“This lawyer. She’s persistent,” I said, holding up the bin. “Out of all the boxes Grandma had lying around, this is the only one she stuck under her desk. And it’s got this woman’s card on it.”
“Maybe it’s important.”
“Maybe.” We walked back to the kitchen, and I set the bin on the table. “Why don’t you grab some breakfast?”
“Don’t open it. Wait for me.”
“I won’t,” I said, but my eyes were already on the folder.
As Ocean hurriedly poured some cereal, I slid the manila folder out of the bin. Right inside was a single sheet torn from a legal pad. My mother’s handwriting was scrawled across it in quick, slanted lines. Dates and times, a few cryptic notes, dollar amounts, and one name written in bold strokes along the margin, underlined three times.
I didn’t recognize the name, but it wasn’t the lawyer’s.
“Who’s Madeline Hart?” Ocean asked, beside me with her bowl of cereal in hand, peering over my shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
I grabbed my phone and texted Arthur:
Who is Madeline Hart?
Three dots appeared almost instantly. Then his reply.
Merd. Don’t tell me Clare still has those letters.
Chapter Fifteen
Arthur
* * *
Clare had been Arthur’s closest friend for over forty years and losing her had been hard. More than hard. Frankly, it’d knocked the wind out of him. It had been a difficult couple of weeks, waiting for Skye to arrive. More difficult than he’d expected.
Arthur had been just a thirty-something when he took a chance on this dusty old bookstore in Harbor View. He’d been through the village a few times, and something about the feel of the place stuck in his head. The slower pace, the salty smells, the cobblestones, the brisk breeze off the water all seemed to beckon to him.
It was all so different from Manhattan and the life he’d been leading there.
Since college, Arthur had been involved in theater in New York. Writing, directing, and occasionally acting, he’d become so totally immersed in the endless hours, the drinking, drugs, and the toxic relationships, that after a while he lost track of who he was and what he wanted.
One morning, he’d woken up on a ratty sofa in an unfamiliar apartment. A number of other bodies lay strewn about the place, and he’d been ready to vomit from the stale odor of cheap whisky and cigarettes. Then he realized that the smell was coming from him.
That was the turning point. The life he was leading was going nowhere, and he knew it would kill him if he didn’t make a change. A major change. And that had to start with getting away from his crowd.
His family was gone, except for a divorced aunt who lived in Connecticut. When Arthur called her, she suggested a stint in a rehab center near her.
Six weeks later, he emerged looking at life quite differently, and he’d thought of Harbor View. It offered the change he needed to make.
Now, four decades later, it was still the place he was always meant to be.
Right off, he’d liked his neighbor across First Street. Clare was sharp-tongued, fiercely independent, and—to most of the town—downright prickly. But not to him. From day one, she’d been his person. Showing up for weekly dinners and impromptu visits, she’d always been good for wine and leftovers and gossip and opinions. Arthur loved it.
Over the years, they’d stopped needing labels. Neighbor, friend, family (albeit self-selected), it all blended nicely. In the end, they were just Arthur and Clare. And they always had each other’s back.
God, he still remembered the wintry day she called him over, voice unusually soft, and introduced him to a wide-eyed, frightened little scamp who’d just lost her mother on the interstate.
Now, here she was, all grown up, sitting at his kitchen table. The daughter of his dearest friend, true. But Skye was the absolute closest thing to a child of his own. In his heart, she’d always been exactly that.
Grief was written across her face like a scar. The loss of Clare definitely hung heavy between them. But there was comfort too, in being together. In her knowing she could lean on him now. It warmed him to his core that she trusted him with finding out what happened to her mother.
