Harbor Lights

by Sherryl Woods

  To her delight, he laughed again.

  Maybe, she thought, if she worked at coaxing that laugh out of him, in time it would get easier. It might not chase away all his demons, but it could be a start.

  She sighed at the thought. Here she was again, trying to save a wounded soul. She thought of her ex-husband. She’d worked so hard to try to save him from himself, convinced that she could make things better for him and his son, but in the end alcohol had won.

  It had taken a very long time, but she knew now it had never even been a fair fight.

  5

  With all of the physically demanding work finished at Shanna’s store, Kevin needed to find an excuse to be away from the house over the weekend, so he could avoid an encounter with his mother. Despite his father’s willingness to let bygones be bygones, Kevin wasn’t interested in a reconciliation with the woman who’d left them. It still shocked him that his sisters seemed to be mellowing toward their mother, especially Jess, who’d suffered the most when she’d gone.

  Friday evening, assured that Davy was welcome to spend the night at Abby’s, he’d called Jake and scheduled a guys’ night out with him, Will and Mack. The quick agreement to the last-minute suggestion was one of the few benefits of having everyone worried about him. Bree had immediately given Jake her blessing to join the outing. Apparently she considered the invitation to Jake a sign that Kevin was finally on the mend.

  Kevin wondered what she would have thought if she’d known how little he’d had to say all evening. Jake and Mack had filled the conversational gaps, while Will had studied him with way too many speculative looks. That was the risk of having a shrink for a friend, though Will was halfway decent about waiting to be asked for any kind of advice. If Kevin had been in a better frame of mind, he might have chuckled at the number of times he caught Will practically biting his tongue to keep silent.

  Since Kevin had nursed a single beer most of the evening and gotten home early, he was up barely after dawn on Saturday and heading for Abby’s a half hour later. He was fairly confident that he’d be long gone before anyone else in the house awoke. He hadn’t formulated a plan for the rest of the day, but he definitely wouldn’t be spending it here waiting for his mother to pounce with advice or comfort.

  Unfortunately, he’d just stepped off the porch, when he spotted his mother crossing the lawn, obviously returning from an early-morning walk on the beach. She offered him a tentative smile.

  “You’re up early,” she said, her voice determinedly upbeat. “Going somewhere?”

  “Over to Abby’s. I need to pick up Davy.”

  He was about to walk on by, but she faced him with a penetrating look that halted him.

  “Then you weren’t hoping to avoid me again this morning?” she inquired lightly.

  He flushed guiltily. “So what if I was?” he asked defensively.

  “I never took you for a coward,” she responded, her tone deceptively mild. “Certainly no one in this household raised you to be one, not your father or Nell or—”

  He cut her off before she could add her name to the list. “At least you acknowledge it was Dad and Gram who raised me.”

  The barb didn’t seem to humiliate her as he’d intended it to. Instead, she kept her gaze steady.

  “Of course I do, Kevin, though if we’re both being honest and direct, I did have a hand in raising you until you were in your teens. It wasn’t until then that Nell stepped in.”

  He was about to speak, but she apparently wasn’t through, because she silenced him with a hard look, then added, “And though I’m quite sure you think otherwise, I never intended any of it to turn out the way it did.”

  “Oh, really? Then you just went to New York for the weekend and got lost? Maybe developed amnesia?”

  She sighed and gestured toward the beach. “Let’s go for a walk, Kevin. We might as well have this out here and now. This fight has been brewing for years.”

  She was right. It had been. He’d stored up plenty of things he wanted to say to her, but now that the opportunity had presented itself, he felt tongue-tied.

  “You’re just back from a walk and I need to get to Abby’s,” he argued, but he could tell from her unrelenting gaze, she wasn’t going to give in. Maybe it was best to get this over with, let her know there was nothing she could do or say to make amends for the past. In fact, a part of him admired her for not backing down. In her shoes, he wasn’t so sure he’d have been as strong. Recent history certainly suggested quite the opposite. He was lousy at facing hard truths.

  “I’m not so old that I can’t take a second walk on the beach, and those children over at Abby’s are probably still in bed,” she said, regarding him with amusement. “Any other excuses?”

  “None,” he conceded and turned toward the beach. He strode off across the lawn, then went down the steps without slowing his pace. Let her chase him, if she wanted to talk to him.

  To his surprise, she actually kept up with him, despite being several inches shorter and a good many years older. When he glanced over at her, she gave him a faint smile. “Everyone walks fast in New York,” she said with a shrug. “Do your worst. I can keep up.”

  The knot in his chest seemed to ease just a little at her show of determination and defiance. He suddenly recalled that it had been a matter of pride to her that she could keep up with him and Connor. With Mick so often away, she was the one who’d even organized the occasional camping trip for the two of them, or gone with them on hikes. She might have looked out of place with her perfect hair and stylish outfits, but she’d never complained and she’d matched them step for step.

  Because he didn’t want to dwell on the good memories and because the question had been nagging at him for more than fifteen years now, he finally blurted it out. “Why’d you do it, Mom? I know why you left Dad, but why us?” He couldn’t seem to help the pain that was revealed in that single question.

  “Oh, Kevin, I never meant to leave any of you behind,” she said, reaching out to touch his jaw, but drawing back before she made contact. Her expression turned sad. “Not even your father.”

  What the devil was she talking about, Kevin wondered. She’d left. What had she expected to happen? Suddenly it dawned on him. “Did you expect Dad to come running after you?” he asked incredulously.

  She shook her head at once, then sighed deeply. “Okay, maybe at first I hoped for exactly that, but I knew your father well enough not to expect it.”

  In an odd way he was relieved that she hadn’t been that delusional. “Then what did you expect?”

  “To have my children with me in New York.”

  She said it so wistfully that it stunned him, especially when he knew it was a lie. “Come on,” he scoffed. “You never wanted that. I overheard you tell Dad more than once that you hadn’t signed on to be a single mom. Am I supposed to believe that changed just because you’d divorced him? Did you suddenly get all warm and fuzzy over the idea of raising us on your own?”

  She looked stung, then shook her head. “Sometimes I’m still astonished by how much you all heard, when your father and I tried so hard to keep our arguments private. You heard just enough to be hurt, but not enough to understand.”

  “Come on, Mom, what’s to misunderstand? If you ask me, you made yourself pretty clear.”

  “Actually the point I was trying to make to your father was that we’d agreed to be partners in our marriage, that if he wasn’t going to be around to share in the responsibilities of parenting, I might as well be a single mother. At least then I’d know that everything was up to me.”

  Kevin knew she was trying to make a distinction, but he wasn’t sure he bought it. “What’s the difference?”

  “I’ll give you an example,” she said at once. “Do you remember the first thing that would happen every time your dad came home from a business trip?”

  Kevin thought back, but couldn’t think of anything specific. He shook his head.

  “Then I’ll remind you. Y
ou or Connor or one of your sisters would greet him at the door with a laundry list of things you wanted to do that I’d already refused to let you do. Mick would automatically say yes, undermining my decision without knowing any of the relevant facts. He loved being the good guy, which left me to be the hard-nosed disciplinarian. Then he and I would end up fighting about it.”

  Though he hated admitting it, Kevin did recall exactly how they’d used Mick’s absences to their advantage. On some level, they’d known that their dad’s guilt at being away so much would keep him from saying no to anything. They’d also known that Megan wouldn’t overrule him.

  “You’re saying it would have been easier to be the final authority,” he concluded.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Couldn’t you just have told Dad to butt out until the two of you had a chance to talk? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than divorcing him?”

  She smiled at that. “We’re talking about your father. Have you ever known him to butt out? Besides, you know the divorce was about much more than that.”

  “I still think you’re revising history,” he said bitterly. “It’s easy to say now that you wanted us with you. How are we supposed to prove otherwise?”

  There was a quick flash of hurt in her eyes at his remark, but then she said, “Don’t you really mean how am I going to prove that I’m telling the truth? Okay, fair enough. Do you remember my first visit back here after I left?”

  Kevin shook his head. He’d made it a point to be away from the house as much as possible whenever he knew she was coming. He’d been so angry then. And Gram and Mick had let him get away with it, buying whatever excuse he’d offered. They’d gently tried to coax him into sticking around, but the minute he’d balked, they’d given in.

  “You spent the weekend with Jake,” she reminded him. “On a camping trip.” She let that sink in, then asked, “How about my next visit?”

  He tried to think back, but nothing specific came to mind. “How do you expect me to remember something from that long ago?”

  “You seem to remember pretty clearly that I supposedly abandoned you.”

  “Well, of course, because that’s exactly what you did.”

  Her gaze steady, she said, “No, Kevin, I didn’t, not the way you’re implying, anyway. I was here, time after time. You were all so angry, and who could blame you, but I kept coming back. I encouraged all of you to come to New York. I was supposed to share custody with your father. Mick and I had agreed to that. He provided enough alimony and child support for a place big enough for all of us. My apartment was filled with empty bedrooms intended for you. I had schools picked out. Ask Abby if you don’t believe me. When she moved to New York, she visited the apartment, saw the room I’d decorated for you and Connor with all sorts of sports posters, the one for Bree and Abby with a computer, the perfect little girl’s room for Jess.”

  Shaken, Kevin regarded her with disbelief. “Why did you do all that, then never take us with you?”

  “Because I was convinced you’d be miserable if I took you away from here. It was the wrong decision, no question about it, but I did what I thought was best for you at the time. Your friends were here. You had family here. In New York, with me working, you all would have had too much time on your own in a strange place, even if I’d arranged for a housekeeper. And, on top of all that, most of you were barely speaking to me. Eventually I had to face the fact that you all wanted to be here, rather than with me. I finally gave up that ridiculously expensive apartment and got one I could afford without any help from your father.”

  He hated the image that came to mind of his mother sitting all alone in that large, empty apartment. For an instant, his heart filled with compassion, but it took only a moment before it hardened again. He’d had years to perfect the anger and no time at all to absorb this other side to the story.

  Apparently his mother wasn’t expecting a response or even a reaction, because she continued, each word another blow to the wall of defenses he’d erected.

  “Instead, I settled for being the outsider,” she said. “I settled for coming again and again for uncomfortable visits, trying to chip away at all that anger.” She gave him a rueful look. “Every one of you kids inherited the O’Brien gene for stubbornness in spades. Not one of you ever cut me any slack.”

  “Did you expect us to?”

  “I hoped, with time, you would. That’s why I never stopped trying.”

  The conversation made him look back from a different perspective, see that period of his life in a new light. Maybe she hadn’t been quite the monster he’d turned her into in his own head.

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, will you answer one of mine?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  This time when she reached out to touch his cheek, she didn’t pull back. “Tell me why you’re in so much pain?”

  He stared at her incredulously. “I lost my wife! How do you expect me to feel?”

  “Oh, Kevin, I know grief when I see it, and that’s not what I’m seeing with you, not entirely, anyway.”

  “You think you know what it’s like to grieve for someone?”

  She didn’t even hesitate. “I grieved for you children every day of the past fifteen years.”

  “Not the same. You could have had us back. All you needed to do was move home, or at least back to Chesapeake Shores. There’s nothing, nothing, I can do to get Georgia back.”

  To his dismay he saw something in her eyes that scared him, an apparent understanding of every emotion that was in his heart.

  “If you could wave a magic wand and bring her back, would you?”

  “Of course,” he said at once, stunned that she’d even ask such a ridiculous question.

  She waved off the quick response. “I don’t just mean having her safe and alive,” she amended. “Of course, all of us want that. I meant here, with you.”

  He was slower to respond this time, though he once again insisted, “Of course.”

  “Sweetheart, that tiny hesitation speaks volumes,” she said.

  “What?” he demanded. “What did it say?” He honestly wanted to know, because for the life of him he couldn’t figure out all of the conflicting emotions rampaging through him on a daily basis.

  “Think about it,” she said. “When you’ve figured out the answer, I think you’ll finally be ready to move on with your life.”

  “If you know so much, you tell me,” he said. He barely kept himself from begging. He had a feeling she was right, that if he knew the answer, he could get beyond these endless days of living in a fog.

  “It’s not up to me to put words in your mouth,” she said, then shrugged. “Could be I’ve got it wrong, anyway. But if you ever want to talk it through, I’m here to listen.”

  Impatient, he snapped, “No, you’ll be back in New York. As usual.”

  This time when he strode away, she didn’t even try to keep up with him. She let him go. Astonishingly, that hurt almost as badly as when she’d walked out on them.

  Laurie arrived in town on Thursday to see Shanna’s shop and pronounced it amazing.

  “I love the pale green color of the walls and all the white trim,” she said, as she stood in the doorway. “And the bright seaside pattern in the upholstery on the chairs looks fabulous. The whole store is warm and cozy and inviting. Not only is the mix of books and games perfect, but it smells like coffee and the tables and chairs in that area are charming. Who could resist coming here for a chat with a friend or a book club meeting? You are planning to start a book club, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Shanna said. “I’m going to have a sign-up sheet at the opening. I love the idea of women getting together right here to talk about books.”

  Laurie continued to walk slowly around the shop, surveying the room more closely. “There’s not another single thing you could do to make it better,” she said, then added with a grin, “So, let’s go book the inn for my
wedding.”

  Shanna regarded her friend with amusement. “What happened to coming to town to help me get ready for my grand opening?”

  “You don’t need my help,” Laurie said blithely. “Frankly, I’m a little miffed about that, but since you don’t, we can focus on me. That’s always my favorite thing.”

  “If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you were a totally self-absorbed human being,” Shanna told her, even as she grabbed her purse and prepared to take Laurie to the inn for an inspection to see if it would meet her needs.

  Fortunately, she’d anticipated exactly this scenario and had worked doubly hard to get ahead for the opening, so she could spend a few hours focused on the wedding.

  “I’ve made an appointment with the owner,” Shanna told her. “We’ll walk around, look things over and have lunch, then meet with Jess.”

  “You’re an angel,” Laurie said, giving her a hug. “I knew I could count on you. And once we’ve done this, you can count on me a hundred percent to do whatever you need me to do. I’ll even bake cookies, if that’s what you want.”

  “Given your cooking skills, I think it’s probably a good thing that I’m having the food for the opening catered, by the inn, as a matter of fact. I’ll go over those details while we’re with Jess, too.”

  “Then it won’t be all about me,” Laurie said with an exaggerated pout.

  Shanna laughed. “Sorry, sweetie, you are not the center of the universe, at least not this week. When the time comes for your wedding, I promise you’ll get all of my attention.”

  Laurie put on her seat belt, then managed to turn sideways and tuck a leg under her. “So, tell me about the men in this town.”

  “Haven’t we had this conversation? Besides, you’re engaged. Other men should be the last thing on your mind.”

  “Not for me. For you. And we haven’t discussed this since you’ve met someone,” Laurie said confidently.

  Shanna regarded her with shock. “What makes you say that?”