Return of the Wild Son

Friday night, after he’d had time to contemplate his father’s phone call, Nate had done an Internet search on the Finnegan Cove, Michigan, lighthouse and been rewarded with a picture of the place. The photo had been taken ten years ago, and even then it was showing signs of significant decay. That had been the point of the photograph. A concerned lighthouse enthusiast had chosen the Finnegan Cove Light to illustrate the desperate need to restore the old buildings.

“So, you think the old man’s off his rocker?”

Nate scrubbed his hand over his nape. If he was, then Nate wasn’t too far behind him. “I gotta admit,” he said, “I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to come back here.” For some reason, certainly not because he thought his brother was interested, Nate added, “I just had a sample of the way folks feel about us coming back to this town.”

“What are you talking about?” Mike asked.

“There’s a bakery on Main Street. I stopped there to get a cup of coffee, and you won’t believe who’s running the place.”

Mike waited.

“Marion Malloy and her daughter, Jenna,” Nate told him.

“That’s an interesting bit of news,” Mike said. “I figured rather than relive that night over and over every time they passed the lighthouse those two would get out.”

“I know. After I gave Marion the twelve grand, I thought she might start over somewhere else. The trial was hard on both of them, especially Jenna. She was so young to go through something so terrible.”

“Getting out is more our style, don’t you think?” Mike spat in the dirt, then rubbed his fingers down his jawline. “I have to say, though, dividing up the proceeds from the sale of that fishing boat was the best thing the old man ever did for us.”

They remained silent, each lost in his own thoughts, until Mike suddenly said, “So, did you see the daughter?”

“Yeah, she was there this morning.”

“She married?”

“I don’t know. But I didn’t see a ring.” He wondered why he’d noticed that detail.

“And I guess she didn’t treat you like her favorite person?”

“Person. Creature. Primate.” Nate managed a smile. “I’m not high on her list of living beings.”

“Was she openly hostile?”

“Oh, yeah. Looking into her eyes, I felt the past twenty years slip away. I was suddenly bad boy Nathaniel Shelton again, only Jenna’s contempt was worse than any aimed at me before.”

“Hell, Nate, you didn’t kill her father.”

That simple truth should have put the tragedy in perspective. Sadly, it didn’t for Nate.

And he resented his brother’s attitude. He always had. Two years older, Mike had taken the brunt of punishment for Harley’s erratic behavior after their mom died. It had been Mike who’d bailed Harley out of jail, Mike who’d taken criticism from neighbors and Mike who’d stood up to Harley and argued back when it only pushed the two men further apart. But then Mike left, and at sixteen, Nate had taken over the job of managing the drunken, abusive man his father had become. And Nate couldn’t look at his brother today without feeling that Mike had let him down.

Ironically, before the murder, Nate had begun to see a change in their father. Harley had started to resemble the calm, rational, even loving man he used to be. So once Harley went to prison, Nate made strides in reconnecting with him, in time forging a fragile but reassuring bond.

He glanced at Mike, saw him focus on the lighthouse. As in the past, it was impossible to know what was going on in his brother’s mind. The only contact Nate had had with Mike over the years was a few notes from his wife, a woman Nate had never met. They’d just shared what Nate told himself was a companionable moment. Could this meeting be the start of a reconnection for them?

Mike turned to him and said, “I haven’t got all day, Nate. You want my opinions on this building or not?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” he replied. They started walking toward the lighthouse.

“Just out of curiosity,” Mike said. “Did Harley give you a good reason for wanting this place?”

“He gave me a reason. I don’t know how good it is. He said Finnegan Cove is the only home he’s ever known.”

Mike frowned. “Not true. He’s spent the past two decades in Foggy Creek.”

Nate reminded himself that Mike didn’t know Harley was a different man now. “He blended in at prison,” Nate said. “I suppose he feels if he can make it there, he can make it in Finnegan Cove again. At least he wants to try. And after spending all those years paying his debt, I guess he’s earned the right to live where he wants to.”

“Just count me out,” Mike said. “I left here twenty-two years ago and I don’t intend to come back, even to hang a few new windows. I can’t be around the old man.”

“You’ve made that clear,” Nate said. “For the past two decades.”

“Good. Because I’m doing this for you, little brother. For the years we had together, before it all turned sour.” He held up one finger. “No other reason.”

They reached the back door and Mike opened it. “I don’t imagine he has any competition in trying to buy this place,” he said. “If you make an offer, it’ll probably be accepted.”

“I suppose I will then.”

“Then you going back to L.A.?”

“Sure. Once Dad’s settled, I’ll head back. But as I’ve done all these years, I’ll continue to check how he’s getting along.” He cut off his words.

Mike’s eyes sparked with long-held resentment. “I don’t suppose you’d take any advice from me?”

“Not unless it’s about fixing up old stairs.”

Mike almost smiled. “Okay, then. Let’s look her over. You might as well go into this deal with both eyes open.”

For the next hour, the brothers examined every inch of the Finnegan Cove light station. And their conversation was all about construction.

I N THE HOURS THAT HAD passed since Nate’s unexpected visit to the bakery, Jenna’s anger hadn’t abated. Now, at closing time, she feverishly scrubbed the countertop that her mother had just wiped and vented her frustration aloud. “Did you hear what he said, Mom? Nate Shelton feels sorry for me! What does Harley Shelton’s son know about anything? And how does he have the nerve to come back to this town and say that he pities me! How sorry did he feel when his father hit Daddy with that two-by-four?”

Marion looked away, pretending to stuff napkins into an already bulging chrome holder. Jenna saw her cringe. “I did it again, Mom, opened my big mouth. Forgive me. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, and I seem to do it too often by bringing up Daddy’s death.”

“That’s not why I’m upset, Jenna,” Marion said. “It’s your reaction to Nate this morning. I remember how it was for him. Nate felt terrible about what happened.”

“Fine. So Nate felt terrible,” Jenna said. “He and his friends were always getting into trouble with the police long before Harley…” Her voice caught, and she took a deep breath. “I’m surprised he didn’t end up in a cell before his fifteenth birthday.”

Marion stopped fidgeting and looked at her daughter. “I realize Nate did things you never would have done at his age. But he wasn’t so bad as a kid. He just grew up too fast. When his mother was alive, he was a sweet boy. And then later, after she died, I seem to remember a few times I caught you staring at him when he was bagging at the supermarket. And I recall picking you up at Lighthouse Park a time or two when you and your girlfriends had gone there to watch the older boys, including Nate, play baseball.”

Marion gave one of those knowing smiles that mothers seem to perfect. “You didn’t always have such a low opinion of Nate. Besides, the police never charged him with anything. They picked him up twice—and that was only to scare him. Now all of a sudden, he’s interested in the lighthouse, and you’re dredging up all these reasons why you should hate him.”

Jenna had to admit there was some accuracy in her mother’s interpretation of history. Five years younger than Nate, and with an overactive imagination, Jenna had often fantasized about him. But after he’d become old enough to drive, Jenna heard more about Nate from the police scanner her father had hooked up in their living room than she did from the few ladies in town he’d managed to fool with his smile.

She knew Nate and his friends hung out at Lighthouse Park, showing little regard for the property, littering the grounds with beer cans and fogging up their car windows with whichever girl in town was eager to take a drive.

Jenna always believed Nate and his friends were the main reason the park got a bad reputation. But even then, while Lighthouse Park deteriorated and the station began its sad decline into disrepair, Marion had defended Nate to Jenna, saying he was just acting out his frustrations. Joseph Malloy, on the other hand, saw Nate for what he was—a bad seed who would end up like his father, quarrelsome, mean, and not to be trusted.

“You know,” Marion said now, “you might try being nice to Nate. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the lighthouse.”

She headed into the kitchen and Jenna followed her, saying, “I’ve been thinking about this all day, and I can’t come up with any reason Nate would want to buy the place. But he mentioned Mike, and I’m wondering if he’s the one who’s interested. Though why Mike would come back is an even greater mystery. He left before Nate did.”

Marion organized cans on a shelf. “My daughter the detective,” she said fondly.

“Certainly Mike’s motive for buying the station can’t be better than mine.”

“We’re finished here,” her mom said. She snapped the dead bolt on the back door and turned around. “But one last thing, Jenna. Your motive for wanting to buy the light is as personal and subjective as any could be.”

“What? The building is a mess. I want to tear it down and put something beautiful and lasting in its place.”

Marion walked over, wrapped her hands around Jenna’s arms. “What you really want is to get rid of a horrible memory.”

When Jenna started to protest, her mother wouldn’t let her. “And I understand.” She smoothed her hand over Jenna’s shoulder. “I wish you could have been spared what you saw that night. If I could change anything about the past, it would be that, and your grief. The grief you still feel.”

Jenna looked at the floor, unable to bear the pain in her mother’s expression. They had been through so much, the two of them. Heartache, therapy, starting over. But still, after all this time, Marion didn’t really understand.

Her mother leaned down to peer into Jenna’s downcast eyes. “It’s just a building, honey. Something terrible happened there, but twenty years have passed. You’ve got to let it go.”

“I have, Mom,” she protested. “At least I’m trying. I try every day. But the best way, the surest way to put the past to rest is to wipe it off the face of the earth.” She hoped her mother could see the sense of what she was saying. “And when that station came up for sale, it was a sign I can’t ignore. I was meant to buy that place.”

Marion turned and got her purse out of the locker. “You haven’t told your grandmother your idea.”

“No.” That admission plagued Jenna’s conscience. She didn’t like hiding anything from Hester.

“She’ll find out eventually,” Marion said. “Are you still going to see her tonight?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to argue. I’m bringing her a turkey dinner from the Boston Market. She always likes that.”

“Yes, she does.”

Jenna watched her mother close up shop and, once outside, get into her dependable Ford and drive away. And then her thoughts turned to Nate. She couldn’t help wondering what he had done with his life since leaving Finnegan Cove.

He must have found success on the West Coast. He apparently had enough money to buy the lighthouse. And he looked, well…good. Very good. Successful, assured, as handsome as she remembered. Yes, physically Nate still lived up to her fantasies. She swallowed. Looks could be deceiving.

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