Chapter Four
First comment: Can you post photos of each individual item?
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
“So what’s this we hear about you having breakfast at Pete’s with a woman nobody’s ever seen before?”
Nick glared at his brother before closing the door of his truck with a little more force than necessary.
Gray could have waited until he was in the house, at least. But all three of his brothers had beat him to the jobsite, and they were standing around waiting for gossip instead of getting to work.
And of course it was Gray who’d jumped right into a conversation they knew Nick wouldn’t welcome.
Four years younger than Nick, Gray had been pushing his older brother’s buttons since he was a toddler.
Two years after Gray, Beck was born. He was the quietest and most thoughtful of them, though he could push buttons, too, if the mood struck him.
And a year after him was Theo, who was barely restrained chaos.
They’d all gotten their dad’s dark hair and dark eyes, and they could easily be picked out of a crowd as brothers.
When it came to personality, though, the differences were obvious.
Nick wanted to work more than he wanted to explain Lucy to his brothers. “You know how it is at Pete’s. There’s always someone to talk to and nobody eats alone.”
Theo laughed. “Sure. I mean, she got out of your truck and then got back into your truck. Oh, and you went grocery shopping together, but okay.”
As a rule, Nick loved Wayward Harbor. But there were times, like when the gossip kicked into high gear, that he wouldn’t mind seeing the community in his rearview mirror.
He’d much rather work than talk, but he also didn’t want his brothers’ imaginations running away with them.
They were going to have way too much fun with his situation as it was, but at least they wouldn’t think he was dating her.
“Lucy Macauley is Helen’s granddaughter,” he said brusquely. “She didn’t know Helen was traveling and showed up at the cottage Saturday night.”
“Iris Macauley’s daughter is in town?” Gray asked, eyebrows raised.
“Wait. The Lucy Macauley?” Theo asked, and they all turned to look at him. “You know, the woman that Reese Noonan cheated on Faith Lincoln with?”
“It was one coffee in public,” Nick said. “And Lucy didn’t know who he was.”
Theo scoffed. “Okay, you’re telling me she didn’t know who Reese freakin’ Noonan was?”
“Not everybody follows sports,” Nick said. “And it’s possible to know a name and recognize a guy in uniform, but not make the connection to a guy you run into in a coffee shop. How do you know so much about it, anyway?”
“When it happened, it was impossible not to see it. I just scrolled or swiped past it because I didn’t care, but I saw it. Didn’t realize she’s Helen’s granddaughter, though.”
“Wait,” Beck said. “She’s Helen’s granddaughter. You’re staying at Helen’s cottage. Breakfast at Pete’s. Grocery shopping. This woman lives with you now?”
“From a top five NFL quarterback to a former college running back,” Gray said before he could respond. “Hell of a downgrade.”
Even as his body tensed and anger urged him to lash out, Nick forced himself not to react. His brother was joking—taking a shot at his brother the way they all did—and it wasn’t their fault they didn’t know how deeply the words cut him.
He’d given up his dream for them, but he never let them see how much it had hurt because he didn’t want them to carry the guilt around with them.
“She’s crashing on the couch because she didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he said in a tone more harsh than he’d intended.
Okay, so maybe Lucy wasn’t totally wrong about him being a little grumpy now and then. Sometimes.
“And we don’t get paid to stand around gossiping,” he continued, before casting a dark glance at Theo, who was scrolling on his phone. “Or being online.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but his brothers stopped talking about Lucy and got to work, which was all Nick cared about. This was a big job, and they were already slightly behind schedule.
The historic colonial home was set off from the road by a tall, dense row of hedges. And from the back, a long and sweeping lawn sloped down to the water’s edge. It was a gorgeous property, and some rich family from Vermont had bought it.
They’d hired Slater & Sons to totally gut the interior. From a distance it would still be a majestic, historic home. On the inside it would be sleek and modern, with much of the back wall replaced with glass so they could sit in the air conditioning and look out over the water.
As much as Nick and his brothers—and most of Wayward Harbor—hated out-of-staters buying up property and making summer homes, he appreciated that they were preserving the exterior.
And he really appreciated the amounts on the checks the guy from Vermont was writing out to Slater & Sons.
A few hours later, Nick had to make a quick run into town to buy some more pencils because they had a way of disappearing that drove him mad. He wasn’t surprised to find his brothers lounging on the back lawn, eating lunch.
Gray, whose turn it was to supply the food, tossed him a sandwich from the cooler. It was ham, which wasn’t his favorite, but it had extra Swiss, so not bad.
Theo gestured him over, so he caught the soda Gray tossed after the sandwich and went to join him. The others were enjoying the warm spring sun, but Theo was under a tree in the shade. Probably so he could see his phone screen.
“While I’m eating my lunch and not getting paid,” Theo said once he’d sat down and unwrapped the sandwich. “I’ve been doing a deep dive on some of the social media platforms.”
Nick gave his youngest brother a flat look.
He didn’t think his constant nagging about phones during working hours was unreasonable.
“Don’t even get started with the forklift fail videos because we get hooked in.
Then it goes to funny snowmobile fails and then cute animals being goofy and then it’s almost quitting time and nobody’s even picked up a hammer. ”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.” He paused, and then chuckled. “But remind me to show you the one with the guy who tried to ride a full-dresser Harley up a two-by-six into the back of his truck.”
“Theo.”
“I looked up Lucy,” he said quietly. A scary calm settled through Nick as he glared at his brother, waiting for an explanation. “I mean, we all know what happened, of course. But I was just curious about how bad it could be to make a woman drive all the way across the country to live with you.”
“She didn’t drive out here to live with me, and you know it. She came to visit Helen.” But that wasn’t the point. “How bad is it?”
“Bad. The internet really hates her. Looking at the time stamps and stuff, it’s kind of dying down, but…” He handed Nick his phone. “Those are screenshots in my photo app, so you can just swipe through them. And it’s not even a fraction of what’s out there.”
Nick flipped through the screenshots of posts and comments, his blood pressure rising with each swipe of his thumb. The stuff being said about her. The names she was being called.
The threats.
“Can you find out where these people live?” he demanded, looking up at Theo.
“Whoa.” His brother snatched the phone back. “No, I can’t. And even if I could, I definitely wouldn’t tell you because if you go to prison, we all have to work harder and that would suck.”
If he did go off on a Lucy Macauley revenge tour, his first stop would be the house with the two guest bedrooms where Iris was living with some guy. Throwing Lucy out to face these wolves was unforgivable, in his book.
“I skimmed through Lucy’s accounts, and there were two women she was clearly good friends with,” Theo continued.
“One of them went viral with videos talking about Lucy while also mentioning some ugly jewelry the woman made. Her other friend did the podcast and interview rounds with titles like ‘Lucy Macauley’s best friend tells all’ and the like. ”
“She had nobody.” Nick glared at the phone in Theo’s hand, trying to get his temper under control. “All that hate and abuse coming at her for something a man did, and not a single person had her back.”
“That sucks. And look, it’s pretty unlikely any of these keyboard warriors actually come looking for her, but I wanted you to know what’s out there.”
“Thanks.”
He finished his sandwich so they could get back to work, but all afternoon, his mind was on Lucy and the toxic ugliness he’d seen directed at her. And that was just a small sampling.
No wonder she’d pulled a hood over her remarkable hair and hidden part of her face with the sunglasses.
But she was here now, and he barely listened to Gray drone on about the logistics of the number of outlets the homeowner wanted. As a rule, Nick hated gossip, but with a few well-targeted comments, he could get the word out that Wayward Harbor needed to rally around Helen Griffin’s granddaughter.
He’d do it for Lucy.
* * *
With Nick at work for the day, Lucy decided it was a good time to sort through the mess she’d made of her grandmother’s living room.
While packing up her belongings in Las Vegas, she’d tried to be deliberate about grouping things in boxes and bags, but the more upset she’d gotten, the more she’d just tossed things in wherever they fit.
And when she’d loaded everything into her car, she’d been struck by how little she appeared to own.
But piled up in Gran’s living room, it looked like a lot. Most of the clothes she repackaged to return to her car. She wasn’t going to need little black dresses or strappy heels here. Those would wait until she reached Miami.