She shook herself. They’d had a meal together yesterday.
Of course she recalled those things.
Can you even remember Adrian’s voice?
“I think maybe I’ll just stick to myself on this trip,” Piper murmured.
Two hours later, they weaved down the sidewalk on the way home. It was well past time to put her little sister to bed. At four o’clock in the afternoon, but who was keeping track?
Crossing the street toward home, Piper’s step slowed. It appeared they had a visitor. A little old man with a toolbox and a smile like sunshine.
“Ma’am.”
“Um, hi.” Piper nudged Hannah into alertness, nodding at the man waiting outside No Name. Come to think of it, returning home to find a local at their door was beginning to be a habit. “Hi. Can I help you?”
“Actually, I’m here to help you.” With his free hand, he plucked a slip of paper from the pocket of his shirt. “I own the hardware store down on West Pacific. My sons have the run of the place now, but they have little ones, so they don’t make it in until later in the morning. When I opened up today, there was a note taped to my door.”
He held it out to Piper. How could this possibly pertain to her? With a mental shrug, she took the note and scanned the four blunt lines with a burgeoning clog in her throat.
No Name bar. Upstairs apartment. Piper Bellinger.
Needs padding installed on the base of the top bunk.
She keeps hitting her head.
Captain Taggart
“Oh my,” she breathed, fanning herself with the note. Am I levitating?
She’d just decided to be friends-only with the sea captain. This definitely wasn’t going to help divert her rather irritating attraction to him.
“He left some cash to cover it,” the man said, reaching out to pat her arm. “You’re going to have to help me up the stairs once we’re inside, I’m afraid. My legs decided they’d had enough living when I turned seventy, but the rest of me is still here.”
“Sure. Of course. Let me take the tools.” Grateful for something to distract her from Brendan’s gesture, Piper claimed the dusty box. “Um. Hannah?”
“What?” Owlish eyes blinked back. “Oh.”
Yawning, Hannah transferred her drunken weight onto the side of the building so Piper would be free to unlock the door. They all went inside, traveling in a comically slow-moving pack toward the stairs. Piper hooked her right arm through the old man’s left, and they followed Hannah’s uneven gait up toward the apartment. “I’m Piper, by the way. The girl from the note.”
“I probably should have checked. My wife would have had some questions if I’d let some stranger squire me up to her apartment.” She laughed, helping him up the fifth stair and the sixth, their pace slow and steady. “I’m Abe. I saw you walking yesterday in the harbor. I’m usually sitting outside the maritime museum reading my newspaper.”
“Yes. That’s how I recognize you.”
He seemed pleased that she remembered. “I used to read the paper outside every day, but it’s getting harder to climb the stairs to the porch. I’m only able to get up them on Wednesdays and Thursdays now. Those are my daughter’s days off from the supermarket. She walks me over and helps me climb them, so I can sit in the shade. The other days, I sit on the lawn and pray the sun isn’t too bright.”
Keeping hold of Abe, Piper unlocked the apartment door. Once they were inside and she’d shoved a bottle of water into Hannah’s hands, Piper gestured to the bunk. “This is the one. You might be able to see the outline of my head on those boards by now.”
Abe nodded and crouched down very slowly to access his toolbox. “Now that we’re in the light, I can see that bruise you’re sporting, too. Good thing we’re getting this fixed.”
While Abe got to work nailing memory foam to the top bunk with a nail gun, Piper tried to avoid Hannah’s teasing pokes in her side. “Brendan no like Piper boo-boo. Brendan fix.”
“Oh, shut up,” she whispered, for her sister’s ears alone. “This is just what people do in small towns like this. Maybe he’s trying to rub LA’s awfulness in my face.”
“Nope. First the lock. Now this.” Wow. She’d really slurred that s. “He’s a real champ.”
“I thought you didn’t even like him. What happened to ‘Leave my sister alone, you bully’?”
“At the time, I meant it,” Hannah grumbled.
“Look, I’m just biding time until I can get back to my natural habitat. No distractions need apply.”
“But—”
“You wouldn’t be encouraging me to make time with a crab fisherman, would you?” She gave Hannah a once-over, followed by a sniff. “I’m telling Mom.”
Hannah rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to deliver a rejoinder, but Abe interrupted with a jolly “All finished!”
God, how loud had they been at the end of that conversation?