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packed the brick building from April through October as they gobbled down lobster, clam chowder, and the Lobster Pot’s specialty, Heavenly Harbor Crab Cakes.
    Ayuh, the place was profitable, but managing it had been more difficult than the owners imagined. Since none of them lived in the area, they’d had to rely on local people to run the place, and since all the Heavenly Daze folk had their own businesses, the Lobster Pot managers and staff had always commuted from Wells or Ogunquit. On those rare days when the rough weather kept the ferry from running, the Lobster Pot couldn’t open, and a closed sign in the window created unhappy customers.
    Last summer the folks at Kremstock had hoped to solve their problem by hiring Buddy to manage the restaurant, but in less than six weeks he had managed to annoy all of his cooks and servers. By Columbus Day, at the end of the tourist season, all six remaining employees tossed in their aprons, collected their wages, and beat a path out the door, telling Buddy they wouldn’t be back come April.
    Management, Buddy figured, wasn’t his style . . . as long as it was someone else’s restaurant. But if the place belonged to him, surely things would be different.
    Satisfied that his loan papers were at least legible, Buddy folded the page and slid it into the preprinted envelope. The bigwigs at the Key Bank of Maine were about as likely to give him four hundred thousand dollars as they were to send him to the moon. This application was almost certainly a useless gesture, but it would earn him a few months grace in his sister’s eyes. As long as Dana and Mike thought he was trying to be responsible, they’d stay off his back about getting a job and finding a place of his own.
    Buddy closed his eyes as he licked the envelope. Dana and Mike would never understand him; they had been cut from different cloth. Ever since he was a kid, Buddy had known he was a loner. He didn’t fit in anywhere,
and the only person on Heavenly Daze who seemed to understand that was Yakov Smith, the man who lived in the attic apartment and helped Mike run his business.
    Yakov understood, Buddy suspicioned, because he was sort of a loner, too.
    From the window of his bedroom on the third floor, Yakov leaned on the sill and watched as Buddy hunched inside his coat and walked west on Main Street. Butch, the Klackenbushes’ bulldog, pranced at his side, eager to go out with a member of the family.
    As Yakov studied the pair, he noticed the edge of a rectangular envelope protruding from Buddy’s pocket, and he knew the envelope contained the loan application— indeed, the entire family knew, because Buddy had talked of nothing else for the last week. Ever since New Year’s, when Mike sat Buddy down for a man-to-man and told him he needed to find some sort of fittin’ work, Buddy had turned his occasional references to the Lobster Pot into a full-fledged campaign, going so far as to venture into Ogunquit and pick up a loan application at the Key Bank of Maine.
    Just last night, as the four of them sat at dinner, Buddy announced that he had nearly finished filling out the forms. “I’ve listed several of your neighbors as references,” he said, looking at his sister with an uplifted brow. “I’m hoping that won’t be a problem.”
    Dana shrugged and passed the mashed potatoes. “I think everybody here likes you, Buddy. But maybe you should have listed some people who knew you from one of your other jobs.”
    Buddy didn’t respond to that comment, and Yakov knew why. Earlier, on a quiet afternoon when Yakov found Buddy waiting for the ferry, the young man had explained that he’d never held a job for longer than six months. “Wanderlust, that’s what I’ve got,” he had said, squinting out at the horizon. “I don’t know how long I’ll be staying here, either. I think I was born under a wanderin’