguing. Tell me about it.”
“That story is bigger than a sandwich in a car.”
“Were people digging for gold again like they did in the 1950s?” Hunter asked, and then took a bite of his sandwich.
“A bit, but some of the people around here found something better than gold. They found long-lost relatives. Anyway, the Pirate’s Roost, which you probably saw on your way into town, is new, one of the first town improvements. My sister has taken possession of the three Victorian houses on Treacher Avenue. She’ll turn them into a bed-and-breakfast.” She took a nibble of the cheese and lettuce sticking out from the side of her sandwich to keep herself from babbling.
“Each little improvement will grow the town, make the place of more interest to tourists, create jobs for some lucky people who want to live in a small coastal town,” she continued anyway.
“So the town has a plan?”
“Right.” But no way was the town going to grow fast enough for an extra attorney to make a living for herself and her daughter. “And maybe I can come back someday.”
“Come back? Are you leaving?”
She should have kept her mouth shut. She had just opened herself up for the “Why aren’t you an attorney?” question again.
She took a large bite of her sandwich, too impossibly big to speak around, and she chewed.
They ate in silence. It was shocking how fast a submarine sandwich could disappear when one was trying to make it take a long time.
She frantically tried to open her pickle until Hunter stilled her hands with his and took the