Brothers of Paradise Series

“I’m dead serious. She started work on Monday.”

“And you waited five days to tell me? What’s wrong with you?” She reaches for a pillow, my thirty-three-year-old sister reverting back into the feral animal she’d been as a kid.

“Because you’d react like this and I didn’t want you to scare my nephew.”

“Excuses!”

I raise my hands again. “Look. She’s back. She’s been back for about two weeks. But something’s changed.”

“Of course it has! I haven’t seen her in years!”

“No, damn it, I don’t mean that. I mean…” I trail off and run a hand through my hair. How do you put it into words? The Jamie I remembered had dyed her hair pitch-black. She’d had fire in her eyes and confidence radiating from every pore. Once, she’d relished every opportunity to argue with me. She’d been on the debate team. She’d written for the school newspaper.

Timid would have been the last word I’d use to describe her. But now she seemed a shadow of herself. Docile and quiet.

“Yes?” Lily prompts.

“She’s changed,” I say lamely. “Look, all I’m saying is, don’t come in guns blazing. Okay? Wait for her to come to you.”

A fire burns in Lily’s eyes. “I’ve waited for years. She never answered my last text!”Content rights by NôvelDr//ama.Org.

“Yeah. Not making excuses. But I don’t think the last few years have been kind to her, that’s all I’m saying.”

Lily puts her head in her hands. “She’s back in Paradise,” she says. “Jesus.”

“Living with her mom.”

“And working at the yacht club?” She looks up from her hands and gives me an inscrutable glance. “I suppose we really do have to start calling my son little Jamie.”

“Or James,” I say.

“Bah, he’s no James yet. Maybe when he stops wetting the bed.”

I laugh at that. Hayden comes downstairs and joins us, mid-laugh. He looks between us with a crooked smile and tosses the blanket Jamie had used as a cape over the back of the couch. Lily runs a hand over her husband’s back and starts to fold the cloth. Judging from her quiet expression, she’s already devising a strategy.

It’s her best friend that’s back, and yet, I don’t know if she’ll approach this the right way.

I picture the Jamie I’d seen, standing in the yacht club uniform. The leashed anger in her gaze after that creep had dared to put his hands on her. No dark makeup around her eyes, her hair light brown instead of black. The nose ring she’d once had was gone. And then I’d watched the anger die, and sputter, and turn into embarrassment.

“Just be careful,” I warn Lily again.

She gives me an angelic smile.

Right. As if.

I sit at the corner table in the restaurant. It’s become mine, more comfortable than the back office, with the view of the ocean outside the windows. Seagulls trail a sailing boat motoring swiftly out of the marina and toward open water.

I watch as the sailor unfurls the main sail. The winds are good today.

My mind draws me out there, like it always has.

The yacht club is like home in the same way Paradise Shores is. I’d sailed here since I could walk. It’s where I had lessons. It’s where I later helped give lessons to others. It’s where I trained for the regattas.

I’ve sailed in better waters. Bluer, calmer, warmer. But none of it beats the deep blue of the Atlantic right here, along the coast of New England.

The figures on my screen confirm just that. The yacht club is doing as well today as it did ten years ago. Paradise hasn’t seen the outflow of people like so many other small towns. It’s kept steady instead. Housing prices are expensive, and zoning regulations are tightly controlled. None of us want the coastline to be overbuilt.

My father had considered my current job a downgrade. I’m buying it, I’d said. I’m not working there as a busboy.

He’d shook his head and turned his back to me, focusing on the lobsters he’d been grilling on the family porch. You had a job in Boston. A career.

This again. But after thirty-four years as his son, and as the younger sibling of Henry Marchand, I’d finally realized I’d never be able to make the man proud. When your oldest brother is the head architect of the newly constructed New York Opera House, well, you might as well give up the attempt.

Studying for my law degree had been interesting. Rewarding. But even then, I’d known as I sat with the thick books spread out around me, that my heart was out at sea.

So giving up my practice and renovating the yacht club instead was, for the first time in years, a project I was actually excited about. I know this place like I know my own bones. My sister and her husband, one of my best friends, live in the town. I have the ocean and the boats here, and they’re better than any prestige gained professionally.

I look up from my screen again. The restaurant is slowing down after a busy lunch. With May inching toward June, the out-of-towners are increasing. Things are looking good. The new chef starts next week, and with her, I hope the menu gets a much-needed makeover.

One of the waitresses walks through the space, dishrag in hand, and sets to wiping down the tables. It’s not Jamie. She’s stayed mostly out of the dining room today, instead working front of the house.

I wonder if it’s because I’m here.

She still hasn’t said more than a curt hi or goodbye to me. There’s been no repeat of the conversation we’d had in the parking lot the other week.

I watch her colleague wipe down the tables. They have no problem saying hello to me, and none of them avoid my eyes.

Sighing, I look back at my screen. The yacht club’s website needs an overhaul. It’s still using the old booking system for sailing classes, which is the incredibly high-tech honor system with Neil-you make a call, you promise to pay-and it slows us all down. I’ll have to hire someone to create a new website. Re-do everything.

I’m halfway through searching for web designers online when someone calls my name. The voice is familiar. Please don’t.

I slowly close my laptop. “Lily…”

My sister gives me her brightest, I’m-not-up-to-anything smile. I know better than to trust it. “Hi. What are you doing?”

“Working.” I look over her shoulder, but I don’t see Jamie. “You just happened to be in the mood for a lobster roll?”

“Not quite.” She puts her bag down on the chair opposite me and looks around. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“Lily,” I warn. She’s been here many times since the renovations ended.

But she’s not having my admonitions. “Let me,” she says, fast and heated. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”

“I know that, but perhaps right here isn’t the best place-”

“Then where? She won’t answer my texts.”

I sigh. “Don’t make a scene, Lily.”