Page 73 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
All those people, breaking their backs for me. Getting filthy, growing weary, but chatting and laughing all the way through it. At some point Jessie even got something like a line dance going, with everybody working on the yard doing what I think was the Cha Cha Slide, with their shovels, while they sang a song that was popular enough to be familiar to me.
It might actually have been the ‘Cha Cha Slide.’ That’s a song, right?
You know about barn raisings? I’d only ever heard of them in books, movies, and musicals. Until that day, my broken faith in human nature had not allowed me to believe that a barn raising had ever been a real thing, that people would come together and work so hard for somebody else just because the need was there.
As a child I’d lived in Bluster without ever seeing this aspect of the people around me. My neighbors. My community. If there had been similar moments back then, my mother had, either by intention or personality, kept them from me. But the day after somebody tried to wash me away, I saw Bluster clearly for the first time. And my faith in human nature grew like the Grinch’s heart.
Maybe my own heart grew three sizes as well.
Because my mother would never have allowed anyone to help her in such a way, I hadn’t known it was possible. Somehow, even in the twenty years I’d lived without her, I’d never seen it to be true. Mutually suffering people coming together, sure. Certain people volunteering in a catastrophe, yes. But a whole town dropping everything on a sunny Saturday to dig my life out of a swamp? No, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t watched it happen.
I’d been afraid the people of Bluster would hate me when I came home. I’d expected condemnation and contempt. Torches and pitchforks. Instead, I got shovels and wet vacs. Freshly madebreakfast and fancy soda. The Cha Cha Slide. Laughter and support. Community.
Standing in the wreckage of the property we lived on, I discovered home.
For the first time I could remember, I felt something like sympathy for my mother. What a lonely life she’d led, keeping the world at a distance. Help and support had been right outside the door, but she’d kept it locked. She’d been so angry, so bitter, so full of hate. What that really meant, I finally saw: she’d been miserable and alone.
Something must have made her the way she was.
Just like something had made me the way I was.
I felt a hand on the small of my back and smiled over my shoulder at Roman.
“Hey,” he said, handing me a fresh bottle of Blueberry Ginger soda (it’s surprisingly yummy—I was skeptical at first, too). “You look better.”
“I feel better. I think I feel ... hopeful. Like this isn’t destroyed.”
“It’s not. It’s a lot of work, and it sucks we have to do it, but it’ll get done.”
I nodded. Then I turned and buried myself against his chest, hugging him as tightly as I could. “I love you.”
He kissed my head and held on. “Querida,” he whispered.
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, while I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of ruined carpeting, I happened to look over and see Roman in a seemingly agitated conversation with the cranky lighthouse guy.
(It occurred to me right about then that he’d been helping all day, and, being a quite large, strong man, he’d been given proportional tasks. He’d worked hard, and he didn’t even likeme. So I figured I should probably stop thinking of him as the cranky lighthouse guy.)
I saw Roman andFinn Nybergin what seemed maybe like an argument. They were looking at Roman’s phone. Suddenly, Finn stepped back, still talking. Roman nodded, and Finn turned sharply and headed toward his truck, his head down and his stride long, like he had serious business to attend to. Or like he was pissed and done with helping.
I took a couple of steps toward Roman, intending to ask what that was about, when Daddy Ned started yelling for his dead wife. He’d last been with Jessie, and I wasn’t sure where Erin was, so I changed course and hurried to help her dad—who was the closest I’d ever had to one myself.
By the time I had Daddy Ned corralled, we’d located Erin pulling ruined drapes down in Cottage 3, and I’d talked her down from finding Jessie and chewing her out for abandoning her Ned-watching duties, I’d forgotten about Finn Nyberg.
I REMEMBERED ABOUTFinn much later that afternoon, when he returned and came straight for me.
By then, the headcount of helpers had about halved, mainly because the great bulk of the work that could be done by amateurs was done. That huge crew of townspeople had cleaned out every cottage, the space around the cottages, and our cabin. Something like a dozen truckloads of trash had been hauled to the county dump/recycling center. Thick rope had been strung from cottage to cottage, and all the rugs, drapes, and linens that had a hope of salvage were hanging to dry.
As a place to live, the Sea-Mist wouldn’t be fit again for months. I hadn’t allowed myself to think yet about where Wyatt and I would live in the meanwhile. But really, I don’t think I was all that worried—even a flooded, uninhabitable mess, the Sea-Mist was still a home. Our home. Because Bluster and its people had made it so.
When Finn came up to me, I was standing with Wyatt and Roman at the buffet tables, filling a plate with Catherine’s dinner offerings: zucchini burgers, apple-spinach salad, mac-n-cheese, carrot cupcakes, and tortellini salad.
He came up so quickly, and he looked so angry, that I first thought his anger was directed at me. I cringed away from him, nearly tipping my plate onto my shirt. Roman must have sensed aggression from Finn as well; he took a sidestep and put himself between us.
“Finn,” he said, calmly. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Finn said, sounding perfectly reasonable. That man had the Premium Label version of Resting Asshole Face. “Uh, Miss ... Leo?”
“Leo is fine,” I said.
