LITMIR.BIZ

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of town. The Mexican restaurant was better than scarfing down fast food, but at this point he didn’t much care. Zach decided he’d order a couple of tacos and eat them in the car.

      As he stepped up to the counter, he noticed a woman sitting by herself at a table. He didn’t think anything of it until he realized she looked familiar. Turning, he gave her a second glance.

      “Janice?”

      “Mr. Cox, what are you doing here? I mean—I didn’t know you ate here.”

      “I do every now and then,” he said. The teenage girl working the counter hurried over to take his order. Zach examined the menu and decided on a chili rel-leno and a cold drink. While he waited for his meal, he sauntered back to where Janice sat.

      “What brings you to the Taco Shack on a Tuesday night?”

      She looked sweet and pretty when she smiled up at him. “I’m celebrating my raise.”

      “By yourself?”

      She nodded. “My ex-husband has our son on Tuesday nights, and I was too excited to go home and sit in front of the television all by myself.”

      Zach’s order came a few minutes later, and he went to collect it. “Do you mind if I join you?”

      “No. I mean, that would be great.”

      Zach lingered over his dinner and they both ordered coffee afterward. The tension that had been with him all evening dissolved and he found himself laughing and enjoying this visit.

      When Zach finally returned to the house it was almost ten. Rosie was in bed, pretending to be asleep. She lay on her side, her back to him. He stared at her for a moment and debated whether he should apologize. No, he mused, he was finished apologizing to his wife. She was the one who needed to make amends. But if she wanted to give him the cold shoulder, that was fine with him.

      Jack sat at his desk at The Cedar Cove Chronicle and stared at his computer monitor. The cursor blinked accusingly back at him from a screen that was almost blank. This article about the bond issue for the local park should have been finished two days ago. Jack didn’t lack an opinion on the subject. He had plenty to say, and he’d write it out in fine form, just as soon as he chased Olivia from his thoughts.

      It’d been almost a month since he’d canceled her birthday dinner. These had to be the longest thirty days of his life. The fact that Eric was living with him had complicated everything. His routine, his hard-won peace of mind, his productivity had been shattered all to hell.

      This was what Jack got for dwelling on life’s regrets. He wanted to be a good father to Eric; he longed to make up for the lost years, and here was the opportunity. Unfortunately, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

      Naturally Eric would decide he needed a father at the same time Jack was falling in love and wanted to spend every spare moment with Olivia Lockhart. The first week Eric was with him, Jack had spent hour after hour listening to his son’s woes. It seemed Eric had at least fifteen years of hurt and doubt that he needed to release. Patiently Jack had listened and when he could, he offered comfort and advice.

      When Jack eventually did have a chance, he’d phoned Olivia, dying to see her, dying to take a break from his son’s troubles. He’d hoped that an hour or two with Olivia would rejuvenate his spirits. Instead he’d hit rock bottom when she wasn’t home. He waited around all night for her to return his call. She didn’t until the next morning, and by then he’d left to cover the Christmas Bazaar for the newspaper’s Neighbors Section.

      They finally did connect, early the following week, and Jack noticed that her feelings for him appeared to be cooling. It wasn’t anything she said, exactly. Her son-in-law was back from Alaska, and she was working with Charlotte on putting together a wedding reception for Seth and Justine.

      Every time he’d talked to Olivia since then, she was busy. Too busy to see him. Even their Tuesday night get-togethers had fallen by the wayside. Just how much trouble could a wedding reception really be? It seemed Olivia constantly needed to run somewhere or talk to someone. Someone other than Jack.

      The hustle and bustle of this wedding reception aside, what worried Jack was her changing attitude toward him. Yes, there was a decided cooling. Whenever they managed to chat, Jack braced himself, half expecting her to suggest they break it off. It was this expectation—the feeling that she was looking for a kind way to tell him to take a hike—that prevented him from giving her the bracelet. He was afraid she’d view the expensive gift as a means of manipulating her and so he’d held on to it, not knowing what else to do.

      The cursor on his screen continued to blink, and Jack wheeled his chair around, gazing out the window. This wasn’t going to work. He needed an AA meeting and a talk with his sponsor.

      He found a meeting near Bangor, but because he was in unfamiliar territory, he sat at the back of the room and listened to the speaker, who had over twenty years of sobriety. At the end of the session, when the group stood, joined hands and said the Lord’s Prayer followed by the Serenity Prayer, Jack’s voice rose and blended with the others. These people were family. They might be strangers but they all shared a problem that bonded them.

      On the drive back to the office, Jack stopped at Thyme and Tide, the bed-and-breakfast on the waterfront owned by his sponsor and friend, Bob Beldon, and his wife, Peggy.

      Bob was busy tinkering in the garage with one of his woodworking projects when Jack pulled into the driveway. Bob came out of the garage to meet him.

      “How’s it going?” Jack asked, not quite ready to launch into his reason for visiting.

      “Good. How about you?”

      Jack shrugged.

      Bob smiled knowingly. “I figure if you’re coming by to see me in the middle of the day, something’s up. Want to talk about it?”

      Jack sighed, grateful he didn’t need to lead into the subject delicately. “Have you got a few minutes?”

      “Sure. Come on in. Peggy’s visiting her sister, but I’m sure there’s still coffee in the pot.”

      Jack was grateful. He was feeling unsettled, and even after ten years without a drink, the urge still came, especially at times like this. The meetings helped, but talking to Bob would give him a sense of perspective. It’d been a long while since the cravings had hit this hard.

      “How are things with Eric?” Bob asked, heading into the kitchen. He paused on the back porch and removed his sweater, which he hung on a hook there. Then he led the way into the large, spacious room. Despite its size, the kitchen was warm and inviting, with its oak table, its woven rug on the polished floor and bunches of drying herbs by the window.

      “Eric’s still with me. He doesn’t like it any better than I do, but he’s stuck until he can work out this mess between him and Shelly.”

      “What’s going on with him and the girl?”

      The hell if Jack knew. Twice now, at Jack’s suggestion, Eric had phoned Shelly. Jack had made himself scarce, but it didn’t take a psychic to figure out that the conversations hadn’t gone well. Within minutes the calls were over, leaving Eric more depressed than ever.

      “I didn’t come to talk about Eric,” Jack told his friend. “I’ve got a problem with Olivia.”

      “What’s up?” Bob silently offered him coffee, which Jack refused. Apparently Bob thought better of it himself and reached inside the refrigerator for a cold soda. Jack declined that, as well.

      “I’m crazy about Olivia,” Jack admitted, although this wasn’t news to Bob, who’d encouraged the relationship from the first.

      “I know.” Bob opened the soda and leaned against the counter as he waited for Jack to continue.

      Jack remained standing, too. Soon he was pacing. “I used to think she felt the same way about me.”

      “What changed her mind?”

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