Caleb’s expression brightened at once. “There you go. Best to nip this sort of thing in the bud. Be sure to give Loretta my regards.”
“I never said I was going to the school,” Patrick pointed out.
“Of course you are. It’s ten minutes away. Won’t take you but a couple of minutes to put things right with Loretta, and you can be back on that dock of yours in no time. You’ll have done a good deed.”
“I thought diving in the freezing ocean was my good deed,” Patrick grumbled.
“One of ’em,” Caleb agreed. “A smart man knows he needs a lot of ’em on the ledger before the day comes when he faces Saint Peter.”
Patrick sighed heavily. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He noticed that Caleb was looking mighty pleased with himself as he watched Patrick gather up his purchases. Just what he needed in his life…a nosy old man who thought he had a right to be Patrick’s conscience.
Nevertheless, he drove to the school, then stalked through the halls that still smelled exactly as they had twenty years ago—of chalk, a strong pine-scented cleanser, peanut butter sandwiches and smelly sneakers. He followed the all-too-familiar path directly to the principal’s office and hammered on the door, determined for once not to let Loretta Dowd intimidate him. He was all grown-up and beyond her authority now.
“Come in,” a tart voice snapped.
Patrick entered and faced Loretta Dowd with her flashing black eyes and steel-gray bun. He promptly felt as if he were six years old again, and in trouble for the tenth time in one day.
“You!” she said. “I might have known. There’s no need to break my door down, Patrick Devaney. My hearing’s still perfectly fine.”
He winced at her censure. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I imagine you’re here to tell me that it wasn’t Alice’s fault that Ricky Foster fell off your dock.”
Patrick nodded.
“Did you take him from his classroom to the waterfront?”
Patrick barely resisted the desire to squirm as he had as a boy under that unflinching gaze. “No.”
“Did you lose control of him?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see how this is your fault,” she said. “You may go now.”
Patrick started to leave, then realized what she hadn’t said. He turned back and peered at her. “You’re not firing Ms. Newberry, are you?”
She frowned at the question. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a fine teacher. She just happened to make a bad decision today. Spring makes a lot of people do crazy things. We’ve addressed it. It won’t happen again.”
Thank the Lord for that, Patrick thought. “Okay, then,” he said.
He turned to leave, but Mrs. Dowd spoke his name sharply.
“Yes, ma’am?” He noticed with some surprise that there was a twinkle in her eyes.
“It was very gallant of you to roar in here in an attempt to protect Ms. Newberry. You’ve turned into a fine young man.”
Warmth flooded through him at the undeserved compliment. “I imagine there are quite a few who’d argue that point,” he said, “but thanks for saying it, just the same.”
“If you’re referring to your parents, I think you know better.”
Patrick stiffened. “I don’t discuss my parents.”
“Perhaps you should. Better yet, you should be talking to them. And to your brother.”
“They’re in my past,” he told her, not the least bit surprised that she felt she had a right to meddle in his life but resentful of it just the same.
“Not as long as there’s breath in any of you,” she told him, her tone surprisingly gentle. “One phone call would put an end to their heartache.” She leveled her gaze straight at him. “And to yours.”
“My heart’s just fine, thanks all the same, and I didn’t come here to get a lecture from you,” he said. “I left grade school a long time ago.”
“But you haven’t outgrown the need for a friendly nudge from someone older and wiser, have you?” she chided.
It was the second time in less than an hour that someone in town had seen fit to pull rank on Patrick. It was Caleb’s push that had gotten him over here, and for what? He hadn’t done a thing to help Alice Newberry, and he’d gotten another lecture on his own life in the bargain.
“Forgive me for saying this, Mrs. Dowd, but in this case you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough to recognize a miserable man when I see one standing in front of me,” she said. “You won’t be truly happy until you settle this.”
“Maybe it can’t be settled and maybe I don’t care about being truly happy,” Patrick retorted. “Maybe all I care about is being left alone.”
That said, he whirled around and left the school, regretting that he’d ever let Caleb talk him into coming over here in the first place. Some days a man would be smart to listen to his own counsel and no one else’s.
Alice had never been so humiliated and embarrassed in her life. Of all the boneheaded things she could have done…not only had she lost control of her students and let one of them nearly drown, she had done it in front of Patrick Devaney.
Everyone in Widow’s Cove knew that Patrick had turned into a virtual recluse. He lived on that fishing boat of his, ate his meals at Jess’s and, for all Alice knew, drank himself into oblivion there every night as well. What no one knew was why, not the details, anyway. There had been some sort of rift with his parents, that much was known. He’d left his home, about thirty miles away, and moved to Widow’s Cove. That thirty miles might as well have been thirty thousand. From what she’d heard, none of them had bridged the distance.
Alice almost hadn’t recognized Patrick when he’d emerged from the ocean dripping wet and mad as the dickens. His hair was too long and stubble shadowed his cheeks. He looked just a little disreputable and more than a little dangerous, especially with his intense blue eyes shooting angry sparks.
Alice remembered a very different Patrick from high school. Although she’d been two years older, everyone at the county high school located here in town knew each other at least by sight. Even as a sophomore, Patrick had been the flirtatious, wildly popular, star football player; his twin brother, Daniel, the captain of the team. The two of them had been inseparable. Now they barely spoke and tried to avoid crossing paths. No one understood that, either.
Alice hadn’t been surprised that Patrick hadn’t remembered her. Not only had she been older, but in high school she’d kept her head buried in her books. She’d been determined to go to college, to break the pattern of all the women in her family, going back generations, who’d married seafaring men, borne their children and lived in fear each time a violent storm approached the coast.
Too many of those men had been lost at sea. Too many of the wives had raised their children alone, living a hand-to-mouth existence because they’d had no skills of their own to fall back on. It had been such a bitter irony that her own father had been lost to that same sea—not in a boat, but in a car—and that he’d taken Alice’s mother to her death with him.
Alice could still recall the heated exchange when she’d told her parents of her plans. They’d both thought she was casting aspersions on their choices, that by wanting more she was being ungrateful for the life they’d struggled to give her.
Maybe