The Wishing Tide (5 page)

Lane turned to face him, towering above her now, and disturbingly close. “Why here?”

Michael set the teapot on the counter, then slid the cups into the sink full of soapy water. “Well, for starters I’m already here. And I guess because I like it. It feels like . . . home.”

Lane peered up at him skeptically. “It feels like Vermont?”

“No, not like Vermont. And sure as hell not like Boston.”

Something in his face told Lane not to press the matter. She was probably crazy for even considering his proposal, but it would be a nice windfall, maybe enough to pay for the storm shutters she was going to have to order before next hurricane season. And in light of the recent break-ins and the strange goings-on across the street, it might not be such a bad idea to have a man around. If—and
only
if—he kept his promise to be invisible.

“There are rules,” she informed him firmly.

“Let’s hear them.”

“I don’t allow smoking anywhere on the premises. The third floor is my residence and is off-limits to guests. Breakfast is provided, but not lunch. Dinner is included for an additional fee and I’ll need to know at the beginning of each week if you’ll be dining here so I can shop accordingly. Should you opt to dine elsewhere on a particular night, you will still be charged for the meal.”

She had barely finished delivering the last edict when he extended a hand to seal the agreement. “Done. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can scare up something to board up that broken shed window.”

Lane felt a lingering sense of misgiving as she watched Michael slip out the back door and disappear in the direction of the shed. When he was out of sight she tugged on her jacket and ventured out onto the beach, picking her way through a tangle of sea grass and battered pink and purple morning glories. The storm had hit at low tide and she was relieved to see that the surge had left the dunes relatively, though not completely, unscathed. Squinting down the beach, she could see what appeared to be a cooler and other bits of debris snagged against the jetty.

It wasn’t pretty, but it could have been so much worse. As she turned to go back to the inn, she paused for one last look, hoping for some sign of the old woman. For the first time in weeks there was no telltale flash of the mysterious purple bag.

Mary

I
dreamed last night, of a fine-set table, of exquisite lace and bone white china, of bloodred wine in thin crystal glasses, of handsome princes smiling through candlelight. The dream is not new. I have dreamed it before, the table with all its fine things, all its lost things, but not for a very long time. I did not want it to come, but it was insistent, like the storm outside, keening at my window to be let in.

While Penny raged outside the thick walls of my small safe world, another storm raged in my head, howling out of dark corners where I hide my most precious things—and my most terrible. I did my best to fight it, thrashing and tangled in my narrow bed, defying it, begging it to leave me in peace. But I knew it would not. The tide came in, as it always does in my dreams, swirling at the panes, pushing its way in, smashing its way in. I was not ready. I am never ready. Too late to save anything. Everything, everything, swept away.

The tremors have stopped now, the storms, real and imagined, at last gone by, leaving their small ruins before moving on. Beyond my window the world is fresh and clean, made new by the washing of water. And yet I find I haven’t the strength to face this new day. I
fumble two pills from their little brown bottle and swallow them without water—I’m a practiced pill-taker, you see—then crawl back beneath the safety of my covers. I will not go to the dunes today. My wounds are suddenly too fresh, my heart too raw. Let the sea keep its secrets while I tend to my bruises.

Lane

T
wo days later, Lane opened her eyes with the sun streaming across the sheets, and the immediate sense that something was different. Propping herself up on her elbows, she looked around, eventually spotting the slow, steady turn of the fan blades over her bed. It was all she could do not to hoot out loud. No more cold showers.

God bless Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and anyone else who had to do with the modern conveniences of electricity. She all but skipped to the bathroom, where she flipped on the shower, waiting until the water grew warm, and then hot. She was out of her T-shirt and boxers in under a minute, thinking as she stepped into the steamy glass enclosure that hot water was undoubtedly the most unappreciated commodity on the planet.

She lingered, letting the scalding water needle her skin until it was tingly pink and just starting to prune. Two days of ice-cold showers had left her with a new appreciation for small daily rituals like hair conditioning and leg shaving, not to mention the luxury of actually being able to see what you were doing.

“Coffee!” she bellowed cheerfully as she passed Michael’s door on her way to the kitchen.

The last few days had been a challenge to say the least—cold soup, peanut butter sandwiches, iced tea without the ice. Now, for the first time in more than seventy-two hours, she was able to cook an honest-to-God meal on an honest-to-God stove, to enjoy hot food on plates not made from paper. To his credit, her guest had remained true to his word about being low maintenance. He had eaten the makeshift meals without complaint. In fact, he’d eaten them without much conversation at all. Afterward, he would disappear with a handful of candles, presumably up to his ears in the cartons of books he’d unloaded from the SUV and carried up to his room.

Lane caught herself humming as she moved about the kitchen. There was an almost Zen-like feel to the tasks of chopping and whisking as she started the breakfast, simple pleasures she hadn’t bothered to notice for a very long time, and would probably forget again in twenty-four hours. For now, though, the routine things felt very good indeed. By the time Michael wandered in, the table was set and the potatoes were already in the pan.

“What smells so amazing?”

“Home fries with onions.” She held up a mug. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

He wore a navy sweater with a crest on the pocket and well-creased khakis—a pricey version of academic casual. Lane tried to imagine him hunched over the tiny ironing board she supplied in the closet of every room, studiously pressing that crease into his pants, but she couldn’t, perhaps because she suddenly realized he was staring at her. Understandable, she supposed, since this was the first time he’d seen her look anything like respectable.

She was used to having guests in her kitchen, asking questions about the island and chatting about their plans for the day. In fact, she rather enjoyed it. But this silent audience of one made her self-conscious as she served up two plates and carried them to the table.

“Now, that’s a breakfast,” Michael said, offering a rare smile as he stirred a dash of sugar into his coffee.

“Certainly better than bread and jam,” she said, returning the smile as she slid into the chair across from him. She’d had to toss out just about everything from the fridge, but the eggs and some of the veggies had survived, allowing her to create a pair of fairly impressive omelets. “Sorry, there wasn’t any cheese. Tomorrow I’ll go to the village and see what I can scare up. It’ll probably be several days before trucks are allowed through, so I expect the pickings will be slim. Hot meals from now on, though. I promise.”

“As far as I’m concerned you can just keep making these. Most bachelors are good with eggs in any form.”

Single—or at least not married. It was more than he’d volunteered about himself in three days. But then, she’d guessed as much. No ring, and on his own for the entire winter. Not that he couldn’t have a girlfriend or fiancée tucked away somewhere. She had a momentary flash of a twentysomething sorority brunette in a twinset and tasseled loafers. Or maybe she was thinking of Melinda Bingham, the Pilates-sculpted wife of Bruce’s college roommate, with her Volvo and her perfect twins. Lane shook off the thought with a mental shudder. The last thing she wanted to think about was Bruce’s friends—especially the lofty Professor Bingham.

Looking down at her hand, she realized she was still stirring her coffee and had been for a very long time, her spoon clinking absently against the side of her mug. Setting the spoon on the edge of her plate, she cast about for something to say. She ended up settling for the obvious.

“How’s the research going?”

If Michael heard her he gave no sign, his eyes busy wandering the kitchen as if he were trying to remember where he’d left something. Eventually he must have felt her gaze on him.

“Sorry, did you say something?”

“I asked how the research was going.”

He rolled his eyes and waved the question away. “It’s going. Let’s leave it at that. How about you? How are the . . . unimportant . . . articles coming along?”

Lane felt her cheeks go warm. There was a teasing flavor to his words, and something else, too, that bordered on censure. It made her uncomfortable.

“It’s going fine, actually, in light of all the distractions. That’s the thing about writing the unimportant stuff. You know a month after it hits the stands, no one’s going to remember a word of it, so there’s very little pressure. Today, I’m putting the final touches on an article about vintage soap makers. Tomorrow I’ll be starting a piece on microbreweries.” She forced a lighthearted grin. “No deep thought required.”

“Is that how you want it, or just how it is?”

“How I want it?”

“Is it that you don’t have any deep thoughts? Or that you just don’t feel like doing the work?”

He was using his professor voice, and Lane didn’t appreciate it one bit. She didn’t need a lecture from a stranger, especially one for whom she’d grudgingly agreed to inconvenience herself.

“It fills the time during the off-season,” she replied coolly before pivoting to a safer subject. “I was thinking, since it looks like you’re going to be here awhile, we could fix up an office for you. There are some old desks in storage on the third floor. We could haul one down to your suite and set you up in the turret room. The view—”

“I’d rather use the library off the front parlor,” he said, cutting her off. “The desk is huge, which means I’d have plenty of room to spread out. I figure as long as the inn is empty I won’t be in anyone’s way. And it’s full of old books. I’m comfortable with books.”

Lane couldn’t help frowning. What kind of person passed up an ocean view for a dark, windowless room, even if it was lined with old
books? The literary kind, she supposed, who chose to spend his sabbaticals researching dead Victorian writers.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” she answered with a shrug. “But are you sure? The view is spectacular. You can see all the way to the lighthouse. It really is quite breathtaking.”

Michael paused, his coffee mug halfway to his lips. “One man’s breathtaking is another man’s distraction, Ms. Kramer.”

Once again she stared at him, not sure if he was teasing or in earnest. He’d delivered the line as if it were from some dark Shakespearian play.
It wasn’t, was it?
In the end, she chose to let it go. Writers were known for being a bit manic about their routines. Some couldn’t write without music; others required absolute silence. Some could write in the midst of utter chaos, while others shut themselves away from the world, sometimes for weeks on end. She’d heard tales of lucky pens, hats, scarves, and rocks, all of which seemed ridiculous to everyone but the writers who staked their creativity on them.

“Good, then,” Michael said, picking up his fork again. “I’ll bring in the rest of my boxes and get set up.”

They lapsed into silence as they finished breakfast. Lane continued to study him through lowered lashes. He was an enigma, undeniably gorgeous, and at times even charming, and yet there was a frostiness about him, too, a careful wall he erected whenever it suited him. Perhaps he saw her attempts to be sociable as an annoyance. He’d made no secret of the fact that his main reason for wanting to stay at the inn was that with it closed there would be no one to bother him. Well, if that was the case, she had no problem giving Mr. Forrester all the space he wanted.

With breakfast over and the kitchen clean, Lane threw a batch of applesauce muffins in the oven, then set to work on a shopping list—or, more accurately, a wish list. There really was no telling what she’d find on the shelves, or if the Village Mart was even open yet, but as long as she had rice, beans, and pasta in the pantry they weren’t going
to starve. Next, she zipped several bread heels into a sandwich bag and pulled on her jacket. She was eager to get back to something like her normal morning routine—breakfast, dishes, walk to the light, then up to her writing room. But first she needed to tell Michael she was going.

He had wasted no time making himself at home, she saw as she stepped into the den, his laptop and books already spread over the softly polished library table he had pressed into service as a desk, a teetering stack of thick texts within easy reach on the seat of a green leather wingback. She really could see why he’d chosen to work here. It was a man’s room, gleaming with dark wood and softly worn leather, stately and proper right down to the globe and lectern she hadn’t had the heart to leave in storage. And he looked good standing there, right somehow, in front of the dark shelves, a pair of volumes tucked beneath his arm.

“Don’t tell me you actually found something that might help with your research.”

Michael started, looking vaguely guilty as he stepped away from the shelves. “Not really, no. But I have to say you’ve got a pretty impressive collection here.”

“Thanks, but I can’t take credit. They were here when I bought the place. Well, not here. They were up in storage. I salvaged what I could, but a lot were moldy. Others fell apart the minute I touched them. God knows how long they were up there in the heat and damp.”

Michael let his eyes drift back to the shelves. “What happened to them? The damaged ones, I mean.”

“I had to toss them. It broke my heart to do it. All those classics, even some first editions, all ruined. It would have made the nuns sad, I think.”

He made a sound like a snort. “Sad nuns—now, there’s a cheerful thought.”

“You should look through the binder in your room. There’s some
history in it about the inn. It’s called the Cloister House because it was a convent at one time. Then, in the late sixties, I think it was, the church converted it to a boys’ home. I’ve always assumed the books were part of the curriculum. One day I’ll get through every one.”

“That sounds fairly ambitious.”

“Oh, but I’ve already started. Here, I’ll show you.”

She pointed to the top shelf. “I’ve read all those, and I’m up to
Anna Karenina
on the second shelf.
Madame Bovary
is next. Rather racy reading for schoolboys, though, I must say.”

“Maybe the top shelves were off-limits for the boys, and the racy stuff was for the nuns.”

Lane laughed but realized he was serious. “You know, I never thought of that, but it makes sense. I always imagined nuns as stern and stoic, their noses always stuck in their Bibles or their prayer books, but who knows what they really do in their free time? They’re human, after all.”

“So rumor has it.”

There it was again, that weighty, Laurence Olivier stage voice he’d used at breakfast, gruff and thick with cynicism. Or was it bitterness? Rather than ponder the matter, Lane decided to change the subject. She wandered back to the table and examined several more books he had pulled from the shelves—
Bleak House
and
Little Dorrit
.

“I see you migrated right to Dickens.
Great Expectations
was always my favorite. I fell in love with it in eighth grade. I bet I’ve read it ten times.”

A tic appeared along Michael’s jaw. “That’s when I read it, too. It’s my least favorite of all his books, actually. A bit gothic for my taste, but then, my interest in Dickens, and the focus of my book, has more to do with the social commentary of his writings, on his view of the inequities suffered by the poor, especially the children, than with mere entertainment.”

He had slipped into professor mode again, delivering what Lane
felt certain was part of his first-day-of-class lecture. “See, right there,” she said, wagging a finger. “That’s what I mean by important stuff. He was making a point, focusing attention on a problem. And now you’re doing the same thing.”

Michael nodded somewhat grudgingly. “As a boy, Dickens experienced those things firsthand, and they formed the foundation for his life’s work. The shame is the same problems still exist today. We pretend we’re civilized, but we’re not so very different in how we treat the poor and ignore the sick, or the way we herd up displaced children like stray cats bound for the shelter.” He paused and looked briefly away. “Which is why there isn’t room in my treatise for broken hearts and crumbling mansions. Or for crazy old women who set fire to the house.”

Lane blinked up at him, not sure whether to be impressed or insulted. He’d sounded more like a politician than a literature professor just then, filled with righteous zeal and compassion for his fellow man. Was he this passionate with his students? she wondered, because he was certainly nothing like any of the lit professors she’d ever had.

The silence stretched while Lane groped for something to say. “All righty, then,” she blurted finally. “I suppose now that we’ve established our differences in literary taste, I should do what I came to do, which is to inform you that I usually walk down to the lighthouse every morning. I should be gone about an hour. There are muffins cooling on the stove, and I made a fresh pot of coffee should you want a refill.”

“Thank you,” Lane heard him murmur as she slipped from the room to leave him to his research, and wondered why it was that every time they had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes, he ended up saying something that got under her skin.