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“In a minute. I just have to find some stuff I stashed in this filing cabinet—plans for the fall festival weekends. Those start next weekend, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to need twenty-five-hour days to get everything ready.”
“You’ll be ready. I’ve seen you pull off some amazing things this summer.”
“Thanks.” I can use all the encouragement I can get.
Haley lingered in the doorway, combing her fingers through her bangs and frowning. “I’m thinking of getting blond highlights because I’m tired of my one-color hair. What do you think?”
Alice closed the filing drawer. “No way. If you just get highlights on top of your dark hair, you’ll look like a baby skunk.”
“Oh,” the younger girl said, her smile fading.
“A very cute baby skunk,” Alice said quickly. “But if you want a change, I think you should go with layers.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Haley said.
“Or a Starlight Point tattoo,” Alice said, grinning. “Someplace really obvious.”
Haley shook her head. “Very funny.”
“You asked. I think, in your heart, you probably thought it was a bad idea before you even heard my opinion.”
“At least I know that if I do something drastic and it looks awful, I’m sure you would tell me the truth.”
“I would. Unless it’s a tattoo—those are permanent. I’d tell you the truth if it was something you could fix.”
Haley smiled and crossed the hall to deliver Nate’s lunch. She and Nate laughed and talked for a while before Haley finally said goodbye. Of course she was trying to make a good impression on Nate—she wanted to become a public relations media consultant. And Nate was charming and pleasant when he wanted to be. Because he worked in PR, he knew how to make things look and sound good.
And, she had to admit, he still looked good, unchanged by the years except for a little more muscle and maturity in his expression. Tall with dark hair and eyes, he could easily win people over, which meant they could be working together a long, long time. There was no way to avoid the problem, and she should be honest with herself, march across the hall and...say something to Nate.
Instead, she sighed, squirted some sanitizer on her hands and sat down at her desk to eat. Maybe lunch would fuel her up to face what she had to. She rolled the sandwich over and read the name written in black marker on the package. Nate.
Alice groaned and closed her eyes. She could eat Nate’s sandwich, which, according to the wrapper, was ham, mustard and lettuce. That would mean giving up her favorite: turkey, provolone and pickles. Or she could bravely march across the hallway and trade with him.
“I believe this is yours.”
She dropped the sandwich and looked up. Nate leaned on her office door, a sandwich in his hand. He had beaten her to it, and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Instead of speaking, Alice held up the item he’d come for. He crossed her small office, took his sandwich and laid hers in front of her without a word.
“Thank you,” she said.
Nate was almost to the door, but he paused and half turned. “You’re welcome. I know you hate mustard.”
He slipped into the hallway, leaving her no chance to respond. It was just mustard, of course, but the fact he remembered... That was going to make it twice as hard to work with the man she’d chosen not to marry only hours before their own wedding.
* * *
“I USED TO love pumpkin pie,” Henry said. “But I don’t think I can ever enjoy it again after this.”
Virginia laughed. “It’s not so bad. If we take enough painkillers tonight, we’ll live to do this all over again tomorrow.”
She took a small pumpkin from a wagon and tossed it to Henry. He walked to a flowerbed, glanced at a color-coded map and placed it beside a green squash.
Nearby, the midway fountain had been transformed into an autumn display of colors and textures. All summer long, refreshing spray from the light blue splash pad tempted children to play in the water and cooled the air for people passing by. The water was turned off for the fall festival, though, and a giant inflatable pumpkin crouched over the area. Children could run through the pumpkin’s grinning mouth while their parents rested on the benches circling it.
In addition to the hay bales and pumpkins artfully placed around the seating area, Virginia and Henry were laying out various sizes and colors of pumpkins and squash in the flowerbed. When completed, the vegetables would create a fall landscape scene, but it took attention to detail. It reminded Virginia of the paint-by-number projects she’d done with her children during long, snowy Michigan winters.
“I better look at the diagram again,” Henry said. “I don’t want our artwork to look like a couple of teenagers dashed it together so they could quit early.”
“Nothing against the kids,” Virginia said, “but old age does have its advantages.”
Henry stepped close and stood over Virginia, blocking the sun and smiling down at her. Small wrinkles around his eyes were accentuated by the smile, and she noticed one white hair mixed with his blond eyebrows.
“We are not old,” he said. “Especially not you.”
“Fifty-seven earlier this summer,” Virginia said. Henry stood so close she could smell his soap. It was clean and practical, just like the rest of him. He had a lean, straight build and walked with confidence, as if he were a man accustomed to responsibility. She’d noticed, though, that he was happy helping out however he could, and he seemed to take pride in executing the fall displays exactly as depicted on the directions. His skill was probably a result of following flight diagrams and paying attention to detail. It was also probably a relief, she thought, to fuss over gourds instead of turbulence after years of being responsible for hundreds and thousands of lives.
She’d felt a similar relief when she handed over Starlight Point to her children Jack, June and Evie. A grieving and shocked widow at the time, she hadn’t thought she could put one more thing on her plate, and she was confident her children were stronger than she was. In the five summers since her beloved Ford had succumbed to a heart attack, she’d seen for certain the strength of her three children.
And her own strength.
“I’m just a little closer to sixty than you are,” Henry said, drawing her back into their conversation. “But I feel like eighty after setting out straw bales and lifting pumpkins all day yesterday.”
“Is it still better than sitting in the cockpit of a plane?”
Henry ran a hand through his hair and looked down the midway as if he were considering the question. Virginia wondered if he missed his old job now that he was retired. Without a family, did he feel lonely? She’d felt as if she’d been set adrift when Ford died, but she still had her children to give her a reason to get out of bed.
“Most days, yes. It’s nice not worrying about hijackers, lightning and schedules.”
“We have lightning and schedules here,” Virginia said.
“So I guess I feel right at home,” he replied, smiling. “Just don’t bring in any hijackers for my benefit.”
Virginia laid a paper copy of the decoration placement diagram on the wagon’s wood floor and smoothed it with both hands. “Alice saw to every detail,” she said.
Henry leaned over her shoulder to view the diagram, and Virginia felt the warmth from his body. There was a touch of autumn in the air, just enough to make his warmth welcome. It had been a long time since she’d thought about men and heat in the same sentence. Or noticed what a man smelled like. Or wondered if one found her attractive.
“Mom.”
Virginia turned so quickly she almost knocked Henry off his feet. Evie, blond ponytail making her look as if she were twelve and not twenty-five, handed a bottle of cold water to her and Henry. “I could get someone else to do all this physical labor.”
Virginia realized her heart was racing. Was it the new awareness of Henry, a man with whom she’d worked all summer? Or was it this new consciousness being interrupted by her daughter—and making her feel guilty?
There was no reason she should feel guilty.
“You mean someone younger?” she asked Evie, keeping her tone light and playful.
Evie laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Maybe a little. Can I help it that I love my mother?” Evie put an arm around Virginia’s shoulders, which increased her distance from Henry. He stepped back, eyes on the ground. “And, besides,” Evie continued. “I don’t want you to wear yourself out. You have to save energy for Gladys.”
Virginia smiled at the thought of her new labrador.
Henry removed the cap from his water bottle and took a long drink. “Who’s Gladys?”
“My new dog.”
“New?” Henry asked.
“I had a dog named Betty for years,” Virginia said.
“Roughly one hundred years,” Evie added.
“She wasn’t that old,” Virginia protested, and then she laughed when Evie waggled her eyebrows at Henry. “Fine, she was fourteen but she was wonderful.”
Evie straightened her smirk into a neutral expression. “She had many wonderful qualities in addition to her less wonderful ones.”
“Don’t we all?” Henry asked. “So is your new dog—?”
“Gladys,” Virginia supplied.
“Gladys. Is she a puppy?”
Virginia shook her head. “She’s about four or five.” She’d given serious thought to a litter of puppies curled into a ball at the humane society, but then Gladys had stolen her heart.
A chocolate lab with a few years under her belt, her soulful eyes had looked deep into Virginia’s own and forged a connection. Virginia had signed the paperwork immediately and driven to her small house on the old road adjoining Starlight Point, a warm nose on her shoulder the whole way. It was nice having another living soul in the house again after being alone so long. In the few days they’d been together, she’d taken Gladys for a morning walk through Starlight Point before it opened for the day, two romps on the beachs and one trip to the pet-friendly supply store in Bayside.
“And she was already saddled with the name Gladys,” Evie said. “Mom didn’t pick that one.”
“You could probably change it,” Henry said. “Maybe to something that rhymes with Gladys so it doesn’t confuse her.” Virginia and Evie swung their heads in unison to stare at Henry and he held up both hands. “Don’t ask me to think of something that rhymes with that.”
“Already tried it. My brother thought of a few suggestions, but we had to reject them.”
“I’ll use my imagination,” Henry said. “I’ve never had a dog, couldn’t have one because I was never home. Wouldn’t have been fair.”
Virginia noticed her daughter’s look of confusion and it occurred to her that she knew a substantial lot about Henry, but Evie did not. Virginia and Henry had worked together most of the summer, grilling hot dogs on the boardwalk, handing out prizes at employee game nights and manning a table at a season pass holder appreciation night. He’d shared stories of his early years flying for the air force and then his twenty-five-year career as a commercial airline pilot. While Virginia had devoted her life to Starlight Point, Henry had been all over the world.
“Why weren’t you ever home?” Evie asked.
Virginia could have answered the question for him, but she listened instead while he gave Evie an account of his years in the air, his retirement and his move home to Bayside where he kept busy working at Starlight Point.
“And what do you do when you’re not judging beautiful baby contests and keeping my mother out of trouble?” Evie asked.
“Nothing,” Henry joked. “That’s a full-time job. But I do have a 1960 Chevy pickup I’m restoring. It’s how I avoid fixing the porch door at my house. I hate doing home improvements.”
“Which is why I live in a condo,” Evie said. “I see now why you’ve never had a dog, and you probably never found time to have a dozen children either.”
“No children,” Henry said. “My brother and sister have kids and grandkids now, so I’ve enjoyed being an uncle. I show up with presents on special occasions, and I’ve been lucky enough to give free plane tickets to my nieces and nephews for their honeymoons. I can’t complain.”
Virginia thought of her honeymoon with Ford more than thirty years earlier. He’d sunk all his money into buying Starlight Point from a previous owner who’d fallen on difficult times, so their honeymoon did not involve a flight to a tropical paradise. They’d honeymooned right in the Lake Breeze Hotel. It had been substantially renovated just recently, but she still thought of her late husband when she walked through the doors into the lobby. He’d loved that hotel, just as he’d loved Starlight Point.
She hoped he’d be happy if he could somehow see it now under the expert guidance of their children. They’d built a marina, restored the theaters and hotel and added numerous special events such as the fall festival unfolding around them right now.
“Thanks for the water,” Henry told Evie. “I’ll get back to work.”
As Henry picked up two pumpkins and walked over to one of the displays to tuck them in, Virginia took a close look at her youngest daughter. Her cheeks were pink and eyes bright. It was a mild autumn day, but not warm enough to bring color to Evie’s cheeks.
“I have to tell you something,” she said quietly once Henry was out of earshot.
Virginia guessed the news, but she let her daughter continue.
“I’m pregnant,” Evie announced. Her feet practically danced on the pavement when she said it. Virginia pulled her close as tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh, honey, I’m so happy!”
“We are, too. Due in March. It’s still early, but I had to tell you first before everyone else finds out.”
“That should be in about fifteen minutes,” Virginia said. “And how are you feeling? Are you okay?”
“Great,” Evie said. “A little yucky this morning before I got going, but I feel fine as long as I keep moving and focused.”
“You’ll get to take a nice break when this place closes. Although not as long as usual with the fall and winter events going on.”
“I’m worried about being a mom and running this place,” Evie confided. “Jack and June have done it, though, so I hope it’ll be okay.”
“It’ll be better than okay,” Virginia said. “Remember, you have help. And you’ll have a beautiful son or daughter by next summer.” She hugged her daughter again, unwilling to let her go for another moment.
“I should get back to the office,” Evie said. “And I’ll see if I can find June on my way there.”
“Let’s have a celebration dinner tonight,” Virginia said. “My place—and don’t worry, I’ll order something instead of cooking.”
“I’d love that. And Scott will be very happy you’re not risking a kitchen fire. You know what a worrier he is.”
Virginia watched Evie walk away, her thoughts miles from the pumpkins she was supposed to be helping Henry arrange. She’d been so happy when Evie found true love with the new fire chief at Starlight Point. Scott and his sister Caroline had become part of their family, and Virginia was overjoyed to have more Christmas presents to buy every year.
Henry’s shoe scraped on concrete behind her, interrupting her thoughts about buying nursery gifts for Evie and Scott. She hoped to know by December whether to put pink or blue presents under the tree.
“Everything okay?” Henry asked.
Virginia turned to him and nodded, unashamed of the tears in her eyes. “Family announcement,” she said.
“None of my business,” Henry said, “but I hope it’s good news.”
Virginia almost felt hurt that Henry thought it was none of his business. They’d become friends, she thought, with every event they’d helped put together. She wouldn’t hesitate to share her good news with him—but did he consider her a friend or an employer?
A friend, she hoped. It would be public knowledge by noon the next day, and she felt no qualms sharing the excitement. She nodded. “The best kind. I’m going to have another grandchild in the spring.”
