Page 65 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

Kyle’s face blushed. “I must’ve forgotten to clean up.”

This made her do a double take. “You slept in here?”

He nodded his head. “It’s sort of like my treehouse. It’s how Jacob figured out I wanted to learn to fish. I’d be up here pretending to be out on the water while he painted inside the barn. My dad would be at work, and Gram couldn’t contain me.”

She looked back and could see blankets and tossed pieces of clothes and books from years of use. “That must be fun.”

“It was the best,” Kyle said. “Jacob even let my dad put up a rope swing in the barn.”

Meredith snuck a glance at the barn, imagining being a kid on this piece of land. And all the resentment that usually would anger her about Jacob didn’t rise to the surface. A different, more curious feeling came. “That sounds incredible. Did Jacob ever take you out on the water?”

Kyle grinned wide. “All the time…once he got clean.”

Kyle wiped off a bench along the side of the boat, and they all sat down in the sun.

“So, he went back out on the water?” Meredith had heard he never went back out.

“Only with me,” Kyle said. “He taught me how to drive a boat and fish.”

“You and Jacob fished together?” The thought of an old selective mute and a young boy amused her. “I think he felt like he had to help me.”

“Jacob felt like he had to help you?” Meredith couldn’t believe the relationship.

“I didn’t talk either back then,” Kyle said, and he paused for a moment. Then he dropped the bomb Meredith hadn’t expected. “Not after my mom died.”

Her heart immediately crushed at the thought of a silent little Kyle grieving his mother.

“It must’ve been wonderful to play on this farm,” she said, holding back her own emotions.

“It was the best,” he said again. “At first, my dad didn’t like me playing on the boat and being with Jacob all the time, but then Gram got Jacob to stop drinking if he wanted to be around me.” Kyle shrugged. “Gram can be very convincing.”

Meredith laughed. “Yes, she seems like it.”

“My whole life, I had heard about the storm of the century and the boat accident,” he said, and like Ginny, Kyle had the gift of storytelling. He told the women about his first time fishing out on the water and how scared he was going out there after hearing stories about his great-grandfather. “But Jacob wasn’t afraid. He felt most comfortable out on the water. I think he was afraid of being stuck on land like this boat.”

“Why didn’t he just go out then?” she asked, surprised that she even wanted to know more.

Remy took a double look at her.

“He couldn’t drive it anymore.” Kyle shrugged. “Gram says that part of him never left the ocean that day.”

Kyle told more stories about going on the water. How he had learned to set traps and collect them days later. How the lobster will move with the seasons. How lobstermen are protective of their territories. And how he had inherited the whole cove from Jacob.

“Hardly anyone fishes anymore,” Kyle said. “They’re mostly paper pushers like my dad.”

“Being a lawyer isn’t being a paper pusher,” Meredith argued. Then she thought of Phillip. She hadn’t thought of Phillip in…a while. She smiled at herself. “Well, I guess, maybe a little.”

Remy smiled at this, as though she was waiting for Meredith to have a breakdown at the mere mention of law or lawyers, which would surely lead her to think about Phillip.

They left the boat and returned to the barn to sift through Jacob’s paintings, but the idea that part of Jacob had been left in the sea stuck with her. As she tagged and organized them the way Remy’s friend had told them to, she couldn’t help but notice how many paintings there were of the ocean.

As the day wore on, she could tell Kyle had better things to do than help her. He continuously checked his phone.

“You don’t have to stay here and help,” Meredith said, impressed that he had even offered. Would Ryan help a stranger sift through his neighbor’s stuff?

“I’m happy to help,” he said, stuffing the phone back into his pocket.

Ryan didn’t even know about his grandfather’s death or the house or anything that had to do with her.

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