Dash shrugged. "I kinda hate the job anyway. Maybe I'll quit and do something else. Maybe I'll find my thing. I only took the job because it paid enough to help you out. I have enough saved to take care of you if I quit.
Mrs. Fitzgerald swatted her son on the arm. "Ow!"
"Listen," she said. "I appreciate that, but I didn't ask you to do that."
"But that's what sons do for their widowed mothers. That's the rule."
"Is it? I thought I was supposed to take care of my baby boy forever," she said with a smirk.
Dash laughed. "No, that's not how it works. I make sure all my people are taken care of. But what about you? I have questions for you, Ma."
Mrs. Fitzgerald studied her son's face. "She told you all about the reason behind the feud, didn't she?"
"I'd like to know why you never told me. All I ever knew was her great-grand-somebody stole a fortune from my great-grand-somebody, and nobody ever apologized for nothing. That was how Dad described it. All I knew was I was supposed to hate that family, but I wasn't sure why. But now that I know the truth, I think it's time to forget about those old hurts and move on, don't you?"
His mom looked at him skeptically. "You know, I only cared about it because your father carried the grudge around. We all tend to carry around this idea that people who have passed on were right about everything. We think we're honoring their memory when we don't identify their faults. But maybe you're right. Maybe it's all meaningless."
"It's not meaningless, Ma. It's just time to talk things out so we can give each other some grace."
Mrs. Fitzgerald reached over and patted her son's cheek. "Harper's a lucky girl."
"You've no idea how wrong you are about that. I'm the lucky one."
Chapter Nineteen
Harper
She had a boyfriend and a full-time job. Was this her life now? Was she settling down into normal life?
Ever since graduating high school, Harper had worked with her moms at the distillery and volunteered with a long list of community groups.
Then she began writing letters to the editor. So many that she was eventually an often-quoted source for TV and newspaper reporters who needed a source in the city's most struggling neighborhood. And then came the guest editorial. And then came the thing she never told anyone. Not her mothers, not her boss, and not Dash…yet. Then came the death threats in her social media DMs. And most recently, delivered to her home. She knew enough to take them seriously, so she did show them to the police. So far, they hadn't turned up any leads as to the source. One or two of the trolls in her DMs had turned out to be just that—trolls who didn't even live in Newcastle.
But Harper was Harper, and she refused to live in fear. She was smart about it. She varied her routes when she walked. She frequented establishments where she knew people'd surround her. Crow Bar always felt like the best place to frequent. It was almost always crowded and always secure, even when the customers got rowdy.
She'd never told Dash, but she went there because she felt safe. If she ever felt as if she was being followed, she would duck into Crow Bar and was snug as a bug.
If Dash knew all this, he would flip his lid.
But now that they were together, she knew she would have to tell him. And he would insist she start carrying a gun. Knowing him, he might quit one of his jobs just to keep his eyes on her full time.
The idea of that, even though ridiculous, made her smile as she parked her car at the public beach lot under the boardwalk.
She had an hour before she needed to report to work, and she needed to walk on the beach.
It was an unseasonably warm February day, and the sun was shining off the water.
Harper was a person who could never stop moving. When she wasn't working, volunteering, or meeting up with friends, she would just walk.
Her favorite place to walk was the Newcastle Pier, and sunrise was her favorite time. But knowing full well the depth and breadth of crime in this city, she varied her schedule. Some days she went at noon, sometimes at sunrise. Always when it was light out.
Instead of going to the pier on this day, she decided she needed to feel the sand between her toes.
Peeling off her sneakers and stuffing her socks into them, she considered whether she should carry them with her.
She decided to leave them where they were so she could walk freely without carrying smelly shoes. "If someone wants my old beat-up sneakers that badly, they can have them," she said out loud to no one.
The packed, damp sand felt cold, but soon she became used to the temperature as she walked on and forgot about it as her mind wandered.
A couple walking a dog strolled past her coming from the other direction. They smiled at her, if seeming a little hurried when the dog stopped to sniff Harper's outstretched hand. The woman looked a bit out of place for a morning stroll on the beach. Apart from not wearing enough warm layers, she wore expensive high-heeled boots, which hampered the woman's strides and left deep heel prints in the compacted, wet sand where they walked. How strange, Harper thought. Wearing heels while walking one's dog was already a risky choice. Heels on the beach is asking for a twisted ankle.
Then again, Harper never knew what she might see at the public beach. Newcastle was full of characters, and that was one of the things she loved about her town. She felt relatively safe there at the beach, with very few people out on a
