by Maisey Yates
And the way he was looking at her...
Well, Anna would have to be an idiot to miss what was happening there.
She had known that Adam had more than a passing interest in Rachel. He’d made that very clear.
But what she hadn’t realized was that Rachel might have an interest in him.
“Hi,” she said. “I came to ask about the pie.”
“Oh,” he said, looking at her as though he was shocked that anyone but Rachel was there at all. “Sure.”
“Hi,” she said, nudging Rachel, who hadn’t said anything to her. She felt like she should say the word one more time just for good measure. It was getting a little ridiculous.
“Yeah,” Rachel said, looking edgy.
“I just wanted to know if you were going to want more pie, if you sold the pie, if anyone committed a ritual sacrifice of the pie in my dishonor...”
“No ritual sacrifice,” he said. “In fact I have money for you.” He turned away. “Just going to go get the envelope from the back.”
When he disappeared into the kitchen, she looked pointedly at Rachel. “And?”
“What?” Rachel asked.
“Adam?”
“What about him?”
“You’re staring at him like you want to lick him. Or like you have licked him.”
Her face went scarlet.
“Oh. You have. You’ve already done it.”
“Please keep your voice down. Emma would die. He’s her boss. And no one else would understand. Can you even imagine? ‘Supposedly grieving widow hops on diner owner mere months after her husband’s death.’ Her good, sweet, local husband that everyone loved?”
“Does anyone else have to understand? As long as you do.”
“You know that they do, or they gossip a lot. And are mean.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t understand, either,” Rachel said. “I shouldn’t be able to do this yet, right? One dinner date with a guy I thought of only as a friend-ish was one thing, but this is—”
“You having fun?”
A serene smile crossed her face. “Yes.”
“Keep having fun. There’s a shortage of fun in our lives.”
“True.” Rachel took a breath. “I just... I feel like you should know. I understand why you needed to escape. And that you did with Michael. What I said to you....about how I would never, it was wrong. I would. I did. With Adam. We didn’t have a physical relationship or anything before this and I wasn’t totally conscious that we were flirting. But I took a break from my life and I let myself use him as an escape. Jacob wasn’t a burden. But it was hard. It was so hard and I was lonely. Somehow taking a break from the real world and taking about other things made me less lonely.”
Adam reappeared with the envelope as soon as Rachel quit talking. “I sold them all. If you want to think of monthly specials, in addition to some of the standbys, that would be great. It was really popular.”
“Excellent,” Anna said. “That’s perfect.”
Her mind was still turning over with her sister’s apology. With what she’d said.
She supposed she could choose to get mad. Mad that it had taken Rachel this long to acknowledge it, but she didn’t have it in her.
Their lives were complicated in ways they never would have chosen. If they could find their way through the mist and to the light, then why be mad over the how, when or why.
They’d connected here. At this point of pain. And suddenly it was like she could see Rachel clearly, and she knew Rachel saw her now, too.
She looked between him and Rachel. “Well, I’m going to leave you. I have another stop to make.”
And she marched right down to Fog, money in hand. She talked to Jo about making turnovers. And then, feeling truly brave indeed, she went down to Sunset Bay Coffee Company to make the same offer to Natalie.
It was a strange meeting, and it took a while for Natalie to warm up, but once she did, she was interested in what Anna had to offer.
“Full disclosure,” Anna said, “Fog will have some turnovers, and J’s will have pie. But if you want to, I can make you different specials. Things to differentiate between here and there.”
“That would be great, Anna,” she said. “I’d love to have your baked goods. I miss them at church.”
Anna huffed out a laugh. “Right.”
“Sorry. I promise I wasn’t being snarky. I mean it. I miss seeing you there.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome here. Anytime.”
That was entirely unexpected and...nice. It was nice.
She’d felt like a pariah, and had told herself she was comfortable with it. Had told herself she’d blown up her life.
Maybe none of that was true. She’d just rearranged it.
With herself in the center of it. And come to find out...that was okay. More than okay. She didn’t have to be colorless.
“Thank you for that, too,” Anna said.
She looked over and saw Xavier sitting at a table by the door. He ran a large hand through his dark hair and she paused to watch the motion. He was concentrating on whatever was on his computer screen and he didn’t notice her.
She wanted him to notice her.
And she didn’t have to just sit back and hope he would.
She walked over to his table and leaned in. “Hey,” she said.
He looked up from his computer and smiled. “Anna, hi.”
“I’m just headed out. I don’t want to interrupt you. Just wanted to say hi.”
He smiled at her, and she lit up inside. Before he could say anything else she moved away.
And when she stepped out into the sunlight, it felt like the first step into something. Maybe into that new life that she’d been wanting so very much.
The life that had always been there, waiting for her to make it.
WENDY
When her granddaughter showed up at the Lightkeeper’s House unannounced one morning after all the guests had been served breakfast, Wendy was surprised.
Emma had spent a lot of time in the Lightkeeper’s House when she was a girl, learning to avoid the times when the guests were most likely to be milling about in the main house, and choosing times instead when she could putter around with her grandmother, or sit in the kitchen with a book.
But, of course, Emma had lost interest in that a long time ago, so seeing her standing on the front porch, reminding Wendy so very much of when she was young, threw Wendy back to a different time.
“Can I come in?”
“You don’t have to ask,” Wendy said. She looked out at the ocean, at the brilliant blue, the sky clear for the first time in so long. They’d been having beautiful weather for the last few days, and it was a blessed relief.
It was well into May, and it was finally starting to look like spring. It may have been late, but it was welcome all the same.
“Though, if you like, I can bring lemonade out onto the porch. It’s pretty out.”
“I’d like that,” Emma said. “Can I help you with anything?”
“No,” Wendy said. “I’ve got it.”
It was a funny thing, she mused as she went into the kitchen and collected lemonade in a cut-crystal pitcher, and a platter with shortbread cookies on it. Of course, Emma was offering to fetch things for her because she was older. But Wendy wanted to bring them to her, like she’d done when Emma was a girl.
But it was strange. How those roles began to shift. It had happened with her daughters a while ago. They tried to take care of her, while she tried to take care of them, and now even Emma was trying to take care of her.
It was just funny how people grew, and things changed. And no matter how much you might like to, you couldn’t change them back. You could only move forward and find the beauty in the brand-new shap
e of things.
She opened the door again, shut it quietly behind her and took a seat in the wooden chair next to Emma’s. There was a small round table between the two of them, and she set the tray with glasses, the pitcher and platter there. She let Emma pour lemonade for the two of them.
The roar of the ocean wasn’t quite as pronounced today, the water a bit more placid than it sometimes was. But that sound—that sound that had rolled right through her body every day for the past three decades—was there. A steady constant. One that she barely thought about. A presence all the same. Like the hand of God, or a sense of love. Something that she would miss profoundly if it was gone, but often didn’t think about.
“I have a question about...the dorms,” Emma said. “Have you had any luck chasing down any information about them?”
“No,” Wendy said. “The school won’t release names. I’ve posted on an online group for alumnae asking if anyone who was here during the time had letters or stories or memories to share beyond what we have, but I haven’t had any responses.”
“I’m curious about Lazy Susan. The one who carved on my ceiling. You know, where she was from. If she was far from home when she was here. On an adventure.” Emma took a breath. “Grandma... I’m not sure now. I’m not sure about going to Boston.”
The words surprised Wendy. Emma had been so certain. It had been a dream of hers for the last two years, and something that she had clung to, even after Jacob had died. She couldn’t understand why she was second-guessing herself now.
“We’ll be fine,” Wendy said. “We’ll be fine here. And we’ll be here waiting when you get back.”
“I know,” Emma said. “I mean, I know you’ll wait for me, and that you will be here. But... I don’t know. What if I leave, and I can’t come back. I’m worried about Luke. My boyfriend. And I feel bad about that, too. Because I should be more worried about Mom. But I’m just worried that he could fall in love with someone else. Because I don’t know if he loves me the way that I love him. And I...”
Wendy looked at her granddaughter’s face, so pale and drawn, and distressed. And Wendy didn’t need to know the whole story to understand that Emma was in deeper than Wendy would’ve hoped she’d be at her age, with so much left to do.
She also knew that...sometimes there was nothing for it.
She’d fallen in love at Emma’s age, and she made terrible mistakes with it. Rachel had fallen in love at that age and paid a terrible price.
Anna had fallen in love, and it had been wrong.
But whatever the outcome had been in the end, she knew that nothing could’ve stopped them from falling.
It was a road you had to walk on your own. A mistake you had to make, or a wonderful, difficult truth you had to take on, like in Rachel’s case.
Because her love for Jacob could never be called a mistake, and if they’d fallen in love any later, then they would have had even less than the lifetime cut short that they’d had.
She couldn’t tell Emma she wasn’t in love. She couldn’t tell her not to worry about it.
“You are a strong young woman, Emma,” Wendy said softly. “You’ve had to be. I worry that you had to be too strong. Because everyone around you was doing their very best to hold themselves together, and you saw that, and began to keep your own self all stitched together in one piece, all on your own.” Wendy looked out at the ocean. “You have to trust your heart.”
“But...hearts lie. And mine is so afraid.” She bit her lip. “And it wants different things. It wants everything. You can’t... You can’t have everything.”
“Why not?” Something shifted inside of Wendy. “Why not, Emma? Look at how little we are willing to hold on to in this life. I told myself I couldn’t have everything. I thought that I needed to punish myself forever. Because of my sins. The world didn’t punish me, God didn’t punish me—I did. I came up here with my girls, and I lied about who I was and how I’d gotten myself into my circumstances. I didn’t let myself fall in love. I didn’t let myself have a companion. Because I had decided that I didn’t deserve it.
“I’ve met someone, too,” Wendy said softly. “I never let myself be open to that, not in all the years I’ve been here. I thought I didn’t deserve it. Because of my past. But we don’t live in the past. We live now, and we store up for the future. But the past is done. It’s over. You can’t bring your father back, any more than I can. We can’t heal a wound by continuing to make it hurt.”
“But what...? What happens if I can’t have everything.”
“Then maybe it wasn’t everything. And as much as it doesn’t feel like it, you can fall in love with someone else. Or you can fall in love with another place. Because our hearts are big, and they change. They grow, and they expand. Why don’t you demand everything first. See where it gets you.”
“But Mom...”
“Your mother is strong. No less strong than you. You don’t need to protect her.”
“You tried to protect us.”
“And look where it got me. It all fell apart, years later. And maybe if it had fallen apart earlier... I wouldn’t be learning these lessons now, sitting here with you on my porch. Maybe I would’ve learned them when I was eighteen.”
Emma blinked. “I suppose...that’s the greatest gift,” Emma said. “That you, and Aunt Anna, and Mom... That I get to learn from you now.”
“I hope so,” Wendy said. “I hope that I can take all those rocks in my own road and break them down, and give you a smoother path. Because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And I can’t do anything about the past. But we can all try and have a better future. But what you want, and what you’re willing to accept from life, begins with you. I can’t tell you what the right thing is. I tried to control your mother, and I tried to control Anna. I wasn’t able to keep them from pain. Pain is part of life. It’s part of love. I hope you don’t have a heartbreak, Emma, but you might. You probably will. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love. And it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have dreams.”
“But I’m scared.”
“I know. You loved your father. I loved your father. We all did. We knew that we would lose him earlier than we wanted. And we did. But what if we hadn’t loved him at all?”
Tears slipped down Emma’s cheeks, and Wendy felt moisture building in her own eyes. “I can’t think of anything sadder,” Emma said.
“Neither can I,” Wendy said. “Neither can I. Two things in this world are worth the pain, sweetheart. Love and dreams.”
Emma reached across the space between their chairs, and gripped Wendy’s hand.
And they sat like that, drinking lemonade and watching the ocean.
She looked at her granddaughter’s profile, proud and strong.
She wanted to protect that girl. But she was fierce and strong, and she was a fighter.
And she deserved everything in this world.
And Wendy suspected you couldn’t reach for everything without risk.
She couldn’t protect Emma.
But she could learn from her. From the bravery of youth.
Wendy suspected that she already had.
30
There is an answer now for my morning queasiness. Naomi and Rose are thrilled. I don’t know what to feel. I have not told him. Not even the lavender walls can cheer me.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, AUGUST 15, 1900
RACHEL
It was so strange to do this day without Jacob. Even stranger was wishing that Adam was with her.
She felt like she was caught in the middle of conflicting desires. For the man that she had loved as a girl, and the man who was... She didn’t know. He was under her skin. The skin of the woman that she was now, who couldn’t quite remember what it was like to be the girl who had fallen in love with her husband.
Life had taken too much from her. Had worn her down.
She’d come to terms with wanting sex. With wanting to recapture part of who she was as a woman, those pieces that had been lost and worn away by grief.
But she didn’t know how to cope with these feelings that were rising up inside of her. With the fact that on the day of her daughter’s graduation, the daughter she shared with Jacob, she was thinking of him.
Wishing he was sitting beside her.
Anna was sitting beside her. Her mother was on the other side of her. That should be enough.
Well, not enough. Because not having Jacob left a hole there that wouldn’t be filled, she knew that.
But she wanted...
She wasn’t going to think about it. She wasn’t going to think about him.
She cried, though, when Emma accepted her diploma. And she wished that she could grab hold of Jacob’s hand. Congratulate him.
Because he was part of this. Part of her. This beautiful girl that they had raised to womanhood.
Smart and fierce. She loved the sea because of Jacob. And loving Jacob, losing him, hadn’t made her afraid to live her life. It had made her follow her dreams.
Rachel was afraid, though.
She had lost purpose in some ways when she had lost Jacob, because caring for him had been such a big part of her life. Loving him had.
And Emma... Getting her through school, seeing her through life, was a change in her role, too.
But she had Adam. And in his arms she wasn’t a caretaker or a widow. She was a woman.
When the graduation was over, she hugged Emma. And Emma ran to her friends, because, of course, they had places to be.
“We are going to bake dinner rolls,” Anna said, grabbing hold of Rachel’s hand. “Unless you want to go to dinner.”
“I...”
Anna looked at her meaningfully. “You can also go occupy yourself elsewhere. Since your daughter is leaving for the evening. And I can certainly make excuses for you.”
