If Only Forever

by Sophie Love

  “What’s first on the itinerary?” Jayne asked, clutching an oversized latte in one hand.

  “We’re start small and non-intimidating,” Amy explained. “Invitations.”

  She steered Emily into her carefully researched and selected stationery store. As they browsed the shelves, Emily realized there was more to invitations than she’d ever anticipated. There was color, paper thickness, shape quality, envelope size. So much for non-intimidating! And the whole thing wasn’t helped by Jayne’s contributions.

  “Pastel pink is so in at the moment,” she explained. “At least it is for hair. I’m not sure if that translates to wedding invites.”

  “Ignore her,” Amy laughed. “I’m the expert.”

  After much deliberating, they left the store with a selection of different papers to take home and consider in more depth.

  “Next we’re going to try some cakes,” Amy explained, gently shoving Emily down the street. “I found a highly rated place just round the corner.”

  Jayne took a gulp of her latte. “I’m surprised there’s so many good-quality shops in such a small town.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. Jayne’s compliments were always veiled criticisms.

  “I know, it’s very lucky,” Amy explained. “The dress store is in the next town over, and there’s a cake store there too but my research concluded that the baker in Sunset Harbor was actually better. It’s one of those quaint family-run places and people prefer the more personal, homey touch. And they supply the cake stands as well so that will all be taken care of.”

  Emily couldn’t help but drag her heels. “You know, my friend’s sister bakes cakes so I’ll probably just use her. Or my friend Karen. She makes all the cakes and bread for the town…”

  Amy looked horrified. “Emily, this is your wedding, not some insignificant party you’re just throwing together. You should feel absolutely no obligation to get your cake from some random acquaintance or Karen at the convenience store. You deserve the best cake you can get!” She gesticulated with her notebook.

  Jayne took a slurp of latte. “The best cake you can get in Maine,” she corrected. “I mean the actual best cake you can get would mean shipping it in from Milan…”

  Amy shot her a glance. Then she turned back to Emily, who felt like she was shrinking under the weight of all these decisions.

  “Look,” Amy said, gently. “You need to trust me. And relax. We’re just going to try some cake. That’s all. Nothing needs to be decided today. It’s just three old friends having a good time and eating cake.”

  Emily tried to take Amy’s advice and relax but it was almost impossible. As Amy took Emily by the shoulders and steered her down the street, she couldn’t help but feel anxious.

  They finally reached the bakery, which was right on the outskirts of town. The store smelled delicious. They were greeted by a portly, maternal woman named Pauline.

  “You must be the bride-to-be!” Pauline gushed, squeezing Emily at the tops of her arms and plonking her into a seat at a long table where a row of sample-sized cakes were laid out.

  Emily wondered why everyone felt entitled to touch her now she was a bride-to-be. She’d been steered through town by Amy, pushed in all directions. It was becoming somewhat invasive. And she hadn’t even started trying on dresses!

  Amy and Jayne sat at the table beside her. Pauline seemed genuinely enthusiastic about Emily’s wedding, which made her feel bad because everyone seemed more excited than she was herself.

  “So we have chocolate mud pie here,” Pauline said, gesturing to one end of the table. “Then we move onto Victoria sponge, red velvet, pineapple upside down, cookies and cream cake, and finally, my personal favorite, double toffee banana walnut whip.”

  She grinned with triumph. Emily felt a lump forming in her throat. With an overwhelming sense of trepidation, she took her first sample, all under Pauline’s eagle eye. With each bite-sized sample piece she ate, it became harder and harder to swallow. Nausea swilled in her stomach.

  “We do different sizes,” Pauling explained as they ate. “You can get the mini package which is up to one hundred pieces, then there’s the medium package, which is a three-tier standard wedding cake, or you can go for monstrous.” She gestured to a display cake in the window which stood at least three feet tall and consisted of ten different layers. It was indeed monstrous.

  Emily found herself tongue-tied. She struggled to swallow her mouthful of double toffee banana walnut whip cake.

  “I think she might have had enough sugar for one day,” Amy said, filling the uncomfortable silence Emily’s lack of response had caused.

  They finished up and bid farewell to Pauline, then piled into Amy’s fancy new car to begin the drive to the wedding dress store. The bumpy ride made all the cake samples swill in Emily’s stomach, mixing with her anxiety about trying on dresses.

  “Here it is,” Amy grinned as she pulled up outside. She looked very proud of herself.

  The store was exquisite looking, with a charcoal gray sign with silver lettering that said La Belle. It was a world away from Pauline’s bakery. It was the sort of place you’d see in a magazine.

  Emily got out of the car, feeling her anxiety grow even further. She felt scruffy, not to mention bloated. Why had Amy planned the dress wearing after the cake eating?

  They’d hardly all gotten inside when Emily’s emotions burst out of her. Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

  “Oh no,” Amy said, scooping an arm around her friend’s shoulders and leading her to a chair to sit down. She looked up at the approaching store clerk, her stern look communicating that they needed some privacy. The clerk scurried away. “Have I pushed it too much?” she asked.

  Emily shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s just the stress of it all. I mean, I don’t know how we’re going to afford a wedding. Daniel’s only just started working and it’s manual labor, it hardly pays well. The inn’s doing okay—we have a decent amount of money coming in from the carriage house at the moment—but it’s so changeable and unpredictable right now. And the more guests I get the more staff I need.” She was aware that she was wailing now. “And Lois is useless!” She let it all pour out.

  Jayne was crouching in front of her, gripping her hands in her lap. “Do you want me to fire her for you?”

  Emily couldn’t help but laugh. It was one of those snotty, messy laughs. She must have looked a state.

  “No,” she said with a sigh. “Lois isn’t the problem. I mean, yeah, she is useless, but I’m just taking it out on her. It’s everything else, really.” She looked over at Amy in the chair next to her. “I mean I have no idea how you got Daniel to talk last night! I haven’t been able to get him to commit to so much as a date.”

  She noticed Jayne’s face, how hard her friend was trying to stop herself from saying “told you so.”

  “It’s okay,” Amy said, rubbing Emily’s shoulder. “That stuff is just superfluous. Focus on the important stuff, on you and Daniel. On your love and how you want to spend forever together. If you get wrapped up in the wedding then you’ll lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s how I almost ended up making the biggest mistake of my life.”

  Emily snuffled up her tears. It was amazing how her friends were able to draw so many emotions out of her. In front of them she was completely comfortable, able to let it all out, all her ugly parts, all her fears. Then with them, she could be put back together, patched up. She realized then how much she’d missed them, how much her decision to be with Daniel had been a sacrifice. But she knew that it was the right decision, that the sacrifice was worth making.

  Feeling so close to her friends gave Emily a sudden burst of courage.

  “I need to tell you guys something,” Emily said.

  “You’re pregnant,” Jayne stated. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Ames, that Emily was pregnant?”

  Emily shook her head emphatically. “I’m not pregnant!”

  Jayne seemed to deflate. “Oh,” she
pouted.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Emily added with a smirk. But then she turned serious again. She looked from Amy to Jayne. “It’s my dad. I found a way of contacting him.”

  Amy gasped loudly and grabbed her mouth with her hand. Jayne didn’t even try to hide her shock. Her eyes practically popped out of her head.

  “That’s… that’s quite some news,” she stammered.

  “When did this all happen?” Amy asked. Her tone had softened considerably.

  “The other day,” Emily explained. “It was in the bar, actually. I found one of his safes and it was full of paper. I thought it was just a pile of junk but then, amongst it all, there was this printed out page of emails. The email address was all of our initials strung together.”

  “So you emailed him?” Amy asked, her voice notching up a semitone.

  Emily nodded. Before her friends even had a chance to ask her the outcome she explained, “He hasn’t gotten in touch.”

  Amy’s and Jayne’s disappointment was palpable. It felt like someone had let all the air out of the room.

  “I’m sorry, hon,” Amy said. She squeezed her arm around Emily even tighter than before.

  All at once, Emily’s tears began to fall again. This time in torrents. This time all her pain and anguish and that sense of rejection came gushing out of her.

  “I’m this close to having my dad walk me down the aisle,” Emily said, holding up her fingers an inch apart. “After all those years trying to accept he wouldn’t be there and then I find a way of reaching him and… and it’s still futile. I hoped that having some direct contact with me would be enough to make him realize he didn’t need to keep hiding.” She sighed deeply. “But no. It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.”

  “Don’t say that,” Amy implored. “What happened with your dad was not your fault. Don’t ever think that. You are loved and wanted. By me and Jayne, Daniel, Chantelle. Your dad.”

  Emily sucked up her tears. “Not by my mom.”

  Amy didn’t miss a beat. “I know it might seem like that sometimes, but your mom does love you.”

  “She said she might not come to the wedding,” Emily confessed.

  “She will,” Amy insisted. “She’s just kicking up a fuss. Being Patricia about it all. She’s hurt you left New York, that’s all. She thinks you’ve chosen your dad over her and that has to sting a bit.”

  “Well, she needs to get over it,” Emily bit back. “Her only living child is getting married. She should be happy for me!”

  Amy squeezed again. “She’ll come. I promise.”

  Emily nodded, but she couldn’t be so certain. Right now, everything felt very precarious. And even with the comfort and assurance of her best friends, Emily couldn’t lift herself out of the gloom that had descended upon her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Early Monday morning, Emily walked Amy and Jayne out of the inn and to Amy’s white Chrysler. It had been a somewhat emotional visit, but also cathartic for Emily.

  “We’ll talk on Saturday,” Amy reminded Emily as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “Then we can go over those cake options. Make a decision once you’ve had a chance to think things through.”

  She spoke in the soft, persuasive way of a parent, like she wasn’t going to let Emily off the hook. Emily appreciated that someone was taking the lead on the whole wedding organization.

  Just then, Daniel came down the porch steps and headed out to his pickup truck.

  “See you ladies next time,” he said, waving, barely masking his relief that the two of them were leaving. Then he blew a kiss to Emily.

  Amy reached out the car window and lightly touched Emily’s hand. “Don’t let him dictate this, hon. Please. You have every right to ask questions and tie him down to some answers.”

  Jayne leaned across Amy and poked her head out the window. “Or just don’t ask,” she said. “Tell him how it’s going to be.”

  Amy shook her head and turned on her car. “And ignore Jayne. Always.” She winked.

  Emily stepped back from the car and waved as it began backing out of the driveway. She was going to miss having those two goofballs around, even if it had been a blur of a weekend crammed with wedding talk, wedding talk, and more wedding talk.

  As Amy’s car disappeared around the corner, Emily noticed Colin Magnum walking up the drive from the carriage house. The breakfast shift was beginning for the guests, which meant it was time for Emily to wake Chantelle and get her ready for school.

  She went inside, immediately feeling lonely without Amy and Jayne. It was like the inn had fallen back into a quiet slumber without them. But the absence she felt was also because of Daniel. This was going to become her new routine now, getting Chantelle ready for school by herself, spending the days alone in the inn with no one to speak to. She wished Serena had more shifts rather than Lois, then instantly felt guilty.

  Emily trotted up the stairs, bidding good morning to the guests coming down for their breakfast, and went into Chantelle’s room. She woke the little girl up with a kiss on the cheek, then helped her choose an outfit for the day ahead.

  Emily didn’t like to make a habit of eating breakfast with the guests, preferring instead to make sure they had some privacy during their stay, so she and Chantelle ate breakfast in the busy kitchen. It was steamy and loud as Matthew and Parker rushed about making food for everyone, so they hardly got a chance to speak to one another, compounding Emily’s solitude.

  When they were done eating, they headed to the car. At last she and Chantelle could have a chat. But no, the little girl pulled out her favorite book and read the whole journey there! Yvonne wasn’t even at the school gates and Ms. Glass was in too much of a hurry to even exchange pleasantries.

  Emily sighed sadly and returned home.

  During her quiet, lonely lunch, Emily found herself staring at her blank phone with its empty inbox, wondering about her father. Had he received her message or had it just been wishful thinking on her part that the email address she’d found belonged to him? If he had received her message, had he read it and chosen not to respond, or had he discarded it because it came from an unfamiliar address? What if it had disappeared into a spam folder?

  She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice Tracey the yoga teacher bounding up the driveway in her loud, patterned leggings, with her purple yoga mat tucked under her arm.

  “Emily?” Tracey cooed as she trotted up the steps. “You okay? I’ve been calling your name for ages!”

  Emily had become so accustomed to the lack of company it took her by surprise that someone would be wanting to talk to her. She snapped to attention. “Sorry, I was miles away. Do you have a class today?”

  “I do indeed.” Tracey beamed. “It’s my recently rebranded Gentle Yoga for the Mature Lady class.” She winked. “You know, the one Cynthia and Karen come to.”

  Emily laughed. “Yes, of course, your Monday class. I’m not very switched on at the moment.”

  Tracey’s expression turned to one of sympathy. She exuded calmness, comfort, and Emily couldn’t help herself from revealing the brewing sadness inside of her with her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Tracey pressed. “Because if you need to talk, please know that I’m here for you.”

  “Thanks.” Emily smiled, touched. “I’ll walk inside with you.”

  She stood, collecting her empty lunch plate, and then she and Tracey walked into the inn.

  “I can’t believe you found a secret room,” Tracey said as they passed the living room. “It’s like something from a movie! Are you going to restore it?”

  Emily nodded. “Daniel wanted to be the one to do it, of course. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. So he’s working at Jack Cooper’s during the day, and he’s going to start working on the bar in the evenings and weekends.” She felt herself swell with pride and admiration. Daniel worked so hard, not just for the family but for this home, for this place they both loved so much.

  “T
ell me where I can find my own Daniel,” Tracey joked.

  Just then, Karen and Cynthia arrived and the three women headed to the ballroom for the carefully named “Mature Ladies” class.

  Alone once more, Emily decided to continue her exploration of the bar. She’d been inspired by her conversation with Tracey and realized it was about time she cleared out all of her dad’s old papers. She’d been avoiding it since the discovery of the email address, which had managed to consume most of her thoughts ever since.

  She went into the room and made a beeline for the vault she’d discovered. She emptied out the pile of dusty papers and stacked them onto the surface of the bar. Propping herself onto a barstool, she began sorting through all the bits of random paper. Typical of her father, most of the bits of the paper were junk—receipts and bus tickets, that sort of thing, items the average person would know to throw away. But her dad was one of life’s hoarders and held onto everything, either psychologically unable to throw things out, or so paranoid about his paperwork being read he’d lock it up rather than risk it being retrieved from the garbage can. Emily wondered why her dad had left all this stuff in his house if he was so worried about being spied on, then checked herself. Her dad had never really gone. Not properly. He’d been back, had kept an eye on the house over all those years. He’d kept everything in vaults, hidden, locked away, dispersed. It might not have occurred to him to throw these things out because he knew Patricia would never come back to the house and so that left only her, Emily, at risk of discovering it. Or…

  Perhaps he left this stuff specifically so I would find it, Emily thought.

  She brushed the thought away. It didn’t ring true. Her dad hadn’t thought about her when he’d run away, so why would he have thought to leave these clues for her? No, it was far more likely that it hadn’t occurred to him that his daughter may one day return.

  Or perhaps there was a third option—that her dad had never expected to be away so long. Whatever had driven him into hiding all those years ago was not supposed to keep him away indefinitely. Could it be her father was always planning on returning but that like many people in life he’d ended up losing year after year after year, letting the absence drag on then, feeling less and less able to resolve it, until one day it had just become his new way of being and he’d forgotten there’d ever been a plan to return?