“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” He took her arm back. “I’m coming with.”
She sighed with some frustration, but she didn’t argue with him, so they walked down to the beach, arm in arm. It was dark, but the moon was high and bright. He let her lead the way in the direction of the museum instead of the cottage.
He knew where she was going before they even got there. She took a seat on her favorite rock. He leaned against it. They both looked out at the ocean. Moonlight wavered over the surface of the water. The cold air whipped around them, but it felt good after the overheated beer-scented air in the saloon.
It should have been an easy enough night. It shouldn’t settle in him like a million regrets, and a bunch of old swirling, negative feelings. Still, he just felt…shitty.
And he got the impression Lara wasn’t feeling much better though he couldn’t understand why. After a lot of silent moments, she leaned her head against his shoulder. It was asfamiliar as tracking down a fly ball. Taking the first pitch. The foundation of his life was baseball and Lara Townsend leaning on him.
At least one of those things still had the ability to make him feel something positive.
“Are you happy, Ty?” she asked him, her voice almost indistinguishable over the sound of waves slapping against the beach.
She asked it with a gravity he couldn’t ignore. Or lie to. “No, not really. Are you?”
She sighed. “Sometimes I think I am, but this feeling always creeps back in. It’s probably just the winter sads.”
He didn’t point out it wasn’t winter yet.
Chapter Five
Lara spent the next few days at the museum processing a new donation of artifacts from a formerly local family. Mary Lou kept Ty busy with to-do lists. Lara hadn’t discussed it with her grandmother, but she knew they both thought if they could keep Ty busy enough with the museum to-dos, by winter he’d start seeing the sense in taking the baseball coaching job that would no doubt be offered to him if he just met with Mr. Stolt.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Ty saw right through their plans, but he hadn’t said anything. So they’d all go along, just like always…
Except Ty wasn’t planning on leaving this time. Lara was surprised at how much that seemed to…change everything. She was so happy he was home for good, but she had never been a fan of change.
And it required a certain level of adaption for Ty to always be here. To not think,well, when he leaves again…Because he wasn’t leaving. He was just…always going to be here. Unless he decided to move.
Would he?
She was considering that possibility and wading through all the complicated emotions that brought up, when Grandma came in from the back room.
“I’m headed out,” she said, pulling on her winter coat. Somewhere deeper in the museum they heard the sound of a door slamming. “Oh, I’ll be back, Floyd, you old flirt.”
Lara smiled in spite of the uncomfortable feelings around Ty that she was trying to work through. “Let me make dinner tonight, Grandma. You don’t always have to be waiting on Ty. I can help.”
“Oh, I’ll do it while I can. I don’t see Ty wanting to sleep on a couch for too many more weeks no matter how much he’d like to stay with us. You don’t worry about it.” Grandma studied her in a way Lara didn’t quite know what to do with. “Even if he’s back, he won’t be underfoot forever. He’ll start planting some roots.”
Lara supposed Grandma was right, but the way she was intently staring at Lara like she’d asked some kind of question was a little baffling.
“I suppose so,” Lara agreed.
A slow, ticking minute of silence passed with Grandma just staring at her. Lara just kept staring back because she didn’t understand what Grandma was looking for. Atall.
“Roots are good,” Lara offered when the silence went on another minute. “And now we don’t have to wait around for the Taylor boy to remember to clean out the gutters like he promised he would.”
Grandma only grunted, then turned and left, like Lara had said something wrong. But she didn’t know what.
Lara shook the whole weird interaction away and went back to the new exhibit she was working on with their new artifacts. It wasn’t too long after Grandma had left that she heard the bell on the door tinkle. She moved for the front desk to greet their visitor but then stopped abruptly when she recognized him.
“Mr. Wagner.” Unease was immediate. Followed be a little trickle of fear. It had taken becoming an adult to fully understand what Ty had grown up with. The adults in her life had taken pains to keep it…vague, and she’d eventually realized Ty had done the same.
But over the course of the past ten years or so, she’d really begun to understand just how abusive Bruce Wagner had been to his son. It made her sick. And in this moment, the anger began to overtake the fear that he was a volatile man who liked to hurt people weaker than him.
Ty deserved some kind of retribution for what had been done to him by the man who was supposed to protect and care for him, and the impotent anger of that propelled her to be icier than she probably should have been if she wanted to avoid a scene.
“Can I help you with something?”
