Heron's Landing

He put the box on top of a sheet of plywood being held up by two sawhorses and could tell that he’d diverted his old man’s interest in this morning’s delay when the steamer paused. Fritters were Ben Harper’s favorite. But apparently this morning they weren’t enough to stop him from his work. “Humph.” The steamer began moving again. “Didn’t realize Cops and Coffee had gone organic. Given that’s what you seem to be into these days.”

“They haven’t.” Since he’d only begun to make inroads in the oversize travel mug of coffee, it took a moment for his dad’s meaning to click in. Obviously he was talking about the newest organic place in town. Busted.

“Word gets around,” Seth said casually. Not that there was anything casual about your parents’ breakup. Whatever your age, he was discovering.

“I was driving by and saw you going into Leaf after work.”

“I remodeled the place. Makes sense I’d eat there from time to time. The mushroom meatloaf’s pretty good.” Yet for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why so many things on the menu had appeared to be pretending to be meat. It wasn’t like you’d ever go into the pub and find Jarle’s beer-battered fried cod and chips pretending to be a salad.

The older man grunted, then muttered something beneath his breath. “Like it makes sense for a son to turn traitor on his own flesh and blood?”

“Okay. I had dinner with Mom. So what?”

“You weren’t eating with just your mother. You going to tell me you didn’t know that she would be there with her new boyfriend? Wearing a dress she sure as hell never wore out to dinner with me?”

Seth was about to point out that he couldn’t remember the last time his father had taken his mother out for so much as a burger at Dinah’s Diner when the comment hit home.

“Nobody told you she was at Leaf.” Gossip might always be swirling in Honeymoon Harbor’s salty air, but he doubted anyone talking to his dad would bother to mention what his mom was wearing. “You saw her with Mannion.”

“Like I said, I happened to be driving by.”

“You said you saw me while driving by.” Seth jabbed a finger at him. “I was ten minutes late because I stopped by the pub first.” Unless his dad had been driving up and down the street, the odds of him seeing both his wife and son arrive was not only unlikely, it was flat-out impossible.

Ben backed down the ladder, switched off the steamer and put it onto the plywood next to the blue box. “I’ll bet dollars to those doughnuts you brought with you that you stopped at the pub to have yourself a real dinner before eating the damn rabbit food they serve at Leaf.”

Seth was going to neither confirm nor deny that guess. “I told you, the meatloaf was good. And the corn bread nearly as good as Mom makes. And trying to change the subject to a debate about vegetarian versus burgers isn’t going to work. You were stalking Mom.”

“Not stalking.” His face settling into hard lines, his father reached into the box, took out a fritter and bit into it with enough force to send powdered sugar flying around like snow in a blizzard. “I was just watching out for her. She’s not used to being on her own.”

Even as he was annoyed by the stalking aspect, Seth knew that his father wasn’t entirely lying. He’d always known Ben Harper loved his wife. In his way. Which, unfortunately, hadn’t ever been the least bit demonstrative. Which caused a twinge of pain as he remembered the way Zoe would touch his arm, smooth a hand over his hair, nuzzle his neck while they were sitting and watching TV on the secondhand couch she’d unearthed at Treasures antiques shop.

“I suspect she’s felt as if she’s been on her own for a long time,” he said, feeling his way across what was turning out to be a conversational minefield. “Given that you’re not one for going out.”

“A man puts in a hard day’s work, he doesn’t feel like getting all gussied up to stay out until all hours of the morning dancing,” his father said around a second mouthful of fritter.

“Last I checked, movies only take a couple hours. And don’t require either dressing up or dancing.”

“Cheaper to stay at home and watch a show on the TV.”

“Maybe. But did you ever think that attitude is what’s got you living alone?”

“Your mother will be back.”

Seth knew he’d hit a sore spot when his father grabbed the steamer, went back up the ladder and switched it on.

“It’s been three months,” he said to Ben’s back.

“Took nearly that long to talk her into marrying me and staying here instead of going back east to that foo-foo art school.” He began methodically moving the steamer over the wall. “I can wait her out.”

“I’m no expert on women, but I’m not sure that’s the best option.”

The steamer paused as his father stiffened. Shoulders, arms, legs. “You saying she’s serious about some pansy artist?”

Seth resisted rolling his eyes. “Did you ever think that mom might prefer you not to talk like Archie Bunker?”

“I liked Archie,” Ben shot back. “It was good to see a regular guy on TV. So? Is she involved with Mannion?”

“I don’t have any idea. All I know for sure is that she’s taking classes from him in art.” And how weird did it feel playing this stupid high school game of “does she like me or him best” with his dad? “Which, by the way, she’s really good at.”

“He’s probably just leading her on by telling her that.”

“She gave me a watercolor. Believe me, she’s good.”

“If she’d wanted to paint, I wouldn’t have stopped her. Hell, she could’ve helped out on the houses instead of just doing the business’s books. And those drawings of the houses.”

Seth opted against mentioning that creating an actual piece of art wasn’t anywhere the same as painting a wall. But then wondered if, just possibly, she’d like to try a mural. With Kylee and Mai both being visual types, a mural of the harbor, or snowcapped mountains, might make a nice feature wall.

“That wasn’t my point. Whatever their relationship, Mike Mannion’s not the only guy in town. Did you ever think that the longer she stays away, the more comfortable she might be with the new normal of single life?”

Ben shot a look over his shoulder. “She’s my wife.”

“For the moment, though I feel the need to point out that you are legally separated.” Seth had been surprised when she’d gone all legal-ass on his dad, having those separation papers served on him. “But, just in case you missed the memo, the days of women being chattel are long gone. You don’t own her.”

Great. Now not only was he eating veggie meatloaf, he was paraphrasing Beyoncé.

“Never said I thought I did.” Ben’s scowl deepened. “Your mother’s always had a mind of her own. I used to call her my steel magnolia.”

There was just a tinge of something that sounded like pride in Ben’s tone. Which made sense because only a strong woman would’ve stuck around past the first anniversary. It wasn’t that his father was a bad guy. But he was from another era, a hardworking, blue-collar guy who wasn’t all that happy about a world that seemed to be moving too fast to keep up. And whereas some people might see the glass half-filled, Ben Harper always seemed afraid someone was going to steal his.

“Used to being the definitive phrase,” Seth pointed out, wondering yet again how he got into this damn situation. “Do you want her back?”

That question had his father spinning around so fast Seth feared he might fall off the ladder and break his stiff neck. “What the hell do you think?”

“I’ve no idea. You damn well should,” he said. “Not only is she smart, kind, loving and an all-around great woman, the one thing you and I have in common, along with the love of fixing up old homes, is that we both married above ourselves. Besides, living alone is the frigging pits.”

Not that the way he spent his days was fully living. The truth was he was fucking tired of being lonely. If he hadn’t been able to lose himself in his work, he probably would’ve just taken his boat out the strait into the Pacific and jumped into the icy ocean where Coast Guard PSAs were always reminding boaters to wear their life jackets because a fit person could swim only fifty yards in fifty-degree water, which just happened to be the summer temperature.

Another grunt. “You should know, given that you’ve turned into a hermit monk,” his father said. “Hell, even I’ve played poker once a week for the last twenty or so years.”

Which had always taken place at the Harper house, and which, Seth could have argued, wasn’t exactly getting out.

“It’s not the same thing,” he insisted. “My wife died.”

Zoe had been more than Seth’s wife. She’d been his soul mate for over half his life. He’d lived for her weekend visits home while she’d been away at college, and it never would’ve occurred to him to so much as look at another woman while she’d been deployed, assuring him that she was in a well-guarded hospital and would be returning home to make a lot of babies, so he’d better be prepared to man up and do his part. Which had totally worked for him.

“That was two years ago,” Ben said.

Two years, one month, two weeks and three days. But hell, who was counting?