Chapter 13

DIDN’T I tell you she hated me?” Maggie slumped in the front seat of Hal’s car.

“Well, now, hate might be too strong a word.” Hal drove away from the curb, mindful of the group of teens who for unknown reasons did not seem capable of walking on a sidewalk in this town. “I think she’s got issues, Maggie, but I don’t know that she hates you.”

“She’d rather take her chances with some crazy guy in a ski mask than have me stay with her.”

“Let’s be fair, now.” He paused, trying to choose his words carefully. “I’d guess that she’s a little put out on Beck’s behalf. You know he wasn’t expecting to see you at the wedding, Maggie.”

“You think I was wrong to come.”

“I think if he-”

“You think if he’d wanted me at his wedding he’d have invited me.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say, but yes, I think that’s probably true.”

He rolled to a stop sign, looked both ways to see what was what on Rayburn Road before continuing on his way.

“So what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say, if he’d had some time to prepare himself, if he’d had some contact with you over the past few years, he’d have taken it a little better.”

Tears welled in Maggie’s eyes. “I’ve never done a damned thing right where that boy was concerned. I didn’t know how to handle him when he was a child, or when he was a teenager, or now that he’s an adult. I’ve never known how to talk to him, Hal. I think it would have been easier for all of us if you’d been there…” She swallowed hard. “That was not what I intended to say, so forget that part.”

“Maggie, once something’s been said, it’s said.” He drove around the block to Charles Street. “You can’t take words back and pretend they weren’t spoken.” His voice softened. “Just like you can’t take the last twenty years back, and expect your children to pretend those years never happened.”

Maggie stared out the window.

“What should I do, Hal?”

“You have a lot of explaining to do to both of them,” he told her. “If you want them to let you into their lives, you have to let them into yours. From what you’ve told me, you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your life.” He hastened to add, “We all have. But you have to own up to them if you’re going to move past them.”

“What if I tell them, and they still don’t like me?”

“Well, then, I suppose that’s a chance you have to take. The way it stands right now, they both have problems with you but they don’t understand why you acted the way you did. There is a chance that they could hear the truth and still have a problem with you. That’s the chance you take. But they’re your kids, and if you want them back in your life, you’re going to have to step up and talk to them, and tell them everything you’ve told me over the past twenty-four hours. Maybe they’ll understand and forgive, maybe they won’t. I’m seeing that as fifty-fifty. But if you don’t have those conversations with them, your chances of reconciling with your kids are zero.”

“What if they dislike me even more?”

“Like I said, that’s the chance you take.”

“Where should I start? What would you do, if you were me?” she asked.

“I guess I’d start by taking Ness out to dinner and just talking to her. Get to know her a little, find out what’s happened in her life since she’s come here.”

“Well, I know what’s happened in her life. I know that you took her under your wing and helped her to get her business started. I know that you financed that little house of hers. I know that she thinks of you as the father she didn’t have.”

Hal couldn’t tell if she sounded happy or annoyed.

“You know that much, seems to me that’s a starting point.”

He drove down Kelly’s Point and parked in the spot that was reserved for the chief of police. He never got tired of remembering that the chief was his son. He opened his car door and started to get out.

She reached for the door handle and asked, “Do you hate me, Hal?”

He shook his head. “No. I never hated you, Maggie.”

“Not even when you came back from Nam and found out I was married to someone else?”

“Maybe for a while, back then,” he admitted. “But I started thinking about how hard things must have been for you. Pregnant, not knowing if I’d come back alive, your parents pressuring you to marry this other man. After a time, I realized you did what you thought you had to do. I understood.”

He slammed his car door and walked around to the passenger side.

“The fact that I understood doesn’t mean that I liked it.” He fell in step with her and they walked down the road toward the Bay.

“I was scared.”

“Of course you were. Who wouldn’t have been?”

“My father kept telling me that the baby and I would end up like these homeless people we had in the town where we lived.” Her step slowed. “My parents owned a restaurant, and every night, there’d be people cleaning out the Dumpster out back. My parents would leave the leftovers in these Styrofoam containers and they’d leave plastic knives and forks out there so that people wouldn’t have to eat with their hands.” She shook her head. “It sounds so crazy now. But my father used to make me watch out the window when they came. ‘See that?’ He’d hold my face to the glass. ‘That’s going to be you if you don’t marry Vic.’”

She clasped her hands together in front of her as they walked, and Hal suspected that the hands were probably as shaky as the voice.

“I don’t blame you, Maggie. We already talked about this,” Hal reminded her.

He’d heard it the night before, and he didn’t want to hear it all again. He understood how one thing had led to another in the past, how everything had gone downhill and why she felt powerless to stop it. He just didn’t want to hear it again now. He wanted to put it all behind him. He wasn’t sure where that would take them, but one thing he knew for certain: looking back was no way to move forward.

Which was all well and good as far as he was concerned, he supposed, but apparently she hadn’t gotten it all out of her system yet, in which case he’d be hearing about it again and again. But if that was what Maggie needed to work it all out, that was the way it was going to have to be. The thing was, he wasn’t sure that even Maggie fully understood the choices she’d made over the years. Maybe she’d have to talk it through a little more before she did. And that was okay, because the longer she talked, the more time he’d have to look at her. It was a pleasure he thought he’d never experience again, and he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity.

He took her by the arm and led her down the path to One Scoop or Two.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Are you taking me for ice cream?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied. “And while we’re here, I’m going to have a little talk with Steffie about this Candice person who was in Ness’s shop the other day. She may have noticed something that Vanessa might have missed.”

“And after that, are you going to take me back to the Inn?”

“Nope. After that, I’m going to take you for a cruise around the Bay on the Shady Lady.”

“The Shady Lady?”

“My boat.” He opened Steffie’s screen door and waited for Maggie to catch up.

“Did you name your boat after me?”

Hal smiled, and stepped back to allow her to pass.

“You won’t believe who that was on the phone.” Vanessa came into the spare bedroom, where Grady was hanging his tux in the closet. He’d meant to give it to Andy to return when he took his own back, but he hadn’t been able to locate his brother before he left the Inn.

“Let me guess. It was Candice, apologizing for having trashed your store and wondering if you could get her another one of those dresses.” He looked over at the doorway, where she stood leaning against the jamb. “Maybe one that’s in one piece.”

“I wish. Maybe her number would show up on my caller ID so that we could track her down and sit her phony little ass in one of my brother’s cells.” She plopped down on the chair in the corner. “Maggie was on the phone. She’s with Hal, and they wanted to know if I wanted to meet them for dinner.”