by JoAnn Ross
“I’m not sure anyone can ever get over the loss of a loved one,” Dan said quietly. “Not completely.”
There was a moment’s silence. Dan could practically hear the gears cranking away in John’s head. “Now you’re talking about my mom and dad.”
“You, of all people, should understand that sometimes people feel a lot of stuff deep down inside that they’re not real comfortable sharing with strangers.”
“Yeah. Sometimes, when I think about the accident, I feel like crying. But I don’t, at least not when anybody can see me, because I don’t want them to think I’m a dummy.”
“No one could ever think that.”
“Sometimes people do,” John said matter-of-factly. “But Mom always said that I just need to work harder to change their minds.”
“Your mom was a wise woman.”
“I know.” John sighed. “Sometimes I miss her a lot.”
“Me, too, Sport.” It had been more than a year, and the loss of his older sister still hurt. Dan figured it always would.
After having made the decision to buy the Far Harbor lighthouse, Savannah was back on the grounds, the inspection report in hand. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The roofs would need replacing, there was a little dry rot in the basement of the larger of the two houses, and the wiring would have to be brought up to code in all three buildings, but at least they remained structurally sound.
Mostly all that was needed was a lot of hard work and elbow grease. After these past months of feeling like a ship adrift at sea without a rudder, Savannah found herself looking forward to having her sights set on a new goal.
When she’d caught her husband having sex with the relentlessly ambitious, take-no-prisoners attorney from the resort’s legal department, right in his office, on the glove-soft Italian leather couch she’d bought Kevin for an anniversary present, Savannah had discovered that the old saying was true—fury really did cause you to see red.
As a scarlet flame blazed before her eyes, she’d been sorely tempted to commit castration with her new filet knife. Fortunately, common sense kicked in, and after deciding that the unfaithful, lying, narcissistic husband she’d once adored wasn’t worth going to prison for, she moved into the Beverly Wilshire hotel, arranged to have all her calls—except those from her adulterous spouse—forwarded, ordered a ridiculously expensive bottle of champagne from room service, and then proceeded, for the first time in her life, to get rip-roaring drunk.
The following morning the phone had jarred through her skull like a Klaxon. It had been Raine, calling with the news that their grandmother had been taken to the hospital after a fall and now the courts were demanding that an adult other than Lilith take over the care of Ida’s pregnant teenage foster child.
Nursing the mother of all hangovers, bolstered with a Thermos of strong coffee and a large bottle of extra-strength pain reliever, Savannah had left California that day. As soon as she’d arrived back in Coldwater Cove, she’d immediately been swept up into a series of family emergencies. Once those crises had been taken care of, her own problems had belatedly come crashing down on her like a blow from behind.
She still wasn’t certain exactly how long she’d spent curled in a fetal position beneath her covers, wrapped in an aimless lassitude. Finally, when she’d just about decided that she was destined to spend the rest of her life in bed, she’d awakened one sunny August morning feeling as if she’d survived a coma. Thinking back on those weeks, Savannah realized that she’d been behaving much the same way she had during childhood when, terrified by the violent thunderstorms that rumbled and crashed over the mountaintops, she’d cower in the closet beneath the stairs. The only difference was that this time she’d been hiding from life.
Determined to create a new identity, she’d called her mother, who’d recently gotten her Realtor’s license, and began searching for the perfect property to turn a lifelong dream into reality. And now she’d found it.
Immersed in chipping away at the paint that was flaking off the window shutters like cheap fingernail polish, Savannah wasn’t aware of the truck coming up the hill. It was only when she heard first one, then a second metal door close, that she realized she was not alone. A moment later a teenager in a T-shirt that read He Who Plants a Garden, Plants Hope appeared from behind the lighthouse carrying a black plastic flat of bedding plants.
“Hello.” She gave him her friendliest smile. “I’m Savannah Townsend. And you must be John Martin.”
“That’s my name, all right.” His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Are you the lady who’s going to buy the lighthouse?”
“I’m thinking about it. But to be perfectly honest, the only thing going for it is your garden.”
“How did you know I planted the flowers?” His cautious expression turned panicky.
“Well, the fact that you’re carrying a flat of plants was my first clue. Also, my mother told me when we were here a few days ago. It’s absolutely stunning. You’re definitely an artist.”
“People say that a lot,” he agreed guilelessly. “They say, John Martin, you were born with the greenest thumb in the entire Pacific Northwest.”
“They’re probably right. So, does Mr. Hyatt pay you to do his gardening?” Savannah couldn’t understand why, if Henry Hyatt cared so much about the grounds, he’d let the rest of the lighthouse fall into disrepair.
“No.” The strange, edgy panic was back. He reminded her vaguely of a wild rabbit about to bolt. “Nobody’s ever paid me. It was all my idea. But I didn’t mean to do anything bad.”
“Oh, I wasn’t implying you did,” Savannah said quickly. “I mean, I wasn’t suggesting—”
“He understands the word imply,” Dan, who’d appeared carrying a second flat of plants, offered.
“I do understand imply,” John seconded his uncle. “I have a disability,” he explained. “But I’m not stupid.”
“Of course you’re not,” she agreed.
“How do you know that? Since you don’t know me?” John asked.
She exchanged a brief look with Dan, who seemed to be watching her carefully. “You just told me.”
“Oh.” He appeared to accept that. “This is my uncle Dan. He’s my best friend.”
“Isn’t that nice?” She turned her smile toward Dan. “Hello.”
“Savannah.” Little lines crinkled outward from morning glory blue eyes when he smiled, reminding her of a bittersweet secret crush she’d had on him the summer she’d turned twelve. “You’re looking well—as always.”
“She looks beautiful,” John corrected. “Like a movie star. And the sun makes her long hair look like it’s on fire.”
Savannah laughed. “I can tell you’ve got O’Halloran genes, John.” During their high school days, Dan and his cousin Jack had certainly charmed more than their share of Coldwater Cove’s female population. “You must have kissed the Blarney stone.”
The boy’s freckled forehead furrowed. “I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well, perhaps I’m mistaken.”
“Or I was too young to remember,” he said helpfully.
“That could be.”
“But usually I have a real good memory. Better than people without a disability, even. Huh, Uncle Dan?”
“Absolutely.”
“Like I said, I’m just slow. When I was a little kid, my mom read me the story of the tortoise and the hare. About how the hare did things a lot faster, but in the end the tortoise finally won the race. I’m like the tortoise. Slow and steady.”
“That certainly makes sense to me.” Savannah exchanged another brief look with Dan. “So, if you don’t work for Mr. Hyatt, how did you come to plant this garden?”
“Sometimes other kids take advantage of me. One Halloween, right after I got mainstreamed into public middle school, some boys talked me into throwing rocks to try to break the lantern room glass. I threw a lot, but only a couple hit.
“The sheriff caught us. After he explained that what we
did was vandalism, I felt real bad. I thought and thought how I could make things better, but I didn’t know how to fix the broken glass. And that’s when I decided that I could plant some flowers and make it look prettier. So I did. And it really did look prettier, didn’t it, Uncle Dan?”
“You bet.” His grin was quick and warm and obviously genuine.
“The next spring I planted some more. Then some more after that. And pretty soon everyone started calling me the flower kid. I’m saving my money so some day I can start my own landscaping business. My mom used to say that everyone should have a dream. I figure a garden is about as nice a thing to dream about as anything else.”
“You’re right. I’ve always had a fantasy of starting my own inn, where people could come and relax and forget all about the outside world.”
“And dream?”
“Definitely dream, and I can’t think of a better place to do that than right here. But since I’ve been known to kill plants as easily as look at them, I hope I can hire you to keep up this magical garden.”
“It’s not magic. But I will keep it up, if you want.”
“Then it’s a deal.” She held out her hand. “Partners?”
His grin was as wide as a Cheshire cat’s. “Partners.”
“Hey, John,” Dan said after Savannah and John had shaken hands, “why don’t you go get started planting and I’ll be right along.”
“Okay.”
When he was out of earshot, Dan put the flat down on the bench. “So, you’re really going to stay?”
“Absolutely.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, he skimmed a look over her, from the top of her head to her feet, clad in expensive designer sneakers that were one of the few reminders of her past life. Savannah had the impression that after the years she’d spent in Paris, Atlantic City, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, he didn’t think she’d still fit into Coldwater Cove.
“It isn’t going to be easy.”
“That’s okay.” She lifted her chin and did her best to pull off at least a bit of her sister Raine’s Xena-the-warrior-princess impression. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“You’re going to have to be, if you’re planning to tackle this place. Because it’s definitely a wreck.”
“A challenge,” she corrected.
He chuckled. “You and John should get together and open a Coldwater Cove chapter of Optimists Anonymous.”
His words rubbed at some still-raw wounds and had her feeling perversely annoyed. Savannah seriously doubted that he would have questioned Raine taking on such a challenge. Then again, Raine had always had the reputation of being the “smart, sassy” sister, while Savannah was known throughout Coldwater Cove as the “sweet, pretty one.”
Well, she was going to change that. There was nothing she could do about pretty since she’d been gifted—or cursed, she sometimes thought—with the best of her parents’ looks. Her mother might be fifty, her rock-star father five years older, yet both had remained stunningly attractive individuals. Nevertheless, when Savannah had finally quit hiding beneath the covers, she’d vowed to abandon her lifelong habit of avoiding unwanted conflict by abandoning her own wishes. No longer would she be so damn accommodating, especially when such knee-jerk submission wasn’t in her best interests.
“Do you have something against optimism, counselor?” Her back stiffened along with her resolve even as she secretly wondered which of them she was trying to convince, Dan or herself.
“Not at all.”
“Good. Because I’m going to make this lighthouse beautiful again, and when it’s done I’m going to throw the biggest blowout grand opening party Coldwater Cove has ever seen.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
He made another of those long, silent assessments that made her feel as if he were evaluating her for jury duty, then, just when her nerves were on the edge of screeching like banshees, he picked up the flat of glossy-leaved, dark green plants. “Guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I handle all of Henry Hyatt’s legal affairs, including property sales, and while I don’t want to scare you off, if you happen to have a suit of armor in your closet, you might think about wearing it for your meeting with the guy.”
Dan’s tone suggested that negotiating with Henry may prove nearly as difficult as refurbishing the buildings. Before she could respond that she was certainly capable of doing business with a frail old man, he flashed a quick grin that was even more charming than it had been back in those long-ago days of her adolescent crush, then sauntered away, his cheerful, off-key whistling drifting back on the fir-scented breeze.
The following morning Savannah lay in bed, futilely chasing sleep. She’d left the shade up so the stars that she’d never been able to see while living in California could shine into the room. A full white moon floated in the center of the darkened rectangle of the dormer window. The ring around the moon meant something, but she couldn’t remember exactly what. Magic, perhaps? Or trouble?
The moon drifted by, eventually slipping out of sight as she struggled with her churning thoughts. By the time a shimmering lavender predawn glow revealed the violets that blossomed on the wallpaper she and Raine had compromised on so many years ago, she surrendered to the inevitable. There’d be no more sleep tonight.
Untangling herself from the twisted sheets, she pulled on a robe, went into the adjoining bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth, and clipped her unruly red-gold hair into a quick twist. Then, not wanting to wake her grandmother, who was sleeping across the hall, she crept down the stairs to the kitchen, where she made coffee in the snazzy red coffeemaker she’d sent Ida last Christmas.
Drawn by the lure of birdsong, she went out on the front porch and sat down on the swing where she’d spent so many lazy summer afternoons daydreaming. Cradling the earthenware mug in her hands, Savannah breathed in the fragrant steam. As she thought back on those days, she decided that despite her mother’s marital instability and gypsy lifestyle, her own life had certainly seemed a great deal simpler back then.
A few stars still shone on the horizon. After an early sprinkle that was more mist than rain, the day was dawning a gloriously bright one. Despite the popular stereotype of gray clouds, sunny skies weren’t that uncommon during late summer. Since the Puget Sound cities of Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia were being flooded with new residents, content with their remote peninsula town just the way it was, Coldwater Cove’s residents tended to pray for rain whenever tourists were in town.
Ida Lindstrom’s Victorian home was set atop a hill overlooking the town that could have washed off an American primitive painting of New England. The flagpole in the grassy green town square at the end of Harbor Street was surrounded by a blaze of color Savannah guessed was another example of John Martin’s green thumb.
Those same vibrant blooms encircled the clock tower, which was made of a red brick that had weathered to a dusty pink over the century and could be seen for miles. Its four sides had each told a different time for as long as Savannah could remember, which didn’t prove any real hardship, since things—and people—tended to move at their own pace in Coldwater Cove.
As she watched a white ferry chug across the sound, which was as smooth as sapphire glass this morning, her mind flashed back to a long-ago evening when choppy waters had caused her to throw up the hot dog, barbecue potato chips, and Dr. Pepper Lilith had fed her for dinner shortly before they’d all boarded the ferry that would take them from Seattle to Coldwater Cove.
She couldn’t remember what, exactly, her mother had been doing during the short trip, but the memory of Raine dragging her out of the glassed-in observation desk into the fresh air, pushing her onto a wooden bench, and wiping her face with a wet paper towel was as vivid as if it had occurred only yesterday.
Her four-years-older half sister had always been there for her, hovering over her like an anxious mother bird, taking on the role of surrogate
mother. Fate may have given them different fathers, but love had made them sisters of the heart.
Savannah couldn’t count the number of times Raine had come to her rescue, banners flying, like bold, brave Joan of Arc riding into battle. Now, despite being grateful for her sister’s unwavering support, she’d begun to suspect that perhaps she’d been overprotected.
Perhaps, she thought as she sipped her cooling coffee, if she’d been forced to fight a few more of her own battles, she wouldn’t have so blithely ignored marital warning signs that only a very blind—or naive—woman could have missed.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said into the still air perfumed with late summer roses. The scarlet blossoms drooping with the weight of diamond-bright dew were as large as a child’s fist and as velvety as the formal gown she’d worn to the Coldwater Cove high school’s winter festival.
She’d made the dress herself, laboring over the rented sewing machine late into the night for two weeks, buried in a pile of velvet and white satin trim that took up the kitchen table and had all of them eating on TV trays for the duration of the project.
Listening to Ida’s grumbling and giving up sleep to baste and hem had proven worth it; when Savannah entered the gym that had been decked out in white and silver crepe paper for the occasion, with the crinolines that showcased her legs rustling seductively and her long hair, which she’d managed to tame with a curling iron, bouncing on her bare shoulders, she’d felt exactly like a fairy-tale princess.
The velvet fantasy of a gown was gone, but not forgotten, turned into pieces of a memory quilt she’d hung over the tester bed a Melrose antique dealer had assured her had once belonged to Lilian Gish. The quilt, which had also incorporated white lace squares from her high school graduation dress, a piece of shiny black silk from a negligee her mother had worn in a movie about female vampires that had opened on Savannah’s tenth birthday, and ivory satin ribbons from her wedding bouquet, was currently packed away with other sentimental items in a cedar trunk at Jack Conway’s U-Store-It on Spruce Street.
