He Didn’t
Present day . . .
“OKAY . . . OKAY . . . OKAY . . . HOLY CAH-RAP, that’s way more beautiful than the pictures.”
There was nothing I could do but smile as I drove Kath up to the lighthouse.
It was August. The sun was shining. Fluffy white clouds dotted the bright blue sky. My pristine white fence ringed the sloping green grass with the intermittent gray rocks poking through along my property. And the outbuildings had all been painted so their dazzling white and glossy black trim matched the perfection of the lighthouse with only their warm red roofs being disparate.
Months ago, after the altercation with Coert and after Kath had calmed me down, we’d made a plan.
I had bookings in inns and B&Bs and I had a mission.
Restore the lighthouse. Live there, if not happily ever after, then contentedly ever after.
Coert had been out of my life for a very long time and frankly, the time he’d been in it had not been long (it had just been eventful).
He wanted me to avoid him?
That I could do.
What I wasn’t going to do was let him break me.
Not again.
So I honored my bookings and I watched the roofs go on and the windows go in and the studio begin to be transformed.
I did this finally enjoying Magdalene.
I went shopping in town and at what I learned were new shops at the jetty. I found a shack on the wharf that made such good coffee I went back and learned the man in the shadowed interior also made excellent seafood omelets. I had lunch at the Lobster Market in town. I had dinner at a place that was recommended by a cashier at Wayfarer’s that was a town over called Breeze Point. I got salads or sandwiches on more than one occasion at Weatherby’s Diner.
I also went on a whale watching tour (we didn’t see any whales but I was loaded and I lived in Maine, I could try again a hundred times until I saw one).
I went down to Portland to explore. I went up to Bar Harbor because I heard it was beautiful and artsy, and it was, so I bought a bunch of stuff for the lighthouse, the studio and the apartment over the garage.
I went to Augusta to meet Paige and decide all things interior decorating.
I even went down to Boston, because in all the traveling I’d done with Patrick, we’d never been there and I’d always wanted to see Old Ironsides and eat real clam chowder. Not to mention walk the Freedom Trail, see the Old North Church, go to Lexington and Concord and be where the shot was fired that was heard round the world. And as sad as it would be, I wanted to visit Salem and soak in that history. I had even more reason to go in order to hit Harvard, take selfies and send them to Verity and Dex in aid of Dex harassing his sister.
But once my bookings ran out, even though I saw Coert nowhere (thank God), I turned tail and ran home, giving myself the excuse I needed to get my stuff because I’d be able to move in at least to the studio in just weeks, and Mike said we were going car shopping in Denver or he was flying out to Maine to help me find a vehicle, no ifs, ands or buts.
The real reason was that I needed the family to prop me up, help heal the wounds Coert had reopened and prepare to settle in, because I couldn’t act like a tourist on a daily basis (actually I could, I just didn’t want to, it was exhausting).
And now the time was right to come back. I didn’t have to stay at the inn or find anywhere else because the studio was done. They’d begun work on the lighthouse so in a few weeks I could move in, move in and they would finish with the apartment over the garage after I was in my real new home.
Kath had come with me, citing that she just could not wait to see it all, but I knew she did it to make sure I was all good there before she’d be leaving and not seeing me for months.
Walt had shared that Paige had “set the place.” He’d also mailed me a remote to the gate so right then, as I drove up the lane, I hit the button on the remote on the visor of my new Jaguar SUV and watched the gate start to swing open.
“Oh my God, Cady, this place is perfection,” Kath breathed.
She was right.
This I could do, I thought as we rolled in when the gates opened.
This beauty that Patrick gave me. Verity (and then Dex) coming up some weekends. The family out for Christmas. Spring breaks. Summer holidays.
And when they weren’t around, I could help at the Historical Society.
I could volunteer at an animal shelter.
I could garden.
I could cook.
I could read.
I was forty-one years old and had forty years (I hoped) ahead of me of, essentially, retirement where I could just sit back, enjoy “the kids” and do whatever pleased me.
Most people would kill for that opportunity.
So Coert was in town, and Kath wanted me to go up north to visit my brother when she was here so she could be close when he treated me like dirt.
I’d lived through worse.
Much worse.
My mother had frozen to death, for God’s sake.
And I’d had to watch Patrick waste away.
If Coert wanted me to avoid him, fine. This wouldn’t be hard. It was a small town but my lighthouse was miles away.
It would be fine.
It would all be fine.
Because I had that.
I stopped in front of the garage and Kath and I got out. I saw her head was tilted back, her attention focused on the beauty of the lighthouse.
I looked to the left, beyond the garage to where the studio was.
There was nothing happening there. No men walking in or out. The activity was at the lighthouse.
But the new windows were shining in the sun in a way the whole structure looked like a beacon, summoning me to safety.
“Nice ride.”
At these words I turned my head and saw Walt strolling toward the car.
“It all looks fabulous,” I called.
“You haven’t seen nothing yet,” he replied, looking to Kath and dipping his chin to her.
“Walt, this is my sister, Kathy. Kath, this is my contractor, Walt,” I introduced when Walt stopped at Kath.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said.
“Same,” he responded then asked, “Your first time?”
“Yup,” she answered. “I live in Denver.”
“Bet you just rearranged your vacation schedule,” he guessed.
She gave him a big smile. “Yup.”
“Wanna see your home that’s about fifty yards away from home?” Walt asked me.
“Yup,” I replied.
He chuckled then threw out an arm. “Lead the way.”
I led the way, trying not to run. I knew all that was in it, obviously, since I’d chosen it, but I’d eventually asked Walt to stop sending pictures because it was looking so amazing, I didn’t want the surprise reveal of it all together to be spoiled.
When we walked in, I found that was the right call.
Downstairs was bright whites (walls, slouchy furniture and cupboards in the kitchen), gray carpet (living room), parquet floors (everywhere else), bold blue toss pillows, lush but trimmed plants in white pots giving a dose of healthy green, the common areas seemed big, open, breezy and amazing.
The bedrooms and bath upstairs couldn’t be more different.
One bedroom had busy pink, old fashioned wallpaper with a recurring pastoral scene against cream and heavy colonial furniture, gingham and ruffled bedclothes, all of this screaming New England. The other was calm, light grays, taupes, blues and greens with a padded headboard upholstered in a heavy damask of delicate colors, matelassé covers on the bed. The pink bedroom had a chintz armchair and ottoman with a reading light over it and side table stuffed in a corner, the other bedroom had a white loveseat with gray trim and toss pillows in damask matching the headboard against one wall. And the bathroom had a boxed tub jutting out perpendicular to the painted white wood walls and its original cabinetry that was updated with fresh paint in a dusty cornflower blue and white marble countertops with veins of gray.
The downstairs was spacious and contemporary but cheerful and inviting while the upstairs seemed cozy, busy, overfull and warm.
I loved it. Every inch.
Including the veranda with its curvy, ornate wicker furniture painted cerulean blue with crisp seafoam-green pads and matching side tables and ottomans.
Definitely a place you could sit and enjoy a coffee in the morning or sip a wine of an evening, watch the sea and just . . . be.
Oh yes, I could avoid Coert Yeager here.
I could absolutely avoid him here.
I could love every minute of it.
“So?” Walt prompted as I stood on the veranda and stared at the sea.
Slowly, my eyes turned to him.
“It’s perfection,” I whispered.
His face changed after the words came out and he studied my expression.
He was probably my age, maybe a bit older, looked it, weathered and tan, not unattractive, but he was a durable man, a hardworking man, and he showed it, which made him more attractive.
He’d been friendly and entirely professional in every encounter I’d had with him.
But right then, I watched his face soften and his eyes grow warm with pleasure at my approval and concern at what was not his to know, he just knew it was there.
“I . . . our . . . the . . .” Kath stammered, cleared her throat and said quietly, “We lost the patriarch of our family not too long ago. Cady was particularly close to him.”
“Right,” Walt murmured, looking away in a manner I knew he was giving me privacy.
“We’ll just, uh . . . let you get on with it while we get the boxes in,” Kath said.
“You wanna see where we are with the lighthouse?” Walt asked.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Kath answered for me.
“You want me to send some boys down to help with those boxes?” Walt queried.
I finally piped up. “I . . . yes, that’d be nice. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Okay. I’ll get a couple of the boys and I’ll help myself. If you wanna drive your car closer to the studio, I’ll be back with the guys,” Walt said.
“I’ll do that,” I replied.
He jogged off.
I turned to Kath. “We’ll get the things in then go to Wayfarer’s and get something lovely for dinner tonight.”
“Cheese, bread, pâté and lots of wine. You are not cooking tonight and neither am I. We’re enjoying that.” She jerked her head to the view. “Tomorrow, we can break in that kitchen. You said Paige outfitted it with plates and knives and pots and pans and stuff?”
I nodded.
She grinned. “Then we’re set.”
I wanted to see the pots and pans “and stuff” I’d picked for this space.
But I needed to drive the car around so we could move in the boxes and suitcases, which were almost entirely filled with clothes, shoes, books, DVDs, CDs and photo albums and not much else.
“I’ll get the car and we’ll get started,” I declared.
“And I’ll prepare to ogle cute construction guys and I’m calling the pink room.”
She was calling the pink room because she knew I’d go for the damask room.
God, I just loved her.
“Let’s get cracking,” I said.
She clapped her hands and rubbed them together.
I shot her a smile and walked with a spring in my step to my car.
And we got cracking.
The air had a nip to it, a light breeze was flirting through the sky, I had a belly full of cheese, pâté, bread, wine and too many of the selections of mini-cakes the bakery counter at Wayfarer’s sold individually or, in our case, by the dozen.
The boxes were inside.
The construction workers were long gone.
And I was sitting holding a stylish wineglass filled with an exceptional sauvignon blanc, my behind on a crisp, seafoam-green pad in a fabulous wicker chair on my veranda in Maine next to the best friend I’d ever had and the finest woman I’d ever met in my life.
“I talked to Pat about it.”
I looked from the buttercreams and pinks of the sky painted by the setting sun on the horizon behind us to Kath when she spoke.
“About what?” I asked.
She turned her gaze to me. “About this place. He looked into it.”
I was perplexed. “Looked into what?”
“He says you got it for a song. The renovation is steep but would be worth it any way you cut it. He said it would take years to make it profitable, but as luxury rentals, it’d be hugely popular, so that would eventually happen.”
I was no less perplexed.
“Are you saying you want me to rent out the extra spaces so I’ll have company or something?” I asked.
“I’m saying I saw you in town, and you were good here at the lighthouse, great, actually, happy, nearly skipping. But there you were stressed out, tense and looking over your shoulder a lot.”
I drew in breath, turned my eyes back to the sea and sky and took a sip of wine.
“You’re gonna see him,” she said gently.
“I know,” I told the sea.
“And it’s gonna hurt.”
“I know,” I repeated and looked back to her. “But then it’ll hurt less and less and it won’t happen often anyway. And in the end, I’ll have all of this.” I gestured around me with my wineglass.
“What I’m saying is, if you want to come home, we can keep this in the family. We can make a go of it. Once we earn back the investment in a few years, it’ll even turn a profit. The kids absolutely love the place, all of them, and they haven’t even seen it yet. Maybe one day, when they’re making their own way, one of them will—”
“This is my home, Kath,” I stated firmly.
“He had no right to speak to you that way,” she stated far more firmly than me.
My back straightened and I turned toward her in my chair. “Kath, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this and it’s not a surprise he’s this angry.”
Her brows shot high. “How is that not a surprise? How, in all that happened, does he have even the ittiest bit of right to be angry, much less that angry? Still?”
“I promised him I’d stick with him,” I explained something I’d told her before. “No matter what. I didn’t stick with him, Kath.” I lifted a shoulder. “Sure, when I thought he was a drug dealer or the lackey of a drug dealer or whatever I thought he was, which by the way I never asked, I was completely okay with it and our life and how I fell into having one with him. When I found out he was an undercover cop, though . . .” I let that hang because she knew the end of that sentence too.
“He lied to you.”
“It was his job.”
“He lied to you and he slept with you and he listened to you making plans for your future together all while he was lying to you. You didn’t even know his real name.”
“It was his job, Kathy,” I repeated.
“When he knew who you were, how you were, he couldn’t tell you that?”
“Our connection came strong and fast, and it was there but it wouldn’t be very wise of him to share with some girl he didn’t really know that he was working undercover in the dangerous pursuit of bringing down drug dealers, possibly increasing that danger enormously if he did.”
“He thought it was wise enough to sleep with you in order to use you to make others think he was what he was not,” she parried.
“He slept with me for more than that,” I whispered.
“Cady,” she whispered back.
I shook that hurt off because I knew she didn’t mean to deliver it and stated, “I knew who he was. I knew how he was. It was a shock when I found out what exactly he was, but when I had time to calm down and think about it, it wasn’t a surprise and that’s what it was all about. When we began. When he practically begged me to believe in him, stick with him, not give up on us. Because I saw it in his eyes. I knew he was good down to his soul. I knew in some part of me he was not the man he was pretending to be. And when it all happened, I let it all get to me and I stopped believing when I’d promised him I would never do that.”
“And through all of that he couldn’t know who you were enough to trust you?”
This was the part I hadn’t been able to come to terms with.
However.
“I was a twenty-three-year-old girl perfectly okay with starting an emotionally and physically intense relationship with a man I suspected of being a not very good one, in those terms. And then, even if I’d promised to stick with him, weeks after my world collapsed around me, when he came back to me to put us back together, he found I was engaged to a very wealthy, sixty-five-year-old man. He didn’t know why. He jumped to conclusions. But honestly, Kath, could you blame him?”
She turned to the sea.
She couldn’t blame him. She, too, had not been my biggest fan when Patrick essentially decided to adopt me and do it the only way he could—as bizarre as it was, it made sense in a time when everything happening was bizarre—adopting me by marrying me.
“It was weird, what Patrick and I did, even you thought that,” I reminded her carefully.
“I got it in the end,” she muttered.
She did.
“Coert thought it was a betrayal,” I told her.
She turned screwed up eyes to me. “Yeah, he did, and he made sure you weren’t in any question about that, didn’t he? He didn’t even listen. And if he’d shut up and listened, maybe you would have never married Patrick. Maybe that baby of his would be a fifteen-year-old baby of both of yours and you’d have a couple others besides.”
“Then I wouldn’t have had Patrick, and Pat, and you, and you know I could go on.”
“Do you think Patrick would have given up on you? Let you out of his life?” she scoffed. “Hardly. He always wanted a daughter and you know the lengths he went to for that years before he’d even met you.”
I tried not to wince at the memory of learning that knowledge but Kath was on a tear, so she didn’t notice my struggle, she just carried on.
“He’d always wanted his sons to have a little sister. If that came with her boyfriend, he’d take it. He wanted you to have his last name because he didn’t think those two jerks deserved you carrying theirs. But if you took this sheriff guy’s name, he wouldn’t have cared. He’d have done anything to give you what you wanted, including getting back that cop for you. Why do you think he had him followed all these years?”
“I know that and that’s why this is all on me,” I returned.
And it was all on me like everything was all on me.
“You know, this is beautiful and it’s peaceful and I’m so glad this place rocks, and I’m okay leaving you here because half of me wants to drag Pat out here just to live in this studio. Not to mention this is our first night here and all. But I’m gonna shatter all of that right now by saying I’m sick of that shit.”
I blinked at her.
She kept talking.
“You were twenty-three years old, barely more than a girl, and hurting. Your family had totally turned their backs on you. Your best friend hated your guts, and I say that part since I don’t wanna get into all the other insanity she perpetrated. It turned out the man you were desperately in love with lied to you from the second you met and used you to hurt people who were, let’s face it, not that great but they were yours. Your friends. People you cared about. So your head was screwed up and some old guy with a kind heart and a gentle way with words offers you love and support and an end to all that garbage, and you took him up on it. So what? You know, if all that happened to me and I met Patrick knowing how he can be and he said, ‘Let me help you leave this all behind.’ I’d say yes too. In a second. So give yourself a break with all that for once, would you?”
“I don’t even—”
She shook her hand at me. “No. And no again with you cutting this sheriff some slack when you won’t cut yourself some. You’ve forgiven him for using you and lying to you and putting you in danger too but you can’t forgive yourself for trusting the right man who pulled out all the stops to take care of you. And furthermore, you have no problems with that sheriff holding a grudge after all these years when he never gave you the opportunity to explain where you were with all that.”
It was then she shook her head and turned back to the sea.
“No,” she continued. “He doesn’t get my forgiveness that easily. You can do that, okay. But he doesn’t get that from me.”
I didn’t share with her Coert wouldn’t care because he didn’t know her, and furthermore, he wasn’t like that. I knew Tony, not Coert, but I figured both were one and the same (at least the Tony he gave to me, mostly) and he never cared what anyone thought.
Which meant Coert didn’t even care how I felt about these things.
However, the bottom line was it was a long time ago. So he was still beautiful. So he was still single. So he had the most adorable little girl I’d ever seen (outside of Verity, Ellie, Melanie and Bea).
It was a long time ago.
So it was time to move on.
I’d come out here not even knowing what I’d wanted to come of it (exactly).
But what I got was my lighthouse. A place of peace that wasn’t full of memories of Patrick but was still another something beautiful he gave me.
And that was a good place to be.
“It was almost two decades ago, Kathy,” I reminded her. “It’s time everyone moved on.”
She turned again to me. “And you tense and looking over your shoulder at the gol’darned market? Is that moving on?”
“That will stop too. We just got here today. I’ll settle in. I promise.”
“He should have told you he was a cop,” she spat.
“He didn’t.”
“He should have listened to you when he came back to you.”
“He didn’t.”
She glared at me for a long time before she puffed out air, turned to the sea and mumbled, “I need more cake.”
“I’ll go get them,” I replied and got out of my seat.
I was nearly to the door when I heard her trembling voice come at me.
“It breaks me.”
I turned back to her and it took a great deal, too much, to stare into her beautiful brown eyes shining with tears and not allow my own to come.
“What you could have had,” she finished. “What you two could have built together. When I think about it, it breaks me.”
It broke me too.
A long time ago.
Now I needed to fix me.
“You didn’t date,” she said.
“I did, Kath, honey,” I replied gently.
“On the sly because you refused to divorce Patrick,” she shot back. “He didn’t care, he wanted you to, but those society bitches would have torn you to shreds.”
This was all too true.
“If I divorced him, the times he got sick, I wouldn’t have been able to be at the hospital with him the way I needed to be, make decisions he wanted made,” I reminded her.
“Pat had those papers drawn up.”
“They weren’t what a wife is offered . . .” my voice dropped low, “or a daughter.”
She looked to the table where our wine bottle was sweating.
Pat could have had a million papers drawn up, but when you hit the hospital, none of that mattered.
“Are you his daughter?” they asked because at my age, that was what was assumed. I had his last name. So I said yes. I looked nothing like him. Like any of his sons. But that was all that mattered.
If they’d pushed it, they’d have found I was legally tied to him.
That would have been all that mattered.
And I needed that. I needed it to be in the position to take care of the first man on this earth who loved me unreservedly just for me being me.
He’d had cancer when I’d met him. He had not shared that. His boys didn’t even know that at the time. It had taken a while for all of us to learn that.
And when I learned it, the deal we’d made changed.
He took care of me.
And then after we found out, for twelve years, as it came and went, ravaging him then giving him time to recover only to ravage him again, I took care of him.
“I don’t regret it,” I declared.
Her eyes lifted to me.
“Not a minute,” I whispered.
“You need to find a man,” she whispered back.
“I know Pat is awesome and you love him more than anything, but a man isn’t everything, Kathy,” I told her.
“You’ve got time. You need to make babies and a man is kinda essential to that.”
I gave her a soft smile. “I had seven babies I could help look after, honey. I’m good.”
Her lips trembled before she said, “I want you to be happy.”
“I’ll be happy,” I assured her.
“You came here because you’re still in love with him.”
It was my turn to look away because I didn’t want to admit that out loud.
But she was right.
“I want you to be happy, Cady.”
I looked back to her. “I’ll be happy, Kath.” I swallowed and finished, “Eventually.”
“I’m sorry I was a bitch to you when we first met.”
And there we were.
All of this was bringing up feelings of guilt she had no reason to feel.
“It was understandable and it led to this, so do you think I care?”
“I love you, Cady. I only have brothers so Patrick gave me a sister too, and I cannot tell you how many times I thanked God that He led Patrick to doing that.”
I smiled at her. “And I love you back, Kathy. Totally more than you love me.”
She straightened her shoulders. “No way, I love you totally more than you love me.”
“Who’s up getting cakes?” I teased. “That’s love when I have to leave that view.”
“I carried a whole, single box into your house earlier before the boys showed up, now that’s love.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“Do you want cake or do you want me to stand here bickering with you?”
She pretended to think about it and then answered, “Cake.”
I grinned at her and saw her mouth twitch before I felt my grin die.
“This, right here,” I stated. “Seriously, my beautiful Kathy, I don’t regret a thing.”
I didn’t let her reply.
She knew I’d made my point and done it grandly.
I just walked in and got the cakes.