Chapter 16
The breeze off the ocean was chilly although the sun was warm as Grace, Jacob, and Becca started across to Salt Cove on Ned’s trawler the next morning, the ferryman at the wheel, nursing a large thermos of coffee.
Grace sat with Jacob pressed in close to her, watching the water glint off the ruffled surface of the ocean.
She felt both excited and a little anxious about heading over to the mainland.
Over the last ten days, despite her misadventure with the tides, Lighthouse Cove Island had become something of a haven, a place where she knew she was safe from the prying eyes of the internet, New York society, and the whole world.
Instinctively she glanced behind her at the island fast disappearing over the horizon, the crenellated towers of Grayhaven rising from its heap of rock.
It would take them forty-five minutes to get to Salt Cove, and then the same again to travel to Eastport, the tourist town that was on Moose Island, at the entrance of Cobscook Bay, and still a couple hundred miles from just about anywhere.
It was, Grace knew, nearly three hours to Bangor, over five to Portland, and that was still considered pretty far from regular civilization.
Lighthouse Cove Island really was the absolute back of beyond.
She and Becca didn’t talk much on the way over, thanks to the loud hum of the trawler’s motor and the presence of Ned, but as soon as they reached Grace’s SUV, parked in the lot across from the ferry terminal, shack that it was, the questions started, as Grace had suspected they would.
“So I don’t really know a lot about you,” Becca remarked as she slipped into the passenger seat of Grace’s car.
They’d agreed to take her vehicle rather than the old truck Becca’s mother kept in a garage in Salt Cove.
“Besides that you’re from New York and have a fabulous wardrobe.
” She glanced down at Grace’s outfit—a pair of wide-legged pants in cream linen and a navy-blue boatneck sweater, both, as all her clothes were, designer and expensive.
Plus the Prada boots, which were comfortable.
“Why on earth do you want to go clothes shopping in Eastport?” she asked frankly.
“Well, these clothes aren’t exactly suitable for being a nature reserve warden,” Grace pointed out with a smile.
“And…” She hesitated, wanting to share some confidences, since Becca had been so honest with her about her son, Lewis, but felt that familiar anxiety claw at her throat.
What if Becca googled her? What if she believed what she read?
Plus, Jacob was here, silent but always listening.
“I’d like to change my style,” she said finally. “Try something new.”
“Well, I don’t know if Eastport is really the place for that,” Becca replied with a snicker. “Unless you like t-shirts with ‘chowdahhead’ or ‘brake for lobstah’ written on them, or recycled bowling shirts circa 1990, if we’re going to the thrift store.” She snickered again, shaking her head.
“I guess I’ll have to take my chances,” Grace replied with a smile.
The drive to Eastport around the north side of the bay was pleasant, through rolling hills, the glint of the ocean almost always visible from a curve in the road.
Cobscook Bay was dotted with islands, some postage-stamp sized, some a lot bigger, with Moose Island the most notable one, having a bridge that connected it to the mainland.
Eastport, population all of twelve hundred, felt like a booming metropolis compared to life on Lighthouse Cove, and, Becca informed her, was in fact incorporated as a city, the easternmost in the entire United States.
“And it has a salmon festival as well as a pirate one, plus a ferry to New Brunswick. And the 4th of July celebration is wicked good—fourth biggest in all of Maine, just saying.” She slid Grace a humorous glance.
Grace smiled, shaking her head. “Sounds pretty incredible to me.”
“Well, I like it here,” Becca said firmly, almost as if Grace had suggested otherwise. “But I guess it can’t possibly compare to New York.”
“Oh, New York’s not that great,” Grace replied lightly as she parked on Water Street, the town’s main drag that faced the waterfront and, with the art galleries and boutiques shuttered for the season, had only a few open stores. “Pretty overrated, if you ask me.”
“Why did you move all the way to Lighthouse Cove?” Becca asked as they got out of the car and started along the street. Grace thought she’d probably been dying to ask the question since they’d first got in the car. She lowered her voice with a swift glance at Jacob. “Bad breakup?”
Grace glanced down at her son. “Something like that,” she said quietly.
Some evening, she decided, she’d invite Becca over when Jacob was asleep and give her a little more honesty.
It would feel good, if strange, to have a friend, after so many years of isolation, like stretching a muscle that she’d forgotten how to use.
She didn’t know how much she would be willing to tell, but at least it would be something.
Baby steps toward a future where she could figure out who she was and how she wanted to be.
But as for now… she really wanted to buy some new clothes. If they had to be bowling shirts or chowdahhead t-shirts, well then, so be it.
Fortunately, Eastport offered a little more than Becca had said, and in one of the thrift stores Grace found several pairs of serviceable jeans and cargo pants as well as some t-shirts and fleeces.
Her favorite t-shirt was bright yellow, with a sketch design of a shingled building in blue, and a huge lobster snapping its claws on the back.
It read “Kenny’s Lobstah Shack” and underneath, in a wide, looping scrawl, “We’re Claw-some! ”
She imagined Brad’s reaction to her wearing it and almost laughed out loud.
She and Becca spent a fun few hours poking around in various stores, and then Grace insisted she treat them all to lunch at the Happy Crab. Becca had crab cakes, Jacob pizza, and Grace splurged on a burger—something Brad would have never let her eat.
There was, she reflected, so much wrong with that sentence, starting with, why had she let her husband dictate what she ate for twelve years?
Worse yet, she hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it.
He wouldn’t have forbidden her outright, of course.
Just raised an eyebrow, asked in a voice dripping with faux concern whether she wanted something so heavy.
And she hadn’t even been able to recognize his behavior for what it was—cruel manipulation and gaslighting.
Thank God she’d gotten out when she had, even if it had taken her so long.
They were still eating lunch when Jacob tugged on Grace’s sleeve and then nodded to the lobster tank by the front door.
“Sure, buddy, you can go have a look.” Grace watched as he trotted over, glad for this little bit of independence he was showing.
He’d clung to her pretty much constantly since she’d left Brad, but between the chess lessons and the freedom the island provided, that was hopefully becoming a thing of the past. One small way in which her son was healing. They both were.
“Does he not speak at all?” Becca asked quietly, and Grace couldn’t help but tense.
“Sorry if it’s rude to ask,” she continued quickly.
“I don’t know the protocols for asking about that kind of thing, and as you might have been able to tell, I don’t get out much anyway, so social niceties are not my strong point.
But you know, tell me to mind my own business if you’d rather. We do that a lot around here.”
Grace glanced at Becca, her green eyes crinkled, her expression both so anxious and hopeful, and she smiled as she reached for a fry, dipped it in ketchup. Heaven.
“No, it’s not rude to ask,” she assured her. “He was always quiet, but he’s been completely mute for the last six months.” She swallowed her fry, and for a second it stuck in her throat. “Since I left my husband.”
“I’m sorry,” Becca murmured. “Was… was Jacob close to him?”
“Kind of?” Grace shrugged, because the truth was, she really didn’t know the answer to that question.
“I mean… yes, in that he was his dad, and when he was around and interested, he could be incredibly charming, and of course Jacob loved that. But otherwise…? I don’t really know, and I don’t even know if Jacob misses him, because of course he hasn’t told me.
And I don’t know why he stopped speaking, what about me leaving Brad was so traumatic that he responded that way. I wish I did.”
“I’m sorry,” Becca said again. “That’s why you came to Lighthouse Cove? Because… because of the divorce?”
Grace nodded. “I needed to get away. Brad—my ex-husband—he’d made things pretty…
pretty unbearable, back in the city.” Which was a huge understatement, and one she’d leave for now.
“And I’m not sure I ever liked living there that much, anyway.
” She wrinkled her nose, letting out an uncertain laugh.
“To be honest, I’m not sure what I like or even who I am.
I married Brad when I was twenty-two, and he basically told me what to like and who to be for the next twelve years, and I went along with it without even questioning whether I should.
So I don’t think I ever really got a chance to figure myself out, for myself, and I didn’t even realize that until I finally left him.
” She let out a shaky laugh. “I am definitely a work in progress.”