The Harbor

Eleven

Christina's Café was between crowds. The lobstermen had grabbed their coffees and muffins and gone, and the tourists hadn't arrived yet. On his first few days in Goose Harbor, J.B. wandered in with the lobstermen, then went out on his rented boat and stayed out of their way-at least his definition of out of their way. The lobstermen wanted him back in Washington.

He didn't know about his next few days in Goose Harbor.

He sat with Zoe at a small table overlooking the water. The busted lock on the door was the only evidence of last night's break-in. Christina was in a cranky mood, slamming around behind the counter and barking orders at her waitresses. She completely ignored her older sister.

Finally, she put her hands on her hips, exhaled loudly and apologized. "I didn't get enough sleep last night." She smiled over the glass-front counter at Zoe, who'd gotten up to inspect the muffin offerings. "Hey, break-fast's on me. What'll it be?"

Zoe grinned. "Since it's on you instead of your unemployed sister, I'll have blueberry pancakes with sausage and coffee."

"Orange juice?"

"Sure."

Christina leaned over the counter and called down to

J.B. "What about you, Agent McGrath?" "Same thing, except I'll pay my way. And you can call me J.B."

She held up a hand. "J.B. I can do, but you should seize the moment about me paying. I'm usually not this generous." Her crankiness had disappeared so fast and so completely, he wondered if he'd imagined it. "Give me a sec and I'll bring over two coffees."

Zoe returned to her seat, and when she gazed out at the sunrise, J.B. saw the pain in her eyes, fleeting, not meant, he thought, for him or anyone else. It couldn't be easy for her to be back here, with the onslaught of memories and unanswered questions, her uncertainty about her own future.

Christina swooped out from behind her counter and set two mugs of coffee on their table, pulling up a chair and sinking into it as if she'd been on her feet all night instead of just a couple of hours. "Kyle didn't want to come back here last night," she said. "He insists he wasn't spooked, but we ended up having a couple of drinks and talking for hours about his documentary. He's really into it. Obsessed, I'd say."

Zoe poured milk into her coffee from a pottery pitcher painted with a sprig of wild blueberries. "I hope it works out for him."

Christina sighed, and J.B. could tell some unspoken sisterly communication had just occurred between them. "Come on, Zoe, it can't hurt to talk to him," Christina said.

"It doesn't matter, I'm not going to." Zoe seemed to be struggling to keep her tone neutral. "Don't take it as anything against him, Chris. I just don't want to do it."

"Fine. I won't pressure you."

Zoe ignored her sister's irritable tone and smiled at her instead. "Thanks."

Christina slid to her feet. She had on her informal uniform of blue apron, white ruffled shirt and black pants. Her hair was up, her eyes a darker blue-gray this morning, sunken from lack of sleep. She looked exhausted and troubled. And annoyed, but trying to pretend she wasn't. "I'll get your breakfast," she said, probably wishing she hadn't insisted on paying.

She swung behind the counter, and a waitress, who obviously knew Zoe, rolled her eyes behind the boss's back, as if to say to steer clear. Must have already been a long morning with the younger Ms. West, J.B. thought.

He pushed back his chair to give himself more room to stretch out his legs. "She thinks Kyle is handsome and brilliant."

Zoe shrugged. "Maybe he is. I don't care." There was no harshness in her tone, just determination. "He can do his documentary without my help."

"What does he want from you?"

"I have no idea. We've never gotten that far."

The waitress, not Christina, brought out their pancakes, thin and buttery, dotted with blue-and-deep-pur-ple wild blueberries. J.B. dribbled just a little real maple syrup on his-he was buzzed enough from coffee and too much late-night thinking without overdoing on sugar. Zoe had no such compunctions. Her pancakes were swimming in syrup. She even dunked her sausage.

"What're you doing today?" he asked.

"I wouldn't mind going kayaking, but I'll have to see what the conditions are like. It's been awhile-I don't want to roll. Too cold." She stabbed more pancakes, and he could see they were an indulgence for her, something she mustn't have had in Connecticut. "I haven't known what to do with myself for two months. I'm sort of used to it."

"Not a bad life if you can afford it."

"I can't," she said. "Not forever, anyway."

"Sorry you got yourself fired?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I had it coming. I don't regret the Texas Ranger, but I should have carried my weapon."

"Where was it?"

"Locked in my car."

"Then it wasn't an oversight," he said. "It was deliberate. You knew what you were doing."

"Yes. I did."

She swept a triangle of pancakes through her river of syrup, and J.B. knew the subject of her and guns was closed. "How did people around here react when you quit the state police to go into the bureau?" he asked.

"Fine."

She was into these short answers. J.B. knew he was moving onto shaky ground. "They thought you could cut it at the academy?"

She raised her eyes. "Of course."

He sipped more of his coffee. "People liked the idea of you leaving Maine?"

"No."

"You're only answering the question asked, Zoe."

She set down her fork. "My father wasn't killed because I was on my way to Quantico."

"Did he like you following in his footsteps into law enforcement, going beyond what he did?"

"I don't think of it that way. I was on my own path. I didn't think of myself as going ‘beyond' him because I was on my way to becoming an FBI agent and he was a small-town police chief."

J.B. nodded. "I know. It's not how I think, either." She managed a self-deprecating smile. "I fell for your interrogation tactics, didn't I?" "We're just having a conversation-" "Right." She didn't bother to hide her skepticism.

J.B. smiled back at her, setting down his mug. "Your father wanted you to stay in Goose Harbor and run a bed-and-breakfast, didn't he?"

She ignored him. "I could look into this Teddy Shelton character. Talk to a few people, see what they know about him. How much trouble can he be if you spotted him just like that?" She paused, giving him a long look. "Or are you that good, Special Agent McGrath?"

He laughed. "I'm that good."

"Excellent. I wouldn't want to hang out with a lousy FBI agent. What're you planning for the day?"

"Don't know yet."

"Meaning you're waiting to see what I do. Well, I am not going to be responsible for you not having a proper vacation. Go on and enjoy yourself. Don't fret about me."

The waitress refilled their coffee mugs, and J.B. found himself noticing Zoe West's slender fingers and neatly polished fingernails. There was something off-center about her, as if she'd just started getting in touch with a part of herself she'd stamped down during her years in law enforcement. She might have belonged there for a while, but she didn't anymore. He could see that now, wondered if she did, too. He thought about Bruce's comment that his childhood friend was a closet eccentric. Then he thought of her writing secretly in the attic.

"What about you?" she asked. "Did you always want to be an FBI agent?"

"Nope. I wanted to be a fishing guide like my father and grandfather."

"That didn't work out?"

"It got me through high school and college. Then I went to Washington, D.C., and knew I wasn't going back home except for vacations."

"Not this vacation," Zoe pointed out.

"True." He didn't expand.

"Now you're an FBI agent. You hate it Stick found out about you, don't you? You undercover types. Pains in the butt."

"No comment."

He finished his coffee and got to his feet. Zoe followed, and he turned to her abruptly, catching her off guard. He stood so close to her that her sweater sleeve brushed against him and he could see the gray flecks in her blue eyes. "You don't trust me, do you, Zoe?" he asked softly.

She didn't back up even an inch. "Tell me who you trust."

"That's not what I asked-"

"Of course not. I know you won't answer, so I'll tell you. No one. You trust no one. That's why you can do the work you do." A steely hurt worked its way into her eyes, a kind of pain he thought he understood. "When I found my father, I stopped trusting. It happened just like that. The blink of an eye."

"It's a tough way to live."

He didn't know if she could see in him the lingering effects of what he'd done. Escaping his own death, causing another. Putting an image into three kids' eyes that they would have to live with forever, just as Zoe did the one of her murdered father. J.B. didn't think he didn't trust people but he was the only son of a solitary and self-reliant man, and undercover work had come naturally to him.

If Patrick West's murder had been solved, J.B. doubted he'd have come to Goose Harbor. Maybe for a three-day weekend, to see where his grandmother was born, maybe deliver Olivia West's letters to the West family. But he wouldn't have picked it now for this particular vacation.

Zoe spun off, telling her sister what a great breakfast they'd had-in a better mood, Christina thanked her, said she'd talked Bruce into fixing her café door. Zoe greeted an older couple who'd come in, people from Goose Harbor she'd apparently known forever. Then she disappeared outside, the screen door banging shut behind her.

J.B. stopped at the counter, and Christina smiled feebly at him. "It's harder for her than for me. I know that." She spoke as if he'd understand what she meant, without her having to provide context, and he thought he did. She brushed her forehead with the back of her wrist and shifted her gaze to her broken door, then back to him. "You're one of the good guys, right?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Then do what you can before it's too late and she starts again, running roughshod over everybody, not eating, not sleeping. Please. Most of the time Zoe knows when enough's enough, but with Dad's death…" Christina trailed off, her own skin a little paler.

J.B. smiled, trying to ease some of Christina's obvious tension. Zoe's return to Goose Harbor wasn't easy for her little sister, either. "Did you know Zoe eats Toaster Strudels sprinkled with flax seed?"

"Oh, God. Is that the worst?"

But Christina had smiled, even laughed, and J.B. headed outside, the sun so sharply bright as it rose up over the harbor that it gave him an instant headache. He had no deep sense of belonging here. None at all, no matter how many of his ancestors were buried in Goose Harbor cemeteries. To him, at that moment, it was a strange and beautiful place, and he understood why his grandparents had cleared out and headed west.