Page 7 of Stolen Harmony
“Suit yourself,” David said finally. “But don't come crying to me when your rent triples and you're working out of your garage.”
They left, and I was alone again with the hum of equipment and the weight of another day survived without accomplishing anything meaningful. I could have gone home. Should have gone home. Instead, I opened another project file and pretended I had somewhere urgentto be.
By seven o'clock, the building was empty except for me and the cleaning crew. Mrs. Chen knocked on the door and waved when she saw me still working. Her granddaughter Jennifer had been in one of my volunteer guitar classes until her family moved to Portland last year, another casualty of Harbor's End's shrinking opportunities.
I waved back and turned up my headphones so I wouldn't have to hear the vacuum cleaner in the hallway. The track I was working on was supposed to be a love song, some local guy serenading his girlfriend with lyrics that rhymed “forever” with “whatever” and thought that counted as poetry. I'd heard a thousand songs like it, all earnest emotion and clumsy execution. But something about this one made my chest tight.
Maybe it was the way his voice cracked on the word “stay,” like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. Maybe it was the guitar line underneath, simple and honest and completely unaware of how fragile it sounded. Or maybe it was just that listening to someone else's hope felt like holding broken glass.
I saved the file and shut down my computer. The office felt different in the dark, smaller and more honest. Through the window, I could see the lights of the town meeting across the street, people filing into the community center to argue about the future of a place that had been dying slowly for decades. Victor would be there in his best suit, charm dialed up to eleven, selling dreams he had no intention of keeping.
I locked up and took the back stairs to avoid the crowd. The last thing I needed was to run into Victor or any of his supporters, to have to smile and nod while they talked about progress and growth and all the things that required tearing down what was already there.
The streets were damp from an earlier rain shower, reflecting the yellow glow of streetlamps like brokenpromises. I walked slowly, in no hurry to get home to the silence that waited there. Harbor's End looked different at dusk, softer around the edges, like a photograph taken with an old camera. The last of the fishing boats were coming in, their diesel engines puttering like metallic heartbeats, and the smell of their catch mixed with wood smoke from chimneys and the perpetual brine that clung to everything.
The Mariner's Rest was doing good business for a Tuesday night. Through the windows fogged with heat and conversation, I could see Tom behind the bar, pulling pints and listening to the same stories he'd been hearing for twenty years. Bobby was gesturing wildly with a beer bottle, probably explaining to anyone who'd listen why his family's bait shop was a historic landmark that shouldn't be touched. Laughter spilled out onto the sidewalk every time someone opened the door.
I used to go there sometimes, back when Elaine was alive. She'd drag me out for trivia night or just for a beer after dinner, insisting that we needed to be part of the community we lived in. I'd complain about the noise and the smoke and the way everyone wanted to talk about my business, but secretly I'd loved watching her work the room. She had a gift for making people feel seen, for turning strangers into friends with nothing more than a smile and genuine curiosity about their lives.
Now the thought of walking through those doors made my skin crawl. All those sympathetic looks and careful questions about how I was holding up. The assumption that two years was enough time to heal from losing the only person who'd ever made me feel like home was a place instead of just a building.
I kept walking.
Margaret Dane's bakery was already closed, but she was still inside, wiping down tables and arranging tomorrow's display. The smell of tomorrow's bread was already drifting from the ovens, yeast and flour and the promise of anotherordinary day. She caught sight of me through the window and raised her hand in a friendly wave. I nodded back but didn't slow down. Mags was a good woman, but she was also the unofficial news network of Harbor's End. Five minutes of conversation with her was like taking out an ad in the local paper.
A block past the bakery, someone had taped campaign flyers to every lamppost. Victor's face smiled down from cheap paper, all practiced charm and expensive dental work. “ELECT VICTOR GRANT: MOVING HARBOR'S END FORWARD” in bold letters that made promises he couldn't keep.
I stopped at the first poster and stared at my brother's face. We'd inherited the same blue eyes from our father, but everything else was different. Where I'd grown weathered and rough around the edges, Victor had grown polished. Where I'd learned to blend into the background, he'd learned to command attention. Where I fixed broken things, he found ways to profit from their brokenness.
My hand moved without conscious thought, tearing the poster down and crumpling it into a ball. It felt good, the small act of rebellion against the future Victor had planned for all of us. I tossed it in the nearest trash can and moved to the next poster.
By the time I'd cleared the entire block, my hands were black with ink and my jacket was damp with sweat. It was a pointless gesture, I knew. He'd have new ones printed by morning, probably with even more of them plastered around town. But for a few minutes, the street looked like itself again instead of like a campaign advertisement.
My father's cottage sat at the end of Anchor Street, close enough to the water that high tide sometimes sent spray across his front porch. The house had been in our family for three generations, passed down through a line of men who'd made their living from the sea and understood that some things were worth more than money.
Kepler Grant had lived there alone since my mother died fifteen years ago, stubborn as barnacles and twice as hard to remove. At sixty-eight, he still kept a small lobster boat moored at the pier, still went out most mornings to check his traps, still refused Victor's increasingly generous offers to buy him out so the land could be “developed to its full potential.”
The lights were on, warm yellow rectangles against the gathering dark. I could see him through the kitchen window, standing at the stove with his back to me, stirring something in a pot. His shoulders were broader than mine, even at his age, built from decades of hauling nets and traps. His gray hair was longer than Victor would approve of, curling at his collar like a declaration of independence.
I knocked on the door, three quick raps that announced myself without demanding immediate attention. The sound of his footsteps was solid, unhurried, the walk of a man who'd learned that most emergencies weren't.
“Elias,” he said when he opened the door, no surprise in his voice even though I hadn't visited in three weeks. “About time. I was starting to think Victor had convinced you I'd died and forgotten to mention it.”
“Hey, Pop.” The old nickname slipped out without permission, carrying with it the weight of childhood memories and simpler times. “Smells good in here.”
“Fish stew. Made too much again.” He stepped aside to let me in, and I was immediately hit by the familiar smells of home: salt air, coffee that had been brewing toolong, and the particular mustiness that came from living this close to the water. “You eating these days, or still living on those protein bars Sarah keeps worrying about?”
“Sarah talks to you?”
“Sarah talks to everyone. That's what makes her good at her job.” He ladled stew into two bowls without asking if I wanted any, the way he'd done when I was a kid and too stubborn to admit I was hungry. “Besides, someone's got to keep track of you since you've gone all hermit.”
The cottage felt exactly the same as it had when I was growing up. Nautical charts covered one wall, marked with notations in my father's careful handwriting. Photographs of boats and catches and family filled every available surface, including several of Elaine that made my chest tight. The furniture was worn but solid, built to last by men who understood the value of things that didn't break easily.
“Victor's been by again,” he said, settling into his chair at the small kitchen table. “Twice this week. Getting more insistent about his 'generous offer.'”
“What did you tell him?”
“Same thing I always tell him.” He took a spoonful of stew and studied me over the bowl. “He's worried about you, you know. Says you're not taking care of yourself.”
