Henry never knew, of course. I was always, without fail, discreet and fortunately Amond was too.

“Then he’ll have to reschedule when we can both do it,” Henry replied.

“Henry, I hardly need to be—”

He interrupted me. “Are you going to meet me in Paris?”

I hesitated, looked back to my lap and whispered, “Things are such that that’s unlikely.”

“Then I’m canceling.”

I sighed before I asked, “Can we discuss this later?”

“Right. Your omelet and Jake.”

His tone was unusual and vaguely disturbing.

I pressed my lips together.

“I’ll speak with you soon,” he said.

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Until then, Josephine.”

“Until then, Henry. Good-bye.”

He didn’t say good-bye. He simply disconnected.

He’d never done that before either.

I stared at my phone for a moment before putting it back in my bag and regaining my cutlery, saying distractedly to Jake, my eyes on my food, “I apologize. That lasted too long.”

“And it didn’t sound like it went real good.”

At Jake’s comment, I turned my eyes to him. “He’s canceling work to come to Magdalene.”

I watched as his mouth got tight for some strange reason and I watched as, seconds later, it relaxed as if he’d willed it to do so to hide his reaction, which was even stranger.

“It’ll be good, you have your people around you.”

“He shouldn’t cancel. It’s a video shoot. That’s even more involved than a photo shoot. They’re shooting on location, so they need to get permission, permits. There’s a good deal of money tied up in it, not to mention all the personnel.”

“You’re worth fucking all that.”

I stared at him as that warmth swept through me again but I replied, “It’s foolish.”

“You’re worth bein’ that too.”

His words were making me feel such that I decided to return my attention to my probably now chiller-cabinet-cold omelet. So I did.

After I took a bite and found it was, indeed, now chiller-cabinet-cold, Jake asked, “When’s he coming?”

I looked back to him. “The job in Rome lasts just over a week. If he cancels Paris, he’ll be free to fly here next Saturday.”

“Right.”

I took a sip from my coffee cup and returned my attention to my omelet.

“Your offer, I’m gonna take you up on it,” Jake declared and my eyes went back to him.

“My offer?”

“Lookin’ after Ethan,” he said. “He, Con and Amber would go over to your place a lot after school. I got shit on, it falls to Con and Amber to step up, look after their little brother, take him places, shit like that. Lydie wasn’t real young, but the kids loved her. It wasn’t really her lookin’ out for them so much as all of them havin’ each other and my kids havin’ someone to go to when school was done. Like my kids havin’ good in their lives and Lydie was the best.”

He was not wrong about that.

He was also not done speaking.

“And Amber needed a good, decent woman in her life. Lydie was that too.”

She was indeed.

He went on.

“Part of Amber bein’ a pain in the ass is she doesn’t know what to do with the hurt she’s feelin’ with Lydie gone. Ethan lets shit hang out, too young to bury it or really know how to deal with it. Con was tight with Lydie too but he’s not a kid anymore and thinks he’s gotta hide emotion to be a man. With that all around Amber, she doesn’t know which way to go. And Lydie gave her a lot which means she lost a lot.” His voice dipped lower when he finished, “I figure you know all about that.”

I very much did.

I didn’t agree verbally. I nodded.

“It’ll be good they got a bit of Lydie to fill that hole. That being you.”

I was not a mother but I could see a father would think this true.

And this felt oddly nice, filling that hole, and that hole being the one Gran left, not to mention him thinking I could fill it as any hole Gran left, I knew too well, was enormous.

I nodded again.

“That said, Amber’s grounded for a week so her ass is tied to Ethan or the house or Lavender House, you take them on. After that, you’re around a while, it’d be cool you give her a break. She’s sixteen years old. That’s too damn early to be a mom to an eight year old kid but with all the shit I gotta do with the club and the gym, I had to lean on her.”

“I can give her a break,” I said quietly.

“That’d be appreciated.”

“I…should I start today?”

“No. You keep settlin’ in. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Amber’s not goin’ on her date because of the shit that came out of her mouth yesterday. They’re covered. But if you could start next week, I’d be grateful.”

I nodded yet again.

“Since Amber’s on enforced babysitting duties, I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night. Fill you in.”

Dinner with Jake.

Alone.

Again, that strange anticipation I’d experienced all the day before hit me and I knew in that moment that it was because I enjoyed being around this man. What I didn’t know was why I’d anticipate seeing him, that feeling coming on strong, when he was sitting right next to me.

“Dress up, I’m takin’ you to a decent place,” he ordered.

That anticipation spiked in a way I felt it in my nipples.

My nipples.

Oh dear.

“I…uh…all right,” I replied.

“Be at your house at seven,” he said.

Finally, a decent hour for dinner.

“I’ll be ready.”

“You done with that?” he asked, tipping his head to my omelet.

I nodded.

“Then let’s get you to the Weavers.”

By this, he meant he would collect all of our refuse, leaving me only to grab my coffee cup. This he did, depositing it in the big barrel with its black plastic liner that served as a rubbish bin for, perhaps, the entirety of the wharf and not just The Shack.

He called, “Later, Tom,” and got back a, “Later, Jake.”

I looked and still, no Tom could be seen in The Shack.

“Your omelets are lovely.” I decided to yell because they were and he probably knew that but it always felt nice getting a compliment.

“Thanks, darlin’!” I heard called back but still could see no Tom.

I completely forgot about Tom when Jake grabbed my hand and started us up the boardwalk.

I also completely forgot to breathe and my heart completely forgot to beat.

We walked, Jake guiding us to my car, and as we did, although I couldn’t breathe and mostly couldn’t think, what I could think was that walking with me holding my hand seemed altogether natural to Jake.

Then again, he’d had three wives, he had a daughter and in our brief acquaintance, he’d shown he could be affectionate and it was doubtful he was only this way with me.

For me, I had never, not once, not since high school, walked holding a man’s hand.

And doing it, that…that knocked me right on my ass.

In a nice way that felt splendid.

“Thank you for breakfast,” I forced myself to say when I’d forced myself to breathe again.

“No worries,” he muttered.

I turned my head and looked up at him. “You were right, it was delicious.”

He dipped his chin and looked down at me. “Told you it’d knock you on your ass.”

Staring in his eyes, now a stormy gray that seemed to reflect the skies above, I knew I was.

I was getting knocked on my ass.

But not by an omelet.

By something altogether different.

And this feeling would continue when he stopped me at the driver’s side door to my car and leaned in. He brushed his lips against my cheek, which gave me another waft of his attractive cologne as well as an altogether too appealing scrape of his stubble (he had again not shaved that morning).

He pulled back and, smiling, murmured, “Later, babe.”

“Yes. See you tomorrow night.”

He winked, squeezed my hand, let it go and I watched him walk to his truck.

I forced myself to get in my car and drive to the Weavers’.

But I did it feeling a peculiar feeling.

That being knocked on my ass.

Thus winded.

And not minding at all.

* * * * *

I didn’t know why I did it; it was as if my eyes were drawn there by unseen forces.

But as I was driving back to Lavender House from the Weavers, my mind consumed with Eliza, her frailty, the pain etched around her mouth, the effort she still was making to pretend everything was all right and chitchat when her eyes were drooping, I turned my head and saw it.

Magdalene was not large and had long since had a town council that was rabidly determined to keep the old Maine coastal town feel about the place. Thus, the commercial areas of town were mostly untouched and had been for well over a century and things like fast food restaurants were firmly placed at the outskirts of town so you couldn’t even see them unless you were on the road driving that way.

That didn’t mean that off Cross Street (the main street in town), there weren’t other business that had sprung up over the decades.

And this included a large store that once was a hardware store but now, as I turned my head to look down Haver Way, it had a sign in the window that did not promote hardware.

I hadn’t taken in that building for years.

But after I drove by it, I found my opening to circle back, turned left on Haver Way and parked in the large-ish parking lot outside the building.

The gold painting edged in black on the window said “Truck’s Gym.”

And inside, through the now misting rain, I saw it was, indeed, a gym. A specific kind of gym. And I spent no time at all in gyms but even so, I knew exactly what kind of gym this was seeing as from what I could take in from my vantage point, there were two boxing rings set up in the vast open space.