Mary Anne Wilson - Alegra's Homecoming

She felt in her pocket, then looked back at him. “Oh, no!”

Alegra must have dropped it when the ferry lurched. They both dropped to a crouch to search.

“There it is,” Alegra gasped, spying it under the railing within an inch of the edge of the deck. She made a grab for it at the same time Joe did. There was a tangle of fingers, and then, as if in slow motion, Alegra saw her phone skitter to the edge and over.

She straightened, grabbed the railing and looked down into the churning water. “Great, just great,” she muttered. “It’s got all of my contacts in it, and my calendar and…” She couldn’t stop a huge sigh. “Everything.”

“It sounds as if it’s your lifeline.”

That about said it all, she thought, but simply closed her eyes to try to regroup. Ever since she’d decided to return to Shelter Island, nothing had gone right. Her flight out of San Francisco had been cancelled, her luggage had been routed to Salt Lake City instead of Seattle. Now her phone. She should have let this place die out of her memories and never looked back.

“Is there a cell phone store on the island?” she asked.

“I really don’t know,” Joe said. He was frowning. “Why don’t you just let it die a natural death and take a break from it all for a while? Just think, no interruptions, no calls when you don’t want them. It could be a good experience.”

He might have left his life behind in New York, but she didn’t want to. “That’s not a choice for me. I have things I need to take care of and—”

“And you’re totally indispensable?”

Why did he make that sound so bad? “Right now, I am.”

“That’s quite a load to bear,” he murmured, and for a crazy moment she wondered if that was pity she saw in his eyes. Though why this man should look at her with pity made no sense.

“It’s business. That’s not always fun and games.”

“Why did you come for the festival if you have such pressing business matters?” he asked.

He’d find out soon enough on the last night at the masquerade ball on what was left of the Bartholomew Grace estate. Maybe he’d cover it for his little newspaper. It would all be over for her then, and she could leave the island behind once and for all. “I can mix business and pleasure, despite the old taboos about it.”

“Good for you,” he said, but he didn’t sound congratulatory at all.

She suddenly felt their conversation had taken a turn into something combative. “Are you the welcoming committee, cross-examining people who come for the festival?”

She thought her words hit their mark, but the next moment, he was almost smiling at her. “Now there’s a job that could be interesting, interrogating lovely ladies on the ferry.”

She wasn’t ready to laugh with him, and her phone having gone to a watery grave only added to the tension of returning to Shelter Island. “Now there’s an employment opportunity that would beat the heck out of doing stories on peach picking or drunks.”

She hated the sarcasm in her tone, but couldn’t help it. This man was starting to annoy her.

“I’ll pass,” he said, and now she felt a chill between them. “And good luck finding a cell phone store.”

“Thanks,” she said. The silence that fell between them was beyond awkward. Before she turned and went back to her rental car, she found herself saying, “As far as doing business goes, I was told that you had fax machines, Internet connections and phone lines on the island.”

“Thanks for filling me in. Now we can put away the hammer and chisel and the slabs of stone we use to write our stories for the paper.”

She flushed, and then the bell sounded to let the passengers know they had to get back in their vehicles to disembark. She started to walk off.

“Can I ask you something before we climb in our vehicles and ride off into the night?” he asked.

She felt herself bracing. “What?”

“It came across the wires just a week ago about you coming to the West Coast because you were merging with a competitor.”

She never would have guessed that a story like that would end up in the offices of a small weekly paper. “We’re buying them out, not merging. They’ll become one of our Alegra’s Closet stores.”

His next question was unexpected. “Are you here to open a new store on the island?”

She almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of his question, but simply shook her head. “No, definitely not. I have other things to do, not the least of which is looking for some art at the local galleries.”

He studied her for a moment, then said, “Nice meeting you.”

“Sure,” she said as she heard car engines starting, sending a low roar into the cold air over the sound of the idling engine of the ferry. She called out, “Goodbye,” and headed for her car.

“Goodbye,” she heard him yell after her.

She got into her rental, and as she settled, she glanced in the rearview mirror. She saw Joe open the door to a beat-up pickup truck parked right behind her. He caught her eye in the reflection, lifted a hand in a wave and climbed into the truck. J. P. Lawrence, now known as Joe Lawrence. “How the mighty have fallen,” she said to herself. She wasn’t sure she bought the reason he’d given—that he was here for his son. Why would anyone want their kid to grow up on Shelter Island?

JOE DROVE HIS OLD TRUCK off the ferry and onto the gravel of the landing right behind Alegra’s sleek black sedan. When he’d come back to the island with Alex, he’d bought the truck from his father, instead of having his car from New York shipped out. The pickup didn’t look like much, but everything worked. Besides, the Jaguar would have been totally impractical for use on the island.

As he watched Alegra inch out of the parking area behind the other cars, he thought about what he’d heard about her founding a string of high-end boutiques that sold intimate apparel on the East Coast, then setting up franchises across the country. It was a fast rise for any business, and seemed only set to grow more.

He followed her car past a small cluster of service buildings, then up the steep driveway to the highway that ran around the perimeter of the island. Most of the cars crested the rise and funneled north, and as they did, one by one, they turned off, heading for their respective homes.

He didn’t turn and neither did Alegra. He thought about the cell phone falling overboard and her horrified reaction. He would have laughed if she hadn’t looked so stricken. Those amber eyes had been filled with anger, frustration—and a touch of sadness.

He hadn’t expected that, not when she seemed to be so successful. But then again, he knew someone could have great business success, but be totally lacking in a life beyond that. He had been a prime example of that in his other life. He shrugged that off as they entered the town, passing under the banner hung high above the road proclaiming Ahoy And Welcome To Any And All Who Enter. The Gothic lettering had a skull and crossbones on either side.

With the festival so close, the main street of Shelter Bay was fully festooned with wood and brass everywhere, street signs all displaying a Jolly Roger overlaying a silhouette of the island, and pirates aplenty in windows and on signs. The park at the center of town, laid out on a piece of land that jutted out toward the sound, had its huge pavilion decorated to look like a huge crow’s nest on a galleon. The lush grassy area, rimmed by wind-twisted trees and bushes, was being filled with booths and food areas, in preparation for the mainlanders who would descend on the island in two days. A life-sized brass sculpture of old Bartholomew Grace, complete with raised sword and a patch over one eye, which had been donated by members of the Grace family still on the island, stood at the entry to the park.