“Where did it come from?”
“Glaûkos. Long story, one for another day…”
A sea of fishermen crowded the vast white deck of Portside Pearl. Beer bottles sprouted out of buckets of ice on every table like bouquet centerpieces. Kane took my hand and led me inside the cerulean blue building where busboys and waitresses rushed around the emptied dining area to clean up the aftermath from the lunch rush. And inside, the Portside Pearl was fancy, grasping Maine’s coastal charm in all its details.
We walked past the bar area, through a stainless-steel kitchen, and reached offices in the back. He knocked three times, and I ran my fingers over my arm, looking around as all the workers’ eyes darted at us between their duties.
“Come in,” a man said, and Kane turned the knob.
The office was large and had a view of the Atlantic Ocean, the long dock we’d just walked from, and the lighthouse. Bright and airy, Augustine Pruitt smiled pleasantly from behind his desk as a woman stood at his side.
“Fallon, this is my father, Augustine Pruitt,” Kane introduced, but his demeanor had changed from excited to disappointed as his gaze fell over the woman beside his father. “I wasn’t expecting Miss Driscoll to be here,” he bit out through his teeth as Mr. Pruitt stood to shake my hand.
“Please, call me Carrie,” she insisted, shaking my hand next.
Carrie Driscoll, I remembered the name. Fable had talked about her, saying she was Jury Smith’s girlfriend, but she never mentioned how beautiful she was, with blonde, honey-dipped hair that dripped over her shoulders and foamed along her waist, upturned eyes that held chips of a glacier.
“Carrie resides off Seaside,” Mr. Pruitt informed, smiling proudly at the young female. Fable had been right; Carrie had to be around the same age as us, twenty-four but no more than twenty-six. “She was just informing me of her plans with the greenhouse behind the old black mansion off Seaside. She’s interested in obtaining ownership.”
Kane frowned. “No one has cared for that property since Lance died. I wished you’d speak with me before making plans. You know I have an interest as well. I’m the only one who cares about that house, and the lighthouse.”
Mr. Pruitt leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs, propping his chin over his fingers. “That’s what we were discussing, she knows her way around a garden and a boat, and based on our plan, we need our own greenhouse. You hardly have the time to learn and attend to the garden, let alone the lighthouse. I thought you wanted to take over Portside Pearl?”
Kane clenched his jaw. “I want the house.”
“You want the world.” Mr. Pruitt chuckled, and his quick-witted gaze moved across the room. Carrie smiled when Mr. Pruitt’s eyes landed on her, but it quickly faded when he turned back to Kane. “We’ll discuss this later, Carrie.” An awkwardness, so thick and stuffy, squeezed the space, and I dropped my gaze to my feet as Carrie left the office. The door clicked shut behind her, and Mr. Pruitt spoke upon her exit with disapproval gleaming in his eyes. “I apologize for my son, Fallon. He must have left his manners on the pier.”
At the corner of my eye, Kane shifted, steeling his spine and clasping his hands in front of him. He turned his eyes up to the ceiling.
“You raised a good man,” I lied,I think. I didn’t know Kane well, but I couldn’t imagine living with one of the town’s leaders was easy for him.
Kane’s hazel eyes swung to mine and blinked owlishly. He was just as surprised as I was for saying that, especially after he acted toward me the night before. He didn’t have the best reputation at Voodoos, but a part of me felt sorry for him.
Mr. Pruitt cleared his throat. “Will you be joining us for dinner this evening?”
“No, I can’t leave Benny all alone, not tonight. Maybe some other time?”
“Very well, I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Kane’s hand clasped onto mine, and he pulled me from the room. Just before the doors closed, Mr. Pruitt’s voice boomed at our backs. “I’m glad to see you two together.”
Kane turned, nodded once, and moved his hand to the small of my back before guiding me out.
“I thought you said men died out there at the lighthouse,” I whispered as we walked back through the kitchen. “Why would you want to be the keeper?”
“It’s not the lighthouse I care about, it’s the mansion. That house means something to me, and unfortunately, the two go hand in hand,” he spoke into my ear with a simmering rage. “Carrie Driscoll isn’t getting my fucking house.”
Gramps refused to eat dinner, claiming he wasn’t hungry. I offered to move him into the living room where he could read, but he shook his head vehemently, his coughing fits only worsening. Blood turned up into the white napkin. He tried to hide it, but I’d already seen it.
His health was only declining, and the only advice Dr. Morley could give was to make him comfortable. Gramps was pushing seventy-eight, but he should have had another ten years left in him, at least. Before these past few months, he’d always been healthy. There had to be a reason for his rapid decline, the fevers, the wheezing inside his chest.
The evening passed, and I’d collapsed onto the chaise on the balcony with my Mac in my lap, staring at the freshly laid moonflower resting over the banister. I stood and swiped it off, watching it float and rock to the ground below before sitting back down. The clouds peeled apart above, illuminating the freckled star-filled night as I clicked into the laptop’s pad desperately, refreshing the internet to find a connection.
Milo was right when he had said Dr. Morley was dumb for a doctor. I wasn’t going to hang back and watch Gramps deteriorate to nothing.
Eventually, I gave up on the computer and set it aside. I pulled the thick quilt up to my neck and stared above as the wind sang me a sweet and calming song. The cold kissed my cheeks, soothed me, comforted me into a sleep.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping, but it was still dark when my eyes blinked open to the sound of a pained and gurgling groan. Small bumps flared over my skin in waves as my eyes darted to where the sound had come.It’s a ghost, I told myself.Just a ghost. If I ignored them, sometimes they would go away.
