Just South of Paradise

by Grace Palmer

  Tasha jumps, startled. She looks over to find a tall man standing at the front door of the community center. She hadn’t even heard him walk outside. He pulls a set of keys from his pocket and starts to lock the door.

  “What’s it about?” Tasha asks when her heart rate has slowed back down to something resembling normal.

  The man shoves the keys in his pocket and turns to face her. He’s cute, with a mass of messy, dark curls and a thin layer of stubble on his jaw. He is wearing a white T-shirt and a black blazer with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, which doesn’t quite go with his ripped jeans.

  He steps toward her, thrusting his hands in his pockets. “It’s about a girl whose perfect life is thrown into disarray after she learns a powerful secret,” he says melodramatically. “But it turns out that her life was not as perfect as she thought, and only by learning this secret does she truly become the person she was meant to be.”

  “Sounds deep,” Tasha says, raising her brows.

  “If we get the right cast, it should be phenomenal.” He smiles, almost bashfully, and shrugs. “I’m a little partial though, being that my brother wrote it and I’m directing.”

  Tasha chuckles. “I think if I had to work on a play with any of my siblings, I’d kill them.”

  “Perils of the job,” the man admits. “Thankfully, I’ve always been much bigger than him, so I can just hold him back by the forehead if I need to.” He extends a hand. “I’m Eddie Green.”

  Tasha takes his hand, forehead wrinkling as she thinks. “Eddie Green … Why do I recognize that name?”

  “I wish I could say it’s because it’s the name on everyone’s lips on the Broadway circuit, but I’m afraid due to my spectacular failure in the Big Apple, it’s more likely we went to high school together.”

  “Yes!” Tasha claps as it hits her. “You were a few years above me, but I remember seeing the state award you won displayed in the theater room.”

  “How embarrassing,” he says, grimacing. “I hope it’s not still there. To think I have a literal award for peaking in high school.”

  “I know that feeling.” Tasha leans against the wall and crosses her arms. “I moved to LA after high school and all that’s gotten me is a fear of Hollywood starlets. I’m Tasha, by the way. Tasha Baldwin.”

  “Baldwin …” he says thoughtfully. “That sounds familiar too, but I think it’s because my mother takes her prized shih tzu to a Dr. Baldwin.”

  “That’s my sister. She’s a doctor. Until recently, I was a gopher.”

  “A gopher?” he asks.

  “I was the personal assistant to an actress,” she explains. “You know, like go-for-this, go-for-that.”

  His lip ticks up at the corner. “I’ve always thought gophers were rather cute.” His eyes are a deep brown, and they threaten to swallow Tasha alive as she stares into them. Her heart skips a beat and she looks down, blushing.

  “So you haven’t made it in Hollywood yet?” he continues.

  Tasha shakes her head. “Sadly, no. The only thing I’ve made in Hollywood is a lot of mistakes.”

  “It sounds like we were on different coasts with the same problem,” Eddie says. “I moved to New York to work on Broadway and the closest I got was a part-time job in a Broadway gift shop.”

  “Tough break,” Tasha says, wincing.

  Eddie narrows his eyes, studying her. “Can you sing?”

  “I’ve always thought so, but my level of success would suggest otherwise.”

  Eddie licks his lips, smiling at Tasha as though she just performed an amusing trick. His heated gaze fills her belly with butterflies. “I hope you’ll audition. I’ve got a gut feeling that you’re more talented than you’re letting on.”

  “What, out of everything I’ve said, has made you want to believe in me?” Tasha asks skeptically.

  “Even after being beaten back at what feels like every challenge, I still believe in myself. If I can do that, I can believe in you.”

  “Me,” Tasha says in a flat voice, “the stranger you’ve never met.”

  “You, the girl who gazed at trophies you hoped to win one day so many times that you memorized the names on them, the girl who stopped to look at the latest and greatest events at your local theater because performing is in your bones,” he says. “You, the girl who once believed so much in herself that she left everything she knew to chase a dream thousands of miles away.” He shrugs. “Maybe you’ll be awful, but I doubt it. And if you think I’m mistaken, come and prove me wrong.”

  Tasha is speechless. She has never lacked support from her loved ones. Even Chuck would lavish her in compliments, tell her how special her talent was, how the world was going to love her one day. In retrospect, many of the times he said things like that it was a segue into whatever form of manipulation he was cooking up that week, but it still made her feel good at the time.

  But hearing kind words from a stranger, who has gleaned more insight into Tasha than she would have ever thought possible from such a short encounter, feels so much different. For the first time in years, Tasha feels as though she is being seen.

  “Okay. I’ll audition,” she says finally.

  “Good.” He taps his finger on the bottom of the poster. “Two p.m. sharp. Tardiness will not be tolerated.” He winks, then turns, and with that, Eddie Green saunters off into the twilight.

  Tasha waits until he disappears around the corner. Then, she gets on her bike and pedals as fast as she can go, laughing as the wind whips through her hair.

  21

  Georgia

  Georgia is exhausted.

  She has worked her hands to the bone cooking, cleaning, and performing all the thousands of other little tasks running an inn demands. She has pushed all thoughts of Richard and her finances to a dark, distant place in her mind, but in doing so she has mentally exhausted herself.

  Thoughts like that don’t just go away. One has to negotiate with them, mortgage up energy and future well-being to keep them at bay. But in the end, they always catch up, and when they do, they take everything they are owed—with interest.

  Georgia’s thoughts have just caught up.

  She is alone in her bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed and staring at the cardboard box on the floor in front of her. She knows that taking it out of the closet was a bad idea. That is the only reason she hasn’t opened it yet, but she knows that she will.

  The inn is empty for the first time in days. All of the guests have gone out to enjoy their Friday evenings in town, leaving Georgia with a house that feels like a hollow shell threatening to collapse around her. Even as tired and cranky as she is, she almost wishes that there was still work to do, still people to please, because her desolation was the catalyst for this impulse, and only a work-based distraction will be strong enough to pull her back from the brink.

  Then again, maybe she needs this. Maybe, in order for her to move on, she has to let the pain in. And what could be more painful than the box of photo albums sitting on the carpet in front of her?

  The box looks so innocuous. The plain brown outside has nothing to indicate its dangerous contents other than the word “Photos” scrawled across the front of it.

  “Come on, Georgia,” she mutters under her breath, pushing off from the bed. “They’re just pictures.”

  She approaches the box and grabs the first album off the top of it, then she backs up until her legs hit the bed and plops down. She opens the book to the first page.

  On the first page is a picture of Drew, grinning in a Spiderman costume in front of the inn. Georgia recognizes the photo as being from the first Halloween that she and Richard owned the inn. Her daughters both claimed to be too old to go trick or treating that year, and Georgia remembers being so sad to see them all so grown up, but so happy to still have her little boy.

  The photo below is of Melanie, curled up with a book in the living room amongst all the spooky decorations. She always looked so serious. She still does.

  Georg
ia flips the page and her heart cracks. Richard is on the bed, the same one she’s sitting on. He’s dressed as a mummy and sprawled out with his head propped up on one hand, pointing at the camera. Georgia remembers how hard she laughed after she took this photo. She remembers Richard jumping off the bed and walking toward her, arms outstretched, groaning like the undead as he chased her around the room.

  She can’t sit up here anymore. She tucks the album and a couple others under her arm and heads downstairs to the kitchen, where she grabs a bottle of wine from the fridge and pours some into a glass, then takes a seat on one of the barstools.

  With a shaking hand, Georgia opens the Halloween album again and flips to the page after.

  There is a photo of Georgia and Drew, standing together at the front door. Georgia is dressed as a witch, with a spiderweb cape draped from her shoulders. Drew is holding up a bucket, smiling from ear to ear. He holds his mask in his free hand. He begged Georgia and Richard to be Spiderman, then promptly spent the whole night complaining about his mask. Georgia told him he didn’t have to wear it if he didn’t want to. Richard had no patience for his son’s whining, and told him there was no point picking a masked superhero to be for Halloween if he wouldn’t wear the mask.

  Georgia remembers being annoyed at Richard for his attitude, and she pulled him aside and told him to cool it. It was one of the last times they would ever get to take one of their kids trick or treating, and she didn’t want him to ruin it.

  Richard told her he just didn’t want Drew to grow up to be a flake. Georgia didn’t think that was fair, because Drew was only ten after all and who knew what he was going to grow up to be? The more they talked, the more agitated Georgia grew, until finally, Richard pulled her into his arms and whispered in her ear that he was sorry.

  “Let the kid be flaky if he wants to be flaky,” Richard said, kissing her forehead. “As long as you’re his mom, he’s going to grow up just fine.”

  Georgia remembers her heart fluttering and, just like that, the bridge was mended. She kissed Richard and they went back to where Drew was waiting for them, mask in hand, and they went trick or treating.

  A fat tear spills down Georgia’s cheek and she brushes it away with the back of her hand as she turns the page. By the time she finishes flipping through the book, she is openly sobbing.

  Life is never simple, and it wasn’t back then, but looking back now, these times seemed so much easier. She was stressed about the business, and about providing for her family, and making sure all of them grew up happy and healthy, but she was never stressed about Richard. He was the one constant.

  Where did it all go wrong?

  The next photo album Georgia opens is from the first Memorial Day barbecue she ever hosted at the inn. They hadn’t gotten the keys that long before and Georgia thought throwing a big party would be a great way to ingratiate themselves with the Willow Beach locals. Richard wasn’t a fan of the idea. He wanted them to get a better feel for the business before they complicated things by throwing party planning into the mix. It felt like he dug his heels in every step of the way—criticizing how much money Georgia spent on food, arguing about what their roles would be during the party, letting his bad humor wash off onto the kids until they were all complaining about it, too.

  So maybe Richard wasn’t such a constant. Maybe the way Georgia broadly remembers their life together is more like the photos of the event than it was real life. In the photos, nobody would be able to tell that Richard was unhappy. He has his arms around Georgia’s shoulders in most of their pictures together and is beaming. Laughing, even.

  It ended up being a great party.

  Georgia takes a drink of her wine and the floodgates burst even wider. She lets it all out, great choking sobs filling the room as she mourns for the life she used to have. Her eyes sting from all the tears. Her nose runs. She is an absolute wreck.

  And then someone knocks on the door.

  The door connecting the breakfast room to her kitchen is always locked to guests, and Georgia considers just not answering it and waiting until they go away. But no, she can’t do that. She cares about her guests too much.

  She slides off the stool and approaches the door, mopping her sleeve over her face in an attempt to dry the tears. It hardly matters. The second anyone looks at her, they will know she’s been crying. Georgia dreads the awkwardness that she will encounter on the other side of the door.

  She unlocks the door and opens it, and is mortified to see Joel standing on the other side. His brow is creased with concern and he opens his mouth then closes it at the sight of her.

  “I—uh—I heard you crying,” he says gently. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to be alone.”

  Could it not be anyone else? Georgia feels she has already surpassed the threshold for unprofessionalism with Joel. She already told him everything that happened with Richard, and while he took it in his stride, he is here to have a nice place to stay, not to be the landlady’s personal therapist. Now she has subjected Joel to the sound of her wails, too. Worst of all, he knows exactly why she is crying. Joel knows far too much.

  “I am really sorry for disturbing you,” Georgia croaks, sniffing.

  “No, no,” he says quickly. “You didn’t disturb me at all, I just heard you and my heart broke a little. I thought maybe I could help.” He smiles kindly. “At the very least I could offer you a hug? Or silent companionship. Or solitude. Dealer’s choice.”

  Georgia considers this for a moment. She doesn’t want to be alone, and the idea of a hug does sound very nice, but the thought of sharing even more of herself with this stranger … it’s too much. Too intimate. She isn’t ready to let another person in and Joel is literally knocking on her door, asking for her to do that.

  “I appreciate the offer, Joel, I really do,” Georgia says, “but I do actually want to be alone right now. If there’s anything at all that you need, though, please don’t feel like you can’t come to me. You’re a guest and I still am here for whatever you need.”

  Joel gives her a strange look, as though confused, then nods. “Okay, no problem. If you do want anyone to talk to, you know where I am.”

  “Thank you, Joel.”

  He turns to go and Georgia closes the door, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

  22

  Melanie

  Saturday is always a busy day for Melanie. Today is no different. Her schedule is packed full and she spends the whole day on her feet—seeing patients, checking on the animals she is keeping for observation, answering her receptionist’s many questions. When her last appointment for the day cancels unexpectedly, Melanie is relieved as it means she will be able to tackle some of the paperwork that has been piling up. She lets Annie go home early and goes to the back of the office, where she has a desk just opposite the kennels.

  The only animals in for observation are Bandit and a sassy calico cat named Tubs. Tubs is fast asleep, but Bandit wags his tail when he sees her and whimpers. Melanie lets him out, checking him over quickly before setting him into the dog bed next to her desk.

  She tries to focus on her paperwork, but all she can think about is her date last night with Colin. Being so busy means she hasn’t had a spare minute all day to go over the details of her evening, and now that she is alone in silence—well, not quite alone; she’s actually got a furry reminder of Colin at her side, no less—it all comes back.

  Colin was a perfect gentleman all night. He made her laugh. He gave her butterflies. He was everything she wanted him to be and more. He’s so smart, and funny, ridiculously good- looking to boot. How did she strike it so lucky?

  Though it was not so lucky for some, she thinks, looking over at Bandit. He whacks his little tail against the bed when he sees her looking and she can’t help but smile.

  She agreed with Colin last night that he could adopt Bandit. There’s no reason for her to still be keeping him except that, at the moment, he has nowhere to go. She has been taking hi
m upstairs when she finishes work each evening but prefers to keep him in the office while she’s still busy, as she’s a little worried what kind of trouble he will get into on his lonesome otherwise.

  Colin said he would be by to pick the little guy up as soon as he got a couple things sorted at the house to make sure it’s safe for him. Melanie wonders when that will be. She only just saw Colin last night and is already anxious to see him again. He pulls her out of her shell, and she is shocked by how comfortable she feels with him. More than that, she’s shocked by how good it feels to feel comfortable with someone.

  She manages to breeze through some work. It’s not longer, however, before she is interrupted by the front doorbell chiming to announce someone entering.

  “Hello?” Melanie calls out.

  She checks her watch—only fifteen minutes left until she’s officially closed. Either someone has come in with an emergency, or Colin has come to make good on his promise to give Bandit a good home.

  The latter prospect makes Melanie’s heart flicker in her chest. She dons a wide smile as she walks into the reception area.

  And then the smile melts from her face like ice cream on a sunny day.

  “What—what are you doing here?” Melanie stammers.

  At least Derek has the good sense to look sheepish as he pulls the baseball cap from his head and wrings it between his hands. His mouth tilts, eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “You look good, Mel,” he says.

  Her ex-husband looks good too, though she hates to admit it. The last time she saw him was over their divorce papers. He has trimmed what used to be choppy blond hair and shaved clean what used to be a grizzly beard. His earnest expression makes her feel more at ease somehow, despite the shock of his arrival, though Melanie knows she should feel anything but.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks again in a more clipped tone.

  “I went out into the world,” he says. “I drove all over the country, saw more of it than I ever dreamed of. It was almost everything I ever wanted.”