"Ethan, if you don't have time for this…" Grace began.
"I've got time to eat an ice cream cone with a pretty girl." So saying, he lifted Aubrey up and let her press her nose to the glass-fronted counter that held the buckets of hand-dipped choices.
Liz took the next order, and spared a wiggling-eyebrow glance toward her husband that spoke volumes. Ethan Quinn and Grace Monroe, it stated clearly. Well, well. What do you think of that?
They took their cones outside, where the breeze was warm off the water, and wandered away from the crowds to find one of the small iron benches the city fathers had campaigned for. Armed with a fistful of napkins, Grace set Aubrey on her lap.
"I remember when you'd come here and know the name of every face you'd see," Grace murmured. "Mother Crawford would be behind the counter, reading a paperback novel." She felt a wet drip from Aubrey's ice cream plop on her leg below the hem of her shorts and wiped it up. "Eat around the edges, honey, before it melts away."
"You'd always get strawberry ice cream, too."
"Hmm?"
"As I recall," Ethan said, surprised that the image was so clear in his mind, "you had a preference for strawberry. And grape Nehi."
"I guess I did." Grace's sunglasses slipped down her nose as she bent to mop up more drips. "Everything was simple if you had yourself a strawberry cone and a grape Nehi."
"Some things stay simple." Because her hands were full, Ethan nudged Grace's glasses back up—and thought he caught a flicker of something in her eyes behind the shaded lenses. "Some don't."
He looked out to the water as he applied himself to his own cone. A better idea, he decided, than watching Grace take those long, slow licks from hers. "We used to come down here on Sundays now and then," he remembered. "All of us piling into the car and riding into town for ice cream or a sub or just to see what was up. Mom and Dad liked to sit under one of the umbrella tables at the diner and drink lemonade."
"I still miss them," she said quietly. "I know you do. That winter I caught pneumonia—I remember my mother and yours. It seemed every time I woke up, one or the other of them was right there. Dr. Quinn was the kindest woman I ever knew. My mama—"
She broke off, shook her head.
"What?"
"I don't want to make you sad."
"You won't. Finish it."
"My mother goes to the cemetery every year in the spring and puts flowers on your mother's grave. I go with her. I didn't realize until the first time we went how much my mother loved her."
"I wondered who put them there. It's nice knowing. What's being said… what some people are saying about my father would have got her Irish up. She'd have scalded more than a few tongues by now."
"That's not your way, Ethan. You have to tend to that business your own way."
"They would both want us to do what's best for Seth. That would come first."
"You are doing what's best for him. Every time I see him he looks lighter. There was such a heaviness over him when he first came here. Professor Quinn was working his way through that, but he had such troubles of his own. You know how troubled he was, Ethan."
"Yeah." And the guilt weighed like a stone, dead center in his heart. "I know."
"Now I have made you sad." She shifted toward him so that their knees bumped. "Whatever troubled him, it was never you. You were one strong, steady light in his life. Anyone could see that."
"If I'd asked more questions…" he began.
"It's not your way," she said again and, forgetting her hand was sticky, touched it to his cheek. "You knew he would talk to you when he was ready, when he could."
"Then it was too late."
"No, it never is." Her fingers skimmed lightly over his cheek. "There's always a chance. I don't think I could get from one day to the next if I didn't believe there's always a chance. Don't worry," she said softly.
He felt something move inside him as he reached up to cover her hand with his. Something shifting and opening. Then Aubrey let out a wild squeal of joy.
"Grandpa!"
Grace's hand jerked, then dropped like a stone. All the warmth that had flowed out of her chilled. Her shoulders went straight and stiff as she turned forward again and watched her father walk toward them.
"There's my dollbaby. Come see Grandpa."
Grace let her daughter go, watched her race and be caught. Her father didn't wince or shy away from the sticky hands or smeared lips. He laughed and hugged and smacked his lips when kissed lavishly.
"Mmm, strawberry. Gimme more." He made munching noises on Aubrey's neck until she screamed with delight. Then he hitched her easily on his hip and crossed the slight distance to his daughter. And no longer smiled. "Grace, Ethan. Taking a Sunday stroll?"
Grace's throat was dry, and her eyes burned. "Ethan offered to buy us some ice cream."
"Well, that's nice."
"You're wearing some of it now," Ethan commented, hoping to ease some of the rippling tension that moved in the air.
Pete glanced down to his shirt, where Aubrey had transferred some of her favored strawberries. "Clothes wash. Don't often see you around the waterfront on a Sunday, Ethan, since you started building that boat."
"Taking an hour before I get started on it today. Hull's finished, deck's nearly."
"Good, that's good." He nodded, meaning it, then shifted his gaze to Grace. "Your mother's in the diner. She'll want to see her granddaughter."
"All right. I—"
"I'll take her over," he interrupted. "You can go on home when you're ready to, and your mother'll bring her on by your place in an hour or two."
She'd have preferred he slap her than speak to her in that polite and distant tone. But she nodded, as Aubrey was already babbling about Grandma.
"Bye! Bye, Mama. Bye, Ethan," Aubrey called over Pete's shoulder and blew noisy kisses.
"I'm sorry, Grace." Knowing it was inadequate, Ethan took her hand and found it stiff and cold.
"It doesn't matter. It can't matter. And he loves Aubrey. Just dotes on her. That's what counts."
"It's not fair to you. Your father's a good man, Grace, but he hasn't been fair to you."
"I let him down." She rose, quickly wiping her hands on the napkins she'd balled up. "And that's that."
"It's nothing more than his pride butting up against yours."
"Maybe. But my pride's important to me." She tossed the napkins into a trash container and told herself that was the end of it. "I've got to get back home, Ethan. There's a million things I should be doing, and if I've got a couple hours free, I'd better do them."
He didn't push, but was surprised how strongly he wanted to. He hated being nudged and nagged to talk about private matters himself. "I'll drive you home."
"No, I'd like to walk. Really like to walk. Thanks for the help." She managed a smile that looked almost natural. "And the ice cream. I'll be by the house tomorrow. Make sure you tell Seth his laundry goes in the hamper, not on the floor."
She walked away, her long legs eating up the ground. She made certain she was well away before she allowed her steps to slow. Before she rubbed a hand over the heart that ached no matter how firmly she ordered it not to.
There were only two men in her life she had ever really loved. It seemed neither of them could want her as she needed them to want her.
Chapter Four
Contents - Prev | Next
ethan didn't mind music when he worked. The fact was, his taste in music was both broad and eclectic—another gift of the Quinns. The house had often been filled with it. His mother had played a fine piano with as much enthusiasm for the works of Chopin as for those of Scott Joplin. His father's musical talent had been the violin, and it was that instrument Ethan had gravitated to. He enjoyed the varying moods of it, and its portability.
Still, he found music a waste of sound whenever he was concentrating on a job, as he usually didn't hear it after ten minutes anyway. Silence suited him best during those times, but Seth liked the radio in
the boatyard up, and up loud. So to keep peace, Ethan simply tuned out the head-punching rock and roll.
The hull of the boat had been caulked and filled, a labor-intensive and time-consuming task. Seth had been a lot of help there, Ethan admitted, giving him an extra pair of hands and feet when he needed them. Though Christ knew the boy could complain about the job as much as Phillip did.
Ethan tuned that out as well—to stay sane.
He hoped to finish leveling off the decking before Phillip arrived for the weekend, planing first on one diagonal, then across the next at a right angle.
With any luck, he could get some solid work done that week and the next on the cabin and cockpit.
Seth bitched about being on sanding detail, but he did a decent job of it. Ethan only had to tell him to go back and hit portions of the hull planking again a couple of times. He didn't mind the boy's questions, either. Though he had a million of them once he started.
"What's that piece over there for?"
"The bulkhead for the cockpit."
"Why'd you cut it out already?"
"Because we want to get rid of all the dust before we varnish and seal."
"What's all this other shit?"
Ethan paused in his own work, looking down from his position to where Seth frowned at a stack of precut lumber. "You got the sides and cabin ends, the toerail and drop-boards."
"It seems like an awful lot of pieces for one stupid boat."
"There's going to be a lot more."
"How come this guy doesn't just buy a boat that's already built?"
"Good thing for us he isn't." The client's deep pockets, Ethan mused, were giving Boats by Quinn its foundation. "Because he liked the other boat I built for him—and so he can tell all his big-shot friends he had a boat designed and hand-built for him."
Seth changed his sandpaper and applied himself again. He didn't mind the work, really. And he liked the smells of wood and varnish and that linseed oil, too. But he just didn't get it. "It's taking forever to put it together."
"Been at it less than three months. Lots of people spend a year—even longer—to build a wooden boat."
Seth's jaw dropped. "A year! Jesus, Ethan."
The loud, and very normal whine, made Ethan's mouth twitch. "Relax, this isn't going to take us that long. Once Cam gets back and can put in full days on it, we'll move along. And once school's out, you can pick up a lot of the grunt work."
"School is out."