Welcome to Moonlight Harbor

by Sheila Roberts

  Meanwhile, the woman with the squalling child and rambunctious boys had finished paying and left, leaving the woman behind the counter free to wait on Jenna and Sabrina.

  She was in her sixties with a smile as wide as her girth. Her hair was almost all gray now but Jenna would know that round, smiling face anywhere. Nora Singleton had been dishing out ice cream since Jenna was a kid.

  “Hello, ladies, what will you have?” she asked.

  “I’ll have a big order of sunshine,” Jenna said, quoting what she used to tell Nora whenever it was raining.

  Nora squinted at her. “Jenna?”

  Jenna nodded. “I’m back.”

  “Well, welcome back. We haven’t seen you around here in ages.”

  “It’s been too long,” Jenna agreed.

  “Your aunt said you’d be coming to help her. I’m so glad. The poor thing’s been struggling ever since Ralph died.” She shook her head. “Hardly any of her family even made it down for the funeral.”

  Jenna had been one of the ones who hadn’t made it. But life had gotten in the way. When Uncle Ralph died, she’d been too busy coping with a miscarriage to want to go anywhere. Instead, she’d sent flowers. It was the best she could do at the time. Anyway, she was here now, and that was what counted.

  “It’s good you’re here,” Nora said. She turned her hundred-watt smile on Sabrina. “And who is this?”

  “This is my daughter, Sabrina,” Jenna said, and Sabrina murmured a polite, “Nice to meet you.” She may have been unhappy about getting uprooted but it wasn’t stopping her from showing good manners, and Jenna was proud of her.

  “You are just as cute as your mom was at your age. You’ll have all the boys after you,” Nora predicted, making Sabrina blush. “What kind of ice cream would you like?”

  Sabrina looked down the rows of tubs. “Bubble Gum?”

  “One of our most popular. How about we top it with a scoop of Deer Poop?”

  Sabrina’s eyes shot open. “Excuse me?”

  “Chocolate with chocolate-covered raisins,” Jenna translated.

  Sabrina smiled and nodded. “Okay.”

  “And how about you, Jenna? No, wait, let me guess. One scoop of Sand Pebble for you.”

  “Sand Pebble?” Sabrina scanned the tubs.

  “Butter Brickle with peanuts.”

  “What’s Butter Brickle?” Sabrina asked.

  Nora rolled her eyes. “What have you been feeding this poor child?”

  “Obviously, not enough ice cream,” Jenna said.

  “Obviously,” Nora agreed. “And how about a second scoop?”

  Neither Jenna’s budget nor her waistline needed a second scoop. “I think one will do.”

  “I hope you’re not passing up a second scoop because you’re dieting. You obviously don’t need to.”

  “If I eat too much of your ice cream, I will,” Jenna said.

  “I can’t think of a better way to get fat,” Nora said with a grin, and got busy scooping out their treats.

  “It looks like you’ve expanded,” Jenna said, motioning to the neighboring fun-plex.

  “Yes, we have. My boys, Beau and Beck, run all that. In fact, adding the arcade and the bumper cars was Beck’s idea. Needless to say, it was a good one.”

  “So your boys are still here?” Jenna asked.

  “Oh, yes. You can’t take fishermen away from the beach. My daughter moved away but she comes down to visit. Okay, Bubble Gum and Deer Poop,” she said, giving Sabrina two giant scoops in a waffle cone. “That’s our welcome to town serving,” she said with a wink.

  She refused to take Jenna’s money once she’d handed over the cones. “Consider it a welcome home gift.”

  Back in the car, Jenna offered her cone to Sabrina to sample. “Good, isn’t it?”

  Sabrina nodded. “I like Bubble Gum better.”

  “I did, too, until I discovered Sand Pebble and Wild Huckleberry,” Jenna said, and started the car.

  They continued down Harbor Boulevard past more shops and restaurants, many looking a little tired and in need of paint, and a place to rent bikes and mopeds. “Can we do that?” asked Sabrina.

  “When you’re old enough to drive,” Jenna said, making her frown.

  Off-shoot streets with names like Beach Way and Razor Clam led to the other main drag, Sand Dune Drive, which ran parallel to the boulevard. The streets also took people either to the beach in one direction, past more shops, or away from the water to the neighborhoods where the natives lived. On Sand Dune Drive visitors could find a grocery store and pharmacy, as well as the library and the police and fire departments and city hall, and the Seaview Medical Building, which wasn’t much bigger than a house, to name a few. Jenna pointed to a restaurant in a faded red building. Red-checked curtains at the restaurant windows gave it a homey, welcoming look. “The Pizza Palace has the best pizza in the world. We’ll have to go there.”

  Sabrina nodded eagerly. Pizza was her all-time favorite food.

  Next to that sat a low building that housed Sunken Treasures Consignments and a new shop called Cindy’s Candies, which was sure to be a hit with Sabrina. Across the way sat the Drunken Sailor, the town’s popular pub, and here was something new, Cannabis Central. Well, there was a good pairing. It was hardly surprising that the town would now have a pot shop. Ever since Washington legalized marijuana, pot stores had been popping up all over like acne on a teenager’s face.

  More tourist treats awaited them past the roundabout. “What’s that?” Sabrina asked, staring at the building with an entrance shaped like a giant gaping shark’s mouth. A young family stood posing inside the mouth while the dad snapped their picture.

  “That’s Something Fishy. It’s a souvenir shop. They sell everything from saltwater taffy and postcards to preserved baby sharks in a tube.”

  Sabrina made a face. “Ewww.”

  “Yes, ewww to that, but they have a lot of fun things in there. Tomorrow I’ll take you in and you can check it out. In fact, we’ll do a tour of the town. How’s that sound?”

  Sabrina nodded. “Good.”

  Good? That was good. Jenna smiled.

  More motels began to appear—a Quality Inn, a Best Western with a restaurant sandwiched between, and a beautiful old Victorian B and B with a long front porch, complete with wicker chairs for lounging. It was painted white with blue trim. One word summed it up: charming.

  Sabrina’s eyes lit up at the sight of it. “Is that our motel?”

  “No. That’s the Oyster Inn. It’s gorgeous inside. I remember eating in their restaurant for Gram’s birthday one year when we were all down visiting. I was ten and it was the first time I’d been in such a fancy place. Linens on the tables, fine crystal, my first ever crab cocktail. From what I hear the restaurant’s still as nice. We’ll have to go there and order you a crab cocktail.”

  “Does our motel have a restaurant?” Sabrina asked.

  “No, but there’s one next to it. And the motel has a pool.”

  Sabrina smiled and took off a big bite of her ice cream. Ice cream, pizza and a pool. Jenna had scored some major points.

  The two cars in front of them began to slow down. “Why’s everybody stopping?” Sabrina asked.

  “Look,” Jenna said, pointing.

  Farther ahead a deer and her fawn strolled across the road. A woman in the car ahead of them leaned out and snapped a picture with her phone.

  “Wow,” Sabrina breathed, impressed.

  Mama and baby made it to the other side and traffic—all three cars—began to move again.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Jenna said, and Sabrina nodded.

  Good. Another favorable impression made.

  Until they got to the end of Motel Row and finally came to the Driftwood Inn. Charming it was not. What had happened to it? If not for the sign h
anging askew and blowing in the wind Jenna would have thought she was at the wrong address. The roof covering the long string of twenty rooms was missing shingles and one of the rooms had a board where there should have been a window. Once the place had been the color of a cloudless sky. Now it was faded and the paint was peeling, and a blackish mold was forming colonies on the walls of the motel. As for the promised pool, she didn’t dare look. The chain-link fence around it was bent and sad. A couple of ancient lounge chairs sat on the cement deck. One was tipped over. If there was water in that pool it was probably contaminated. A lone car, a gas hog from another era, brave enough to traverse the potholes in the parking lot, was camped at an end unit.

  Sabrina looked around them in horror. “This place is a dump.”

  It was. And the small, two-story gabled house next to it, Aunt Edie’s home, wasn’t in much better shape. Its paint, also once a cheery blue, was as faded and chipped as the motel’s. The long porch and its railing needed painting and a couple of the steps were leaning at a slant like something in a carnival fun house. The trees and bushes had been taken over by some kind of hanging moss. The lace curtains at the windows and the big pot of flowers on the porch made a vain attempt to dress up the place.

  Sabrina had followed Jenna’s gaze. “That’s where we’re gonna live?”

  Jenna’s right eye twitched. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix it up.” Blink, blink.

  Too young for a vote of confidence, Sabrina said, “I want to go home.”

  “Hey, now. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Sabrina looked at her as if she were insane. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “At least it’s got a restaurant next door.”

  All right, not really a restaurant. The Seafood Shack, situated on the other side of the parking lot, was barely big enough to support the giant wooden razor clam perched on its roof. But it was a novelty. People liked novelties, and having a place to eat right next to your motel was a bonus. Guests could just walk over and grab something.

  Not that there was anyone walking across the parking lot or anyone inside the Seafood Shack grabbing. Well, lunch hour was past, so that was hardly surprising.

  The gentle rain was becoming less gentle, pouring down in an angry patter. “Come on,” Jenna said. “Let’s go see Aunt Edie. And don’t say anything rude about the motel,” she added as they walked up the front steps. “Okay?”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Sabrina said irritably. “You taught me better than that.”

  The doorbell didn’t appear to work, so Jenna knocked on the door. She heard the chattering of a bird, and then muffled footsteps. “I’m coming,” called a thready little-old-lady voice.

  “When?” Sabrina muttered.

  It felt like forever standing on the porch with the rain soaking their sweaters and hair. “You don’t move so fast when you get to be Aunt Edie’s age,” said Jenna.

  She’d barely finished speaking when the door opened. There stood her great-aunt. She was wearing jeans and tennis shoes and a sweatshirt with a seahorse on it that had Moonlight Harbor scrawled across it. Her hair was the same tightly permed cherry red it had always been, and she was still wearing her usual coral lipstick on lips that had grown thin with age. Silver earrings shaped like sand dollars hung from her ears and a collection of rings decorated her hands. To top off the ensemble, a pair of red reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck.

  “Jenna!” She held her arms wide and Jenna bent to step into her embrace. Aunt Edie had always been petite, but it seemed she’d shrunk since Jenna last saw her. She still smelled like White Shoulders, her favorite perfume.

  Aunt Edie turned her loose and smiled at Sabrina. “And this must be your lovely daughter. Sabrina, I’m so happy to meet you at last.” She held out her arms, giving Sabrina no polite option but to also accept a hug, which, well-mannered child that she was, she did. “I can’t tell you how much it means to have you both coming here to live with me.”

  “We’re not staying for sure,” Sabrina said as she pulled back, and cast a look at her mother that begged her not to make any wild promises.

  Aunt Edie’s brows pinched together. “You’re not?”

  “Don’t worry, Aunt Edie, we’re here to stay,” Jenna said, and shot Sabrina a warning look. The way her eye was twitching, she hoped Sabrina didn’t think she was winking at her.

  The look she received in return spoke volumes about parental betrayal, even though Jenna had not made any promises about returning to Seattle. That option was all in her daughter’s mind.

  “Well, come on in. I made oatmeal cookies just this morning, and I’ve got pink lemonade.”

  Her aunt’s oatmeal cookies had been a childhood favorite. “Thanks,” Jenna said.

  “It’s not a very nice day,” Aunt Edie observed as she led the way into the living room, “which is a shame, because it’s so pretty here when the sun’s shining. June’s a little iffy weather-wise,” she told Sabrina, “but in July it’s heaven.”

  Sabrina was polite enough to nod but she didn’t look all that thrilled to see heaven in July.

  The living room was almost as badly in need of paint as the outside of the house, but it was cozy, with its furniture arranged for conversation, the old woodstove in the corner ready to take off the chill on a winter’s day. Jenna remembered the braided throw rug on the hardwood floor, and there was the same old brown sofa sleeper bed that cousin Winston had often occupied when there was an overload of girls in the house. One of Aunt Edie’s hand-crocheted afghans was draped over the back of it. She still had the little stuffed chair upholstered with a sand-dollar-print fabric that Jenna had always favored. And there sat Aunt Edie’s antique rocking chair and Uncle Ralph’s old recliner. Seeing the recliner empty put a lump in Jenna’s throat. As they entered the room a parrot with plumage in varying shades of green perched inside a giant cage in the corner fluttered his wings and greeted them. “No solicitors!”

  “Now, Roger, behave yourself,” Aunt Edie scolded.

  “Roger, behave yourself,” echoed the bird, who’d obviously heard that a few times.

  Sabrina walked over to the cage to get a better look and Jenna followed her. The parrot was walking back and forth on his perch now, excited over having an audience.

  “Are you a pretty bird?” Jenna asked him.

  “Roger’s a pretty bird,” he said. “Give me whiskey,” he added.

  That had always made Jenna giggle. In her present mood, Sabrina wasn’t about to even smile. “Weird,” she said.

  “Uncle Ralph was a bad influence,” said Aunt Edie. “You girls sit down and make yourselves at home and I’ll fetch the cookies. Would you like milk or lemonade, dear?” she asked Sabrina.

  “Milk, please.”

  At last her daughter was managing to remain polite. Jenna smiled at her encouragingly. Sabrina didn’t smile back.

  “And, Jenna?”

  “Cookies and milk sounds great.”

  “All right, then.” Aunt Edie nodded and started for the kitchen.

  “Do you want some help?” Jenna asked.

  “No, no. I can manage,” she said, and disappeared.

  “Isn’t she sweet?” Jenna said to her daughter.

  Sabrina’s polite mask fell away. “Why did you tell her we’re staying? We’re not for sure staying.”

  “Sweetie, we don’t have a house anymore. Remember?”

  “You said we didn’t have to stay if I didn’t like it,” Sabrina said, eyes flashing. “You lied to me.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said give it a chance.”

  “Well, I have.”

  “No, you haven’t. We just got here.”

  “I don’t want to be here,” Sabrina said, her voice rising.

  Aunt Edie picked that moment to return with a tray bearing a plate of cookies and two glasses of milk. Her ste
ps faltered and for a moment Jenna thought she was going to drop everything.

  She rushed over to her aunt and took the tray. “Here, let me help you with that.”

  “Oh, thank you, dear,” Aunt Edie said, looking flustered. If only she didn’t still have such good hearing.

  Sabrina clenched her jaw and plopped onto the sand-dollar chair and Jenna joined Aunt Edie on the couch. Two against one. The atmosphere felt charged as if there was about to be a squall of epic proportions right there in the living room.

  Aunt Edie cleared her throat and picked up the plate, offering it to Sabrina. Sabrina shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “We just had ice cream,” Jenna said.

  “Oh.”

  “But I’d still love a cookie,” Jenna hurried to say. “Your oatmeal cookies are the best.”

  That brought out a smile. “You always did like them.”

  Jenna helped herself to one and took a bite. Aunt Edie hadn’t lost her touch. “It’s as good as I remember.”

  “And you’re just as sweet as I remember.”

  Not for the first time, Jenna found herself wishing she’d made the time to come down and see Aunt Edie. If only she’d come to visit when Sabrina was younger maybe her girl would have fallen in love with the place, too. Maybe then she’d have been happy to be there.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get here for Uncle Ralph’s funeral,” Jenna said.

  “You wrote a lovely note, and you sent those beautiful flowers. Anyway, I know you’ve been busy, dealing with...” She cleared her throat. “Things.”

  Like crummy husbands. Jenna nodded and took another bite of cookie and Jolly Roger informed them all that he was a pretty bird. “Give me whiskey. Pretty bird, pretty bird. Roger’s a pretty bird. Ralph? Ralph, where are you?”

  Roger was certainly contributing more to the conversation than Sabrina. Jenna sighed inwardly. This house felt like a haven to her, but Sabrina was looking at it like it was prison.