Innkeeper's Daughter

by Marie Ferrarella

  Alex shared a look with Cris, who bit her lower lip. Uncle Dan had been there for her sister when her husband had died halfway around the world. Although she and the rest of the family had done their best to be supportive of Cris, Dan had been able to supply something the others couldn’t. He had actually been in the region where Mike had died and could by that very fact somehow connect her to the place where Mike had been permanently taken away from her.

  It had meant a lot. They’d all recognized that.

  After a moment Cris was able to ask her question. “When?”

  “Very suddenly,” her father answered in a hushed, hoarse voice, unable to take a deep breath because of the tremendous weight he felt pressing down on his chest. “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” Stevi cried.

  Dan was supposed to have arrived at the inn yesterday with Wyatt. When he hadn’t, they had chalked it up to the fact that there were times when Dan Taylor was not one of the most punctual people.

  “Where was he when...when it happened? Why didn’t he come to us? Why didn’t he tell us? He must have known.”

  Stevi’s questions tumbled out in rapid-fire succession. Even so, they found no target, scattering to the corners of the room, searching for any answers that made a smattering of sense.

  As her sisters closed ranks around their father, alternating between asking questions and offering mutual comfort, Alex quietly took a step back.

  And then another.

  And another, until she’d managed to unobtrusively detach herself from the inner circle. Once certain that her sisters and Dorothy had surrounded their father with their love and overwhelming sympathy, Alex turned on her heel and quickly made her way to her father’s small office at the back of the first floor.

  About to knock lightly on the door before entering, she decided against it.

  Instead she slowly pushed open the door, as if she was opening a portal to another world, a world currently filled to overflowing with grief.

  Or so she imagined.

  She found Wyatt standing at the window with his back to the door.

  His body was rigid, as if he was attempting to shoulder something that was far too heavy for him to actually manage. A burden that threatened to bring him to his knees if he took as much as a step in any direction.

  A minor tug-of-war took place inside Alex and then she decided to back out of the room, to wait until Wyatt was better equipped to deal with the offer of sympathy from others—especially her.

  But as she placed her hand on the doorknob again, preparing to ease the door shut, she saw Wyatt raise his head just a fraction.

  “Hello, Alex,” he said in a quiet voice that sounded barely human.

  Hearing him speak startled her. She stared at the back of his head. “How did you—?”

  “Your reflection,” he answered, anticipating the rest of her question.

  He still hadn’t turned around to face her. He was trying his best to get himself under control before he did that. There were times, less now than before, when facing Alex was not an easy thing to do, even under the best of circumstances.

  This was definitely not the best of circumstances. Men weren’t supposed to cry. It wasn’t anything that had been drummed into him; it was just something that he felt. Most of all, he didn’t want Alex to see him with tears in his eyes. So he struggled to get control over himself.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The words came to her lips automatically—and sounded incredibly tinny and hollow to her ear, even though they were filled to capacity and then some with the truth. She meant them from the bottom of her heart.

  “I’m sorry for ours, too,” she added in a voice that was even smaller than when she’d begun. “Your father was a wonderful, wonderful man and we’re all going to miss him terribly. Especially me.”

  Wyatt turned from the window then, his face a rigid mask of control. Only the sunlight shining on the slight telltale dampness on his cheek belied the control he was attempting to project.

  “You’re kidding,” he said in disbelief.

  Alex had no idea what he was referring to. Had his grief caused him to temporarily take leave of his senses? “What?”

  “You’re actually engaging in one-upmanship? Now?” he asked her incredulously.

  “What?” Alex repeated, thoroughly confused. Then his words sank in and she stared at him, horrified. How could he even think that? “No. I only meant that I was going to miss your father a great deal.”

  “That’s not what you said,” Wyatt pointed out. “You said ‘especially me.’ That means that out of everyone who is grieving—including me—you are the one who is grieving the most. You, who only saw him for a month in the summer and a couple of times during the year, you’re going to miss him more than I am.”

  She refrained from pointing out that he only saw his father the same amount she did. But that would be nit-picking and this was not the time for that.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean—oh, damn it, Wyatt,” she cried in frustration, “I’m trying my best to be nice, here.”

  “Something you obviously don’t have much practice at because you’re not succeeding,” he told her.

  She pulled back, hurt and confused.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I just don’t see you making an effort. My dad died last night, and all I see is Alex being...Alex. At my expense.”

  The next moment, any possible escalation of a verbal exchange between Alex and Dan’s son was interrupted as people came flooding into the small office, filling it to capacity.

  Cris, Stevi and Andy surrounded Wyatt, offering their condolences in what came across as a cacophony of sympathy and kind words tripping over one another.

  Only her father noticed Alex retreating from the room, moving back to the threshold.

  “Everything all right?” he asked her.

  “No,” she answered, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from Wyatt and her sisters. Their comfort was easing his pain. She was glad for him, really glad—but she had tried to do the same thing, she really had. And he had just railed at her. “Uncle Dan’s gone,” she added in response to what she knew was going to be her father’s next question. “How can anything be all right at this moment?”

  “I meant between you and Wyatt,” her father clarified.

  “No,” she told him honestly. “But then,” she added, “it never was.” Alex shrugged the matter off. “That’s not important right now.” She focused on something she could help with. “If Uncle Dan just died yesterday, then there hasn’t been a funeral yet.”

  “No, there hasn’t,” Wyatt said, speaking up. Despite having three women talking to him at once, he had still managed to hone in on what Alex had said to her father.

  “That’s part of the reason Wyatt’s here,” her father told her.

  Alex was still contemplating ducking out, but with everyone watching that seemed too much like running and it wasn’t the kind of message she was looking to send. When she came right down to it, she wasn’t sure exactly what kind of message she was trying to send.

  “To carry out Dan’s last wishes,” her father was saying. “Dan wanted to be buried here, in the family cemetery. These past twenty years, Ladera-by-the-Sea was really the only place he called home. His summers here with Wyatt and you girls were his haven, it was what he considered both his goal and his reward for a year well lived.”

  “And Uncle Dan actually said he wanted this to be his final resting place?” Alex asked her father.

  Before her father could answer, Wyatt did. “That was what he told me.”

  That sounded right and fitting somehow, Alex thought. His visits had been the highlight of the summer when she was younger. When he’d suddenly turn up at other times of the year, it always felt like Christmas.

  Who was she kidding? Dan and Wyatt’s visits were both the highlight of her summers, although admittedly for different reasons. Reasons she wasn’t a
bout to pick apart right now because she wasn’t up to it.

  And might never be.

  “So we’ll hold the services here?” Cris asked her father.

  “That’s the general idea,” Richard replied. He looked at his daughters, each precious to him in her own way. He could see that they were all deeply affected by this. “I think that might help us to say one final goodbye to him.”

  As usual, Alex instantly began to take charge.

  It wasn’t so much that she had a need to be in control. It was more that she felt that by picking up the reins, she was allowing everyone else the freedom of doing what they needed to do without having to concern themselves with the bigger-picture details.

  “Okay, first off, I’ll need a list of people to contact about the funeral services,” Alex said to her father.

  She knew that the list would be coming from Wyatt, not her father, and this was her way of letting Wyatt know she would be taking care of the arrangements. At this point, she was certain that his state of mind was a shambles. He had trouble accepting what she said during the best of times.

  Wyatt surprised her by saying crisply, “Already done.”

  Wyatt had never been what she had thought of as organized. But then, maybe he hadn’t put the list together. Maybe he had one of those movie starlets she’d seen hanging off his arm each time he attended a premiere of one of the movies he wrote. None of them looked as if she had an IQ rivaling that of a peacock, but obviously one of them probably knew how to write.

  “Okay, moving on,” Alex announced, shifting her attention to Wyatt. “What date were these people told? For the services that were being held?” she elaborated when she received no answer.

  “Day after tomorrow,” he finally replied.

  Well, that was really quick, she couldn’t help thinking. “Pretty confident my father would say yes,” Alex said, her eyes locking on to his.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” he replied, treating her as if she’d just accused him of something. That’s not why she’d said it. Something just didn’t seem to make sense in this two-day timeline.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Her father asked the same question Wyatt had.

  “No reason, but the inn could have been booked solid, making holding the funeral service rather difficult,” she pointed out. “Besides, even though the inn isn’t booked solid, it would have still been nice to have the details nailed down on our end before alerting—how many people were alerted?” she asked, realizing she still didn’t have a number to work with.

  “My father made friends with the immediate world,” Wyatt told her.

  “The immediate world,” she repeated. “That’s going to make for pretty difficult seating arrangements. I’m not sure if we have enough folding chairs for everyone.”

  “But I cut it down to a hundred,” Wyatt continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “Is that all right?” he asked, looking at his father’s oldest friend.

  “Any number you come up with is fine, Wyatt,” Richard assured him with feeling. “No matter how many people you want attending the service, we’ll find a way to accommodate everyone, so feel free to increase your list if you want to.”

  But Wyatt shook his head. “No, a hundred’s good. But thanks for the offer.”

  “Well, at least we’ll be saving on folding chairs,” Alex said, doing her best to keep the situation as light as she could.

  If she didn’t, Alex was fairly certain she was going to break down in tears herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “YOU WERE KIND OF sharp with Wyatt back there,” Cris commented as she and Alex headed back toward the front of the inn. There was an underlying note of disapproval in her voice. “You could have gone a little easier on him, Alex. After all, the man just lost his father.”

  “I know. I was there when Dad told us, remember?” Alex said impatiently. “And if I’d suddenly changed and gone completely soft and sweet on him, tiptoeing around his feelings—” she forced a smile to her lips and nodded as they passed one of the inn’s recurring guests, Mrs. Rafferty “—Wyatt might have let his guard down—and then who knows what would have happened? This way, he’s got his guard up, he knows what to expect and he’s too busy trying to block my next barb to let all that pain flatten him.”

  Cris looked at her older sister, clearly impressed. “So this was actually a ‘humanitarian’ act on your part?” she asked, trying but failing not to laugh.

  Alex could only agree with her: this had to be the most creative excuse for verbally sparring with Wyatt she’d ever come up with.

  “Something like that,” Alex admitted with a vague, dismissive shrug. She didn’t want to harp on the subject, but the truth was, if she’d treated him with kid gloves, Wyatt wouldn’t have had the sparring partner he was accustomed to and right now, she had a feeling he needed that. He needed that touch of the familiar to help steady him. “Let’s just say that’s what I would have wanted if I was in his place.”

  “Still,” Cris pointed out, “a few kind words wouldn’t have killed you.”

  She and Wyatt didn’t have that sort of a relationship. Maybe the rules would change sometime down the road—although she really doubted it—but what she did know was that this wasn’t the time for change. He needed someone to vent at and right now, for better or worse, that was her.

  She cocked her head, as if she was trying to make out something. “I think I hear Ricky calling for his mommy.”

  Cris shook her head. She had superhearing when it came to her son. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

  “I’m also older,” Alex reminded her with a smile that said she was the one who got to make the rules.

  “Next time around, I get to be the older one,” Cris declared.

  “We’ll talk,” Alex promised. Rounding the desk, she got back to work.

  Alex heard her sister muttering under her breath as she made her way to the kitchen.

  The kitchen had, at Cris’s insistence, already been updated, upgraded and expanded so she could have elbow room. That included a couple of extra elbows, as well, during their busy season. Elbows attached to people who knew how to take orders and work together when preparing meals became a marathon event rather than the laid-back endeavor it had initially been when Cris had slowly eased herself into the position of the inn’s chef.

  It’s too bad, thought Alex, the contractor who did the kitchen had proved unavailable for their expansion needs. Oh well, she’d find somebody.

  With Cris in the kitchen, Dorothy upstairs tending to the bedrooms and their attached baths and her father, Andy and Stevi still back in his office with Wyatt—doing what they could to comfort him in their own way—that left her at the front desk. She was used to holding down the fort but not this ambush of emotions. Wave after wave of sadness kept washing over her, stealing away her heart.

  Alex tried to remember the last time she’d seen the man who would soon be laid to eternal rest on the inn’s property. It had only been a little more than two weeks ago. She tried to think if she’d actually looked at him when they’d talked, or if she’d merely spoken to the image of the man she carried around in her brain.

  But as closely as she could recall, Uncle Dan had seemed perfectly healthy at the time. Oh, maybe he’d seemed a little less robust, but he was all gung ho about what he’d referred to as his next project. She’d thought it strange at the time because he usually referred to his work as assignments, not projects, but she hadn’t asked him about it.

  Now she wished she had. She wished she’d asked him more questions about his work, spent more time with him. She’d just assumed he’d go on forever, that he had a charmed life. He’d never been so much as wounded in all the years he’d spent covering stories in some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots.

  Alex remembered one particular postcard he’d sent several years ago. Not to her, exclusively, but to all of them. It was a generic card with his byline logo on the front, and on the back Dan had written, “Miss you a
ll, but don’t wish you were here. No one sleeps. Everyone’s waiting for the next attack to come. Gotta be a better way to earn a living. Love to you all, Uncle Dan.”

  That was the way he saw himself, she thought. As their Uncle Dan. It wasn’t just a term affixed to parental friends and used strictly by small children. She and her sisters had no other relatives, so she had nothing to compare Dan Taylor to, but if they had had an uncle, she knew without hesitation that she would have wanted him to be exactly like the man who had taken to the honorary title without hesitation. Her father had also selected Dan to be her godfather.

  They made for strange best friends, her father and Dan. Dan was as vital, as outgoing, as her father was soft-spoken and introverted.

  She still couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t be seeing Dan walk through the inn’s tall front doors, bringing in sunlight and blue skies with him.

  Alex felt a tear run down her cheek and looked around for something to wipe her eyes with. The box of pop-up tissues on the desk was very pretty and had been chosen because it matched the inn’s décor.

  It was also very empty.

  Frustrated, she tossed the box into the wastebasket behind the desk and used the back of her hand to wipe the tear away.

  As soon as she did, another one slid down her cheek. Followed by a third.

  This time, instead of her knuckles, Alex used the heel of her hand. She didn’t want to be seen crying by guests.

  Besides, this was a private matter and she was a very private person. At bottom, she always had been.

  “Why are things never the way they’re supposed to be?” she muttered, annoyed over the lack of tissues when she needed them. It was displacement and she knew it, but she used the excuse anyway.

  “I don’t know, why aren’t they?”

  Startled—because she’d believed herself to be alone—Alex gasped and swung around.

  As she did so, she managed to knock the sign-in ledger onto the floor.

  Wyatt bent to pick it up for her and placed the ledger back on the desk.

  “You still sneak up on people,” Alex accused him, her eyebrows pulling together into a single, exasperated line.