The Way Back to Erin

by Cerella Sechrist

  “Your mom?”

  “Yeah, will she learn to laugh again, too?”

  Burke frowned. He hadn’t noticed it, but now that Kitt brought it up, he realized Erin’s laughter had been a rare thing in the last year and a half that he’d been back in Findlay Roads. If Gavin had been here, that would have been his top priority.

  Making Erin laugh again.

  “One day, she will, Kitt. I promise.”

  But nearly two whole years had passed since Gavin’s death. How long would it take for Erin to laugh again?

  * * *

  BURKE WAITED UNTIL after dinner to approach Erin. He volunteered to do the dishes while Aunt Lenora took Kitt into the living room. Erin helped finish tidying up a few things and then disappeared. Burke took his time, rinsing off dishes and loading them into the dishwasher, then wiping down the counters and table. When he felt everything was sufficiently in order, he went in search of Erin.

  He found her curled up in an armchair on the inn’s veranda, staring out at the backyard. She didn’t even look up as he took the seat next to her.

  He sat in silence, listening to the chirp of crickets and the distant sounds of the nearby bay. The air was tinged with damp, and there was the faint scent of burning wood in the air, probably from someone’s bonfire. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering many evenings much like this one, with him and Erin sitting in companionable silence. But then he remembered how long gone those days were, and he opened his eyes.

  “I’m sorry about earlier today, letting Kitt handle the utility knife.”

  She didn’t speak, but he caught the faintest shift in her posture, a flicker of interest at his apology.

  “You were right, I need to be more careful.”

  She relaxed, some of the stiffness leaving her shoulders, but she didn’t look at him. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  Burke let silence fall for a few minutes before speaking again.

  “You know, he said something to me today. Kitt did, I mean.”

  She cocked her head in his direction without shifting to face him.

  “He asked me if you were ever going to laugh again,” Burke said.

  This statement finally drew her full attention. She turned to look at him.

  “I didn’t realize it until he asked me that, but he’s right. You never laugh anymore.”

  Erin winced. “There’s no timetable for grief. I can’t just will myself to laugh again.”

  “I know, I know,” Burke hastened to reassure her, noting her slightly bitter tone. “But Aunt Lenora is concerned, too. She said you don’t get out enough.”

  “What? Am I supposed to play the part of the merry widow?”

  She was even more prickly than usual tonight. He wondered what had put her in such a foul mood. Maybe it was him. He knew she wasn’t comfortable with him staying here.

  “Erin, I’m not trying to be critical. You’ve lost a lot, and no one expects you to just shake that off and be happy again. But for Kitt’s sake—” It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it the instant the words left his mouth.

  She stood to her feet with sharp, abrupt movements and stepped past where he was sitting. “Don’t tell me how to raise my son. You barely know him.”

  “But I’d like to know him.”

  That brought her up short. She froze, halfway to the inn’s back door, but she didn’t turn around.

  “I know I wasn’t around much, after he was born, but now that I’m here—”

  She whirled on her heel, eyes sparking. “And why are you here?”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Why are you here, Burke?”

  He felt a prickle of irritation. Did she want him to relive the humiliation of his failed wedding from the day before?

  “You know why. I had nowhere to go, after Tessa...left.”

  She made a quick, impatient gesture with her hand, dismissing this explanation. “Not now. Why did you come back to Findlay Roads at all? You missed Gavin’s funeral. You sent an impersonal card to us and wrote only one sentence. One. So sorry for your loss. And then, six months later, you show up here, as if nothing had changed.”

  “That is not fair,” he snapped, rising to his feet. “Everything had changed.”

  “Not for you! You’d barely been home in years—”

  “I lost my brother!” he cut her off. “I lost my best friend! You think you’re the only one who has grief to manage? You’re not alone in this, Erin. You’re not the only one who misses him.”

  He could see her jaw working, teeth grinding beneath the skin. He couldn’t tell if she was searching for words or simply trying to contain her emotions.

  “But don’t you see?” she murmured, her voice raspy. “You’d left years ago, you had all this time and distance already. How can you possibly know what it felt like to lose him, without a choice?”

  Burke’s tone turned cool, the words low but hard. “But I do know. You forget that I lost both my parents without a choice. And then my brother, too. Without a choice.”

  Erin’s jaw clenched tight, and he could tell she was holding back the things she wanted to say. He knew the expression well. It had haunted him for a long time. It was the same countenance she’d worn over the years, during the handful of times he’d come back to town. It was part of the reason he visited so little—it was a look he hated because it only emphasized the distance that had grown between them when they had once been so close.

  When she finally spoke, she said nothing more about Gavin but rather warned, “Just don’t get so close to Kitt that you break his heart when you leave.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and headed back inside, leaving him to wonder just whose heart she was really worried about him breaking.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE FIGHT WITH Burke stayed with Erin for days. She spent Sunday night tossing and turning, following their heated exchange, and after running a few errands the next morning, she spent the entire drive back to the B&B voicing her frustration to her car’s empty interior. She cleaned the inn’s bedrooms with unnecessary force, carefully checking the hall before moving on to another room so she didn’t run into Burke as he emerged from the Galway Room.

  When she was finally forced to face him as they all sat down to dinner on Monday evening, she kept her tone polite but cool and didn’t engage him in conversation. Aunt Lenora carried the dinnertime dialogue anyway, chattering more than she had in months, about the weather, the influx of summer tourists, local news and the repairs Burke had undertaken on the inn. She praised her great-nephew for the work he’d done, and while Erin knew she should have added her appreciation, she couldn’t bring herself to speak up. She was too busy fuming.

  It bothered her that she was still so angry, especially by Wednesday when she didn’t understand why she couldn’t let go of her frustration with her brother-in-law. Why did she care what Burke thought? True, they had once been friends...more perhaps...but those days were long past, and she had convinced herself years ago that none of it had mattered.

  Then why did Burke’s presence unnerve her so? And why was she reliving their argument, at least a dozen times a day?

  The Moontide had guests arriving on Thursday, and Erin was putting final touches on the upstairs bedrooms when she ran into Burke in the hall.

  He’d been working tirelessly all week, doing minor repairs and updates to the house. The Moontide had been around for a long time, and while it had undergone extensive renovations over the years, it had been too long since some necessary upkeep had been done. Erin was impressed with how much Burke had accomplished over the last five days since he’d come to stay. She suspected he was keeping busy to take his mind off his failed wedding, but a small part of her wondered if he was working to avoid her as much as she was trying to avoid him.

  When they stumbled a
cross each other in the hall—quite literally, since Erin tripped over the edge of a loose piece of carpet—she fell right into his arms, as he tried to keep her from falling.

  “Hey, sorry, I was just getting ready to fix that carpet.”

  She was too aware of his arms around her, one hand on her back, the heat of his palm seeping through her shirt and into her skin. She pulled away and righted herself.

  “It’s fine.”

  She turned to go, and she might have pretended not to hear him calling her name, if his voice hadn’t taken on such a pleading tone.

  “Erin.”

  She paused, willing herself to keep moving forward. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. And yet...she did.

  “Can we talk?”

  She should have told him no. She should have said they had nothing to talk about. He would move on soon enough—there was no point in putting her faith in Burke. He’d already proven it was a lost cause.

  But no matter the reasons, she couldn’t convince herself to walk away from him. She turned.

  “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

  Her agreement must have surprised him because he looked unexpectedly flustered. A small smile stole its way onto her mouth. It was gratifying to put Burke off his guard. Her tiny grin must have soothed his uneasiness because his shoulders relaxed.

  “I thought we could talk about what happened on Sunday night.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “So talk.”

  He drew a deep breath, some of the tension stealing back into his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said, “for the funeral. And I’m sorry for how long it took me to come back, after Gavin died. It was self-serving and wrong and...” He sighed. “I just couldn’t deal. I couldn’t come back here. As long as I stayed away, nothing had changed. Gavin was still alive. I knew that the minute I set foot in Findlay Roads, I’d know he was really gone. I’d sense it. And then, I’d have to learn to accept it.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “It took you six months. Six months. I needed you here.”

  Saying those words triggered some sort of release. Months of pent-up emotion suddenly found their way to the surface, and she began to weep.

  “I was alone, Burke. You were the only one—” her breath hitched on a sob “—who could have understood what losing him did to me.”

  He didn’t say anything, and she feared she’d pushed him too far. But she couldn’t see through the blur of her own tears. She wouldn’t blame him if he thought her selfish. It had been nearly two years since Gavin’s death, while it had been less than a week since Tessa had left him at the altar. Not the same in terms of grief, but she knew he still had to be smarting from the rejection.

  Before she could open her mouth to apologize, she found herself back in his arms. He wrapped them so tightly around her that for a minute, she lost her concentration and couldn’t remember what had set her crying in the first place.

  Within seconds, it came back to her and the stability of Burke’s embrace released another flood of tears. This was what she had needed, two years ago. Someone to hold her, to remind her she was not as alone in the world as she felt. She needed some essence of Gavin, some small thread to cling to. It was why she had often gone into Kitt’s room at night, long after he’d fallen into a restless sleep, and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Kitt was a piece of Gavin, an anchor to keep her tethered to this life, no matter how much she might want to drift away.

  On some level, she had known it was wrong to wish for Burke during those dark days. Her emotions had been a torment of guilt for wanting him there and anger that he hadn’t come back.

  Even now, the sharp claws of shame dug into her, but she couldn’t pull away. His hand stroked her back in slow, soothing movements, and she felt some tension drain out of her. It felt good to be held like this, to feel so safe and secure. She let her head rest against his chest, counting the steady beats of his heart as the crown of her head brushed against his jaw.

  She didn’t know how long they stood like that. Far longer than what was appropriate, she knew, but she didn’t want him to let her go. She finally shifted, trying to turn her head to look at him, and her lips came in perilously close contact to his. He froze, and so did she, only a breath apart.

  She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to remember what it was like to be loved, wanted. Her eyes slid closed, and she willed herself to walk away from him. But she couldn’t.

  “Erin?”

  The sound of Aunt Lenora’s voice broke the spell. Erin and Burke jumped apart at the same time.

  “Erin, where did you put the welcome packets for the guests?”

  She couldn’t look at Burke. “They’re in the bottom right desk drawer in the foyer,” she called down the stairs.

  Aunt Lenora didn’t respond, and Erin presumed she’d shuffled off to search the desk for the preassembled packets Erin kept on hand for new arrivals.

  “Thank you,” she finally managed.

  Burke’s tone was puzzled. “For what?”

  She finally looked at him. He was stone-cold serious, his blue eyes almost gray. His T-shirt was damp with her tears, dark smudges marring the pale blue color. He had Gavin’s lips. When she realized that’s where her gaze had wandered, she jerked her eyes away from his mouth.

  “For being here.”

  “You don’t think I’m too late?” he asked, his voice soft.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. Too late for what? To say goodbye to Gavin? To be here for her, Aunt Lenora and Kitt? Or was there something even deeper to his question?

  “You’re here now. That’s what counts.”

  She was torn between wanting to hear what he might say next and avoiding questions that she couldn’t answer. She turned to go and then stopped.

  “Gavin would be glad.”

  And then she hurried down the stairs to see if Aunt Lenora needed any help.

  * * *

  ERIN WAS KNEE-DEEP in a stack of invoices and receipts that needed filing but had been unable to maintain her focus that entire Friday morning. After the roller coaster of emotions from the last week, she had yet to regain her equilibrium. First, her fight with Burke, her outrage over the next several days and then yesterday, his apology where she’d ended up in his arms...

  She shook her head, realizing she’d been staring at the same sheet of paper for...six minutes, a quick glance at the clock confirmed. She had tried to make excuses to herself, reasons why she had experienced the insane desire to be kissed by Burke the day before. It was just a reflex, a reminder of the past, a call to her youth.

  She and Burke had been so close that summer Gavin had been away, and they’d shared one unbelievable kiss. Her body had reacted in similar fashion to what she had experienced back then. That was all. She was not attracted to Burke.

  She could not be attracted to Burke. He was recovering from a failed wedding, a lost fiancée. And she was—or had been—married to his brother. It didn’t matter that she was a widow now. Falling for Burke felt like a betrayal of Gavin.

  She was simply thankful, she decided, relieved that she and Burke had made some sort of amends and grateful for how he’d managed to draw Kitt out over the last week. As a result of her gratitude, she’d felt...something. That was only natural...wasn’t it?

  She forced herself to file a few invoices, making a conscious effort to clear her mind from thoughts of Burke. But within minutes, she was staring blankly at her desk once more, remembering the feel of his hand stroking her back as she’d cried. When was the last time she’d been held by someone, been comforted? For so long now, she’d tried to be the strong one—for Aunt Lenora, for Kitt, trying to keep the inn afloat and stick to routines. Kitt’s counselor had said routines were important.

  But since Burke had come to stay at the inn, their routines h
ad been shattered, and Kitt was happier than she’d seen him in a very long time. Maybe routines weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Maybe she needed to shake things up once in a while.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the routines or lack thereof. Maybe it was just Burke. She’d missed him, all these years, she realized. She’d missed having him as her friend, the person she’d always been able to share her deepest, darkest secrets with. She’d missed that. She’d missed him.

  “Trying to stare a hole through that desk?”

  She jumped at the sound of his voice, turning her attention from the paperwork to see him leaning against the doorframe to the inn’s office. His hair fell across his forehead, and her heart gave a little jerk in response. There was nothing particularly inappropriate in the way he grinned at her, but the feel of his eyes on her caused her to flame in embarrassment just the same. With a considerable amount of effort, she forced her gaze away from Burke and down to the paperwork in front of her.

  “Just trying to make ends meet,” she said and then immediately regretted her choice of words. The inn’s struggle wasn’t something she wanted to burden him with. He’d made it clear, in the years of his absence, that he wanted nothing to do with the inn. A part of her feared that if she troubled him with the inn’s situation, it would cause him to flee. Which was strange because she had told herself repeatedly that she didn’t care whether Burke stayed in Findlay Roads or left again.

  “You spend too much time scowling over those accounts,” he said, stepping fully into the room.

  Her frown only deepened at his words. When had Burke noticed the amount of time she spent reviewing the inn’s financial statements? The idea that he’d been observing her made her feel a little uneasy but mostly, secretly thrilled. She quashed the emotion.

  “Well, you know what they say—it’s a dirty job and all that.”

  Burke arched an eyebrow. “But why are you the one doing it?”

  The tone of his voice, somehow disapproving, made her raise her head.

  “What do you mean? Who else is going to do it?”