by Jen Gilroy
“Yeah, but then I’ll have to build boats like you and Uncle Trevor, so even if I can finally live in one place, I’ll still be stuck here.” Ty looked toward the door and a slow smile spread across his face.
Sean’s heart pounded. He’d lost Charlie, his grandfather, his dad, his marriage, and now a baby. He couldn’t lose Ty too. “Hang on. You need to tell me if you don’t want…” Sean paused, because Ty had stopped listening. If he’d even been listening in the first place. “Ty?” His son was halfway out of the chair and his blue eyes had a light in them Sean had never seen there before.
“I saved you a special table right by the window.” Sean turned toward Crystal’s voice. “You can see the lake and watch the sun set over the mountains.”
“Hey, Naomi.” Ty pushed back the chair with a scraping sound. “Happy birthday.”
“Naomi.” Charlie’s voice this time. “You promised me you—”
“Chill, Auntie Charlotte.” Naomi’s cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled.
Sean looked at Charlie. Her emerald halter top had a plunging neckline, and a gold heart necklace dipped into the lush slope between her breasts. Her cream pants hugged the curve of her hips and flared at the knee, stopping at a pair of green-jeweled sandals. Her eyes narrowed and she flicked a glance at Naomi.
Sean dragged his eyes away from Charlie with an effort. She was even sexier than she’d been at eighteen and, despite everything, still sent the same liquid heat searing through him.
“Ty? Is there something you want to tell me?” At least his son had the grace to flush, red spreading up his neck to the tips of his ears.
“Naomi?” Mia stepped between her daughter and Ty. “What’s going on?”
“It’s my birthday.” Naomi gave her mother an innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth smile. “I invited a friend. We’ll push some tables together. No problem.”
“Sean.” Mia was elegant in a black-and-white-patterned dress that showed her tanned legs, but her voice was tight. “I guess you didn’t know anything about this either.”
“No, I didn’t.” And when he got Ty alone, he’d ground him for a week. Keep him so busy at the marina he wouldn’t have time to wander over to the Gibbs cottage.
“Charlie?” Mia turned to Charlie, whose expression held the same mixture of innocence and guilt it had when she was ten and his dad caught her about to take a speedboat for a spin. “You knew something, didn’t you?”
Charlie sat in the nearest chair, which happened to be the one beside Sean’s. “I didn’t expect to see Sean here.” The sisters exchanged a look that was warmer and more loving than he expected. “It’s my birthday too.”
“Of course it is,” Mia said. “Naomi should have been more sensitive.”
“Mom, don’t get weird.” Naomi crossed her arms. Adorable in a white vest and denim miniskirt, she could have been Charlie at fifteen. “None of this is Auntie Charlotte’s fault. Or Ty’s either. He didn’t know I didn’t tell you I invited him and his dad.”
“I don’t mind you inviting friends, but you lied to me and maybe your aunt.” Mia glanced at Charlie again.
Naomi gave Ty the kind of smile designed to send a teenage boy to his knees. The kind of smile Charlie had once given Sean. “I’m sorry, okay? Mr. Carmichael didn’t know either, but it’s great he and Ty are here.” She grabbed a chair and dragged it over to sit beside Ty.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Mia rearranged her face into a polite, social smile. “Forgive me. You’re Naomi’s guests.” A pulse worked in her jaw and she clasped her hands together. “There’s more than enough birthday cake to go around.”
“Thank you,” Sean said. Naomi was only here for a few weeks. Not long enough for Ty to get serious about her. Or get his heart broken.
Beside him, Charlie sucked in a breath.
“Uh, Dad.” Ty’s voice cracked. “You didn’t tell me you invited Uncle Trevor’s family and Grandma tonight.”
“What?” Sean spun around.
Crystal returned, this time with Linnie, Trevor, two of her sisters, and his mom.
“I didn’t invite them. All I said was we planned to drop by Mario’s for pizza. How was I to know they’d show up?” Sean suppressed a groan.
“Dad.” Ty went red again. “You know how they are.”
Yeah, he did. His family liked to spend time together.
“Sean?” Linnie glanced at Charlie and then Crystal, and her eyes narrowed as they landed on her daughter. “Trevor didn’t tell me we were getting together with Charlie and her family.”
“Trevor didn’t know. I didn’t either.” The start of a headache pounded behind Sean’s temples, together with a sense of foreboding.
“How nice to see you all again.” Mia gave a tense smile as Crystal, helped by Ty and Naomi, slid two more tables into place. “Mrs. Carmichael, why don’t you sit here by me? I’m sure my mom would have loved for you to join us.”
“Thank you.” His mom sat in the chair Mia held out for her. She arranged her purse on her lap and eyed Sean. She was not happy about this, her expression said, but she’d put up with it. At least for now. “Since you and Charlie are all grown up,” she added, “you must call me Ellen.”
Mia squeezed in next to Naomi and gestured to her younger daughter. “Emma, you sit beside your auntie Charlotte on the end.”
Under the cover of his family settling themselves, Sean touched Charlie’s arm, her skin soft and warm under his fingers. “I swear to you, I didn’t know about this. There’s no way I’d have come here tonight and intruded on your family party if I’d known you’d be here.”
She looked at him sideways. “We were set up.”
Sean glanced at Ty, his blond head nestled close to Naomi’s dark one, the two of them intent on the menu they shared. “They were both part of that setup. Crystal too.” Things had gone further between his son and Charlie’s niece than he’d thought. He clenched his hands under the table as his mouth went dry.
“Here we are.” Charlie shifted on her chair and tried but failed to laugh. “This is sure a birthday to remember.”
“Yeah.” Sean forced his gaze back to hers only to imagine Charlie pregnant with his child, her stomach rounded, her breasts fuller, and her skin luminous. Then Charlie losing that child alone, without him even knowing it had existed—a child that had been conceived around this time of year. A lifetime ago.
His vision blurred and the headache slammed into him.
“You’re still as pretty as a picture, Mia.” His mom’s clear tones carried above the restaurant din and stopped Sean’s wayward thoughts. “You’re the image of your mother as I remember her.”
Charlie flinched.
“I hear your husband’s a big executive with one of those, what do you call them, multinational companies. I’m sure your dad couldn’t have been more proud you made such a good marriage.” His mom’s voice was brittle.
“You want to color the place mat, Emma?” Voice tight, Charlie opened a box of crayons, and her hand shook.
“Your dad was proud of you, Charlie,” he murmured.
“How could he be?” Her voice was lifeless. “I wasn’t perfect enough for him.”
“There’s no fun in perfection.” Sean’s heart won out over his head, shocking himself and wanting to shock her. Wanting her to know what she’d meant to him. And what she’d thrown away. “I never wanted to be with someone who was perfect. I only ever wanted to be with you.”
Charlie found an empty picnic bench on Mario’s deck and shivered in the cool night air. The lake was misty purple in the twilight, with salmon clouds streaking across the western sky. Naomi and Ty were shadowy figures on the town dock. Would her child have looked like one of them? Not knowing was a wound that would never heal.
She inhaled a deep breath of the clean, crisp air. She’d made it through the meal. Blown out the candles on the birthday cake and pretended to make a wish, so Naomi wouldn’t guess anything was wrong. Pasted on a smile for th
e photos and made silly faces because Naomi and Emma asked her to. All the while, she’d been conscious of Sean beside her, how his big body bumped against hers, how his deep laugh rumbled out, how his forearms were tanned below the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, and how his faded Levi’s hugged his thighs.
And the words he’d said still rang in her ears. Charlie had only ever wanted to be with him. Despite everything, a part of her still wanted that.
“What are you doing out here by yourself?” The bench creaked as Sean’s mom sat across the table from Charlie. The breeze lifted her white hair, which was still thick and glossy.
Charlie’s heart sank. A cozy chat with Ellen Carmichael was the last thing she wanted. “Getting some air. Mia and Linnie are talking about baking.”
“Oh, honey, you tried to please your mom, but you were never a baking-and-sewing kind of girl, were you?” Her Vermont accent was as thick as the sap that flowed from the sugar maple trees in syrup season. Then Ellen chuckled, a feminine version of Sean’s laugh.
“No.” In spite of herself, Charlie laughed too.
Behind her glasses, Ellen’s sharp blue eyes searched Charlie’s face. “Sean still talking to Trevor?”
“There’s some problem with a boat.” Before she left the table, Sean had half risen as if to follow her, before Trevor grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“You weren’t like Mia or my girls or Linnie. You weren’t like any girl I’d ever met.” Ellen gave Charlie a wry smile. “You still aren’t.”
Charlie eyed the older woman across the picnic table. “You always had a problem with that.”
Ellen shook her head. “No, I didn’t. What I have a problem with is how you broke Sean’s heart.”
In Mario’s parking lot, a car horn blared and Charlie jumped. The hurt hadn’t all been on Sean’s side: Breaking up with him had broken her heart too. “Did he tell you that?”
“Of course not, but a mother knows these things.” She slid her arms into the sleeves of a pale-blue sweater and covered her light summer dress. “He’s a grown man, but I don’t want to see him hurt again. Or see him unsettled again, either.”
“There isn’t anything going on between Sean and me that would hurt him or unsettle him. We’re not even friends anymore.” Charlie traced a pattern on the table, following the grain of the wood with her fingertips.
“Don’t pretend with me.” Ellen was firm. “Sean has always known where his responsibilities lie, but right from when you were a little girl, you stirred up everyone and everything around you, him most of all. You’re still doing it.” Ellen’s eyes narrowed. “What you and Mia are planning to do with that cottage, you’ve got the whole town up in arms.”
“I can assure you we—”
“I’ve said my piece to your sister.” Ellen pinned Charlie with what as kids she and Sean had called “the look.” The one that meant his mom wouldn’t stand for any back talk. “As I told her, your grandfather must be spinning in his grave with what’s going on. A foreign company coming in that, from the sound of things, doesn’t have any respect for the place or the people who live here.”
“We want to sell the cottage, but I—”
Ellen raised a hand. “The cottage sale is between you and your conscience. As is what you’re doing to Sean.”
“I’m not doing anything to him.” If anything, Sean was doing things to her. Reminding her how she used to want him. How easy it would be to want him again.
“There’s still plenty of sizzle in those sparks that were flying between the two of you tonight. I know my son.” Ellen leaned closer to Charlie. “He’s never looked at anyone, the woman he married included, the way he still looks at you.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Charlie avoided Ellen’s eyes, afraid the older woman would read the truth in her face.
Sean had tracked the neckline of her top and lingered on her bare shoulders before his gaze dropped to her breasts. His big hands had brushed hers, slow and deliberate, when she handed him the water jug. Time after time he’d watched her, his eyes dark blue with an unmistakable glint, and she couldn’t deny she’d savored every moment of it.
“I know what I saw.” Ellen’s shoulders drooped and she looked older, frail even. “I’ve never shied away from calling a spade a spade. Young Ty, the way he and Naomi looked at each other, is a different matter, which I’m sure your sister will put a stop to. You and Sean are both adults and whatever’s between you is your affair, but don’t you go leading him on if you plan to run out again.”
“I’m not leading him on. After we sell the cottage, I won’t be back here ever again.”
“From the time you were little I always knew you’d make a big success of your life and you sure have. You’ve done your mother and all of us proud.” Ellen’s chin trembled. “Your mother was like a sister to me and you were like another daughter, but you left Firefly Lake and you never came back, which tells me you didn’t belong here, not really. If you truly did belong here, if your heart was here with us, you couldn’t sell that cottage. And Sean doesn’t belong anywhere else.”
“I know.” Charlie’s throat was scratchy. Maybe she belonged here more than Ellen thought. Maybe that was why, deep down and against all logic, she didn’t want to let the cottage go.
Ellen patted Charlie’s shoulder. “Sean needs a woman who will work together with him in the business, like his dad and I did, like his grandparents did.”
Charlie’s stomach flipped. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She’d never wanted to be that kind of woman either. A woman like her mom who’d lost herself in someone else, sucked away until there was nothing left of the person she used to be.
Ellen’s expression softened and Charlie glimpsed unexpected affection behind the gruffness. “I always did speak plain, but I’ve known you your whole life and I loved your mother.” She pulled off her glasses, fumbled for a tissue in the pocket of her sweater, and dabbed at her eyes. “Beatrice McKellar was my best friend the whole time I was growing up. She’d come to the cottage with your grandparents every June, and for the next three months we spent most of our free time together.”
“Mom told me.” Charlie’s chest ached.
“When Beatrice married your dad, she changed, but she was still my friend until your dad, he…I didn’t mean the things I said to her back then.” Ellen’s voice cracked. “I never had a chance to tell her I was wrong. I blamed her for what your dad did, and I shouldn’t have. She was a good woman and she didn’t have an easy life.”
Charlie gripped the edge of the table, the wood sticky beneath her fingers. “Sean still doesn’t know about the loan?”
Ellen stared at her hands. “Rob made me promise I’d never tell the kids, and I’ve kept my promise. My husband was a proud man, and it about killed him to take money from your dad. He worked himself into an early grave. He was set on paying the money back and wouldn’t be beholden any longer than he could help it, he said.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie whispered.
Ellen shredded the tissue, her fingers twisted with age and a lifetime of hard work, the knuckles red and swollen. “We needed the money, but your dad took advantage of us, and I can’t forget that. It’s best for everybody if our families stay apart. You and Sean, Ty and Naomi, so nobody else gets hurt, no more lives are destroyed. I didn’t sleep right for years. I worried I’d lose my home because it was security for the loan. I worried about Sean, and I worried about your mother and how I’d lost her friendship.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said again around the lump of regret lodged in her chest.
“If you’re truly sorry, you won’t sell the cottage to that developer.” Ellen’s blue eyes, the same color as Sean’s, searched Charlie’s face. “And unless you plan to stick around for longer than five minutes, you’ll stay away from Sean and help keep Naomi away from Ty.”
“How can you ask me to do that?” Charlie’s breath caught.
“I could say it was for my son, my family, and
the place I’ve lived in all my life.” The skin bunched around Ellen’s eyes, and her expression was pained. “But that wouldn’t be the whole story. Your mom loved you and Mia more than anything, but after you two, she loved that cottage and this town.”
“I loved her too.” Charlie’s heart thumped, quick and painful.
“I know you did.” Ellen reached across the table and clasped Charlie’s hand. “Your mom knew it, even though you were never one to wear your heart on your sleeve.” She paused and licked her lips. “In your mother’s memory, for her, you think about what I’ve said.”
“Of course.” Charlie dredged up a smile.
Ellen cleared her throat. “Your mom wouldn’t want you to make a mistake or do anything you’d regret.”
She got up, her sensible rubber-soled shoes soundless on the wooden deck.
Charlie pressed a hand to her mouth and stumbled down the steps to the beach. Ellen had only pointed out the obvious. So why did it hurt so much?
She slipped off her sandals and dug her feet into the soft sand. Avoiding Naomi and Ty, who sat side by side, almost but not quite touching, Charlie walked along the water’s edge. She rummaged in her purse for her phone and scrolled through emails, texts, and news headlines.
She was a foreign correspondent, a respected award-winning journalist. She covered serious stories and she had a serious life—the life she’d single-mindedly focused on getting for the last eighteen years. A life a world away from Firefly Lake.
Charlie rubbed her hands along her arms to warm them. Away from the restaurant, it was quieter. The faint twang of country music from a pickup parked in Mario’s lot was a counterpoint to the lap of the lake against the shore. A damp weedy smell tickled her nose, and around the curving lakeshore, lights twinkled like pinpricks in the gentle darkness.
She sat on the sand, tapped on her phone, and checked news sites and her Facebook and Twitter accounts, the familiar work tasks steadying her as they always did. They were a reminder of the world she’d go back to in a few weeks, one where there was no place for Sean, no matter how much she might want there to be.
