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There was shouting from a cottage on the boardwalk, and then a door slammed.
“I'm going out for smokes.”
“What do I care?”
And Merle Highchurch walked down the path towards her; Lucretia recognizes him instantly, but she’s never seen the scowl he’s wearing.
“Take a picture, lady, it’ll last longer.”
He walked past her without a second glance, moving away as fast as his little legs will carry him.
Before today, she’s always enjoyed checking in on Merle. He loved the beach -- any beach -- so much, and she thought he could fit in so well with this community. So seeing him walking along the shore was a delight, even if she could never contact him directly. He’d gotten married, although she’d missed the wedding. Of course, being dwarves, it wasn’t the sort of affair she could just sneak into like she’d done with Magnus and Julia. On the other hand, watching Merle in a new relationship didn’t hurt quite so much.
Besides, it was an actual tourist town, a chance for her to unwind a little, dip her toes in the waves, lay in the sun, feel the breeze. Visiting Merle was her own little vacation, at least until today.
Lucretia walked up the path and knocked hesitantly on the door. The dwarven woman who answered the door had a weary look and red-rimmed eyes.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” Lucretia said.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” the other woman said, and started closing the door.
There was no reason she could think of to make Merle’s wife -- Hecuba? -- let her in or tell her more, and she can’t or won’t chase down Merle. For a moment, she considers just letting it go. On some level this is none of her business anymore.
Instead, she cast Charm Person.
“Mind if I come in? I’d like to know what’s the problem here.”
“C’mon in,” says the dwarven woman. “I’ll get you some ice tea.” She pulls glasses out of a piled-high sink, giving them a cursory wipe-down, then filling them out of a pitcher in the cooler. As she hands Lucretia a glass, she continues, “as for the problem , that’s simple. Merle Highchurch is the problem. Rude, lackadaisical, layabout Merle Highchurch.”
Hecuba has yet to sit down, instead pacing back and forth across the cluttered living room, while Lucretia is perched on the edge of a chair that feels as though it’s only tenuously held together.
“You know my sister set us up? Said he was part of the Rockseeker clan, at least a cousin. Rockseekers, that’s a good family! Can’t go wrong marrying into that clan. Responsible. Hard-working. Prosperous. Clever.” She set her tea down, having not even sipped it. “What cursed branch produced that man, I don’t even know. If I were superstitious…”
She stared off into space for a moment, then shook her head.
“If I were superstitious I’d say he was a changeling. Then again, fae aren’t usually known for messing with dwarves, so.” She laughed, sort of, and Lucretia sipped at her tea, having been shocked into total silence by this angry incisive dwarven woman. Then shocked again by the sweet freshness of the mint and ginger in the tea, by how good it was, how actually refreshing.
“This is delicious, thank you,” she said into the pause in Hecuba’s rant.
Hecuba’s face softened for a second.
“I guess Merle’s good for something.” She waved towards the far end of the room, where a wooden bench overflowed with tools and pots, the window above it crammed with plants of nearly every possible size and shape. “I mean, that’s pretty much all he cares about most days. Everyone said it’d be good to have a cleric around, but they didn’t figure on Merle Highchurch, the” -- her eyes darted to a door at the other end of the room, and her voice dropped to a rumbling whisper -- “ Plant. Fucker. Bad enough that he flirted -- badly, mind you -- with all the bridesmaids and my mother. But to seduce the actual flower arrangements? I was almost grateful that everyone got sick from bad deviled eggs.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “And to think, I thought he’d be a good father for my Mavis….”
She glanced at the door again; it was ajar now, and a dwarven girl stood there looking at them with wise sad eyes. Her bright red hair, the same color as her mother’s, was cropped into a bob, and she held an even smaller dwarf in her arms, a toddler or an infant. Any other moment, Lucretia would’ve been amazed and delighted to know that Merle had a child. Any other moment.
“Mavis, honey, why don’t you bring Mookie over here and go play outside,” said Hecuba. “Mama’s talking to this nice lady now.”
Mavis gave Lucretia a somewhat unsettling look, for a child of her age; it seemed to cut right through her.
“Is Merle coming back?” asked Mavis.
The flat angry look on Hecuba’s face was briefly replaced with sorrow.
“I don’t know, sweetie. Just go outside, ok?”
The girl handed over the younger child, then plucked a book off of a tilted bookshelf on her way out the door, giving Lucretia one last suspicious glance.
“What happened to Mavis’ father?” Lucretia asked, once the girl was gone.
“He….” Hecuba blinked rapidly, and Lucretia recognized the look of someone who’d lost loved ones in the Relic Wars. The face of Fischer’s static. “He was an adventurer,” she said softly, her face muffled in the baby’s scalp.
“Does Merle…? Is he bad with the children?”
Hecuba shrugged.
“He’s not good with them, but he doesn’t hurt them. I think” -- her brow furrowed -- “he wants to love them, but there’s just something in him that’s not quite right. Something missing? And I guess as long as that’s how he is….” She looked at Lucretia’s glass, which was almost empty. “You really drank that down. I could get you another, if you like.”
“Thank you so much, Hecuba. I think I should probably be going now. I hope…” Lucretia looked down at her hands, at the glass with its dregs of mint leaf swirling in the amber liquid, at the frayed carpet and uneven flooring of the beach cottage. “...I hope things work out.”
Lucretia stood and she left and she walked down to the ocean. She took off her shoes and walked as far into the waves as she could stand, letting the hem of her dress get soaked with salt water, and then up to her knees. Then she stood in the surf and let that sound crash around her. “Something missing.” She closed her eyes and thought about walking all the way into the ocean and not coming back, but instead she turned around, wrung out the hem of her dress, put on her shoes, and left the beach village for the last time.