Meet Me in Barefoot Bay by Roxanne St. Claire

Author:Roxanne St. Claire [Claire, Rexanne St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter One

Fifteen Years Later

The situation had gone way past dire.

Will stood in the living room of his next-door neighbor’s house and surveyed the mess, the low, dull throbbing that had pounded at the base of his skull since he’d stopped by at lunchtime rapidly escalating into a screaming mother humper of a headache.

Son of a bitch, it was like a pack of wild dogs lived here instead of one confused, pathetic, and forgotten old man who couldn’t remember his own name.

“William!”

But he knew Will’s name and used it often, in that shaky, feeble voice that threaded down the hall right now.

“William, is that you?”

“It’s me, Guy.” On a sigh that shuddered through his whole body, Will stepped over a pile of magazines that had been torn into a million pieces—the new scrapbooking project, no doubt—and picked up a basket of yarn with threads and spools stuffed inside. He put it on a table next to the remnants of the sandwich Will had made Guy for lunch, then headed down the hall.

“I decided to clean out this old closet,” Guy called from one of the extra bedrooms.

This couldn’t be good.

Shit. Clothes were strewn everywhere: men’s suit jackets, women’s dresses, kids’ shorts, and a small mountain of worn shoes. Where the hell did he get all this crap? His wife had been dead ten years now. Hadn’t he cleaned out anything?

“Guy, what are you doing?” Will fought to keep any anger out of his tone. If he so much as raised his voice by one decibel, Guy cried like a baby, and that ripped Will’s heart into pieces.

“I saw a show called Clean House and got this idea.” Guy stood in a walk-in closet holding a pile of what looked to be old blue jeans. His glasses were crooked, his white hair tufted and messy, his blue knit pullover stained from something red. Punch or Red Zinger tea, probably.

He’d made tea? “Did you remember to turn the stove off?”

“I might have. I was really enjoying this show on that decorating channel. A woman gettin’ all in your face about cleaning up stuff.” He grinned, his lemony teeth a testament to years of stinking up the local sheriff’s office with the stench of Marlboros. And yet he lived while his wife had been the one buried by cancer. And his daughter…

Will pushed that thought out of his head.

“I think she was named Nicey. Smart lady.”

Will just stared at him. “Who are you talking about?

“The lady on TV,” Guy said. “She says the secret to happiness is a clean house.”

Will glanced around at the piles of crap. “Looks like you’re a long way from happiness in this house.”

“That’s the thing, Will! That’s the thing about the show. This crew comes in and takes your house apart, sells your stuff in a yard sale, and cleans it so everything is perfect.”

“Everything was perfect,” Will said, picking up a bright-yellow dress sized for a young girl. Had he ever even seen Jocelyn in this dress? “Why

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