Page 94 of Meet Me at the Grand

“All done,” the toddler said. Then she tipped the last of her spaghetti into her lap.

The table erupted into chaos. Evie’s kids took this as permission to resume their game of chase with Finn, her dad chose to continue his conversation with Dani, only louder, and her mom jumped up right away to catch the pasta before it all went onto her dining room rug.

“Kids, if you’re done eating come back and clear your plates!” Evie called.

Mia swooped her daughter out of the seat and took her to the bathroom. Even the cool blues of the room’s walls failed to calm her as she wiped Maggie off. Her daughter’s eyes lit with a sparkle, and her mouth turned up in a crooked grin.

“I messy.”

Mia’s chest loosened. Maggie looked so much like Troy. Her dark blonde curls flopped over her forehead, nearly covering her blue eyes. “Yes. You messy. You can’t dump your plate when you’re finished eating. We’ve talked about this.”

“Okay, Mommy.” Her daughter pushed her lip out in a fake pout. Mia laughed and kissed the top of her head. Fatigue tugged at every one of her muscles.

“Let’s go get Finn. Time to head home.” Hand in hand, they walked back to the dining room. Most of the others had finished eating, and her mom was stacking the dirty plates.

After corralling Finn and herding him and Maggie outside, she paused in the doorway.

Her mom tucked a Tupperware into her hands. “Some leftovers for later. You didn’t get much before cleaning up Maggie.”

“Thanks, Mom. Thanks for watching them today too.”

“I always like having them, you know that.” Her mom reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “How did it go at the bank?”

Overhead, dark clouds piled up in the sky. “They’re giving me a little time to catch up on my mortgage. So, you can pray that I find something steadier for work.” Just like she’d been praying for the past several months. Maybe she should start to listen to that voice in her heart that had started to whisper that God had abandoned her.

“I wish Troy had planned better.” Her mom pursed her lips.

A churning started in her stomach. The little spaghetti she’d managed to eat rolled over. “He was twenty-two years old, Mom. We thought we had plenty of time for things like mortgages. At least he had life insurance.”

Her mom sighed. “You’re right, of course. Let me know if you need help covering your next payment. Dad and I can write you a check.”

Not gonna happen. “Not necessary.” She began backing off the porch. “Please don’t say anything to Dad. At least not yet.”

“Okay, but?—”

“I gotta go, Mom.” The clouds covered what was left of the late evening sunshine.

A storm was coming. The kind that this time might just take what was left of everything she loved.

And she had less than a month to stop it.

* * *

There was nothing better than putting in a full day of honest work. It was one of the reasons Cody Hart used to love fishing so much. Check that.Stillloved fishing. Even if he hadn’t been truly out on the water since his best friend, Troy, had died along with Troy’s dad, Steve.

He wiped oil off his hand with a shop rag he found lying on his workbench. Silence echoed in the pole shed that doubled as his home and shop. Situated next to the waters of Lake Huron on a small cove, the building had once housed his dad’s fishing business. After the accident that had sunk their boat and shuttered the business, his dad reluctantly allowed him to take over the building, at least until he sold the business. His dad kept most of their old equipment in a shed on the mainland where it had been closer to the places they’d sold their catch. Now Cody lived in the small office, which he’d converted to a bedroom and a small bathroom. Out on the large shop floor, he worked on restoring a commercial fishing boat.

Living in a shop made him feel a kinship with Dirk Pitt, hero of those old Clive Cussler books. Except instead of a shed full of classic cars, he had a beached whale of a fishing boat.

He clenched and unclenched his fist a few times to ease the ache in his fingers. Some days, he operated more like a surgeon than an ex-fisherman. The pieces he worked with could be miniscule. He contemplated the patient in front of him. Along the ten-foot length of the metal workbench spanning one wall of the shop, a John Deere inboard engine lay in pieces waiting for him to reassemble it and reinstall it into his boat.

If he could find the parts he needed.

A wave of cool air washed over him as the shop door opened and closed. For a split second, he thought he would see Troy come around the boat currently occupying the majority of the shop room floor. But, of course, he would not see Troy again. Not on this side of eternity.

“Hey, Cody. How’s it going?” Liam Stone—recent transplant to the island and current rebuilder of the Grand Hotel—appeared. “Whoa. Looks like quite a project you have there.”

“Yeah, when I bought this boat, I didn’t know it would take so much work to get it back into shape or that parts would be nearly impossible to find.” He had been confident he could rebuild the engine in his own shop and save himself some cash. He shouldn’t have been surprised that it didn’t turn out that way. Bad things always seemed to happen to him. “I waited weeks for a new overhaul kit. Then another two months for the fuel pump.”

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