Harbor Street (Cedar Cove #5)(14)

Not knowing what else to do, Grace stepped into the background and waited. She didn’t feel she could just walk away. She might not be able to give him any real help, but she wanted Cliff to know she cared.

After an hour she saw that she wasn’t contributing anything. No one wanted more food or coffee, so she returned to the house. It took her all of five minutes to clean up the kitchen. Bored, she turned on the television, flicking from channel to channel, not settling on any one program for more than a few minutes. Every half hour she went to the barn to see what was happening, but there seemed to be virtually no progress. As Doc Newman had said, it was a waiting game.

At ten Grace fell asleep in front of the television, waking with a start at shortly after eleven. She looked outside and saw that Doc Newman’s truck was gone. When she hurried out to the barn again, Grace saw that nothing had changed. Cliff and Cal were still with Midnight; neither seemed to notice her. As quietly as she could, she slipped out of the barn and went back to the house to collect her things.

Not wanting to interrupt Cliff, she climbed into her car and drove home, feeling depressed. She was worried about Midnight’s colic, of course, and extremely upset by Cliff’s attitude toward her. She wondered if he regretted the dinner invitation. Even if Midnight hadn’t taken sick, it wouldn’t have mattered. Cliff hadn’t even remembered this was the night she was coming to dinner. He’d made no preparations, nor had he shown the slightest interest in seeing her. If anything, he seemed happy to avoid her.

Buttercup and Sherlock were waiting when she let herself into the house and their obvious pleasure at her return comforted Grace. She saw that the message light on her phone was blinking. After leaving her purse on the washing machine, she sat down at her small kitchen table to listen, pen in hand.

A faint smile touched her lips at the sound of her best friend’s voice. Olivia wanted to hear all about Grace’s “hot” dinner date. “Phone when you get home. I don’t care how late it is.”

Reluctantly Grace reached for the telephone. Olivia answered on the first ring.

“Don’t you have anything better to do on a Friday night than sit by the phone?” Grace chided.

“Jack’s still at the office.”

Olivia didn’t sound pleased, and Grace didn’t blame her. “It’s almost eleven-thirty!”

“Tell me about it,” Olivia muttered. “But you didn’t call to hear me complain about Jack. How’d it go with Cliff?”

“Dreadful.” Grace went on to fill in the details, ending with her suspicion that Cliff seemed to regret inviting her.

Olivia was silent when she finished. “So what are you going to do?”

“What can I do?” Grace asked, discouraged and baffled by Cliff’s behavior.

“You’re not giving up, are you?” Olivia challenged.

“No,” but this wasn’t said with a lot of enthusiasm. “I guess not. But if he doesn’t—”

“He’ll phone you in the morning,” Olivia broke in.

Somehow Grace doubted that. It was as if Cliff had put her out of his mind.

Seven

Jack Griffin was tired and hungry. It was past nine on Tuesday and he still hadn’t left the office; Olivia would be annoyed. He loved that woman, but he craved the challenge of his job as editor of The Cedar Cove Chronicle, too. Olivia claimed he had printer’s ink running through his veins and he figured she was right—otherwise he’d resent all the hours he spent getting out five issues a week.

When he’d been offered the position of editor four years earlier, the newspaper published a single issue each week and was planning to increase that to two. Since he was in his fifties and ready to cut back on the grueling hours he put in for the Spokane daily paper, he’d willingly accepted fewer hours—and less pay. The attraction of moving to Cedar Cove was more than just working for The Chronicle. The real draw was being close to Bob Beldon and to Eric, Jack’s son, who lived in the Seattle area, too. Ironically Eric and his family had moved to Reno three years ago.

Bob Beldon was Jack’s AA sponsor and best friend. Several years earlier, Bob and Peggy had returned to the area and purchased a run-down home on Cranberry Point. Being an all-around handyman, Bob had quickly transformed the huge house into a successful bed-and-breakfast they called Thyme and Tide. The thyme part came from Peggy, who’d immediately planted an herb garden, along with a variety of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Her blueberry muffins were legendary.

After a single visit to Cedar Cove, Jack fell in love with the small community. He interviewed for the Chronicle job and got it. He found a decent rental and settled into what he assumed would be a more leisurely pace of life. He was looking forward to it, looking forward to a change.

Change had come, all right, but not in the way he’d expected. Soon after his arrival in Cedar Cove, he’d met Olivia Lockhart, and the woman had turned his world upside down.

In an effort to become acquainted with the community, Jack had visited her courtroom for a day and watched her deal out judgments on a series of cases. One judgment stood out. A young couple who’d lost their child came before her, seeking a divorce. While most people in the courtroom watched the exchange between the two lawyers presenting the case, Jack had focused his attention on Olivia. He found her mesmerizing. As she studied the couple, her eyes had filled with pain. Only later did Jack learn that Olivia had lost a child, too. Her thirteen-year-old son had drowned in 1986. Under the weight of grief and loss, her own marriage had dissolved. When she denied the couple’s divorce on a technicality, in effect forcing husband and wife to reconsider, he knew he had to write about her in his column.