Chapter 14

“Your son got angry at you. Welcome to parenthood.”

Mr. Ping, Kung Fu Panda 3

Ro raised his mug in the air and grinned at Kate and Jessie, who were sitting at the kitchen table, finalizing boat schedules.

“I admit it,” he said. “The show turned out a hell of a lot better than I thought it would, but I’m still happy this is the last week of filming.”

“I’m with you on that,” Kate said, nodding. She’d been looking a little green around the gills lately, and today wasn’t any different.

Jessie didn’t nod, though.

“Peggy Flynn,” she murmured for what seemed like the hundredth time. “You guys are sure you’ve never heard of her?”

“Doesn’t matter how many times you ask,” Ronan said. “The answer doesn’t change. I’ve never met a Peggy in my life, and none of those pictures of Peggy Flynns you found online look like anyone I know.”

Kate agreed.

“It’s just weird, don’t you think? All these weeks, we’ve had celebrities of some kind or another as special guests, except for last week, when we didn’t have anyone; and now, for the last episode, Luka suddenly springs an unknown on us.”

“She’s not springing it,” Kate said. “Hope told us a couple weeks ago they had a lead on someone for the finale.”

“Sure, but they didn’t even give us a name until Hope got here last night, and now, out of the blue, Luka’s personally accompanying this Peggy person up here? Luka’s never set foot on our dock before, so why now?”

“Who cares?” Ro asked. “All we need to do is get through three days with whoever this Peggy person is and we’ll be done. We can take down all the cameras and get back to normal.”

“Normal?” Kate snorted. “The only ‘normal’ around here is the setting on the dryer, Ronan.”

“But Hope must know something,” Jessie said. “It’s her show—how can she not know who’s going to be on it?”

Ro shrugged. “I know as much as you do. Hope said Luka was supposed to email her all the info last night, but whether she has or not, I don’t know.”

He’d been a little too busy doing other things with Hope last night to bother asking, and, as usual, her Sunday morning was taken up with getting reading for and filming incoming guests.

Liam and Finn were in the great room, going over maps with some of the guests, so when the whirring of an incoming Helijet sounded outside, Jessie tipped her head toward the door and nudged Kate.

“Come on,” she said. “Time to go welcome Unknown Peggy.”

Kate took a step, stopped, then slapped her hand over her mouth.

“Oh…I think I’m gonna—” Her cheeks bulged, her eyes widened, and a second later she bolted for the stairs.

“Oooh,” Jessie laughed. “Poor girl. Looks like it’s just you and me, then, Ro.”

Before they headed out the door, Jessie poked her head into the great room for a second.

“Uh, Liam—I think Kate could use your help downstairs.”

The second he heard Kate’s name, Liam was on the move, leaving Finn on his own with the guests.

Ronan held the door for Jessie, then stepped out behind her and smiled. He couldn’t help it. Sure, there was a storm coming in, but what did he care? Luka and the final guest of the season had climbed out of the Helijet, guests were smiling as they wandered around the grounds, and down at the dock was the reason he woke up so happy this morning.

Hope had changed him, taught him to trust again, and for some reason he couldn’t understand, she didn’t care that he wasn’t good at the flowery shit. And the crazy thing was, just knowing that made him want to figure out how to be more flowery for her, to be able to find words that described how he felt about her, no matter how stupid he sounded saying them.

Like how she was the sunshine in his world and everything he did revolved around making her happy. Yeah, stupid things like that, and a whole lot more that came flooding into his brain when she turned and smiled at him.

God, she was beautiful, especially when the Helijet lifted off again and the blasts from its rotors sent her hair billowing out around her—kind of the way it looked last night, splayed across the pillows.

“Oh, stop it,” Jessie laughed. “The whole world doesn’t need to know what you two were doing last night.”

Ro choked on his next breath, but when he opened his mouth to protest, nothing would come out, and he ended up surrendering to a big stupid smile.

“Exactly.” Jessie wrapped her hand around his arm and squeezed as they stepped up on to the dock. “It looks good on you.”

“What does?”

Jessie glanced down at her feet, then turned her smile up to him. “Being in love. She’s the—”

Ronan didn’t hear another word, because in that moment everything around him faded to black except for the person standing next to Luka on the dock. Her hair was more gray than red now, and she seemed shorter than what Ro remembered, but it was her.

“What the fuck?”

Jessie had already turned, following his line of sight, and gasped sharply. “Oh my God.”

They both stood frozen in place, Jessie with her hand over her mouth and Ro scrambling to control the chaos blasting through his brain. The first thing he latched on to was his brother. Shit.

“Finn.” As calmly as possible, he put his hands on Jessie’s shoulders and shook her, just hard enough to get her to look at him. “Go find Finn and do not let him down here, Jessie, do you hear me?”

She didn’t answer, just kept nodding, so fast, so shaky, then turned and sprinted toward the lodge.

Ronan inhaled a deep breath, fighting with everything he had to keep his cool in front of the guests, but it wasn’t going to last; he knew that already. Hope stood halfway between him and his destination, watching Jessie race away. She turned her confused gaze to Ronan, then to the woman standing next to Luka, and as Ro took his first step, he could see the panic spread across Hope’s face.

No, that wasn’t panic; it was guilt. She’d told them weeks ago that they had someone lined up for the final episode…but how could she…why would she?

In that moment, every bit of light inside Ronan died. She’d completely blindsided him; she’d taken the worst thing in his life—in all their lives—and was going to put it on display for everyone to see. Fuck that.

Fighting to keep himself under control, he started past her, but she lifted her hands to stop him. “Ronan, wait.”

“Move.”

“No, you need to—” She pressed her hands against his chest, but Ro jerked back. So many times in the last few months her touch had taken him places he never could have imagined, but now…now the thought of being anywhere near her made him sick.

“What the fuck have you done?” The fact that she didn’t answer was answer enough. He couldn’t even look at her. All he could do was stare down at his feet and repeat the same word he’d said before, only tighter and lower this time. “Move.”

If she’d been a man, he’d have shoved her off the fuckin’ dock to get her out of his way, but instead he stood there, grinding his jaw together until she finally moved aside. Twenty steps—that’s how many it usually took him to get to that end of the dock. He covered it in half that.

“Ronan.” Luka stepped forward, hand extended, and a smile—a smile!—on her face. “It’s nice to finally—”

“Get the fuck off my dock.”

“Excuse me?” The shock in her expression only infuriated him more.

“You heard me,” he said, maintaining the low, even tone he’d learned from his father. “And take her with you.”

Luka’s gaze skittered around him to Hope, who’d come up behind him, and then, with a lift of her chin, Luka had the balls to stare back at Ro with contempt.

“Peggy is our special guest this week, Ronan, and we have a show to film.”

For the first time since he’d realized who “Peggy” was, Ronan looked her square in the eye.

“Her name is Maggie, and we’re not doing anything until she gets the fuck off my dock.”

Maggie had yet to make a sound. She just stood there with her suitcase at her feet, her hands wrapped around the top of her purse and a single tear rolling down her cheek.

“Perhaps we could take this somewhere private.” Luka started to take a step, but Ronan moved over, blocking her way.

“You’ve got to be out of your fuckin’ mind if you think either one of you is going anywhere. Call that Helijet back right now.”

“I can’t.”

“Right now,” he repeated, his voice getting louder as he pointed in the same direction he’d seen the Helijet go.

“I can’t,” Luka said, slower, pointedly. “There’s no cell service here, remember? If you want to call it back, we need to use the phone inside the lodge.”

“Ronan.” From the corner of his eye he saw Hope’s hand reach out, but she pulled it away again before she touched him. “The guests are watching. Maybe you’d better take this inside.”

Ro didn’t move. He couldn’t, because he didn’t know what to do.

If the old man had drilled anything into them, it was that no one raised their voices around the guests. That just wasn’t done—ever—and Ro was pretty sure some of the guests were already gathered near or on the other end of the dock, watching.

He couldn’t continue this for everyone to see, but he couldn’t take Maggie inside, either. Finn was inside, and Ro had to make sure Maggie never hurt him again. God damn it, why was there never any privacy around this place?

As all of this banged around inside his head, he could hear someone running toward them, the pounding feet too heavy to be Jessie’s or Kate’s, and he prayed to God and anyone else who’d listen that it wasn’t Finn.

“Jessie said you—” Liam skidded to a stop beside Ro, his mouth hanging open as he swiped his sleeve across his cheek. “What the fu—”

A wicked bolt of lightning cracked open the sky, sending most of the guests running, but Luka was the only one on the dock who flinched.

“Go inside,” Ro said, “and call the Helijet; tell them to come back. These two aren’t staying.”

“Ro.” Liam turned so he faced Ronan’s profile. “They won’t come back in this.”

Even as he said it, the first blast of thunder shook the dock beneath them and the sky let loose with thick sheets of rain. Luka hurried to cover herself and Maggie with an umbrella but still Ro didn’t move. They’d worked so hard, they’d come so far…Why did she have to show up now? Twenty-one years they’d gone without so much as a word from her—almost twenty-one and a half—and you could bet your ass they could have easily gone another twenty-one.

So why the fuck did all of those twenty-one years suddenly explode inside him like shrapnel, ripping everything up and sending him straight back to his fourteen-year-old self, standing on his bed, watching out the high narrow window, and bawling his head off as his mother climbed inside that float plane and left without even saying goodbye?

“Ronan!” Liam’s roar, and the fact that he was shaking Ro by the shoulders, snapped Ro back to the present, where he managed to shove all that internal shit aside and focus on his brother’s face. “We have to get everyone inside!”

Right. Inside. But the only place not in view of the cameras was downstairs and the only way to get them there would be to walk them right past Finn. Damn it.

Another crack of lightning—closer this time—finally got Ronan moving.

“Kitchen,” he said. “Nowhere else.”

Ro started up the dock, shoving Liam ahead of him. “I told Jessie to keep Finn inside, but—”

“Shit.” Liam was off in a shot, sprinting toward the lodge and waving the last few straggler guests ahead of him.

Over in the waterside cabins, guests stood out on the porches or pressed their faces up against the windows, but Ro wasn’t sure if they were watching the storm or him as he led the three women up to the lodge.

A sane man would have hustled a little to get them inside faster, but he needed to give Liam time to make sure Finn wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen. By the time Ronan walked the women around to the back of the lodge, the rain was so heavy that it felt as if it were pushing them down, but finally he had them through the door and into the mudroom, where JD’s initial excitement stopped dead when Ro pointed his finger at him.

“Quiet!”

Good dog that he was, JD immediately sat down, but his tail never stopped flapping.

For the most part, Luka and Maggie had managed to stay dry under their umbrella, but Hope was completely soaked and dripping all over the floor as she stood shivering next to Luka.

Great.

Turning his back to the cameras, Ronan kept his voice low enough that it wouldn’t be picked up by the mics.

“First thing you’re gonna do,” he said to Luka, “is shut those fuckin’ cameras off.”

Before she could respond, he hopped the plywood gate and hustled across the kitchen, but as he neared the door, it opened just enough for Liam to squeeze through, talking over his shoulder and shoving towels at Ro.

“I don’t know,” he said to someone in the restaurant. “I guess he thought standing out in the rain was romantic or some stupid shit like that. I’ll be right back.”

Scrambling, Ro grabbed the towels and took them to the mudroom. Luka opened her mouth, then snapped it shut when Ro pinned her with a stare. As he scrubbed a towel over his head, he turned to Liam again.

“Where is he?”

“Right there.” Liam’s mouth moved, but he barely made a sound as he pointed toward the door.

“In the pub?”

Liam’s nod got cut short when Jessie’s desperate voice sounded from the other side of the door.

“Finn, wait—”

The door swung open and in walked Finn, with Jessie right behind him, her hands fisted around the back of his T-shirt.

“What’s going on?” His gaze flicked past both Ro and Liam, who immediately shifted to try to block his view. “Is that Hope in the mudroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Ronan, you make her stand there while you’re out here dripping all over the floor? What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”

Their efforts to block his view were for naught, because Luka stepped over the gate just then, clicking her tongue and using her fingers to straighten her hair a little as she glanced toward the camera up in the corner.

“What the—” Finn frowned. “Luka? Who else is in there?”

“Finn, wait!” Jessie lunged for him, but he was too fast.

Finn took only two steps before he stopped so hard and fast that he actually jerked backward and knocked into Jessie.

“Holy shit.” As usual when Finn didn’t know what to do with himself, he laced his fingers behind his head and blew out a low breath. “Ma?”

“Hello, my Finn.”

It was the first thing she’d said since she arrived, and Ro didn’t think she could’ve come up with three more painful words if she’d tried.

What the hell were they supposed to do now? Ronan’s mind raced, trying to get everything in order. Those damn cameras still needed to be shut off, Kate needed to be looked after, guests needed to be looked after, meals needed to be made, and Finn needed to be protected, so where the hell was Ro supposed to start? He had no idea, so he turned to the one person they always turned to.

“Jessie, I need you to deal with Kate and the guests. Can you do that?”

Her worried gaze stayed fixed on Finn, unwavering, until he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a small kiss.

“I’m fine,” Finn said, his voice surprisingly calm. “I promise. Are you okay?”

Her head bobbed, but when she opened her mouth, a squeak was the only thing that came out.

“Jess, sweetheart, it’s okay,” he said. “We got this, but we need you to look after the guests. Tell them it’s a family emergency or something and that we’ll all be out as soon as we can, okay? Can you do that?”

Another nod.

“Give them a round on the house—that’ll make them happy for a while. And maybe turn the ball game on—loud—so they don’t have to listen to what I’m sure is going to be Ro in full roar any second.”

How the hell could Finn be so calm? And how the double hell could he be making jokes?

It took Jessie a couple of seconds to gather herself, but when she did, she proved why she was the one the Buoys needed the most. She wiped her eyes, shook her head a little, and gave Finn a small but sure smile. Then, before she walked out, she put herself between him and Maggie and gave Maggie a look that Ro had never seen before, one he hoped she’d never have reason to level at him.

“He’s not your Finn,” she said. “He’s mine, and you’d be wise to remember that before you open your mouth and say another single word to him.”

With that, she marched to the door, took a deep breath, and stepped into the pub. “Drinks are on the house, people!”

Ro shoved past everyone so he could get the phone out of Jessie’s office. A few seconds later he had the Helijet company on the phone—only to be told that their pilot had to detour into Port Hardy to get out of the storm and there was no way they were sending him back until it was over.

It was the same answer everywhere he called, and if the weather reports were anywhere near accurate, it’d be a couple of hours before anyone would consider heading up to the Buoys.

While Ronan was on the phone, Hope had gone to change her clothes and was now sitting at the kitchen table, watching Finn fumble as he poured them each a cup of coffee.

For a second, Ro almost expected to hear the Twilight Zone music start.

“Okay, no.” He pointed first at Hope, then at Luka, then thumbed toward the door. “Out.”

“But—” It was all Luka said before Ro grabbed the sides of her chair and dragged it away from the table. He then started toward Hope, but she stood up before he reached her.

“Ronan,” she said, “I think one of us should stay here with your mother.”

“Just because she gave birth to me doesn’t make her my mother,” he said, grinding out the words. “You and Luka go shut off those fucking cameras.”

“The cameras stay on,” Luka said, her voice flat, almost dismissive. “Unless you want me to sue you for breach of contract.”

“Sue me?” Ronan roared. He didn’t even know he’d taken a step toward her until Liam grabbed his arm. “I’ll rip those fucking things out of the wall if I have to.”

“Go ahead, but you better have a damn good lawyer.”

“Ro!” Liam yanked hard enough on Ronan’s arm to jerk him back a ways. “Forget the cameras—we’ll deal with that later!”

Shit. Liam was right; the cameras were the least of their problems just then.

“Get them out of here,” he growled. “Now.”

Luka ignored him and peered around both him and Hope. “Peggy? I can stay if you like.”

“No, but I thank you,” Maggie said, her accent still as strong as Ro remembered. “Ronan’s right, this is a family matter.”

It took a minute for Luka and Hope to leave, because Hope wouldn’t stop digging around in her damn bag until she produced a package of tissues to set in front of Maggie.

With the two of them gone, there was plenty of room around the table, but the boys stayed right where they were, side by side, leaning back against the counter and staring at the woman who’d walked out on them, the woman who now sat with her mug pressed against her chest, looking around the room as if she’d never seen it before. After a while she set her mug down and nodded slowly, almost haltingly.

“You’ve done a beautiful job—”

“Oh no,” Ronan said, shaking his head. “You don’t get to do that.”

He shoved away from the counter and stalked to the other side of the kitchen—the room he’d spent so many hours in, the room he’d become comfortable in, the room that now felt more like a cage.

“You don’t get to talk to us like you just saw us last week,” he said. “You don’t get to pretend that you didn’t walk away without so much as a word or a backward glance.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “You’re right.”

“You’re damn right I’m right!” There wasn’t nearly enough room in that kitchen for all of them, especially with Ro pacing. “You left us, Maggie. That was your choice. And in twenty-one years, you never once came back, you never once phoned, and you never even so much as sent us fuckin’ birthday cards. You left us here with the man you broke, the man whose only way of coping was to drink himself into oblivion every night and who only knew one way to vent his pain—and that was to take it out on us! You did that! So every time he cursed at us, every time he punched, slapped, or laid one of us open, that was as much you as it was him.”

“He wouldn’t!” Her sharp gasp, the horror in her eyes—those couldn’t be faked. “Not my Jimmy!”

“Damn right your Jimmy,” Ro spat out. “Just ask Liam how he got that scar near his eyebrow.”

“No!” she cried, burying her face in her hands. “I can’t…He wouldn’t…He couldn’t; he loved you all so much.”

The smallness of her voice only infuriated him more. What the hell right did she have to be hurt by any of this? Did she actually think they’d have any sympathy for her?

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered. “I had no idea. None.”

“No?” he shot back. “Then let me tell you about it.”

“Ro.” Liam’s warning tone did nothing to slow Ro down.

“Finn was ten years old, Maggie. Ten fuckin’ years old, standing outside your bedroom door listening to you spout that vile shit about him being too much work for you. What the fuck do you think that does to a kid? The night you left, you told Da you were tired of him not being the man you wanted him to be—well, guess what? At least he was sober.

“Try dealing with him when he’s drunk and beating the shit out of you—then you’ll know how much of an asshole he could be. But you weren’t there to see that side of him, were you? We were, and we can tell you exactly what it feels like to be so scared of your own father that you piss your pants when he starts coming at you, what it smells like when he stands over you cursing you out with his stale boozy breath, and what it sounds like inside your head when you get punched so hard you can barely see straight. Hell, if you’re interested, I can even tell you what it feels like to finally swing back, to hit your old man so hard that you think you’ve killed him and, for a second or two, you actually hope you did.”

She didn’t look at him, she didn’t look at any of them, just kept her head down and wiped away tears as fast as they fell.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah? What exactly are you sorry about? That you left? That you screwed the three of us up so bad we still don’t know whether to shit or go blind most days?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just paced the floor in front of the table. “Are you sorry that he split Finn’s and Liam’s lips open too many times to count? That I had to teach myself how to stitch us up and how to wrap ribs? Or are you sorry that Da stood down on that fuckin’ dock every night wearing out his rosary beads and praying you’d come back? What exactly are you sorry about?”

Every question he hurled her way made her shrink more, until she seemed as if she’d almost curled in on herself.

“Ronan.” The shock in Finn’s voice made him stop, and it was the sudden silence that made him realize how loud he’d been yelling.

“Okay.” Liam stepped forward, holding his hands up between Ro and Maggie as if he were the referee in a boxing match. “You made your point, Ro—you made all of our points—but I think we need to take a breath here and give Ma a second.”

“She’s had twenty-one years of seconds, Liam.”

Ronan walked over to stand beside Finn again, then turned his back to the room, bent over a little at the waist, and gripped the counter as tight as he could in the hopes it would slow the shaking in his hands. He’d never been so angry in all his life, but it was more than just being pissed off. It was a raw, jagged pain that ripped through his chest and bared every single wound from the last two decades.

How could Hope do this to them? How could she do it to him? She’d said she loved him, and he believed her. Fuck, he let himself love her, too, and that, all on its own, sucked the breath out of him so fast and so hard he thought he’d suffocate right there.

She’d betrayed them in a way he’d never seen coming.

He honestly didn’t know if he had the strength to deal with the pain he expected to see on Finn’s face, but no matter what else happened, it was Ro’s job to be there for his brother, to try to protect him if he could, so he forced himself to stand up and look Finn in the eye.

The pain was deep, there was no hiding it, but before Ro could do anything, Finn wrapped his hand around Ro’s neck, pulled him closer, and kissed his forehead.

What the fuck? Finn was the little brother here—he wasn’t supposed to be the strong one. That was Ro’s job, and he was fucking it all up.

“Okay.” Liam waited until Ro turned around again, then held his hands up in one of those silent “just whoa” kind of gestures. After inhaling slowly, he licked his lips and directed his focus to Maggie again. “I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way up here for the coffee, so why don’t you tell us why you’re here.”

“Because I—” Maggie stifled a sob with her tissue, but when she spoke again, she just stared at the table. “I had to tell you…how very sorry I am for everything. All of it—everything my Ronan said, everything he hasn’t said yet, and for every single second I wasn’t here. I am so, so sorry. And I know you don’t—” Her voice cracked but she kept going. “I know you don’t believe me when I say that, and I don’t blame you, I don’t, but if you’ll let me, I…I’d like to try and explain.”

Ronan was already shaking his head; he didn’t want to hear this, didn’t need to hear it, but the look both Finn and Liam gave him said they did. So, armed with a fresh tissue, Maggie dabbed her eyes and blew her nose before starting.