Chapter 1 #2
Grace let out an uncertain laugh, and then decided not to tell him they’d actually been waiting for forty-five minutes.
When she’d emailed the ferry service, as per the instructions on her job acceptance, she had envisioned a slightly more sophisticated setup than this.
She’d assumed there would be a schedule, with multiple crossings to the islands that dotted the bay, someone staffing the ferry terminal, maybe even a coffee bar or at least a vending machine.
She supposed, considering that, according to Wikipedia, Lighthouse Cove Island only had twelve people, she should have realized it might be a somewhat slimmed-down operation.
“Sorry about that,” she apologized again as the man chucked her suitcases into the cabin before stretching out one work-roughened hand to help her aboard.
She took it, holding Jacob by her other hand, and together the two of them stepped on board the mini trawler, while it rocked back and forth in the waves and for an alarming few seconds, Grace thought she was going to lose her balance and be thrown into the arms of the nameless ferryman.
Thankfully, she righted herself along with Jacob, but not before the man let out a rasping chuckle.
“You’re going to have to get your sea legs soon, missy, if you want to survive in these parts.” He jerked a thumb toward the cabin. “Seats are in there.”
“Thank you,” Grace murmured. As she and Jacob made their way to the cabin, she couldn’t help but notice this wasn’t so much a ferry as a fishing trawler with seats.
There was a decidedly fishy smell to the boat, emanating no doubt from the large net rolled up at the stern, or maybe the slick residue on the floor that looked like a combination of rainwater and… fishiness.
Grace picked her way across carefully, wishing she hadn’t worn a thousand-dollar pair of Prada boots for this journey, but then all she had in her wardrobe was designer clothes she’d never wanted in the first place. She’d have to remedy that, and soon.
“Well, you’ll certainly not be what they’re expecting,” the ferryman remarked as he came into the cabin, settling himself at the cockpit and giving both her and Jacob a very thorough and unabashed once-over.
Grace, perching on a wooden box bench with her arm around her son’s shoulders, eyed him warily.
“Who do you mean by they?” she asked. The application for the position as warden of the nature reserve had been decidedly anonymous—she’d just sent an email to a generic email for the Lighthouse Cove Nature Reserve and received a reply back, friendly it was true, but with the only signature being the Lawrence Estate.
Now that she thought about it, it had all been a little suspicious, but she’d been so desperate to get out of New York, out of her life, that she hadn’t cared.
Maybe she should have.
“They?” the ferryman repeated, his broad back to her and Jacob as he steered them into open water, the trawler seesawing alarmingly so Grace struggled to keep her balance on the bench.
“Well, the Lawrences, don’t you know, eh?
” He glanced over his shoulder at her, his craggy face crinkling into even more wrinkles. “They own the whole island.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Grace murmured. That made sense, considering the email’s signature. She just didn’t know who the Lawrences were. “Do they live on the island?” she asked, and the ferryman’s seemingly open expression suddenly became closed, his mouth snapping shut, his eyebrows beetling.
“Not usually, no,” he said, and turned back to the wheel, essentially ending the conversation.
Grace couldn’t decide if his abrupt answer was just typical New Englander reserve, or if the subject of the Lawrence family was, for whatever reason, a touchy one. She supposed it didn’t matter to her either way.
She drew Jacob more closely to her as the boat rocked in the waves and her stomach did, as well.
She’d been on plenty of boats during her undergrad years studying marine biology, but it been a while.
The weekends she’d spent in the Hamptons on Brad’s sailing cruiser with his bank buddies—before he’d stopped feeling the need to show her off—had probably been the last time she’d stepped foot on a boat, and she definitely didn’t have her sea legs yet.
She hoped she wasn’t going to embarrass herself by throwing up all over her Prada boots.
She also hoped she hadn’t made a gigantic mistake in agreeing to be the nature reserve’s warden for the next six months.
Right now, she was wondering if the job was even legitimate.
If it wasn’t, and she was being kidnapped or trafficked or something else equally nefarious, well then, she didn’t have a prayer.
She was miles from anywhere, no one knew where she was, and she didn’t have a cellphone signal.
Right now, she was feeling kind of stupid. As well as a little scared.
“Isaiah Hawksworth will meet you at the dock,” the ferryman told her. “And show you your lodgings. Not too shabby, I’d say. Did you bring any food?”
Wordlessly Grace shook her head. She had some semi-crushed peanut butter crackers in her purse for Jacob, and that was all.
Why hadn’t she thought more, she wondered with a futile edge of panic.
Brad had often called her an airhead, and right now she felt like one.
Obviously an island with the population equivalent to a carton of eggs wasn’t going to have a grocery store, or any kind of store.
She should have stopped on the way up and bought at least a week’s worth of groceries.
Now she’d have to take the ferry back, and soon, and drive all the way to a grocery store. The prospect alone exhausted her.
“Well, I’m sure old Isaiah will have filled up your fridge,” the ferryman told her with a philosophical shrug. “He does his best to keep the warden happy. Though none of ’em stay for very long.”
“Oh?” Grace swallowed, grateful at least that she and Jacob might not starve. “Why is that?”
The man turned around to give her an incredulous look.
“Well, look around you, missy,” he said with another rasping chuckle.
“There ain’t much here, is there? And the rain and wind and fog…
well, they do something to a body, especially if you’re not used to it, especially in winter.
Course, you’re coming at a better time. Spring here can be just bee-yoo-ti-ful.
” He nodded, his craggy face turning even craggier when he smiled.
“Summer’s sometimes a washout, though. The last warden barely lasted a week, but maybe, with the weather starting to turn, you’ll do better.
” This statement was laden with so much skepticism that Grace thought the man probably expected her to be out on the first ferry of the morning… if there even was one.
“How often does this ferry run?” she asked and was rewarded with another laugh.
“Whenever it suits me,” he told her with a rasping laugh. “Just stop by my cottage and ask, and I’ll let you know if I can do it.”
“There’s no regular service?” Grace asked, a little alarmed although at this point unsurprised, and with a grin that revealed a missing canine, he slowly shook his head back and forth before spitting a gob of something gross into the water.
“It’s not a formal arrangement, these days,” he told her. “There aren’t enough people. So I just take my trawler across whenever there’s a need.”
Or whenever he felt like it? Grace turned away, hugging Jacob to her. This was what she wanted, she told herself yet again. Quiet. Solitude. Privacy. Peace…
Except right now, alone in such an unfamiliar place, it didn’t feel like what she wanted at all. She didn’t want to go back, Grace thought, heaven knew, but right now she didn’t know how to go forward.