Chapter 18 #2
“Well, I have not lived my whole life on this island,” Noah replied as equably as he could.
Her seeming judgment both annoyed and hurt him, which was stupid, because he shouldn’t care and also, he supposed she had a point.
He probably should have remembered who Becca Babcock was, even if he’d barely spoken to her ever, and not at all in the last twenty years.
“And in fact, before eighteen months ago,” he continued a little peevishly, “I hadn’t been here in twenty years.
And you might recall I’m trying to develop myself as a hermit. So.”
Grace folded her arms a little more tightly. “Becca Babcock’s family,” she informed him curtly, “has been fishing from this island for two hundred years.”
“Two hundred?” he repeated, pretending to sound shocked.
He knew that, and he knew the Babcocks, and he remembered who Becca was now, but some contrary part of him refused to trip over himself to explain how it had been a momentary brain blip, not an innate moral failing that had made him forget Becca’s name.
Grace had so clearly already judged him.
“Wow,” he drawled. “That’s very impressive. ”
Her eyes flashed. “Indeed.”
Noah sighed, his annoyance leaving him in a gust. “I know who Becca is, Grace. Her mother Margaret practically has antennae sprouting from her head for any gossip. Her dad died in a fishing accident right before we closed up this place. She has two brothers who were older than we were, and they left the island right out of high school. I didn’t place her name because I haven’t seen or even thought about her in twenty years, and while you might have preferred for us to have grown up together, and been best friends, and had sleepovers when we were kids…
” He let that thought trail off before he joked, a little snarkily, “I was best man at her wedding, did I forget to tell you?” She frowned, and he found he didn’t care if he’d sounded snarky.
If Grace was mad about this, something he’d never even thought about, she certainly couldn’t handle any of his actual stuff.
Not, of course, that he even wanted to spill it, but still. This felt like a bad sign.
Grace stared at him for another simmering moment, like she was trying to decide whether to be really mad, and then she deflated.
“Sorry. I’m out of line, assuming all kinds of stuff.
And truthfully, I don’t know why I care so much.
” She shook her head slowly, her gaze turning distant.
“My ex-husband never learned the name of our housekeeper. Or our building’s doorman.
” She fell silent, like what she’d said should make sense, and it sort of did.
“I remind you of him?” he guessed. That seemed like a very bad sign.
“No, you don’t, actually,” Grace replied. “But I keep trying to draw comparisons, and that’s on me.”
He opened the fridge again, hoping there would be something else in there besides a couple of beers and a wizened wedge of cheddar.
Isaiah really needed to go shopping. Or maybe he did.
“If it helps, I can at least place Becca Babcock,” he said as he stared into the empty depths of the fridge. “Curly dark hair, bright green eyes?”
“Yes.” She sounded far too gratified by this admission.
He sighed and closed the door again. “I’ll be honest, when Jem and I were kids, we didn’t socialize much with the island kids, and that was as much about them as it was us.
We were just really… different.” And Jem had been so shy, and there had always been visitors to entertain.
As for the islander kids… there had been Becca Babcock and two brothers who had been pretty sullen, he recalled, and another family with a boy around his age who had always watched them, wide-eyed, from afar.
He had a vague recollection of asking him to make up a fourth for tennis, and the boy had simply shaken his head.
He supposed he couldn’t blame him, not really.
But they certainly hadn’t all been friends.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said suddenly. “I’m being bitchy and judgmental.
” She shook her head, her eyes darkening to the color of a storm cloud heavy with rain.
“I don’t know anything about the history here, or why things were the way they were.
” She paused. “I know there was a boating accident and a girl died…”
Noah tensed. He’d never talked to her about that, but he supposed Becca must have said something. “Yes,” he said, a little shortly. “It was really sad.”
“What… happened?”
He pressed his lips together. “No one knows exactly. She couldn’t really sail, and she took a boat out on her own.
Had an accident and hit her head. It was terrible…
her family wanted to press charges or something,” he told Grace, “and my parents were devastated by that as well as the girl’s death—she was my mother’s goddaughter, she and her mother were friends from their debutante days.
I hadn’t known her well, but… anyway.” He shook his head.
“It got kind of ugly, and then my parents decided to close up this place, and we never came back again. My mother lost touch with her friend. No one ever spoke about it.”
“That all sounds so sad,” Grace said quietly. “One tragedy after another. And then this place forgotten for so long… but Isaiah stayed?”
“Yes, he’s an islander born and bred. He got a scholarship to a boarding school in Massachusetts when he was young and then went to college and ended up working for my family, traveling around the world with us, but I think his heart was always here.
When my parents realized they needed someone to manage the property, he offered to stay. ”
He glanced at the items he’d laid out on the table—a packet of spaghetti, a container of mushrooms, some lettuce, and a can of tomatoes.
“I thought there would be a little more to make something with,” he told Grace ruefully, ready to leave the conversation about the past behind.
“But the pickings are looking pretty slim.”
She smiled at that. “I’ve still got plenty of food back at my place,” she told him. “Isaiah stocked my fridge and pantry very well. Why don’t we have dinner there?”
Surprised, Noah didn’t reply for a moment. He hadn’t left the estate grounds in months. He hadn’t been in someone else’s home in over a year. Since Grace Wyatt had arrived on Lighthouse Cove Island, he’d done quite a few things he hadn’t in a long time. And he needed to eat.
More importantly, he wanted to.
“If you’re sure…”
Her gaze rested briefly on him in a way that felt weirdly important. “I’m sure,” she said.