Christy takes another sip of her tea. “Well, I never went over there or anything,” she says. “And I don’t exactly remember how much she told me and how much was just what the kids said. But we were lab partners junior year, and we were kind of friendly.”

She stiffens as Violet rolls over, the rustling clearly audible over the monitor, but when no coo or cry follows, she goes on. “I guess the father was abusive. I don’t think sexually, thank God. But there was definitely some bad stuff. The police came once, I remember Allie talking about that. She was crying in the bathroom one day and told me that her brother and father both spent the night in jail…”

“Yikes,” I murmur.

“So, anyway, I really don’t know more than that. She went away to Boston and we never really kept in touch.”

“Did you ever hear that Malone hit his wife?”

Christy frowns. “No. I never did. He’s not—you know, rough or anything, is he, Maggie?”

“Oh, no. No, no.” My cheeks grow hot. “Not rough at all…just…intense.”

“I wish you could see your face right now,” my sister says, laughing.

“Listen, don’t tell anyone about this, okay? About Malone and me. It’s not like we’re actually seeing each other…we’re just…I don’t know….”

“Fuck buddies?” Christy laughs.

“Christy! No! Oh, hell, maybe.” I can’t help laughing, too.

“Can you imagine what Mom would say?”

“I really don’t want to think about that,” I answer truthfully. Mother is not one to be sympathetic to hormonal urges. Young people today are so trashy, she’s fond of saying. Don’t they have any self-respect? Even if Malone and I had a real relationship, he’s not exactly what Mom has in mind for me. Why can’t you meet a doctor, Maggie? Or a lawyer? Or maybe that Microsoft executive on Douglas Point? If you’d just clean yourself up a little, you’d be quite presentable, you know. You need to stop lighting your fire under a bushel.

At this moment, my niece lets out a coo over the monitor, signaling the end of her nap. Christy gets up and goes upstairs, and I sit at the table, mulling over what she’s told me.

I stay to play with Violet, rolling on the floor with her, encouraging her to grab the little moose puppet Jonah gave her at birth. She finally does, and Christy and I cheer as the genius baby stuffs an antler into her drooling mouth and chews on it. Christy convinces me to stay for supper, and I do, drinking in their domesticity and happiness.

On my way home, I try to imagine Malone acting like Will, laughing, pulling me onto his lap the way Will does to Christy, kissing his baby and practically leaping at the chance to change her diaper. I can’t. Malone doesn’t inspire thoughts of husband and father.

So what are you doing with him, Maggie? Mom’s voice asks in my head. Killing time until the real thing comes along? Or just scratching an itch?

I’m pretty sure I don’t want to answer those questions, but I have a long time to think about them. Malone doesn’t come over that night. He doesn’t call, either. And I don’t call him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“SO, MAGGIE, how’s the quest going?” Father Tim asks me as I pour him some coffee.

“The man quest?” I ask.

“Are you on any other kind?” he quips, raising his eyebrows with mock sincerity.

“Oh, how cutting! And you a priest. Tsk, tsk.” I glance around the diner—pretty full, since it’s raining hard outside, and people love to go out for breakfast when it’s raining. “The quest is on hold at the moment, Father Tim,” I answer. “When the time is right, yadda yadda. What can I get you this morning?”

“I guess I’ll have the special, Maggie. Sounds lovely.”

The special is French toast made with homemade sweet almond bread and soaked in a peach glaze. It is lovely, and an original recipe, and if I could get a restaurant critic out here, I’m sure he or she would love it. “You got it,” I tell him. “Bacon with that?”

“You know me well,” he smiles.

“Mmm, yes, and I know you’d better get your cholesterol checked.”

“You’re a wonderful friend,” he says, and unexpectedly, he takes my hand and pats it, looking up at me. And though I have a coffeepot in my other hand and he’s wearing his priest clothes, there’s something very…marriage proposal about our little tableau. For one second, that sense of longing and rightness I always get around Father Tim hits home, and I feel my face grow hot.

“Well,” I say. “Right back at you.” To hide my discomfort, I glance out the window and freeze. Malone is standing in front of the diner, and with him is a woman. A beautiful woman. A young, gorgeous, wow kind of woman. She’s laughing, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling! A baseball cap shields his face against the rain so his expression isn’t completely clear, but yes, that is a smile, ladies and gentlemen.

Father Tim releases my hand, and I smile automatically at him. When I glance up, Malone’s smile is gone, and he’s looking at me. The lines that slash down his face are emphasized from the lights in the diner. Is he angry? He says something to Miss Universe, and without so much as a wave, they continue on their way, away from Joe’s.

“What the hell is his problem?” I mutter. My face is burning. Suddenly I feel quite grimy in my worn jeans and the sweater with the coffee stain on the left wrist. Who cares? I ask myself, but my heart feels tight.

“Ah, Louise, love,” Father Tim calls, “come and keep a lonely priest company.” Louise, a middle-aged widow, wrestles her umbrella inside the door.

“Back in a flash, Father Tim,” I say as the kitchen bell dings. I get to work, bringing Father Tim and Louise breakfast, chatting up Georgie, exchanging diner slang with Stuart, bussing tables and wiping up spills. But my thoughts stay with Malone. Who was that woman? I’ve never seen her before…and truthfully, I never want to again.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen Malone with a woman, though surely he hasn’t been without female company since his wife left him all those years ago. But still. Smiling with that young, beautiful creature…It stings. It’s been three days since I last saw him. During that time, he hasn’t called me or stopped by once. Not once. So I’m forced to think that yes, indeed, any connection we have is purely physical.

I’ll admit, I’ve been feeling a bit conflicted. It seems wrong, somehow, to have these intense physical reactions to Malone when I don’t even know his first name. My mother’s voice keeps floating through my head—When are you going to find someone decent to marry? Why can’t you settle down with someone like Will?

My protestations to my mother that I’m trying fall on deaf ears. I’m not succeeding, and as she so ruthlessly points out, the years are passing. Of course I’d love to settle down with someone like Will. Someone who found me delightful and couldn’t wait to come home to me, someone who loved children and wanted a couple.

Malone is not that guy. After all, there he is out with Maine’s answer to Catherine Zeta-Jones. If he finds me delightful, it’s only in the sack. The only time we’ve spent when we weren’t all over each other like black flies on tourists was the evening he rescued me from the Skipmonster. There was no joy in Mudville that day, that’s for sure. No happy exchange of information took place there, no laughter, nothing other than some primal attraction. It’s not enough. Especially if he’s primally attracted to more than one woman at a time, damn it.

Father Tim is right—people shouldn’t jump into bed with people they don’t know well. Because this is what happens. You make a fool of yourself with someone who doesn’t even care about you, and then you still have to live in the same town.

It’s not enough, I repeat to myself as I refill coffee mugs and bring out breakfasts. I want more.

CHANTAL CALLS ME a day or so later. We’re both suffering from varying degrees of cabin fever induced by three days of rain. Malone hasn’t called me. Bastard. I remind myself that I don’t want him to call. “Sure, I’d love to go out,” I tell her. We agree to meet at Dewey’s for a few drinks. Knowing my low alcohol tolerance, I opt to walk, even though it’s still raining steadily.

I’ve decided that Malone is an indiscretion created by too many months unrelieved by human contact from a nonfamily member. Aside from Georgie and Colonel, Malone is the only male who’s touched me outside of Dad, Jonah and Will. I probably would have humped the eighty-year-old double amputee if I’d gone much longer.

“Hey, Dewey,” I call as I hang up my slicker.

“Hi, Maggie,” he calls. Without my asking, he pours me a glass of wine and brings it over to the booth where Chantal and I usually sit. “That nice Chantal joining you?” he asks.

“She’s not nice, Dewey,” I say, taking the glass. “She’s a wicked, wicked woman.”

“Don’t I know it,” he sighs. My laugh lands somewhere between irritation and amusement. Does every man in town under the age of one hundred and two have to be so damn smitten with Chantal? Do I have to be everyone’s surrogate daughter?

The red-haired temptress comes in, h*ps swaying, blouse revealing, lest anyone forget just how stacked she is. “Hi, Paul,” she sighs, rubbing past him as if we were trapped on a crowded subway car instead of in a nearly empty bar. “Paul, sweetie, could you bring me a martini, hon? Make it a cosmo, okay? My friend and I haven’t seen each other in ages.”

“You sure have a gift with men,” I observe dryly as Paul hurtles to the bar to do her bidding.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, batting her eyelashes. “Man, this rain! I’m climbing the walls! Tell me what’s new with you.”

I wrack my brain for something I wish to tell her and come up empty. “Not much. What about you?”

“Well, I had the most incredible sex the other night,” she purrs.

Me too, I almost say, then chide myself. That was just a fling, Maggie! Stop thinking about him. “Oh. Well. That’s very nice. Good for you.”

“Guess with who?” She leans forward, her beautiful dark eyes mischievous.

There’s a strange sinking feeling in my chest, like I swallowed a rock. “I—I don’t know, Chantal. Who?”

“Take a guess.”

“Malone?” I say, my throat tight.

She leans back in the booth. “Malone? No. Not Malone.”

Oh, thank God. I let out a deep breath. “Um…Dewey?”

She laughs. “No, not Dewey. That was just once, a couple of years ago, before he put on all that weight.” She drums her fingers on the table. “Any more guesses?” she asks.

“It better not be Jonah,” I warn.

“No, no, not your precious baby brother,” she answers. “You suck at guessing, so I’ll just have to tell you. Mickey Tatum.”

“The fire chief?” I blurt.

“Mmm-hmm. You know what they say about firemen,” she smiles. “And it’s true.”

I look away. “Actually, Chantal, I don’t know what they say.”

“Guess.”

“Can we not do this twenty questions thing? I don’t know.”

“Come on!” she implores. “Guess.”

Paul brings Chantal her drink, peeks down her lowcut, lacy blouse, squeezes her shoulder and leaves. She looks at me expectantly, smiling.

“Firemen do it hotter?” I guess resignedly.

“No, honey.”

“Um…firemen have longer hoses?”

“No. But that does seem to be the case.” She takes a sip of her pink drink. “Guess again.”

“I really don’t know, Chantal. Please stop making me guess.”

“They still know how to use a split lay.” Chantal laughs merrily.

“I don’t…I don’t know what that means,” I say, laughing in spite of myself. “And please don’t tell me.”

“Well, okay. But I joined the fire department, so say hello to the newest member of Gideon’s Cove’s bravest.”

Chantal launches into far too much detail about Mickey Tatum, who must be sixty if he’s a day. As he was my CCD teacher the year I made my confirmation, I’m not really comfortable hearing this. But Chantal is entertaining, that’s for sure. The bar grows fuller. Jonah comes in and waves, but he’s with a pretty young woman and can’t be bothered with his sister tonight. Some of his pals are there, Stevie, and Ray, who coowns the boat with Jonah. The regulars.

Chantal and I are discussing a movie we both want to see when Malone walks in, alone. No Zeta-Jones tonight. Good. He hangs up his coat, then glances around, sees me, and gives a little jerk of his chin. My smile turns to stone. That’s it? A chin jerk?

“Oh, Malone just came in,” Chantal says. She’s been documenting the arrival of every man here. “Let’s make him sit with us.” She slides out of her seat.

“No, no! You know what? Let’s not. Let’s just have, you know, girls night. Okay? No guys. Chantal?” But she’s already gone up to the bar. She slides her hand across Malone’s back and says something. I pretend to fumble in my purse for something, hoping he doesn’t think I sent her over. Damn. Malone smiles at her, a little, anyway, and I’m embarrassed at a sudden longing to have him smile at me, then immediately disgusted with myself for feeling that way. This is the guy who slept with you and ignored you, Maggie. The guy who may also be sleeping with someone prettier and younger than you. Ignore him back. Say nothing. I mean it.