Alegra's Homecoming

Ten-year-old Alegra moved through the throng, paying little attention to the parade that was almost done moving up the main street of the town of Shelter Bay. Other years she’d ignored the festival, but this year, after her father had brought home a pirate costume, complete with a hat, full-sleeved black leggings and plastic boots, she’d decided to walk the mile from her home in the center of the island and see what was going on.

No one gave her more than a passing glance. The hat was too big, riding low on her face, but that was fine by her. She trudged along the wooden boardwalk of the town, passing familiar stores and seeing people she’d known all her life mingling with the strangers who took the ferry from the mainland to attend the festival.

An announcement about music at the square in town where the statue of old Bartholomew stood watch was made over a loudspeaker, but before she could head in that direction, someone stepped right in front of her. As she pushed her hat back and looked up, her heart sank.

The one person she didn’t want to see was blocking her path, his band of cohorts with him. “Oh, it’s little Al Peterson,” Sean Payne drawled.

Sean was two years older than she was and one of the island kids who enjoyed taunting her, never letting her forget who she was. Alegra Peterson, the daughter of a man who was drunk more than he was sober and a woman who’d walked out five years ago and never come back.

In the failing light, she stared up at him. Tall and skinny, he was in costume, too, but a far more elegant version than hers, with a billowing silk shirt, high leather boots with shiny buckles and a long white plume of a feather stuck rakishly in his hat. His narrow face was pale, the freckles that went along with his blond-red hair standing out starkly on skin that was just starting to get the first traces of teenaged acne.

His gaze traveled over her, too, then his dark eyes met hers. “Some costume, Al,” he said. “What’re you supposed to be?”

“A pirate,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said mockingly.

“I am a pirate,” she said emphatically, lifting her chin and standing her ground. She wasn’t going to cry and run away. She’d done that once, and it had only made Sean and his friends make fun of that, too.

“No, you’re a garbage picker.” Sean moved closer.

Kids had taunted Alegra for as long as she could remember, but Sean was different. To the others, she was an afterthought. To Sean, she was a target. Now he reached out and grabbed her arm, leaning down until his face was in hers.

“Garbage picker,” he sneered. “That’s a costume my dad threw out because it was a mess. He put it in the trash bin behind his office, right near the Ship’s Rail Bar.”

She hadn’t questioned where her dad had found the costume for her to wear. He’d just said that it fell in his lap. Now she knew. She also knew her face was flaming, and she hated her dad and Sean in equal measure.

“So, you or that drunk dad of yours had to be garbage picking to get it,” Sean continued. “Trash for trash.”

She was aware of everyone watching them and listening, even passersby, and anger raged through her. She narrowed her eyes and hissed back at him loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’d rather wear a stupid old costume than have zits all over my face.”

“Ooohhh,” rose in a chorus from his pals, and it was Sean’s turn to grow beet-red, which made his blemishes even more vivid. The instant he let her go and raised his hand, she made fists and held them up the way her dad had shown her boxers fought. “Come on, come on,” she yelled at Sean. “Hit a girl. Just try and I’ll beat you up.”

But Sean didn’t get a chance to do anything. Someone else was there, an adult who had the boy by the arm, pulling him back and putting his tall, solid body between the two youngsters. Alegra grabbed at the man’s jacket, trying to get him out of her way, and the next thing she knew, his other hand gripped her shoulder and held fast. “Hey, calm down,” he said.

That was when she looked up and recognized an islander, Mr. Lawrence. His son was in high school. Ignoring Sean’s shouts of outrage, he crouched and fixed his dark blue gaze on Alegra. “Aren’t you Peterson’s girl?”

She refused to answer. He was looking at her with the same expression most of the town used. She wasn’t sure what to call it, but she knew how it made her feel. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She’d never been okay, and as long as she was on this island, she never would be. She jerked and must have caught him by surprise, because she was free. Without missing a beat, she turned and ran blindly away from both him and Sean, ignoring the shouts of anger when she bumped into people. She finally broke free of the crowd and, breathing hard, kept on going.

She ran into the night, through the darkness where huge pines canopied overhead, blotting out any light that might have come from the rising moon. But she didn’t need light to know where she was or where she was going. She reached the old lighthouse—out of commission for as long as she could remember—skirted the fence around it, then scrambled down rough stone steps to the beach below. She stopped at the water’s edge.

Fog was rolling in over the dark waters of Puget Sound, blotting out the distant lights of Seattle. Alegra pulled off the boots and stripped off everything down to the jeans and thermal shirt she’d worn under the costume. Then she picked up the costume pieces and waded into the chilly water, not stopping until she was up to her thighs and shivering cold. She dropped the pieces into the shallow waves.

She waded back to shore and headed to a huge rock embedded in the bluffs below the lighthouse and scrambled up onto it. She sat as far back as she could, still shaking from the cold, but not caring. “I hate you all,” she screamed. And then she cried.

No one heard her sobs or the moment when they stopped. Why weren’t there still pirates like Bartholomew Grace? Why couldn’t she stow away on his ship and sail away? Why couldn’t she pillage and plunder with him, until she came back here fabulously rich? She’d throw the money in their faces and if anyone so much as called her Al, she’d make him walk the plank.

She liked that idea very much. And before she nudged an offender into the briny deep, she’d make him bow to her and call her Alegra.

“I am Alegra,” she called into the fog, and heard a vague, muffled echo come back to her. “Alegra,” she said more softly, alone in her world.

Chapter One

Eighteen years later

“I am Alegra,” the woman said softly to herself.

She stood at the railing of the lumbering car ferry as it broke free of the docking area to make the trip across Puget Sound to Shelter Island. She stared at the distant dark blur of the island that was all but lost in the mists of the late-November day. “I am Alegra,” she said again.

The cold dampness brushed her skin, and she pulled her cashmere jacket more tightly around her. Tucking her chin into the faux fur collar, she never took her eyes off her destination. The island certainly didn’t look welcoming. She was the only one at the rail, the other passengers opting to stay in the warmth of their vehicles, but then again, they weren’t coming back here after ten years. They were mostly commuters who were just going home. She wasn’t.

She heard the muffled chimes of her cell phone and reached into her jacket pocket for it. Flipping it open, she glanced at the caller ID, then said into the mouthpiece, “Hey, Roz, what’s wrong now?”

Her assistant, Roz Quinlan, said brightly, “Calm down. All’s clear on the Alegra’s Closet front, or as clear as it can be at this time of year.”

The upcoming holidays increased the sales of their product—women’s intimate apparel—at their stores and through the mail. Nothing was simple with her business this time of year, but it kept going. So if Roz’s call wasn’t a business problem, what was it? She had no family, and her friends were all involved in the company. “Did you call just to hear my voice?” she asked.

“Not even close. It’s Beach Boy Ken.”

Alegra grimaced. Roz didn’t like Ken Barstow, the junior partner in the law firm Alegra’s Closet Inc. used, and although she was polite to him, when she spoke about him to Alegra, Ken became “Beach Boy Ken.” When Roz first met him, saw his tall, blond, tanned good looks and pronounced ingratiating manner, she’d decided he was “plastic and phony.”

“What about Ken?” Alegra asked.

“He’s been calling and leaving messages on your cell, he told me, and you haven’t picked up or returned his calls.”

Alegra had dated Ken Barstow off and on for almost a year, but whatever he’d thought might come from it was fading fast. She was too busy with her company to have time for a serious relationship, which in fact was the way it had been since she’d left Shelter Island. College had taken up four years of her life, design school a few more years, then there were the years spent getting her business up and running.

And, she hated to admit it, but Roz was partially right about Ken. He wasn’t plastic and phony, but he was on the fast track and doing everything he had to do to further his ambition. Sort of the way she was, she conceded to no one but herself. And she’d been pulling back ever since. “Tell him I’m swamped and I’ll contact him as soon as I can.”

“You got it,” Roz replied, then added, “So where are you now?”

“On the ferry,” Alegra said as the outline of the island became clearer, and she could see the ribbon of beach below the towering bluffs, a pale strip between the dark water and the darker land. Now she could even see lights from houses twinkling to life in the coming dusk. And there, silhouetted against the darkening sky, was the old lighthouse. She felt a knot grip her stomach at the sight.

“Well, good luck to you,” Roz said, which only made the discomfort in Alegra’s middle worse.

Roz had been with Alegra since the day her lingerie designs first went into production. She’d been there when the first Alegra’s Closet had opened in New York, and stuck with Alegra all through the struggles to get going and expand. Roz was as close as a sister in some ways, but even she didn’t know everything about Alegra’s past, just a general impression that it wasn’t great and that she was going back to her childhood home to settle a problem before she headed back to San Francisco.

Alegra cleared her throat before she murmured, “Thanks,” and flipped the phone shut.

She narrowed her eyes on the lighthouse, standing like a dark sentinel on the northern end of the island. Suddenly the past two weeks of checking on stores in California, Oregon and now Washington, seemed like another life. All the years she’d been gone were merely a blink in time.

She found herself gripping the railing with both hands, so tightly that her fingers whitened. She was back to the day, after her high school graduation, she’d packed a bag and finally had made her escape. She’d walked the two miles to the ferry landing in the pale light of a June morning, taken the ferry away from the island and found a new life. Now the old life was rushing up to meet her.

She took a deep breath, reminding herself of the reason she was coming here: the need to put Al Peterson to rest. But now that she was getting closer and closer to the island, her eyes started to burn, then her lashes became damp. “Damn it,” she muttered and swiped at her tears. She never cried. She wouldn’t cry. And, as her stomach began to churn, she vowed she wouldn’t throw up, either.

She closed her eyes as she pressed her hand to her middle. She breathed deeply a few times and the urge to be sick subsided, though she still felt a bit nauseated.