Take the Long Way Home
Read Take the Long Way Home Online
Authors: Judith Arnold
Tags: #golden boy high school weird girl cookie store owner homecoming magic jukebox inheritance series billionaire
TAKE THE LONG WAY
HOME
The Magic
Jukebox
:
BOOK
SIX
***
Copyright © 2015 by Barbara Keiler
Smashwords Edition
License Notes
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***
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!
***
Table of
Contents
***
Layton, Felder, Bach & Moore
Attorneys-at-Law
58 East
42
nd
Street, Suite 1800
New York, New York10016
Ms. Maeve Nolan
110 Northwest
41
st
Street
Seattle, Washington, 98103
Dear Ms. Nolan,
I am acting as the executor of the estate of
Mr. Harold Hopewell, whose Last Will and Testament was entered into
probate in the Surrogate’s Court, New York County, State of New
York. I write to inform you of certain assets bequeathed to you
pursuant to Mr. Hopewell’s Last Will and Testament, to wit:
The deed to a building at 227 Seaview
Avenue, Brogan’s Point, Massachusetts
A cash bequest of $300,000.00
I have enclosed information regarding the
Brogan’s Point property, which is zoned for business use and most
recently housed a neighborhood bakery, as well as a check in the
amount of $300,000.00.
Please do not hesitate to contact me with
any questions.
Regards,
Frederick Bach, Esquire
***
Entering the Faulk Street Tavern shouldn’t
have been such a big challenge. Yet as Maeve Nolan stood outside
the door on a drizzly October afternoon, the air gray and heavy
with the scent of the nearby ocean, she wondered if she had the
courage to open the door.
She assumed her father would be inside. Some
cops took their coffee breaks at Riley’s on Main Street or Dunkin
Donuts down on Route One. But Ed Nolan had told Maeve that whenever
he had a few free minutes during his shift, he headed over to the
Faulk Street Tavern. Not for booze—he had that situation under
control, thanks to the woman who owned the bar and kept his mug
filled with hot, strong, sobering coffee.
The tavern had stood on Faulk Street, just a
short block from Atlantic Avenue and the ocean beyond, for as long
as Maeve could remember. She had never entered the place, though.
When she’d left town, she’d been eighteen—too young to order a
drink in a bar. She supposed she could have gone into the tavern
and ordered a Coke, but why would she? She could buy a Coke for a
lot less at the supermarket, and if she wanted something harder,
she could filch a beer or a few shots of whisky from her father’s
stash. In those days, he wouldn’t have noticed.
She was ten years older now, and she could
waltz into any bar she wanted and order any drink. And at least for
the moment, she could pay for that drink without worrying about how
much cheaper it might be elsewhere.
She doubted the Faulk Street Tavern
overcharged. According to her father, Augusta Naukonen, who owned
the place, was fair, down-to-earth, unpretentious, and a whole lot
of other things that made her worthy of replacing Maeve’s mother in
his heart.
That was another reason why Maeve hesitated
outside the bar. She wasn’t sure she was ready to meet her father’s
girlfriend.
But if she was going to return to Brogan’s
Point to live—and Harry had reached out from beyond the grave to
make sure she did—she couldn’t avoid her father or his lady friend.
Sooner or later, Maeve would have to meet Gus Naukonen. Might as
well be now.
Her father would be shocked to see her,
though. She hadn’t yet told him she was moving back to town.
Obviously, she would see him sooner or later—sooner, rather than
later. That was the whole idea, after all; Harry thought she should
be with her family, even if her family amounted to Ed Nolan and no
one else.
Harry had urged her to go home. He’d sensed
that, after living in Seattle for a decade, she still didn’t belong
there. Now, thanks to his machinations, she was back in Brogan’s
Point. She had found an apartment to rent in one of the old
triple-deckers on Atlantic Avenue, she’d bought a few essential
pieces of furniture, she’d helped Cookie adjust to her new home,
she’d renovated the bakery and had the place and all its equipment
inspected, and she’d hired a counter clerk, Joyce, who’d worked in
the same building when it was still Torelli’s Bakery and knew the
facility better than Maeve did.
Maeve had done everything except tell her
father she was home.
The thing was, she wanted
to be…
ready
. She
wasn’t sure what
ready
entailed, but as she hovered beneath the overhang shielding
the tavern’s door, rain misting the back of her jacket and frizzing
her hair, she was pretty certain she hadn’t gotten to
ready
yet.
Just do it,
she whispered, quoting the old advertising slogan.
She was no longer the fragile, grief-stricken girl she’d been the
day she’d left town. She’d lived on her own, mastered her craft,
learned a lot, and become self-sufficient. And now, thanks to
Harry, she was an heiress.
For not the first time, she sent a silent
prayer of gratitude to that sweet man, her confidante, her buddy.
Her guardian angel. The meddlesome old codger who’d found a way to
lure her back to Brogan’s Point.
Drawing in a deep breath, she shoved the
door open and stepped inside the bar.
It looked like…a bar. Nothing special,
nothing pretentious, nothing like the sleek, stark, aren’t-we-hip
watering holes that dotted the streets of downtown Seattle. No
exposed pipes, no chic industrial lighting and glossy black tables.
The Faulk Street Tavern looked the way Maeve imagined it had looked
when it was first built, umpteen million years ago. The walls were
a drab tan, the floor a bit sticky, the lighting amber. Booths
lined one wall, and plain wooden tables filled the rest of the
space except for a clearing at the center of the room, a scuffed
parquet dance floor. The far end contained the bar itself, which
looked like what it was, just a long, clean counter lined with
stools, the wall behind it full of shelves that held bottles and
glasses. Against the wall across from the bar stood an
antique-looking jukebox, easily the prettiest thing in the
room.
The place was fairly busy for a Tuesday
afternoon. A group of paunchy, gray-haired men, engrossed in an
amiable argument about the Bruins, sat around a table covered with
a multitude of glasses and a couple of trays of flatbread pizza.
Several booths were occupied, one by some middle-aged women, one by
a group in business attire, their table covered with open laptops
and bottles of beer, and a few by fishermen still in their boots
and canvas overalls. They’d probably sailed back to port early due
to the rain and figured that if they weren’t fishing, they might as
well be drinking. At the bar, a man perched precariously on a
stool, his shoulders hunched and his face downcast. A
barrel-chested guy stood behind the bar, wiping it down, his hair
dark and his biceps bulging. If he’d been stationed near the door,
Maeve would have assumed he was a bouncer.
A pony-tailed waitress in tight black
slacks, a white shirt, and a black apron bounded from table to
table, taking and delivering orders, one hand gripping a round
metal tray. She wasn’t Gus. Maeve had seen a photo of the woman
during one of her father’s Skype chats, but even if she hadn’t, she
doubted her father would have felt comfortable dating a woman as
young as his own daughter.
One person she didn’t see was her father,
and his absence provoked a twinge of relief inside her.
She shouldn’t have come here. There was
still so much work to do at the bakery. She’d ventured over to the
tavern only because she’d needed a break after scrubbing the
showcases all morning, wiping the glass and polishing the
chrome—and because she’d told herself to stop being such a ninny
and get the reunion over with. Her shop was in good shape, on pace
for her grand opening Saturday. The coffee machines would be
delivered tomorrow morning, as well as the café tables and her bulk
orders of ingredients. She couldn’t start baking until they
arrived, and she could spend only so much time cleaning the place.
And only so much time avoiding her father.
Apparently, she could avoid him for a little
longer, because he wasn’t where she’d expected to find him.
A door at one end of the bar swung open and
a woman emerged. She was several inches taller than Maeve’s
five-seven, and her face was square and plain, unadorned by
cosmetics. Short tufts of hair the color of Maeve’s pumpkin spice
squares fluffed around her head. She looked strong and solid.