Page 59 of Love Bound

"Okay," she finally says, all breathy, clearly ready to tell Devon the second we get off the phone.

Our little grapevine is short but leafy. The only one not wired for instant gossip gratification is Travis. Unlike his middle sisters, he waits, processes, and then acts. He and I are very similar that way. I wouldn't hear from him for another hour.

I pick up on the first ring.

Travis gets right to the point. "And this is the guy who wanted to sue you for the land?" He doesn’t sound thrilled. "The one from Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah," I say, cupping my hand over the landline receiver. "It hasn’t been that long ago. Two weeks."

"You know his wife was killed." Travis's voice, deep and resonate, reminds me he’s a man now. My little brother, yes, but grown up.

"Were you cyberstalking him?” I ask.

"I did what normal people do. I looked him up on the net. It’s not pretty."

I can see Finn next door, throwing bits of roofing material in the dumpster he rented last month. I cross my arms. "She was murdered."

"Yeah, and he and his partner, a Nic Silvano, tried to pin it on some guy."

"So? I know. I met Nic. They didn’t have enough evidence."

"She was found at the bottom of their pool and the story is that she tripped and got caught in the hose line. She was pregnant. Nearly full term, Claire."

I swallow hard before saying, "I saw a picture of her."

I can almost hear the gears moving in his head. How to be concerned, but not nosey. Loving, but not smothering. Protective, but not an asshole.

"He's gotta be messed up. You can’t go through something like that and be whole. Just be careful," is all he says before hanging up.

Travis is all about never, ever getting hurt. Again, we're very similar that way.

***

Finn and I walk down to the docks, out on the pilings to Taylor's, a small wholesale fishery that deals almost exclusively with lobster, crab, and now scallops. Echo Bay is one of the first places to be approved to test out the Japanese method of growing scallops first used in the nineteen thirties. First, there's the collection of wild spat and then a grow-out in “lantern nets," tiered mesh cylinders that hang in the water off a longline. Then the fishermen drill a small hole in the hinge or “ear” of a scallop and attach the scallop to rope lines in the water. The scallops grow to market size in a year or two. "Ear hanging" has been catching on, but nobody knows if it’ll produce a viable product.

What I'm interested in is crab. Sweet Maine crab mixed with mashed avocado, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and a scoop of sour cream is heaven. Just add tortilla strips.

While I'm looking in the refrigerated display fish case, thrilled to see two containers of crab left, Finn walks to the end of the enclosed part of the pier and chats with one of the seasonal workers—a young kid with a sweatshirt on that’s inside out. In the winter like this, Taylor's almost never carries more than four containers of crab a day.

"I'm grabbing crab," I call out, after pressing an intercom button by the cash register.

The speaker crackles and then a raspy voice answers back. "Come on out to Nellie."

After grabbing the crab, I move past Finn and the kid, then push out the back door and walk down the pier. It's the biggest one in Echo Bay. Most boaters use it to tank up with petrol using the pump at the very end.

'Lil Nellie II is lashed to a piling and Billy James, in his mid-seventies and still out at sea five days a week, is swabbing the deck. The Nellie II is so clean you could eat off the deck.

I dig out seven dollars and hand it to him.

"I only need six of those." Billy blinks, his eyes watering from cold or salt or just old age.

"Seven's my lucky number."

Scowling, he takes my fistful of ones and shoves them into a pocket. "Uncle Sam don't need to know about this transaction."

I laugh. He’s said this ever since I was a little girl. The pier vibrates with footsteps and Finn comes up from behind. Billy doesn’t know what to make of this, with the Boston guy who tried to muscle his way onto my property, standing here.

"Billy, this is Finn," I say.