Chapter Eleven
Marit couldn’t believe how fast time was flying.
It seemed as if it was just yesterday when they’d all watched Kash crush the competition in the crate race.
The Lobster Festival was far behind them, and it was now October.
The last couple of months had flown by. The end of tourist season was officially here, and while the weather was still moderate, it wouldn’t be long before temperatures began to really drop.
Lobstering had slowed but never really stopped. That was one thing Marit enjoyed about her job—there was a break in the winter but she still earned a paycheck. She saved up in the summer, when she was working six days a week, and enjoyed the bit of down time she had in the winter.
Then there was Zach.
He was everything she’d ever dreamed of in a boyfriend.
Attentive but not smothering. Just as hardworking as she was.
He didn’t see his work as being more important than hers, and he treated her as if she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
She wasn’t so sure about that, but it was amazing to feel as cherished as she did when she was around him.
They hadn’t spent much time at her apartment; most of the time, she stayed at Zach’s place.
She’d brought over quite a few of her things, and seeing her shampoo, conditioner, and lotion in his bathroom, her clothes mixed in with his in his closet, and their dirty laundry together in the same hamper made her heart do funny things.
She loved him.
And that terrified her.
Because he could so easily break her.
They hadn’t said the words yet, but she was pretty sure he returned her feelings.
Could a man be as sweet as he was and spend as much time with her as he did and not love her?
She wasn’t sure. After all, she hadn’t had good role models growing up.
It was tough to believe she was lovable in the first place.
If her own brothers hadn’t cared for her at all, how could someone as amazing as Zach?
But she was working hard to change her thinking. She’d spent a lot of time out at Lobster Cove with Zach’s mom, and it was easy to see why he’d turned out to be as good a man as he was.
Evelyn Young was one of those people who rekindled your belief that humans were basically good.
For every person who cut Marit off in traffic, who wrinkled their nose at how she smelled after spending the day on the water, who looked down at her, literally, because of her short stature, there was Evelyn, who welcomed her with open arms. Who laughed at her silly jokes.
Who constantly told her how happy she was that Marit was in her life.
Yes, Marit now viewed Evelyn as her own mother, and she’d do whatever it took to protect the woman.
Then there was the rest of Zach’s family.
His brothers, who’d seemed so scary to her at the beginning, were now some of her best friends.
She saw Chad the most, as he was always at Lobster Cove when she was there, but Knox and Linc were around a lot as well.
They laughed and joked with her as if they’d known her forever.
They gave no indication that they thought she and Zach were moving too fast, or that they resented her for any reason.
And sure, they were annoying at times, as Zach had warned they could be, but not in any way that ever made Marit uncomfortable or doubt her relationship with their brother.
In fact, the only thing that wasn’t going well in her life was Lucas Pearson.
The man hadn’t let up on her. Not even now, with lobstering season slowing significantly.
If anything, he’d doubled down on harassing her.
He’d somehow gotten her phone number, and for weeks, not a day went by when he didn’t text her some nasty note or slur.
He didn’t even try to hide that he was the one sending the messages.
He was either conceited enough to believe he wouldn’t get in trouble, or convinced that she wouldn’t go to the cops about the harassment.
And he was right about the latter. Marit didn’t feel as if he was enough of a threat to involve the police. In his messages, he pushed her to quit, to leave town, to leave lobstering to the men, who he claimed could do the job twice as well as she ever could.
It was annoying, but she didn’t really feel threatened, per se. She actually hadn’t seen the man in person for weeks, but she knew he was always there. In the background. Lurking.
She hadn’t mentioned the texts to Zach, because at first she wasn’t sure who was sending them.
She had an excellent idea, but she had no proof.
Until Lucas mentioned his boat, Men At Work, in one of the messages.
Until that point, she had to admit it could’ve been Thorne Deaton, resuming his harassment from Portland.
Even then, she didn’t tell Zach, figuring it was best to just ignore the texts. And when that didn’t encourage Lucas to stop, she blocked his number.
Of course, that didn’t make the harassment disappear.
It gave her a reprieve for a few days, then the texts started up again from a different number, and that pattern had continued again and again.
She supposed he was using a computer to generate different numbers for sending texts.
Or maybe one of those free phone number programs or something.
He certainly wasn’t rich enough to be buying new phones over and over, that was for sure.
Now, the texts had gone on long enough that Marit actually felt weird telling Zach about them.
He’d want to know how long the harassment had been going on .
. . and she’d have to admit that it had been weeks.
Then he’d be mad that she’d kept such a thing from him, and she’d feel awful.
It was easier to just keep on ignoring them.
However, the guilt she felt over keeping such a big problem from Zach was eating at her. She was going to have to tell him at some point. Soon. Because the texts were finally starting to worry her.
She’d honestly thought Lucas would’ve quit harassing her by now, but no such luck. And his nastiness had gone on long enough. It was time to report him to the police, in case he felt the need to escalate, now that the main lobster season was over and he had more time on his hands.
But today wasn’t the day, because she and Zach were heading to Lobster Cove to help Britt and Chad move into their new house.
Evelyn had stopped renting the two-bedroom house on the family property in late August, and Chad and Britt—with help from Chad’s brothers, Marit, and even Walt and Barry on occasion—had been working hard to renovate the space.
Now it was finally done. It had a brand-new kitchen, new floors, a new roof, paint, and while they hadn’t been able to afford all-new furniture yet, Chad had insisted on buying a bed.
Marit agreed with that purchase; she wouldn’t want to sleep on a mattress that countless strangers had slept on over the years. Of course, that’s exactly what people did every day when they slept in a hotel, but she didn’t want to even think about that.
Zach was driving. When they went somewhere, he almost always drove. Not that she couldn’t drive or didn’t have a car, she simply had no problem with Zach chauffeuring her around.
“What’s on your plate for tomorrow?” he asked, as they headed out of Rockville.
“Lobster pot maintenance,” Marit said with a wrinkle of her nose.
It wasn’t her favorite thing to do, but it was one of those things that if not done, and not done correctly, all their hard work to catch the lobsters would be for naught.
If the creatures could get out of the traps because there was a hole somewhere, the boat owner and deckhands could lose a lot of money.
“Down at the docks?”
“No. Eliot and Jonah brought the traps to their place. We’ll swap them out this winter.
We’ve got about a third of the pots in the water that we do in the summer, so we’ll work on this batch, then switch them with the ones that are currently on the bottom of the ocean.
We also have to repaint some of the buoys. ”
“Tedious work,” Zach commented.
He wasn’t wrong. “Yeah. But necessary. What about you? You mentioned yesterday the delivery business is going okay?”
“Uh-huh. Slower than I’d like though. My main issue is getting word out about the weekly specials.
I’ve been using social media, but not everyone is online all the time.
I have a newsletter list, but it seems that only about forty percent of the people who signed up for updates even open the emails.
And even if I put a big sign outside the shack, only the people who happen to drive by will see it. It’s frustrating.”
“You have a phone number for The Lobster Buoy, right?” Marit asked.
“Of course. It’s how people call in to order. They can also submit an order online.”
“What if you put a recording on the phone? Like, push one to hear the weekly specials, push two to place an order . . . that kind of thing. That way, you can print flyers and stuff with the phone number on it and tell people to call to hear the special of the week . . . making sure they know it will always involve lobster in some way. Or you can set up an automatic message, where people can get texts with the specials. A lot of people would probably prefer that option.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually.”
“I know back in the old days, the eighties, that’s how people found out the movie schedules.
They’d have to call and listen to the recording for the times of each show.
Did you know there was even a number people could call to get the time and temperature?
It seems crazy today, but that’s how it was back then. ”
Zach chuckled. “You make it sound as if it was a million years ago.”
“It feels like it was. Oh, what about an app?” Marit asked.
“An app?”