Page 7 of Here & There

The choice is obvious. I don’t even need to think about it. I point my hands in the air, bend my knees, and jump.

Chapter 2

Mac

“What in the goddamned hell!”

I scowl at the shout coming from outside, my floured hands going still on my bread dough.

More muffled yelling sounds from outside my bar, though it’s lower now so I can’t make out the words.

“Goddammit, Stu,” I grumble.

There are two sets of doors between me and the beach, but I recognize our local town asshole’s voice. Stu getting into it with a tourist wouldn’t be breaking any records. He’s retired and spends all his time at the beach just outside my bar, rain or shine, doing annoyingly good watercolor landscapes. Last summer he got into it with a tourist going for a jog earlier than this. Shoved him into the water when he let his dog shit on the beach without cleaning it up.

Can’t say I blamed him for that one.

I’m in too foul a mood for this.

But the shouts seem to have stopped. I keep still a moment, listening just in case. Blissful silence continues. I turn back to my bread making, kneading my big-ass fists into the puffy white dough maybe a little more vigorously than necessary.

I’d blame Stu, but I was already pissed off. I could easily attribute my mood to the bread, since hardly any of my regular patrons order it. I sell most of it in loaves to the natural food store in town. I’m a bar owner, not a bread maker. I should quit making it. But I don’t want the starter to die. Plus, I like making bread. It’s like fishing, or backcountry hiking. It’s simple. Honest. Therapeutic.

But it’s not just the bread.

“Mac!”

God dammit. It was wishful thinking to think anything around here could take care of itself. I wash the flour and bits of dough off my hands and head for the door of the Rusty Dinghy, drying my hands off on a bar towel just as the barking starts.

My stomach twists.

That’s my dog.

I sprint the last few steps to the door. My fourteen-year-old son, Nate, is in charge of Tink when I’m at the Dinghy.

Normally, thinking about Nate makes my stomach ache. Things haven’t been good between us.

But Tink only barks like that when there’s trouble.

Panic seizes my chest as I flip the deadbolt and fling the heavy wooden door open like it’s a flimsy curtain. “Nate?” I yell.

Stu screws up his gray-bearded mug, sticking a finger in his ear. “Dammit, Mac, my hearing’s already going!”

“Where’s Nate?” If something happened to him…

“He’s fine,” Stu says, pointing his chin down to the water.

He’s right. Nate’s upright and walking. But my relief is short-lived, because Nate’s not alone. There’s a sopping-wet woman draped over his shoulder.

I take off down the beach. Tink bounds up the sand toward me, her leash trailing behind her. She barks as she reaches me, jumping in big leaps and spraying me with sand.

“I know, girl. I got it,” I say to my dog as I sprint past her.

An ancient, familiar panic has my whole body on a knife-edge by the time I reach them.

“Where are the rest of them?” I demand.

“She needs a towel!” Nate says, his prepubescent voice cracking.

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