Beyond the Misty Shore (7 page)

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s got to do with looking out rather than in.”

She swiveled her gaze up to his. Her brow wrinkled. “Looking out what?”

“Outside ourselves. Cecelia definitely looked out.”

“I don’t get it.”

He hadn’t either for the first couple of months he’d studied the painting. Then as if a light bulb went on in his head, it seemed so simple and clear. He propped his socked foot against the spindle behind him. “It’s like when you’re going to paint something. You see it with your eyes, but you feel it with every fiber in you. It isn’t until you feel it in here,” he cupped his fingers and thumped them against his chest, “that you can paint something and do it justice. For Cecelia, healing was like that. She felt it in here.”

“Empathy versus sympathy.” Maggie nodded.

“Yeah.” Quick, and a lot more intuitive than he’d given her credit for being.

Maggie smiled. “So how did you learn all this—about the house, and them?” She nodded toward the portraits. A shadow streaked across her chin.

“Miss Hattie. She’s lived here most of her life. Loves this house and everyone in it.”

“Sometimes I get the feeling she’s reading my mind. Not like a psychic, or anything like that. I don’t know. Like she somehow sees inside me.”

“I’ve had that feeling, too.” Why had he admitted that? It opened the door to all kinds of questions he didn’t want asked because he’d have to refuse to answer them.

“It doesn’t bother me, really. It’s just sort of”—she shrugged—“oddly comforting. As if you’re unconditionally accepted as you are and you don’t have to explain anything.” Maggie worried her lower lip with her teeth. “When you painted the gazebo, did you look outward?”

She knew. He felt his face flush. “Um, no.”

“But you did when you worked on canvas.”

It wasn’t a question, more of a statement. He hesitated before answering, certain that if he had any sense, he’d shut this conversation down right now. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I did.”

“You don’t paint on canvas anymore, then?”

He looked away. “I haven’t for some time.”

“Why not?” She rubbed her forefinger down the bannister.

He stiffened. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Sorry.” She sounded as if she truly meant it. “I didn’t mean to pry—and this isn’t another session of Twenty Questions. I’m just curious.”

“I’ll bet you drove your mother nuts.”

She grinned. “Just about.”

He looked down at her coat. “Are you on your way out?”

She nodded. “I thought I’d walk down to the village and soak up some serenity.”

Envy, hot and hard, slammed into him. “Enjoy it.”

He stepped around her, then took the rest of the stairs two at a time. Would he ever again be able to say that—that he was going for a walk in the village?

“Hey, MacGregor.”

“Yeah?” He paused and looked down at her.

“You’re not half bad when you’re civil.”

He grunted. “Show your appreciation, then. Leave me some hot water.”

The weak sun felt good
on her back. There were no sidewalks in this part of the village, so Maggie stopped on the worn, dirt path paralleling the street and watched all the activity. Across the street, two black boys rode their bikes hell-bent-for-leather, speeding dangerously close to the entry of Landry’s Landing.

A young woman with a red-and-white bandana circling her forehead like a sweat band rushed outside and cupped her hands at her mouth. “Aaron Butler! You and George slow down before you kill somebody!”

The boys breezed right on, not slowing a bit. Maggie grinned.

A man stepped out of The Store, next door to Landry’s. “Aaron, George, you heard Miss Landry! Slow it down!”

He was a plain man in his mid-forties, thin but not frail. His arms covered with dark hair, he propped his elbow atop a gas pump, then reached up and adjusted his green baseball cap.
Local Yokel
was embroidered above its bill.

Maggie walked on. Off to her distant right, she glimpsed a white picket fence. Headstones shone through the slats. A cemetery. Right in front of it sat a pristine little clapboard church with a tall, wooden steeple and a stained-glass window that looked pretty new. Looking at that window, feeling calm and restful again, Maggie made a vow. Come Monday, she would not watch MacGregor’s attempt.

Whatever was happening with him had nothing to do with her and it shouldn’t rob her of peace. Besides, she had her own agenda here. Carolyn.

Hooking a U-turn, Maggie headed back down the path, back toward the inn. She’d given MacGregor several opportunities to tell her about his troubles, but he’d elected not to do so. And, aside from the odd event that took place each morning on the shore, everything at the inn seemed the same as it had before she’d become aware of anything unusual occurring.

MacGregor acted like his habitual sarcastic and nagging self, though admittedly he had softened a bit on the civility front earlier today on the stairs. Miss Hattie continued being her usual angelic self. That woman really was a treasure. And Maggie’s conscience pestered her constantly because she hadn’t helped MacGregor. Seeing a stone, she nicked it with the tip of her sneaker. But she just might feel more guilty than pestered because a part of her wanted to help him. That made her disloyal to Carolyn, didn’t it?

The post office’s shadow slanted across the path. Maggie stepped into it and saw Vic Sampson through the window. Polishing the brass framing the glass fronts of the old-fashioned post office boxes that lined the wall, he glanced up and clearly recognized her from when he’d delivered mail to the inn. She’d never seen boxes with dial combinations before, though she’d heard of them. Quaint, but hadn’t the postal system recalled them all? Mmm, how had Sea Haven Village managed to keep theirs?

Vic shook the cloth in a greeting and mouthed, “Hi, Maggie.”

Glad to see a familiar face, she lifted a hand and smiled back, then walked on. Maybe if she just had
tried
to help MacGregor her conscience would stop badgering her. Turning her back on anyone in trouble reeked of indifference to their suffering, and wasn’t indifference just the worst kind of insult? She’d always respected anyone who—right or wrong—loved or hated and fought for or against anything with the passion of their convictions. It was the bystanders, those who elected not to get involved, those who didn’t care, that she’d held in disdain. She frowned. Now she was one of them.

The porch of the Blue Moon Cafe was freshly swept and empty of people. To the right of the front door, a blue moon had been painted on the green cinderblock wall. Like everything else this close to the sea and its salt, it had weathered and faded a little. The sheriff’s car was parked in the lot.

Rounding a rough cedar staircase, Maggie nearly collided with a short, stooped woman who rushed to the cafe’s door on thin, birdlike legs. Her coattail flapping behind her, she muttered something about a Mister High Britches needing a reminder that she’d once been his teacher. She deserved a little respect and he was going to give it to her or she was going to blister his ears.

Maggie skirted a half-barrel of orange silk flowers, replacing those in the dirt that surely bloomed there in summer, and the biggest anchor she’d ever seen, rusted and propped against the wall with a little mound of dirt hidden behind it. She caught a whiff of fried chicken. If she weren’t so troubled, she would’ve stopped in and had some. But she was troubled so, heavy-footed, she kept walking, silently damning MacGregor. Even here, she couldn’t get the man off her mind.

Near Fisherman’s Co-Op, she saw a knot of men sitting on its slab slate porch, rocking and laughing around a wire-spool table. Behind it, around the cove on a little point, she saw a lighthouse. The mild wind carried the men’s voices, and she heard snatches of stories they were swapping about fishing in the good old days. From the newspaper accounts she’d read, those days were ones preceding the fishing industry being thrust into crisis because of large government-funded boats and hi-tech electronic equipment. The big commercial fishermen had about fished out the Atlantic. Most of the fish caught here flirted with being listed as endangered species. Some already had been dubbed “commercially extinct.”

Maggie hurt for the little guy. Many of them third- and fourth-generation fishermen who now were in dire straits, in danger of losing everything they owned.

At the foot of the inn’s gravel driveway, she stepped between the rows of firs lining it and headed toward the house. MacGregor was a little guy, too. Not in stature but, like the little fisherman, he stood alone.

She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and blew out a heartfelt sigh that made fog of her breath. What if she forgot about Carolyn temporarily and tried to help MacGregor? What could she actually do for him? She didn’t even know what was happening out there on the rocks. Or where those strange whispers to her were coming from, though she strongly suspected they were no more than her conscience. What she did know was that watching him disturbed her, hurt her in ways she didn’t understand, and that robbed her of the peace and serenity she’d needed and found here.

The last thing she needed in her life was more turmoil. And MacGregor pounded out vibes of having a truckload of it. Well, she had her fair share, too. That’s how life worked, wasn’t it?

He had his problems, and she had hers. She couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by him and lose sight of her reason for being here—he might be a very large part of that reason. She still suspected him of being involved with Carolyn’s death, though she had to be honest, with a lot less certainty than when she’d first arrived here. MacGregor clearly was worried. She didn’t see his hopelessness growing stronger, but when she watched him attempt and fail to cross that line, she sure felt it.
That
worried her. And it made her feel even more guilty. Still, her first loyalty was to Carolyn. Guilty or innocent of manipulation, Carolyn was family.

No, Maggie promised herself, on Monday she would not watch MacGregor’s attempt. She wasn’t being hard or cold or indifferent—she’d even warned him—she simply had no sympathy to spare.

First light streamed in
through Maggie’s windows. She opened her eyes, stretched, slid out from under the warm quilts, then padded over to the window seat and looked outside.

Dawn had come, but the sky remained a dull, weak gray, as if it struggled under November and prayed hard for an early spring. She’d left the window shade up to catch first light. Sounds carried in the quiet house, and she hadn’t wanted to risk awakening MacGregor by setting an alarm.

It was Monday. She’d made a vow and she intended to keep it. She would
not
watch him. She’d be dressed and down in the village long before MacGregor turned over in his bed much less before he pulled his nasty morning ritual of rapping on the bathroom door and rushing her out.

Ten minutes later, she sneaked down the stairs like a thief, feeling as guilty as she had when at six years old she’d stolen that piece of bubble gum from 7-Eleven. She passed Cecelia’s portrait and deliberately avoided looking at it. Still, knowing she’d passed it, Maggie felt guilt sink deeper into her and it weighed heavily on her conscience. Cecelia would have found a way to help MacGregor.

The third stair creaked.

Maggie’s heart thundered. She stopped, darted her gaze back to the landing, expecting MacGregor to appear any second and look at her with those accusing gray eyes.

When he didn’t, she breathed easier, rushed down the last of the steps, then on into the kitchen.

The smells were wonderful.

Miss Hattie took a pan of fresh blueberry muffins out of the oven and set them on the white counter, then closed the oven door. “My, but you’re up with the chickens this morning.”

Maggie’s face went hot. More guilt poured acid into her stomach. “I saw a lighthouse on my walk yesterday. I wanted a closer look.”

“Mmm.” Miss Hattie pulled the mitt off her hand and set it aside. “Aren’t you going to have breakfast first?” She reached into a cabinet and pulled out a pretty rose-pattern plate.

“Those do smell sinfully good,” she said, watching Miss Hattie transfer the muffins from the pan to the plate, “but I’m anxious to get going.”

“I see.” Miss Hattie’s green eyes sparkled. She took a white cloth from a stack on the counter, freshly laundered or brand new, from the looks of them. “Well, take a muffin or two with you to bribe Hatch for the full tour. He loves muffins.”

“Hatch?” Maggie zipped up her blue and green parka. Her boots were in the mud room. Was she forgetting something important? No, no. She’d talked with her mother last night, and she’d been fine. A little more time to adjust...

“Hatch is the lighthouse keeper,” Miss Hattie said, setting three muffins inside the cloth. She caught the corners, drew them up, then folded them over the muffins. “Well, he was. The lighthouse isn’t functional anymore, of course. Coast Guard took over all of them a couple of years ago. Automated them.”

The twist of Miss Hattie’s lips clearly conveyed her opinion on that bit of progress. She opposed. “So Hatch was tossed out?”