The next day Emily woke early and went straight into town with a plan to make the people of Sunset Harbor like her. The impetus, of course, had been her desire to get them to vote for her permit; yet as she embarked, she realized she wanted to befriend them regardless. The permit was important, but whether she got it or not, what was more important to her was setting wrongs right. She finally realized how cold and standoffish she had been to everyone here, and she felt terrible. That wasn't her. Whether they voted for her or not, or became friends with her or not, she felt she had to make amends. It was time to leave the New York City Emily behind and become the friendly, small-town person she had been in her youth..
It all had to start, she realized, with Karen at the general store. She made a beeline for it and arrived just as Karen was unlocking it to begin the day.
"Oh," Karen said when she saw that it was Emily approaching. "Can you give me five minutes to get the till up and running?" Her tone wasn't hostile, but Karen was the sort of person who was overly friendly with everyone, so the lukewarm greeting was a clear sign of her dislike for Emily.
"Actually, I'm not here to buy anything," Emily said. "I wanted to speak to you."
Karen paused, her hand with the key still in the lock. "About what?"
She pushed the door open and Emily followed her inside. Karen began opening up the blinds straightaway, and buzzing around turning on lights, signs, and the till.
"Well," Emily said, following her around, feeling like she was being made to work for forgiveness, "I wanted to apologize to you. I think we got off on the wrong foot."
"We've been on the wrong foot for three months," Karen replied, quickly fastening one of the store's dark green aprons around her rotund midriff.
"I know," Emily replied. "I was a bit standoffish when I first got here because I'd just gone through a breakup and had quit my job and was kind of in a dark place. But now things are going great and I know you're an important part of this community so can we wipe the slate clean?"
Karen walked around the counter and gave Emily a look. Then finally she said, "I can but try."
"Great," Emily said brightly. "In that case, this is for you."
Karen narrowed her eyes as she looked at the small envelope Emily was holding out. She took it suspiciously. "What is it?"
"An invitation. I'm holding a dinner party at the house. I thought the townsfolk might be interested in seeing how I've renovated it. I'm going to cook, make cocktails. It will be fun."
Karen looked bemused but took the invitation nonetheless.
"Don't feel like you have to RSVP right away," Emily said. "Bye!"
She rushed out of the general store and headed along the streets toward her next location. As she walked, she realized how much she'd grown to love the town. It truly was beautiful, with its cute architecture, flower baskets, and tree-lined streets. The bunting was still up from the festival, making it look like a continuous celebration was taking place.
Emily's next stop was the gas station. She'd avoided it thus far, pretending to herself it was just because she hadn't needed to do much driving since arriving here, but in reality it was because she had not wanted to run into the man who'd given her a lift when she first arrived at Sunset Harbor. She'd been the rudest to him out of everyone but if she was trying to make good with the people of Sunset Harbor, he had to be on her guest list. Since he owned the only gas station in town, he was known by absolutely everyone. If she could get a good word in with him, maybe the rest of them would follow suit.
"Hi," she said tentatively as she opened the door to the shop and peeked her head around. "It's Birk, isn't it?"
"Ah," the man said. "If it isn't the mysterious stranger who appeared in the snowstorm never to be seen again."
"That's me," Emily said, noting that he seemed to be wearing exactly the same pair of greasy jeans as he had been the first time they'd met. "I've been here the whole time, actually."
"You have?" Birk said. "I figured you'd moved on months ago. You spent the whole winter in that drafty old house?"
"Yes," Emily said. "Only it's not drafty anymore. I've been fixing the place up." There was an air of pride in her tone.
"Well, I'll be damned," the man said. "Only," he added, "you might've waited before doing any big repairs. You know there's a storm coming tonight? Worst one to hit Maine in a hundred years."
"Oh no," Emily said. She hadn't thought anything could harm her buoyant mood, but fate always seemed to throw things her way that would bring her crashing back down to reality. "I wanted to apologize for being rude when we first met. I don't think I ever properly thanked you for getting me out of such a dire situation. I was still in my New York mode, although that's no excuse. I hope you can forgive me."
"Don't mention it," Birk said. "I didn't do it for your thanks, I did it 'cause you needed help."
"I know," Emily replied. "But please accept my thanks all the same."
Birk nodded. He seemed like a prideful kind of man, one who didn't accept gratitude easily. "So are you planning on staying much longer?"
"Another three months if I can afford it," Emily said. "Although Trevor Mann on the zoning board is doing his hardest to get me evicted so he can take over the grounds."
At the mention of his name, Birk rolled his eyes. "Ugh, don't worry about Trevor Mann. He's run for mayor every year for the last thirty and no one's ever voted for him. Between you and me, I think he has a Napoleon complex."
Emily laughed. "Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better." She rummaged in her satchel and pulled out one of her party invitations. "Birk, I'm going to hold a dinner party up at the house for people in the town to come to. I don't suppose you and your wife would want to come?" She held the envelope out to him.
Birk looked at it, a little bemused. Emily wondered when the last time was that the man had been invited to a dinner party, or whether he ever had.
"Well, that's very kind of you," Birk said, taking the letter and slipping it into the big pocket of his jeans. "I think I might just come along. We love a celebration here. You might have noticed the bunting."
"I did," Emily replied. "I was at the harbor for the boat show. It was great."
"You came?" Birk said, looking even more bemused than he had before.
"Yup," Emily said with a smile. "Hey, I wonder if you'd be able to do me a favor? I need to hurry home if I want to stormproof the house before the evening but I've still got tons of invites to deliver. I don't suppose you'd be able to pass them on to the recipients when they come in for gas?"
She felt bad asking such a huge favor of Birk, but the impending storm was going to derail her plan for handing out the invitations. There definitely wasn't time to hand them out individually to each person she wanted to attend the party. But if she didn't get home and prepare the house for the storm, there wouldn't be anywhere for her to host a party for the townsfolk anyway!
Birk let out a big belly laugh. If he hadn't been invited to a dinner party for years, he certainly hadn't been integral to one's organization before! "Well, let me see?" Who's on your list?" Emily handed him the envelopes and he thumbed through. "Dr. Patel, yes she'll be in after her shift. Cynthia from the bookstore, Charles and Barbara Bradshaw, yes, yes, all these people will be in sooner or later." He looked up and smiled. "I can hand these out for you."
"Thank you so much, Birk," Emily said. "I owe you one. See you around?"
Birk waved as she turned to leave then let out one of his small chuckles as he looked through the delicate party invitations she'd entrusted to him. "Oh, Emily. Why don't you put one of these up on the town bulletin board? Most folks look it over on a daily basis. You'll get more guests that way as well, since there's only a select few here. Assuming you want more guests."
"I do!" Emily exclaimed. "I want to make good with as many people as possible. I feel like I haven't integrated with you guys at all, and I really want to get to know you all. Make some friends here."
Birk looked touched, although he was doing his best to hide his emotion. "Well, doing up that old house is certainly one way of going about it. Anybody around here would want to see the fixed up house."
"Okay. I'll put up a flyer on the bulletin board then if you think it will help. Thanks, Birk." Emily was grateful that he was helping her out. Just like when he'd picked her up that night in the snowstorm all those months ago, he was willing to go out of his way to help someone else. She smiled to herself, looking forward to getting to know him better.
"Don't be a stranger, you hear me?" Birk added as she slipped through the door.
"I won't!" Emily called back inside before shutting the door.
She rushed up to the town bulletin board and grabbed a pen and piece of paper, then along with the other notices on the board, she wrote up a flyer for her party and pinned it up on the board. She just prayed that whoever came had the courtesy to RSVP to the invite so at the very least she'd know how many people she needed to cook for.
Once the invite was up, she jumped in her car and headed home to warn Daniel of the impending storm and to prepare the house for its arrival.
She found him in the ballroom. It was starting to look amazing in there. The Tiffany windows made colors streak across the walls, which were made even more beautiful, if such a thing was possible, by the crystal chandelier they had cleaned and hung up. Walking into the ballroom felt like stepping into the deep blue sea, into a dreamland.
"I just heard from town that there's a bad storm coming," Emily told Daniel.
He stopped what he was doing. "How bad?"
"What do you mean how bad?" Emily said, exasperated.
"I mean is it going to be 'batten down the hatches' bad?"
"I think so," she said.
"Okay. We should board up the windows."
It felt strange to Emily, putting the plywood back up over the windows when three months earlier they'd worked together to remove them. So much had changed since then between them. Working on the house together had bonded them. Their shared love of the place had pulled them together. That, and the pain they both shared over the disappearance of Emily's father.
Once the house was ready, and the first fat raindrops began to splotch on the ground, Emily noticed that Daniel kept peering out of a gap in the plywood.
"You're not thinking of going back to the carriage house, are you?" she asked. "Because this house is way sturdier. It must have already survived a bad storm or two in its time. Not like your flimsy little carriage house."
"My carriage house is not flimsy," Daniel contested with a smirk.
Just then, the heavens opened and a sheet of rain began to thunder down on the house. The sound was phenomenal, like pounding drums.
"Wow," Emily said, raising her eyebrows. "I've never heard anything like that before."
The percussion of rain was accompanied by a sudden gust of screaming wind. Daniel peered out the gap again and Emily suddenly realized that he was looking over at the barn.
"You're worried about the darkroom, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yeah," Daniel replied with a sigh. "It's funny. I haven't been in there for years but the thought of it being destroyed by the storm makes me sad."
Suddenly, Emily remembered the stray dog she'd met when she'd been in there. "Oh my God!" she cried.
Daniel looked at her, concerned. "What's wrong?"
"There's a dog, a stray who lives in the barn. We can't leave it out in the storm! What if the barn comes down and crushes him?" Emily began to panic at the thought.
"It's okay," Daniel said. "I'll go get him. You stay here."
"No," Emily said, tugging on his arm. "You shouldn't go out there."
"Then you want to leave the dog?"
Emily was torn. She didn't want Daniel to put himself in any danger, but at the same time she couldn't leave the helpless dog out there in the storm.
"Let's get the dog," Emily replied. "But I'm coming with you."
Emily found some raincoats and boots and the two of them suited up. As Emily opened the back door a bolt of lightning cracked through the sky. She gasped at the magnitude of it, then heard the enormous rumble of thunder in the air.
"I think it's right over us," she called back to Daniel, her voice eaten up by the roar of the storm.
"Then we've picked a great time to head out into it!" came his sarcastic response.
The two of them trudged across the lawn, churning the neatly manicured grass into mud. Emily knew how much Daniel cared about his yard and knew it must be killing him to know he was damaging it with every one of his heavy footsteps.
As the rain lashed against Emily's face, making it sting, a flash of a memory hit her with a force much stronger than the winds that whipped around her. She remembered being a very young girl, out with Charlotte in a storm. Their dad had warned them not to go too far from home, but Emily had persuaded her younger sister to go just a bit further. Then the storm had come and they'd gotten lost. They'd both been terrified, crying, wailing as the winds battered their little bodies. They'd been clinging to each other, their hands locked, but the rain had made them slippery and at some point she'd lost hold of Charlotte.
Emily froze on the spot as the memory flashed through her mind's eye. She felt like she was back there, reliving that moment when she'd been a terrified seven-year-old girl, remembering that awful expression on her dad's face when she'd told him Charlotte was gone, that she'd lost her out in the storm.
"Emily!" Daniel shouted, his voice almost entirely swallowed up by the wind. "Come on!"
She turned her attention back to the moment and followed Daniel.
Finally they made it to the barn, feeling like they'd trudged across a vast swampy wilderness to get there. The roof had already been blown off by the force of the wind and Emily didn't have much hope for the rest of it.
She showed Daniel the hole and together they squeezed inside. Rain continued to lash on them through the gaping exposed roof and Emily looked around to see that the barn was filling with water.
"Where did you find the dog?" Daniel called to Emily. Despite the raincoat he looked like he was soaked to the bone, and his hair stuck to his face in tendrils.
"It was over here," she said, beckoning to the dark corner of the barn where she'd seen the dog's head when she left it.
But when they got to the place Emily thought the dog would be, they were met with a surprise.
"Oh my god," Emily squealed. "Puppies!"
Daniel's eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the pink, naked, writhing pups. They were newborn, possibly even less than a day old.
"What are we going to do with them all?" Daniel said, his eyes as round as moons.
"Put them in our pockets?" Emily replied.
There were five puppies in all. They popped one in each pocket and then Emily cradled the runt in her hands. Daniel saw to the mama dog, who was snapping at them both for having disturbed her puppies.
The walls of the barn were shaking as they walked back to the hole with the squirming puppies in their pockets.
As they walked back through the barn, Emily could see the damage the rain was doing to everything inside, and she realized that it would surely be destroyed-the boxes of her father's photo albums, Daniel's teenage photography, the aged equipment that might be worth something to a collector. The thought broke her heart. Though she'd already taken one box into the main house, there were still three more filled with her dad's photo albums inside the barn. She couldn't bear to lose all those precious memories.
Against better sense, Emily rushed over to where she'd found the stack of boxes. She knew that there was a mixture of Daniel's pictures and her dad's in the boxes, and the top one she found was one filled with her dad's photo albums. She popped the runt on the top of the box and heaved it into her arms.
"Emily," Daniel called. "What are you doing? We need to get out before this whole place falls down!"
"I'm coming," she called back. "I just don't want to leave them."
She tried to find a way to take another box, stacking it below the first and wedging them both between her chin, but it was too heavy and cumbersome. There was no way she would be able to rescue all the boxes of photographs.
Daniel came over. He set the mama dog onto the floor, then tied a leash for her from some rope. Then he grabbed two more boxes of Emily's family photos. They now had all three of her dad's remaining boxes of photographs, but not a single one of Daniel's.
"What about yours?" Emily cried.
"Yours are more important," Daniel replied stoically.
"Only for me," Emily replied. "What about-"
Before she could finish her sentence the barn made a terrifying creaking noise.
"Come on," Daniel said. "We have to go."
Emily didn't get the chance to protest. Daniel was already charging from the barn, his arms laden with her precious family photographs at the expense of his own. His sacrifice touched her and she couldn't help wondering why he would go out of his way to put her needs above his own.
As they ducked back out through the gap in the barn, the rain lashed against them fiercer than ever. Emily could hardly move the wind was so strong. She battled against it, making her way slowly across the lawn.
Suddenly, an almighty crash came from behind. Emily squealed with shock and looked back to see that the large oak tree at the side of the property had ripped out of the ground and smashed into the barn. Had the tree fallen just a minute earlier, they would both have been crushed.
"That was a little bit close for comfort," Daniel yelled. "We'd better get back inside as quickly as we can."
They made it across the lawn and to the back door. When Emily pulled it open, the wind ripped it off its hinges and flung it far across the yard.
"Quick, into the living room," Emily said, shutting the door that separated the kitchen from the living room.
She was dripping wet and making huge streaks of rain water across the floorboards. They went to the living room and put the dog and its puppies on the rug beside the hearth.
"Can you start a fire?" Emily asked Daniel. "They must be freezing." She rubbed her hands together to get the circulation going again. "I know I am."
Without a single complaint, Daniel got straight to work. A moment later a blazing fire warmed the room.
Emily helped the puppies find their mama. One by one they began to suckle, relaxing into their new environment. But one of the puppies didn't join in.
"I think this one's sick," Emily said concerned.
"It's the runt," Daniel said. "It probably won't make it through the night."
Emily felt tearful at the thought. "What are we going to do with them all?" she said.
"I'll rebuild the barn for them."
Emily laughed in mock derision. "You've never had a pet before, have you?"
"How did you guess?" Daniel replied jovially.
Suddenly, Emily noticed that there was blood on Daniel's top. It was coming from a gash in his forehead.
"Daniel, you're bleeding!" she cried.
Daniel touched his forehead then looked at the blood on his fingers. "I think I was snagged by one of the branches. It's nothing, just a superficial wound."
"Let me put something on it so it doesn't get infected."
Emily went into the kitchen to search for the first-aid kit. Thanks to the wind coming in through the space where the back door used to be, it was much harder to move around the kitchen than she thought it would be. Wind was racing around the room, throwing any item not bolted down to the ground all over the place. Emily tried not to think of the devastation or how much it would cost to fix.
Finally she found the first-aid kit and went back to the living room.
The mama dog had stopped whimpering and all of the puppies were feeding except for the runt. Daniel was holding it in his hands, trying to coax it to feed. Something about the sight of him made her heart stir. Daniel continued to surprise her-from his ability to cook, to his fine taste in music, his talented guitar playing, and his handiness with a hammer to this, his gentle care over a helpless creature.
"No luck?" Emily asked.
He shook his head. "It's not looking good for the little guy."
"We should name it," Emily said. "It shouldn't die without a name."
"We don't know whether it's a boy or girl."
"Then we should call it something gender neutral."
"What, like Alex?" Daniel said, frowning with confusion.
Emily laughed. "No, I meant more like Rain."
Daniel shrugged. "Rain. That works." He put Rain back with the other pups. They were all clambering to be close to their mom, and the runt kept getting pushed out. "What about the rest of them?"
"Well," Emily said. "How about Storm, Cloud, Wind, and Thunder."
Daniel grinned. "Very appropriate. And the mama?"
"Why don't you name her?" Emily said. She'd already gotten to name all the puppies.
Daniel stroked the mama dog's head. She made a content sound. "How about Mogsy?"
Emily burst out laughing. "That's not very on theme!"
Daniel just shrugged. "It's my choice, right? I choose Mogsy."
Emily smirked. "Sure. Your choice. Mogsy it is. Now, let me look at that wound."
She sat on the couch, guiding Daniel's head toward her with gentle fingers. She swept the hair from his brow and began to disinfect the gash across his forehead. He was right in that it wasn't deep, but it was bleeding profusely. Emily used several Band-Aids to hold the wound together.
"If you're lucky," she said, sticking another piece on, "you'll have a cool scar."
Daniel smirked. "Great. Girls love scars, right?"
Emily laughed. She stuck the last strip in place. But instead of moving away, her fingers lingered there, against his flesh. She swept a stray piece of hair away from his eyes, then traced her fingertips down the contour of his face, down to his lips.
Daniel's eyes smoldered into hers. He reached up and took her hand then pressed a kiss into her palm.
He grabbed her then, pulling her down from the settee and into his lap. Their drenched clothes pressed together as he pressed his mouth into hers. Her hands roved all over him, feeling every part of him. The heat between them ignited as they peeled one another's wet clothing from their bodies, then sunk against one another, moving in a harmonious rhythm, their minds so consumed with one another that they no longer noticed the storm that raged outside.
