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“I have,” she said. “That hasn’t stopped her from trying to change my mind. Now, tell me about you. Were you able to get a reservation?”
“My flight’s tomorrow,” Kelsey confirmed, then gave her the details.
“And your return flight?” Hannah asked.
Kelsey hesitated. “I just bought a one-way ticket in case I decide not to come back right away.”
“Kelsey!”
“It’s no big deal, Mom. I can always book the return flight as soon as I get there. Who knows? Maybe you’ll decide that you and Grandma Jenny can use an extra pair of hands.”
Hannah saw no point in arguing. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow, then. Have a safe flight, sweetie.”
“I will. Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Is it hard being there, you know, without your mom?”
Hannah wasn’t sure how to answer. If she stopped for a second and let herself think, she’d say it was incredibly difficult, which was one reason she’d let her grandmother persuade her to do all these renovations. It left little time for thinking, especially about her mother’s losing battle with cancer. And she had yet to walk into the suite of rooms that had been her mom’s. She’d spent too many hours in there right before she died.
“I don’t think I’ve let myself focus on that at all,” she admitted.
“How can you not think about it?” Kelsey asked. “She was so much a part of Seaview Inn. You must see her everywhere you look, like those old sand pails she collected. They looked like rusty junk to me, but she’d get all misty-eyed when she told me about how they reminded her of when she was a girl.”
Hannah choked back an unexpected sob. She could recall her mother’s excitement every time she came across one of the tin litho sand pails with their colorful images in one of the antique shops she haunted. Her eyes would light up as if she’d just recaptured a hundred old memories, all good ones. Hannah had deliberately avoided looking at the shelves that held the prized collection. Only now did she see how much of the past two days she’d spent in denial.
“She loved them, all right,” she said, when she could speak again.
“Oh, Mom, are you crying? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“I think I’ve just been pretending since I got here that everything was normal, that she was just away on a trip or something. I haven’t wanted to deal with the reality that she’s gone forever.”
“Maybe having me there will be a good thing, then, huh?” Kelsey said. “I can distract you.”
“Given the reason you’re coming, I’d say that’s a sure thing,” Hannah said wryly. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”
“Bye, Mom. Love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said slowly, and disconnected, only to have the phone immediately ring again. She was tempted not to answer it, but given the work crisis she’d missed yesterday, she didn’t want to risk another lecture from Dave about her inopportune absence. Glancing at the caller ID, though, she saw that it wasn’t Dave at all, but Sue Nelson, who’d been her best friend since Hannah had arrived in New York nearly twenty years ago.
“I want to know why I had to find out from your secretary that you’ve skipped town again,” Sue demanded when Hannah answered.
“Sorry. The trip came together pretty suddenly.”
“Jane said your grandmother was having a hard time coping without your mom. Is that why you went?”
“Pretty much. I’m hoping to convince her to sell the inn and move to a retirement community.”
Sue chuckled. She’d met Grandma Jenny and could imagine her reaction. “And how’s that going?” she asked.
Hannah laughed with her. “About like you’d expect. I didn’t even get the words out of my mouth before she was warning me off in no uncertain terms.”
“Then why aren’t you heading home? I’d think being there right now would be really hard. Besides, don’t you have a three-month cancer screening coming up?”
“I postponed it.”
“Hannah!” Sue protested. “You can’t do things like that. This is too important.”
“Don’t overreact. I only postponed it a couple of weeks. I’ll go in the day after I get back to New York.”
“Can I get that in writing? I know you’re dreading it.”
“Well, of course, I’m dreading it, but I’m not stupid. I know I can’t put it off indefinitely.”
“What’s the new date?”
“Why? Do you think I’m lying?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you, but that’s not why I’m asking. I want to put it on my calendar, so I can go with you. I told you when you first got diagnosed that you’re not going through any of this alone.”
Hannah’s eyes stung for the second time that night. “You’ve been wonderful and I will never be able to thank you enough,” she said. “But you’ve spent enough of your time babysitting me through surgery and chemo. I can go to one appointment on my own.”
“But why should you have to?” Sue asked. “Especially when we can go out afterward and splurge on an outrageously expensive dinner to celebrate that you’re just fine.”
“Hush. Don’t say things like that. It’s just asking for something to go wrong.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” Sue teased.
Hannah thought about how recent events had conspired to make her question that. “I’m reexamining my beliefs on that subject.”
“Oh?”
“Long story, and you and John must be about to have dinner.”
“He won’t mind waiting for a few minutes,” Sue said. “Tell me why you’re suddenly leery of black cats and walking under ladders.”
“It’s not about cats and ladders,” Hannah told her. “But trust me, bad things do come in threes.” She paused, then announced, “Kelsey’s pregnant.”
“Oh, my God, you’re kidding!”
“Not something I’d kid about,” Hannah said.
“No, I don’t suppose you would. When did she tell you?”
“Last night.”
“How did you react?”
“You know me. I’m a control freak. I ordered her to come down here before making any decisions. I need to see her. I want to see for myself that she’s okay.”
“And she’s coming?”
“Tomorrow,” Hannah confirmed.
“Okay, now tell me how you’re really feeling.”
“I’m mostly numb, to be perfectly honest,” Hannah replied. “I never expected this.”
“I doubt mothers ever do, unless their daughters are wild ones, which Kelsey definitely is not,” Sue said. “Is Kelsey okay or is she totally freaking out?”
“She sounded calm, but I know she’s falling apart. She’s definitely not thinking clearly. Right now her solution is to quit college and move back to New York with me.”
“Oh, boy! I’m amazed I didn’t hear your reaction to that all the way up here.”
“So am I,” Hannah said.
“Anything I can do?”
“Just knowing you’re there when I need to talk is enough,” Hannah told her.
“I could fly down there and mediate, if it would help,” she offered.
“I’d have to give you combat pay,” Hannah joked. “No, I’ll muddle through this. Just start shaking the martinis the second I get back to New York.”
“You’ve got it, and the minute you decide you need anything more, all you have to do is call.”
“Thanks, Sue. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Thick and thin, that was our deal all those years ago,” Sue reminded her, then added dryly, “Too bad some of my marriage vows didn’t last the way our friendship has.”
“Only because you had extraordinarily bad taste in men before you met John. He’s a keeper.”
“Yeah, I think so, too, which means I’d better get in there and feed him. We miss you, sweetie. Hurry home.”
“Thanks for calling.”
Hannah disconnected the call with a smile on her face. She had other friends in New York, including Dave and his wife, and plenty of acquaintances, but Sue Dyer Martinelli Nelson was the best. If Hannah had said she needed her in Florida, Sue would have been here by morning, no questions asked. Knowing that was almost as comforting as it would have been to be sitting on the porch with her right now, a shaker of martinis between them.
Chapter 3
The Seaview Inn looked like hell. Luke Stevens hadn’t seen the place for twenty years and it was showing every one of those years with its fading paint, untended lawn, and half a dozen posts missing from the railing that wound around the sprawling front porch. In fact, it looked a lot like he felt, as if it had been tossed aside, a victim of neglect.
If the assessment of his life sounded bitter, he figured he had a right. Like too many other men returning from Iraq to find their old lives in tatters, he’d spent months in a rehab hospital in Washington, then faced the fact that going back to the life he’d left in Atlanta wasn’t an option. His wife had filed for divorce two weeks before a car bomb had shattered his leg. The doctors had saved his leg, for which he’d be eternally grateful. Even so, he was a long way from being able to stand in an operating room doing the kind of orthopedic surgery that had been his specialty before he’d come out of military retirement and answered the army’s call for doctors. Yeah, he was bitter and not one bit apologetic about it.
Sitting in a wheelchair during his recovery, staring out at the snow that had blanketed Washington one January morning a couple of weeks back, he’d suddenly had a yearning for the sunshine and palm trees he hadn’t seen since leaving Seaview Key for college more than twenty years ago. Though his family had moved away from the island to live with his sister in Arizona, Seaview had continued to have a special place in his heart. It was home. It was where he’d fallen in love for the first time, where he’d learned to fish and swim, where he’d volunteered with the local rescue squad and discovered his passion for medicine. It was, he’d decided, the perfect place to heal.
There were no memories of Lisa, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, in Seaview, no images of his kids on the stretch of white sand there. After being gone for so long, he could only hope that no one there would remember him all that well. Most of the kids in his class had fled, chasing dreams of more excitement than the tiny town could offer. If he was right about that, there would be no pitying looks to bear, no questions to be answered, just the peace and quiet he craved while he figured out what to do with the rest of his life.
Twenty years ago, there had been only one place to stay on the island, Seaview Inn, a sprawling bed-and-breakfast run for three generations by the Matthews family. Hannah had been in his class, and like the rest of them, she’d been eager to flee. He had an image of a quiet, studious girl whose face lit up when she laughed, which was all too seldom. She’d been best friends with Abby Dawson, his first love, so they’d spent a lot of time on the inn’s front porch, rocking for hours and talking about the future while sea breezes stirred the palm trees and stars sparkled like diamond chips scattered across black velvet.
He shook his head, struck by how simple life had been back then. His biggest problem had been trying to figure out how to rid Abby of her bra without getting slapped. He’d finally mastered the technique by the end of summer. He grinned as he thought of how well that skill had served him in college.
Once they’d all left for college, though, distance had taken its toll, and they’d lost touch. He’d met Lisa and stepped into his future, Seaview Key all but forgotten until recently.
With one call to Information, he’d found the number for the inn, but it had taken him days to get through to anyone. He’d found it odd and discouraging that there didn’t even seem to be an answering machine, but he’d persisted just the same, unwilling to give up on the only plan that had appealed to him in months.
When the phone had finally been answered, it was by a woman who sounded ancient and annoyed. “What do you want?” she’d demanded without so much as a pleasant hello.
“Is this Seaview Inn?”
“That’s the number you dialed, isn’t it?”
He’d grinned despite her tone. Clearly old Jenny Matthews was having a bad day. He could relate.
“It certainly is,” he agreed. “I was hoping to reserve a room.”
“We’re closed.”
Luke decided to try another approach. “Mrs. Matthews, this is Luke Stevens. I don’t know if you remember me—”
“My mind’s not gone yet,” she snapped. “Of course, I remember you. You’re Mark and Stella’s boy. Used to hang around here with that Dawson girl. She was all wrong for you, by the way. I sure as heck hope you had the good sense not to marry her.”
“I don’t know how much good sense was involved, but we didn’t get married,” he said, impressed by her memory.
“Good. Last I heard she was working in some bar up in Pensacola and hanging out with a rowdy crowd. Bikers, I suspect.”
Luke chuckled despite himself. The last he’d heard, Abby had owned a restaurant in Pensacola and been married to a minister. He saw no need to debate the point with Mrs. Matthews. There would be plenty of time to settle the matter when he saw her.
“You said you’re closed right now,” he said, trying to get back to the point. “How soon will you be reopening?”
“That depends on Hannah.”
Luke didn’t even try to hide his surprise. “Hannah’s still in Seaview?”
“No, Hannah’s in New York, but I’m working on that. Once I get her back here, I figure I can convince her to stay. After that it’ll take a couple of weeks to whip this place into shape for guests.”
“I could help with that,” he offered. “I don’t know what you need, but I can manage some odd jobs for you.”
“Not if you’re a guest, you can’t,” she responded, sounding scandalized.
“I don’t mind. It’ll be good to do something useful. If you feel strongly about it, you can give me a break on your rates. I hope to be there for a few weeks at least.”
She was silent for so long, he thought she was going to refuse, but then she asked, “When would you be coming?”
“The first week of February, if that would be okay with you,” he said.
“Perfect,” she muttered, more to herself than him. “Okay, Luke Stevens, you have yourself a deal and a reservation. You might have a fight on your hands with Hannah, but I imagine you’ll be able to handle her. Goodbye.”
