Torchlight (14 page)

They spent the remainder of the day exploring the myriad inlets and coves, chasms and large bays that made up Acadia. Julia was resting and rubbing her aching shoulders, wondering how she’d make it back to the kayak shop, when she heard a splash and felt cold salt water wash over her.

Trevor was off and paddling. “Time to go home, I’d say.” He dug deep into the water as Julia’s shout of disbelief cut the air.

Julia was determined not to let him get away with it. She met each of his strokes with her own, not gaining, but keeping pace. He was stronger, and his paddles dug deeper, but he was also heavier.

They continued onward, sapping the last of their strength as they once again reached Schoodic Point.

With one last mighty stroke, Trevor dug deep into the starboard waters and lifted his oar to dig into the port side. Just then his right plastic paddle came unlatched from the metal rod and floated helplessly away from him.

Julia laughed as she scooped up the paddle and made her way toward him, a mischievous look on her face.

“I’m in trouble!” he called. “Help! I need reinforcements!”

“Oh yeah, you’re in deep, mister! Shout all you want; there’s no one to save you now!”

Trevor tried to use his remaining oar like a canoe paddle, but it was no use. He spun crazily to the left, and Julia was alongside him in seconds. Their friends hooted and hollered in the distance at Trevor’s impending demise. Holding her own oar like a baseball bat, she took aim as he resigned himself and stretched out his arms as a willing target. The oar hit the water perfectly, casting a huge spray in a graceful arc and soaking her companion.

Julia laughed as water dripped down his forehead and onto his wet shirt. He smiled with her, shaking the water from his head.

She paddled alongside him until the boats bumped one another. She handed him the missing piece that had led to his downfall.

“Don’t mess with the master,” she said smugly.

His eyes locked with hers, and she quickly turned away and began paddling again, trying to shake off the sense of longing she saw in his gaze, the vague ache that matched what she felt in her heart. Her eyes drifted to the ring on her left hand as she paddled away. Julia found herself cursing her wandering heart.
What is wrong with me anyway?
She either had to take off Miles’s ring and tell him no or quit flirting with Trevor. She couldn’t have it both ways. It wasn’t fair to either of them.

“Any chance we’ll have some semblance of order before my brother and his wife arrive?” Julia asked Trevor.

Jake and Emily would be arriving within weeks, and it seemed that every wall, ceiling, and floorboard in the old house was torn up. Trevor and three local electricians were rewiring the house, gearing it for modern conveniences.

“We’re doing our best, Julia. This is a big project,” Trevor said.

“I’m not getting on you. I know you’re working hard. But Jake was just a little boy when we were here last. He can’t even remember what Torchlight looked like. Emily, of course, hasn’t ever laid eyes on it. I hate to have their first impression of the place be that it’s a disaster.”

“From what you’ve told me, your brother is too laid back to slap a judgment on it like that. You’ve told them we’re in a major rehaul zone, haven’t you?”

“Yes. But this is their belated honeymoon. They haven’t been anywhere but that Montana ranch since their wedding day. I don’t think they’d be coming now if Emily hadn’t insisted Jake get away and see his only sister. It was like she had to pull teeth to make him take time off. I knew I liked her for some reason.”

Trevor smiled down at her from his ladder perch, then turned back to his work, peeling layers of old wallpaper and slamming through the plaster as he followed the trail of the ancient wiring.

He looked back, his face chalk white from the dust of his work. “We’ll work on it, Julia. Maybe we can at least be done tearing out the old stuff and making such a huge mess. But we won’t have the new wires in before next week. They’ll have to live with what we’re living with.”

“Okay. Just do your best.”

“As always.”

They were interrupted by the doorbell, which rang and stuck. As the loud ringing echoed through the house, Julia ran to the front door, opened it, and banged on the doorjamb three times, unsticking the bell. “Sorry,” she said to Tara with a smile. “As you can see, there’s another project every time I turn around.”

“You should’ve let me bring lunch.”

“Nonsense. You must feel like you spend your whole life cooking for everybody else. I thought it was high time someone cooked for you.”

“I knew we’d be friends as soon as you sat down on my barstool,” Tara said as she entered and looked around. “I didn’t know you were going to destroy the ol’ girl. I thought you were going to fix her.”

“It takes a lot of destruction to reconstruct. Come on into the kitchen. It’s the one room that already has semimodern wiring, so it’s escaping this phase. I’m using it as my haven.” As they walked out of the foyer and into the large blue-and-white room, a loud crash sounded upstairs, rattling the copper kettles hanging from the ceiling. A muffled voice could be heard above them. Julia went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to the electricians at work. “Everyone okay?”

A dusty man in white coveralls appeared at the upstairs railing and looked down at her with a broad smile. “We’re okay. Mack was just looking down at Tara in the entry, and he fell off his ladder.”

Julia smiled back at him. “Tell him it serves him right for gawking at my friend while I’m paying him.”

“I will.”

Julia grinned at Tara, who had listened to the exchange from the kitchen doorway. “You’d better stay in the kitchen. I can’t afford to have the men lookin’ after you and not their work.”

“What can I say? I have to beat them off with a stick.”

“Life’s rough.”

“What’s for lunch?”

“Shrimp salad. Sound okay?”

“Sounds great.”

Julia pulled from the refrigerator two plates piled high with
salad and took a freshly baked loaf of French bread from the pantry. She and Tara each tore off a chunk of bread and ate it, unbuttered, as they sat at the kitchen counter in the relative peace of the room.

“I’m glad you could come today, Tara,” Julia said. “I wanted you to see what we’re doing here. If I weren’t so obsessed, I’d make it into town more often to see you.”

“Well, as soon as things get under control, I’ll expect to see more of you.” Tara took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “You make a mean shrimp salad. If this inn doesn’t make it, you can always come in and help me at the restaurant.”

“I might have to take on a summer job if the place keeps sucking up money at this rate.”

“I can’t begin to imagine. Luckily you hired a handsome and talented overseer early on.”

“He has been a blessing. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t sent him my way.”

“I bet.”

“Tara …”

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t kissed him! I’ve seen how you two look at each other.”

Julia lowered her voice and made a face at Tara. “No, I haven’t. We don’t have that kind of a relationship.”

“Why not?”

“Hello? Is anybody in there? Do you remember that someone proposed last month? Why would I be kissing another man this week?”

Tara pointedly looked at Julia. “I hadn’t heard that you called Miles to say yes.”

“No. I haven’t yet. But I’m wearing the ring.”

“There’s still hope.”

“Tara! You’re just getting to know me. Why are you so sure Miles is the wrong man?”

“I’m not so sure Miles is wrong for you. It’s just that Trevor”—Tara’s eyes went to the door—“Trevor seems so
right.
It’s as though you two were made for each other, and everybody can see it but you.”

“Well, I don’t think he’s as interested as you think.”

“Oh no?”

“Tara Waverly, if you know something I should, you’d better lay it on the table.”

“Sorry, I’m just here for a friendly lunch date, not to get into the middle of some warped love triangle.”

Julia put her head in her hands. “Don’t call it that. Trevor and I are just friends.”

“Okay. But you’re the friendliest friends I’ve set eyes on in a long while.”

Julia and Tara finished their lunch and decided to climb the lighthouse stairs with their coffee. Tara beamed. “I haven’t been up there in months!”

“I told you, you’re welcome anytime.”

“I know. I just don’t want to barge in on your privacy.”

“Don’t be silly. Come whenever you want. If it makes you feel better, call first.”

They entered the building and climbed all the way to the top. “Next time, bring along some oxygen for me,” Tara said, taking in deep breaths of air.

“You’re the one who always came up here,” Julia said, panting herself. “I thought you’d remember to bring your own supply.”

“Guess I forgot.”

Julia smiled at her friend. She was so vivacious that everyone took an immediate liking to her.

“So, have you found out any more about your great-great-grandfather’s return?” Tara seemed to be as interested in Anna’s journals as Trevor was. Julia kept them both abreast of the news as she read, sometimes sharing portions aloud. It felt as though they were eyewitnesses to history. Julia was pleased that both friends shared her passion for the journals.

She took a sip from her coffee cup and looked out at yet another spectacular and clear spring day. It was sunny, yet seemed even colder without the clouds and heavy fog that were more characteristic of this time of year.

“I’ve been reading a lot from Anna’s journals lately.”

“With Trevor?”

“With and without him.”

“What’s been happening?”

“Shane came back. But he didn’t make as much money as he thought he would. Instead of gold in his pocket, he returned with wild ideas about building faster ships—ideas we know made the family fortune—but, living in a tiny hole of an apartment, with a bun in the oven, Anna had a mighty hard time supporting his wild schemes.”

Julia stared down at the waves crashing beneath the lighthouse, transfixed by the rhythm:
Crash, cascade, swirl, drain, build. Crash, cascade, swirl, drain, build. Crash …
“Still, I’ve got to hand it to her. Instead of beating him into submission and making him take a
real
job, she let him take his time and figure it out. She decided that ideas don’t cost money; it’s the building that costs money.”

“I’d have said, ‘Honey, go get a real job,’ ” Tara put in.

“Me, too. But Anna let Shane chalk stripes to simulate planking all over the apartment while she made him dinner night after night, until he headed off on another voyage around the Cape to pay the bills. They lived for months, months that turned into years, in a striped one-room apartment while great-great-granddaddy tried to find an investor.

“Still, Anna held on. She saw the glint in his eye and his passion for the sea. She knew he was smart—really smart. She trusted that. And she was so much in love she couldn’t resist letting him follow his dreams. I admire her so much. I admire their love.”

“Is that as far as you’ve gotten?”

“Anna gave birth to their first child while Shane was at sea. The baby picked up one of the zillion plagues that circulated through those poor neighborhoods. Can you imagine? Anna desperately tried to keep her child alive in sub-zero temperatures while, at the same time, wondering if her husband would ever come home. She was in a strange place and very far away from her family. How lonely. How
desperate.
I think God made people stronger back then.”

Tara stared out at sea, as transfixed by the Donnovans’ story as Julia. “But he came home. He came home and got an investor and made his fortune and built this house.”

“Yes. But not before their first child died of smallpox. Shane came home to find that the daughter he’d never met had been buried for two months. And Anna was near death herself. He vowed that he’d never leave her alone again while she was pregnant. By some miracle she got well, and they grieved together. Fortunately, Anna got pregnant again two months later. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

“I want that kind of love, that utter devotion,” Tara said simply.

“Yeah,” Julia agreed, lost in a story a hundred and fifty years old.
After a moment she returned to the present. “What about Ben?” she asked carefully.

“Ah, the man needs a knock over the head to see the woman right in front of his eyes. But what a man he is. If he could get over grieving the loss of Sharon, I might have a chance. It doesn’t look good now. I keep getting my hopes up. When we went sailing two weeks ago, we had a fantastic day. But as soon as we docked, Ben put up his walls and went back to keeping me at arm’s length. Kayaking to Acadia was fun too, but he didn’t let me in like he did the day we went sailing.”

“How’d Sharon die?” Julia asked quietly. “I know she was your friend.”

“Boat accident. Ben was out fishing while Sharon went sailing. She got caught in a late summer squall and never made it back. It was horrible. We were very close. Mike was only five years old. But that was ten years ago. Sharon would want us all to go on. I’m crazy about both of them, but I can’t seem to get through to Ben.”