After All (Cape Harbor #1)(37)

“Congratulations on the job.” His father reached and shook his hand. The emotional stuff, Gary wasn’t the best at, but his father meant well.

“I’m not sure what to say—I mean . . . a divorce. We knew that was coming, but Carly, the inn, and Brooklyn. She has a daughter?”

“Brystol. Luke’s pretty infatuated with her.”

“How? I mean, I know how, but . . .”

Bowie put his mother out of her misery and told her what he knew or at least what he could piece together. He, himself, still had a ton of questions but felt Brooklyn wasn’t going to sit down and give him a dossier on her life anytime soon.

“And Brystol’s been here before?”

He nodded. “From what I gathered, every year.”

Linda shook her head. “I just don’t understand how we didn’t know.”

Bowie shrugged. “No one knew, except Simone, and you and I both know she would never betray Carly’s confidence.”

His mother seemed to mull this over a bit before sighing. “Maybe I’ll take some muffins over to Carly. I have a lot of groveling to do.” She stood and went right back into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards.

“I don’t think you need to grovel, Mom. But I’m sure the muffins will be a big hit.”

Bowie followed his father outside, where Gary showed his son his large almost-ripened tomatoes. Since retirement, Gary had developed a green thumb and grew most of their vegetables in the garden.

After dinner, Bowie went home, showered, and found himself too antsy to sit still. The walk on the beach he and Luke took did nothing to quell the energy stirring within. The walls of his house were closing in on him, and he needed to get away. Although the last place Bowie expected to find himself in again was the Whale Spout, nursing a beer. His hangover from the night before still lingered, but it was the silence of his empty house that made things worse for him. Even the normal solace he found in his dog wasn’t enough to keep the demons from his mind. He hurt, and it wasn’t the sort of ache he had after a long day’s work. He felt stabbing pain in his heart, his head pounded, and he felt that at any moment he was going to cry. He wanted to slide down the wall and bury his head in his hands and sob. After Austin died, his mother told him crying was therapeutic. Back then, the tears came when he would least expect them: He’d be on the couch, and a fishing show would come on, or he’d drive by the place they’d meet for dinner. Mostly, though, he’d break down when he was alone on a jobsite because his partner, coworker, and the woman who had become his best friend had disappeared as well.

And now she was back and had brought the unimaginable with her . . . a child. Austin’s daughter. A teenager who was a perfect likeness of her mother. When Bowie had seen the girl, he had been taken back to the day he saw Brooklyn, the first day of their junior year, with her long dark hair swaying back and forth as she walked down the hall. From the first time he met her, he was smitten. It was the way her eyes crinkled when she would laugh, how her hair would fall over her shoulder when she was deep in thought, and how she would look at him in class and blush because she caught him staring.

Bowie jerked the pint glass so hard that beer sloshed to the side and spilled onto his hand. Thinking about Brooklyn was not how he wanted to spend the evening. He downed the beer and signaled to the bartender that he wanted a refill.

“Rough night, cowboy?”

Bowie scoffed at the question and reached for the beer. The bartender laughed and wiped the spilled beer off the countertop.

“Where’s Graham?”

“Night off.”

“You’re new,” he said.

“Here, yes, but not to Cape Harbor. We went to school together. I’m Krista Rich. I was a couple of years behind you.”

“Oh,” Bowie said, feeling a bit ashamed for not recognizing her. He studied her for a few seconds before deciding to give up trying to remember. He couldn’t focus on anyone or anything other than Brooklyn right now. He was letting her return consume his thoughts and emotions and couldn’t see that ending anytime soon now that he knew Austin had a daughter. That’s what hurt him more—not that Brooklyn had disappeared for fifteen years but that she had kept Austin’s daughter away from everyone. His friends were never given a chance to be a part of her life, and to him that was unacceptable. When he saw her again, he was going to tell her, give her a piece of his mind.

Bowie picked up and downed his beer, determined to muddle his thoughts. There wasn’t anything he could do about the selfish person Brooklyn had become, and even if there was, he wouldn’t know where to start. He held his empty pint high in the air, waving it around a bit before slamming it down.

“Easy there,” Krista said as she walked by him to tend to someone else. He knew, deep down, he was being unreasonable, but he was angry for so many reasons, and she and this bar were in his warpath. What made matters worse was each time Graham’s newest employee walked by, she was laughing, and he could only assume it was at him.

When she finally set another beer down in front of him, he held it tightly, almost as if it were going to slip away and leave him like Brooklyn had all those years ago . . . like he wanted her to do now. His life would be easier if she wasn’t here. His thoughts were starting to become muddled with the memories they had shared. These were moments he refused to remember, and to do that he needed alcohol to numb his thoughts.