Chapter 2
Mac McCarthy Jr. had been working since dawn to board up the family’s marina in North Harbor.
On the ladder next to him, his business partner, Luke Harris, held one end of the large sheet of plywood they were nailing over the windows in the gift shop.
Mac’s cousins, Shane, Riley and Finn, were at the Wayfarer in town, boarding up the massive plate-glass windows that overlooked the beach.
“Are we gonna undo all this for two more weeks of the season after the storm?” Luke asked.
“I don’t think it’s worth it. Do you?”
“Probably not.”
“We can offer dockage through the long weekend in October, provided we still have docks after this storm,” Mac said as he hammered a nail into a wood frame. The large window looked out over the island’s famous Great Salt Pond.
“You think it’s going to be that bad?” Luke asked.
“I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
“Yeah, me either. What’s after this?”
“We need to button up the hotel and tie everything down at the alpaca farm.” The farm was currently under construction to become a wedding venue by the following summer.
Mac hoped the storm wouldn’t knock them so far off schedule with the renovations that they’d have to cancel weddings already booked for next year.
“Have you done your house yet?” Luke asked.
“That’s on the list for later today. You?”
“Not yet.”
“We can do them together, if you want.”
“I won’t say no to that.”
“I’m glad I bought all this plywood a couple of years ago in case of something like this,” Mac said as he drove in the last nail.
“Remember how all the old guys said you were nuts for spending the money?” Luke asked, grinning.
“Two of them have called me today to ask if I had any extra,” Mac replied.
“Did you?”
“Of course I did.”
“What would this island do without you?” Luke asked.
“That’s what I’m always saying. How’d you people survive before Mac McCarthy came home to save your asses?”
“And now you’re talking about yourself in the third person.”
“It’s what I do.”
“Trust me, I know. How are Maddie and the babies?”
“She’s doing great and so are they, but we’re both tired. It’s very hard to get twin babies to sleep at the same time. One of them falls asleep, and then the other starts crying, and before we know it, they’re both crying. Sometimes all five of them are crying at the same time.”
“Yikes. Five crying kids.”
“Thomas is only crying because he can’t hear the TV over all the racket.”
Luke laughed. “It’s tough to be the oldest.”
“It’s a difficult burden for him, especially with two new baby sisters adding to the chaos, when he was all set with the one sister he already had.”
“Poor guy.”
“I feel his pain. Everything was fine in my world until Janey showed up.” His sister was the youngest of the five McCarthys.
They’d learned in recent years that their father had had a daughter he hadn’t known about before he married their mother, which was how Mallory had knocked Mac out of the position as the eldest in the family—a role he still played to the hilt with his four younger siblings.
“You’re so full of it. You love her to pieces.”
“I do now. Then? Not so much. That reminds me. She called me an hour ago. I need to call her back. Let’s take five.”
“I’m ready for some coffee.”
“Make it a double.”
“You got it.”
Mac took his phone to one of the picnic tables. Before they left, they would carry the tables inside the large building that housed the restaurant and office. He placed the call to Janey, who answered on the first ring.
“Mac.”
“What’s up, brat?”
“Joe has lost his ever-loving mind.”
That she didn’t tell him not to call her brat put Mac immediately on alert. “Why do you say that?”
“He’s taking one of the boats out to sea to ride out the storm—alone—and Seamus is taking another.” Joe’s family owned the Gansett Island Ferry Company, which was the lifeline the island community relied upon to get them back and forth to the mainland.
“What’s he doing that for?” Mac asked.
“Joe says that’s what you do when there’s a big storm coming, and you don’t want to lose your most valuable assets or some such nonsense.
Even though they’re insured, apparently the time it would take to replace them would put us and the island out of business.
You need to talk him out of it. They could take them up the Connecticut River just as easily.
That’s what Carolina’s father did in the past.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“I’m thinking about coming there. He’s leaving the kids and Carolina with Mom and Dad, since Carolina is still laid up with her broken leg, while he and Seamus take the boats out to sea.”
“You can’t get here, brat. They just sent the last boat over, and planes are already grounded.”
Janey let out a sound that was a cross between a moan and a scream. “I’m losing it sitting here in Ohio while my whole family is under threat from this massive storm—and my husband thinks it’s a good idea to drive a ferry out to sea.”
“I’ll see if I can talk him out of that.”
“Thank you,” she said, sounding relieved.
“I tried to tell him the most precious assets are him and Seamus, not the boats, but they aren’t listening to reason.
” Seamus, the ferry captain Joe had hired to run the business while he went with Janey to Ohio so she could attend vet school, was now married to Joe’s mother, Carolina.
“I’ll do what I can,” Mac said with a weary sigh as he added another thing to his lengthy pre-storm to-do list.
“How’s it going there?”
“Chaotic. Everyone is scrambling to batten down the hatches, so to speak. Luke and I are just finishing up at the marina.”
“I’m so scared, Mac. Everyone I love is on that island. My kids…”
“We’ll be fine, Janey. I know it’s hard not to worry, but we’ll get through this.”
“How am I supposed to focus on school and studying when there’s a huge storm heading for Gansett?”
“Keep your head down. You know Mom and Dad will take good care of the kids, and everything will be fine. I promise. I’m the big brother, so you know you can count on me.”
“Always, Mac, but I’m worried about you, too. I’m worried about everyone.”
Mac hated to hear Janey so upset that she was on the verge of tears. “I get it, brat. I’ll find a way to get word to you after the storm, even if I have to do it by Morse code.”
“For all the good that’ll do me,” she said with a laugh.
“We’ll get word to you one way or the other. Try not to worry. We’re all together, and we’ll take good care of each other.”
“I know you will. I think I’ll go have a gigantic glass of wine and try to chill out.”
“Good plan.”
“You’ll talk to Joe?”
“I will. I promise.”
“You’re the best big brother ever, except when you call me that stupid name.”
Mac laughed. “It’s tradition. Too late to change it now.”
“It is not too late. I’m going to be a doctor of veterinary medicine very soon, and my brothers still call me that ridiculous name.”
“I’ll tell you what—the day you get that DVM, we’ll stop calling you that.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Although, Dr. Brat has a nice ring to it.”
“Mac!”
He laughed harder than he had in days. The threat posed by the looming storm had taken the humor out of his life and that of everyone else on the island. “I gotta run and get back to work, but I’ll check in later after I talk to Joe.”
“Thanks again, Mac.”
“Anything for you, kid. Love you.”
“Love you, too. So, so much.”
As Mac ended the call, Luke walked over to him and handed him a coffee and a hot sugar doughnut.
“Every time I swear I’m giving up the doughnuts,” Mac said, “I crumble like a sandcastle the first time someone hands me one.”
“Why would you do something so dumb as to give up the doughnuts?”
“Because they’re full of fat and other crap that’s not good for me.”
“So?” Luke took a sip of coffee and a bite of doughnut. “How’s Janey?”
“Freaked out about everyone she loves being on the island with a storm barreling down on it. Joe and the kids came after Carolina broke her leg, and they’re still here. Seems Joe and Seamus have decided to take the two biggest boats to sea rather than running them up the Connecticut River.”
“And Janey isn’t liking that plan, I take it.”
“Not one bit.”
“That’s what the Navy does when a storm is headed for one of their ports. They take all the ships to sea.”
“Still, it’s risky, and they’d both be alone on the boats.”
“Why wouldn’t they take someone with them?”
“Probably because they don’t want to risk anyone else.”
“That’s insane.”
“Which is exactly what I plan to tell him when I talk to him. Should we move up the hill and knock out the hotel before we head into town?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“We’ve got miles to go before we sleep,” Mac said as he finished the doughnut and downed the coffee. He only hoped they could get it all done in time.