Mary Wilson - Alegra's Homecoming

“Smart man,” she murmured as the wind picked up, bringing cutting cold with it.

When her phone rang again, he heard himself asking, “Does it ever stop?”

She took the device out, saw the LED and hit a button that shut off the ring. “When I turn it off.” She kept it in one hand, and tried futilely to get her hair under control and behind her ears. “It’s business. You know how that is.”

He had a flashback to his other life, before he came home to Shelter Island. Back then cell phones had been his lifelines. Heck, he’d had three. One for business. One for personal calls. And one with a number he only gave a select few. He’d had an earpiece he never took out of his ear while he was awake. Now he still had a cell phone, but seldom turned it on, and truthfully wasn’t at all sure where it was right now. “It can eat up your life, can’t it?” he said.

She took him off guard when she asked, “Why did you leave the island?”

He shrugged. “You know, the old I’m-going-to-conquer-the-world attitude?”

“And you didn’t?”

“I got close, then came back here,” he said, not about to go into details of the twenty years he’d lived away from the island, or why he’d come back here six months ago with his three-year-old son, Alex, to make a life for the two of them where his own had begun.

The ferry slowed even more, and an announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Sorry, folks, we’ve got a bit of a problem docking, and it’ll take a few minutes.”

“Riding the ferry can be an adventure,” he said as the big vessel lurched to a complete stop.

Alegra grabbed the railing to brace herself. “This could be a huge story for your paper,” she said.

“I guess so,” he said, aware of more than a hint of sarcasm in her tone. It hit a nerve. “Not like gang shootings or bodies in the Hudson, though.”

That made her smile. “Yeah, not exactly the big, bad city.”

“Alegra Reynolds. You’re from New York.”

It was a statement, not a question, and he could tell it surprised her. “Yes, but how—?”

“The boutique. The one near downtown Manhattan. All black and silver, with headless mannequins in the windows?” He’d gone past that upscale store when he’d walked to work instead of taking a cab. He’d glanced at it more then once, and wondered how anyone could call those tiny pieces of silk and lace clothing. “You’re that Alegra.”

She looked pleased that he knew of her. “You got it right, but how could you?”

“In my other life, I worked at one of the big New York dailies, and our offices were about two blocks south of where your store is. I went past it a lot.”

Her smile slipped, and her mouth formed a perfect O before she finally said, “J. P. Lawrence? You’re that Lawrence?”

He nodded. “Used to be.”

“But now you’re here?” She waved vaguely to the island nearby.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“But you…” She bit her lip, looking as if he’d said he was from Pluto but chose to live on Mars. She looked stunned. “You were the editor, weren’t you?”

The ferry lurched forward again and the voice came over the speaker. “We’ll be docking in five minutes. Please be ready to disembark.”

“We need to go to our cars.”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken. “What are you doing here running a weekly newspaper?”

So many had asked him that, and so many had gotten his stock answer. “I’m here for my son, to let him grow up where I did.” But a part of him wanted to tell her something that was more truthful than the first statement. “I told you I went off to conquer the world, but what I didn’t say was, it wasn’t worth it.”

She stared at him, then a frown grew. “Oh,” she said. “I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“Nothing, I’m sure it’s personal. Things happen, and—”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t a drunk or druggie and lost it all. No.” He stood straighter. “I didn’t have a breakdown or punch the publisher in the face.”

She held up both hands, palms out to him, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t mean that.”

He looked at her hands, the long, slender fingers, and realized something. She wasn’t holding her phone any longer. He didn’t remember her putting it in her pocket, either, though maybe she had. “Your phone?” he asked.

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.”