Chapter 28
“You’re back.” Maya greeted Harper as she entered The Aboveboard.
“I am. Just one Gull, is …” Harper pulled her parka off as she sat on a barstool.
“Anna here?” Maya said with a sly smile as she poured the beer from the tap. “She’s not; with the storm nigh, I expect she’s too busy to get away tonight.”
“I thought that might be the case,” Harper said. “I was on my way back to our house, I just thought maybe …”
“She’s a good one,” Maya said as she set the beer down in front of Harper and took her cash. “I think it’s been a bit lonely for her here, though; it’s good she has a friend.”
“We really just met, but I agree, she’s a good one.” Harper took a sip.
“Time doesn’t matter, connection does,” Maya said. “You can know a person for years and never know them, or you can have a drink and some bar snacks with them one night and know them.”
Harper smiled. “I have a reputation of not being particularly forthcoming. I don’t talk to strangers, I don’t talk to much of anyone, but I come here, and all of a sudden …”
“We’re not strangers,” Maya said softly.
“There are two types of people who come to Bell. Those who discover and those who remember. The Discoverers are looking for things they were missing on the mainland—animals, birds, quiet. The Rememberers are coming home, even if they’ve never known what that means before.
I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting who’s who. ”
“Who am I?” Harper asked, feeling her mind disconnect from her form in comfortable numbness.
“You have Bell in your blood. Last time I saw your mother she was sitting right on that stool where you are now. Your daddy next to her. That was, oh, maybe a year before the hurricane. I wish I’d known that would be the last time I’d see them, but I suppose we never know that …
do we?” Maya said. She locked her dark eyes on Harper’s for a long moment and Harper was hit with a wave of warmth, and she felt emotion well in the back of her throat.
“What was she like? When she was young?” Harper asked softly.
“A bit like you, thoughtful, smart, lovely. She was a bit ahead of me in school. She always knew who she was, I was envious of that. I didn’t get that kind of confidence until I was much older.
But your mother? She was always her genuine self, no matter what people thought.
I wasn’t surprised a bit when she left the island.
” Maya leaned against the bar, her expression thoughtful.
“You never met your grandparents, they passed long before you came along, but they were good folk too. They might not have understood their daughter, but they loved her just the same. They’d love you too. ”
Harper swallowed the lump in her throat that Maya had once again caused to form.
At that moment, two fishermen came in, waving hellos to Maya, who nodded to Harper and went on her way.
Harper drank the last of her beer and ventured back into the night to head back to the little house with Kyle.
The wind was already starting to pick up.
She had a bad feeling about the outboard boat they were supposed to take out tomorrow morning.
That night, Kyle was particularly quiet.
Harper resisted the urge to ask yet again if he was alright.
He picked at the pasta that Harper had made without complaint or interest. Harper found her own thoughts wandering to Bell Manor.
She had no intention of bringing it up to Kyle, who would tell her to go.
He was in no shape to be left alone. He was slipping, and days alone in a clapboard house during a storm were no good for anyone, even with Polly’s company.