The Way Back to Erin

by Cerella Sechrist

  “So you’re here because you don’t like Allan’s plans for the inn?” Tate snapped. “Do you mean to tell us your aunt wants the inn back?”

  Burke shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” He drew a breath and sent a quick, silent prayer heavenward. “But I’m raising the question about what is better for the town. Is the loss of the Moontide, a building that has stood over two hundred years and is rich in local and national history, acceptable in comparison to what will be gained? A golf course.”

  John O’Shea let out a hearty, “Amen!” It gave Burke the courage to continue.

  “The Moontide is the oldest surviving building in this town. The only other one that comes close to it in age is St. Peter’s Church on Elm Street. But St. Peter’s wasn’t built until 1832. That is twenty years after the attack on the town during the War of 1812. The Moontide was around shortly after our country became an independent nation, and it is our last witness to some of the struggles Findlay Roads faced in the early nineteenth century. After St. Peter’s, the next oldest buildings weren’t around until 1891.”

  He realized that the entire room was silent, hanging on his every word. He sensed the other attendees at tonight’s council in the chairs behind him leaning in, listening to hear what he had to say next.

  “The Moontide was a station on the Underground Railroad. It saw countless men and women on the road to Canada and their freedom during the mid-1800s. It was briefly used as a hospital during the Civil War. It operated as a boardinghouse for Irish immigrants before being converted to an inn around the turn of the century. It housed visiting soldiers heading off to war during the World Wars.” He stopped to draw a breath.

  “It has sheltered weary travelers, welcomed the birth of countless babies, hosted innumerable weddings, seen the best and worst of history pass within and beyond its walls. It gave me and my brother a home when we had none. Do we really want to tear it down and level it with golf turf?”

  There was no reply, but he sensed the emotion in the room. They were with him. Jessica Murphy was even rummaging in her purse for a tissue to wipe away tears.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Tate’s pasty expression had a sheen of sweat on it. “Your aunt agreed to the sale of the inn. This is just your way of getting back at Tessa for standing you up at your wedding.”

  The audience at their backs drew in a collective breath at this low blow.

  “Mr. Cummings, I hardly think that kind of accusation is appropriate,” Ms. Hastings chided.

  Tate had the decency to blush. He slid a glance at Burke. “Sorry.”

  Burke gave a nod of understanding. He felt bad for Tate. Reporting all this back to Allan Worth wouldn’t be a fun task.

  “Well, boy, you’ve certainly got our attention,” John said, drawing him back to the moment, “but don’t get us all lathered up for nothing. Tell us what you propose we do about this situation.”

  Burke grinned. “I’d be happy to.”

  * * *

  “AUNT LENORA?”

  Erin stepped through the house they’d been renting since their move from the Moontide and tried not to flinch at the unfamiliarity of the place. It was a nice enough house with beige walls and earth-tone laminate wood flooring, shiny chrome fixtures and pristine white windows. It was also boring and lacked character and made Erin ache for the Moontide’s flaws and features of worn wood, old paintings and chipped antiques.

  “Here!” Aunt Lenora’s voice could be heard somewhere nearby.

  “Where are you?” Erin called, cursing the thin walls that shifted sounds outside of their actual location.

  “In here!” Aunt Lenora called again. “In the storage room!” she clarified.

  Erin made her way toward the back of the house, to the room they’d designated as a storage area. It was meant to be a den/home office, but they had no need for one of those anymore so they’d stacked boxes in there until they could be moved into storage or until they found a new home.

  When she stepped into the room, she found Aunt Lenora with various cardboard cartons piled around her, half of their contents spilling onto the floor. Erin’s jaw dropped.

  “What are you doing? We just organized all this stuff.”

  “I’m looking for the photos Burke packed up,” Aunt Lenora announced, the words coming out in disjointed puffs as she breathed hard from exertion. “I want to start working on some albums for Kitt.”

  “But we haven’t even unpacked all of the essentials yet,” Erin pointed out. “We still have crates of household items in the garage.”

  This didn’t seem to bother Aunt Lenora who struggled to pull an oversize box down from a closet shelf. Erin hurried to help her.

  “Aunt Lenora, sit down before you break something.”

  The stubborn old woman finally relented, stepping back to allow Erin to take over. The box was even heavier than Erin anticipated, and by the time she wrestled it to the floor, she was breathing as heavily as Aunt Lenora had been a moment before.

  The older woman now sat on one of the unopened boxes as she tried to catch her breath.

  “You shouldn’t be trying to move boxes like this on your own. Why didn’t you ask for my help?”

  Aunt Lenora shrugged. “I may be eighty-nine and feeble, but I’m not entirely helpless.”

  Erin’s mouth twitched at Aunt Lenora’s candor. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Erin, do you know how I came to take over the Moontide?”

  This question was so unexpected that Erin blinked several times, wondering if she’d misunderstood. And when she realized she’d heard correctly, she didn’t respond. She had no wish to discuss the Moontide. The loss of it was still a bitter wound in her heart, not healed over. She had managed to temper her resentment toward Aunt Lenora, and her anger at Allan Worth, but somehow, she still had not been able to release her feelings of betrayal about Burke. This, perhaps, was the greatest pain of all.

  She’d lost the Moontide, yes, and that cut her deeply. But she’d also lost her best friend in the process and hadn’t even realized what a tragedy that was until it was too late to go back. Burke had said he wanted to marry her. Why? He had ruined everything with those words. He knew she couldn’t be his wife, not after Gavin. But because he’d been selfish enough to ask that of her, she saw no way that they could mend things and be content as friends.

  “I had a young man, once.” Aunt Lenora had obviously decided to say what she wanted without Erin’s acknowledgment.

  The shock of this statement made her ask, “You...were in love?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “No, I just...it’s only...well, okay. Maybe a little,” Erin admitted. Years ago, when Erin had first gotten engaged to Gavin, she’d asked him if Aunt Lenora had ever married. He’d said no, that she’d always been a spinster. Aunt Lenora herself had never once brought up the idea of a romance, in all the years she’d known her, and despite their relatively close relationship, Erin had never found it appropriate to ask.

  Aunt Lenora didn’t seem in the least offended by Erin’s amazement.

  “It was a very long time ago,” she said, as if this made up for never mentioning it before this.

  “He came to stay at the inn with his family for a few weeks as sort of a final vacation before he was shipped out to Germany during the war.” She looked past Erin, at some distant point over her shoulder as though she could see her beau standing in the doorway.

  “I found him loathsome, at first. I was an only child and quite spoiled. You see, I had chores around the inn, but my parents didn’t reprimand me if I chose not to do them or simply disappeared for the day. Clark and I didn’t start off on the best foot, you might say. He needed clean towels, and I couldn’t be bothered to get them for him. So he reported me to the person he assumed was the management. Typically, this would have been my mother, but she was ou
t for the day, and my grandmother was filling in. She gave me quite the schooling for my behavior, and of course, I blamed it on Clark.”

  Aunt Lenora sighed, almost dreamily. “It was impossible to stay angry with him, though. He had the most delicious wavy brown hair and gray eyes. Absolutely mesmerizing.”

  “He sounds like a looker.”

  “Oh, he most certainly was. And it didn’t take long before I was finding excuses to see if his family needed anything.” She chuckled to herself. “I believe those weeks may have been some of the hardest I ever worked at this old place.”

  Erin smiled, but it slipped as Aunt Lenora stopped laughing.

  “I volunteered to show him around the town. We became inseparable. By the time his family’s stay was up, we were in love. He asked me to marry him, and I agreed, though we didn’t tell our parents. We exchanged letters for months until the last letter I received came from his sister. He was dead from a German bullet. She knew he’d had feelings for me and passed along the news.”

  Aunt Lenora shook her head. “I vowed that I would never love again and determined to spend the remainder of my days, tending to the inn.” She raised her head and looked Erin in the eyes. “And so I did. I had opportunities, other chances at love, but I scorned them all until it was too late. My youth disappeared, along with any suitors I might have had. One day, I woke up and I was an old lady, clinging to the memory of love rather than living it. Sometime in the last fifty some years, it has occurred to me just how much of life I might have missed out on by tying myself to the inn.”

  Erin’s eyes filled with tears, though she wasn’t exactly sure who or what she was crying for. Aunt Lenora and her lost love, her lost youth? Or Gavin and herself?

  “I know you thought it was unfair of me to sell the Moontide when you love it so much. But sometimes, we must let go of the things we love in order to make room for new things. For new loves.”

  Erin felt the tears begin to slip down her cheeks. “All I have ever loved has been tied to the Moontide.”

  Aunt Lenora leaned forward. “Love isn’t tied to any one place or thing. Because it cannot be tied down. You know the old saying, if you love something, let it go? It’s because you can’t hold it. It’s like a bird, it must rest in your hand. Hold it too tightly, and you crush it. Set it free, and it will come home to nest in your heart.”

  Erin wiped at her eyes. “I don’t know how to let go.”

  Aunt Lenora patted her hand. “You let go by giving in.”

  “To what?”

  “To the love that’s waiting for you.”

  Erin thought of Burke. Was it really so simple? Could she let go of Gavin, and still cherish his memory, by loving Burke?

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Oh, it isn’t easy,” Aunt Lenora said. “Love is a risk because life is fragile. You know this lesson better than most.” The old woman leaned in once more. “But tell me this. Would you trade your life with Gavin, erase it from existence, because you experienced the pain of losing him?”

  The answer left her lips before Aunt Lenora had even finished speaking. “No.”

  Aunt Lenora leaned back with an approving nod. “To know love is to know pain. But it does not mean you stop living.”

  Erin sat there, letting those words sink in.

  “And I don’t think Gavin would have wanted you to stay at the Moontide, tied to his memory, without him there beside you.”

  The words settled on Erin’s shoulders, a weight of sadness. But they were not so heavy as they might have been. She had grieved a man she loved more than life itself. Surely she was strong enough to grieve the Moontide, too.

  She cleared her throat and looked at Aunt Lenora. “Let’s see if we can find those photos, hmm? Maybe we can assemble a photo album of the Moontide over the years.”

  Aunt Lenora beamed. “What a perfect idea. And Burke took so many photographs before we left that we can include those.”

  Erin didn’t comment, but she began sorting through the boxes to find which ones the inn’s mementos might be stored in. She started when she felt Aunt Lenora’s hand rest gently on her head.

  “You see?” the old woman said. “The Moontide will live on, through its memories.”

  And maybe, Erin realized, that was what mattered most.

  * * *

  ERIN SAT ON her usual bench within view of the lighthouse and observed as a father and his little boy walked hand in hand around its circumference. The sight made her wonder if Gavin would have walked with Kitt like this one day, had he not been taken from them. But while the observation made her a little sad, it didn’t break her heart like it once would have.

  The August morning was already warm and muggy, which may have been why the lighthouse was more deserted than usual, even though it was a Monday morning. She’d skipped coming at her usual time on Sundays and had decided to spend those hours with Kitt instead.

  It was strange, not feeling the burden of the inn. It left her at loose ends. The Moontide had provided some much-needed distraction over the last couple of years. She wondered if perhaps that was part of her difficulty in letting it go. She did love the place and had treasured every moment there. But the daily care for its upkeep and her efforts to boost its revenue had consumed a large part of her thoughts and time. She realized now that maybe she was afraid to give up the Moontide because it would require her to face everything she’d been avoiding—moving on. And while the last month hadn’t been easy and she’d experienced her fair share of grief over the inn’s loss, she had also come to a sort of peace about it.

  The Moontide had been a home for her when she needed it. But it wasn’t her home anymore. That was with Kitt. With Aunt Lenora. And...

  She refused to think about Burke. Though she missed him, she was still smarting at how he had encouraged Aunt Lenora to sell the inn. Granted, she knew he’d been doing it because he believed it was the right thing. And maybe it was, given the personal revelations she’d experienced over the last week. But she couldn’t forgive Burke. Because if she did, she had to face that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life in letting him go.

  The man and his boy had left, and Erin now faced the lighthouse alone. The flag fluttered slightly, as if feeling too lazy to fly proudly today.

  “This is the last time I’ll be here for a while,” she said aloud. “I’ve been telling myself for a long time that I came here for you. But really, we both know it was for me.”

  She lowered her head and toyed with her wedding ring. She’d never taken it off. Not once since she’d learned of Gavin’s death. She drew a breath and raised her head.

  “Years ago, when you were in army basic, Burke and I became...very close. I was young and unsure, and I missed you so much. I felt a little, I don’t know, abandoned? I think it just stirred up all my old insecurities from being shuffled from place to place because of my dad.”

  She sighed.

  “The point is, Gavin...as much as I loved you...I fell in love with Burke, too, a little. When you asked me to marry you, and I accepted, I think I broke his heart. It’s my fault he left and hardly ever returned. I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I promise you that I was never unfaithful to you, not even in my thoughts. I buried any feelings I had for Burke so deeply that I thought they’d ceased to exist. But over the last few months...ever since he came to live at the Moontide...” Speaking the inn’s name didn’t bring as much pain as it once had. She was learning to let go.

  “Those feelings resurfaced.” She swallowed, willing herself to say the words out loud. “And I fell in love with him, all over again, and deeper than before.”

  It was still difficult to admit this aloud. Surprisingly, not because of how she felt for Burke but because she’d kept it in for so long. She felt foolish for not unburdening this to Gavin sooner. He was gone, and she didn’t know whether he could eve
n hear her confession or not. But by imagining he could, she realized that Gavin wouldn’t have condemned her for loving his brother, now that he was gone. His heart had always been bigger than that. If he couldn’t be here, at Erin’s side, he would have given his blessing to her and Burke.

  “It’s too late, though,” she whispered. “Burke asked me to marry him, and I told him ‘no.’”

  Her wedding ring felt heavy on her finger at this admission.

  “So I’m not here to tell you I’m marrying Burke. But I am here to tell you that I know it’s time to move on. I think that’s why I clung to the Moontide so desperately—I wasn’t ready to close that chapter of my life and look to the future.”

  Despite her best intentions, tears rose to her eyes.

  “I will always love you, Gavin. Nothing will change that. It isn’t dependent on the Moontide or the town or whether I fall in love with someone else. You will always be my first love. But wherever you are right now, if you have the chance to fall in love again...I’d want you to take it. I miss you. So much. But I miss you a little less now than I once did. I was afraid that made me a bad person, an unfaithful wife. But I think it just means I’m healing.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “So I’m moving forward. I applied to a culinary school in Baltimore, to earn my degree as a pastry chef. Connor said as soon as I’m ready, I can come back to work for him. But I want to take a little time to focus on school and Kitt first. With Aunt Lenora’s help because of the B&B’s sale, we’ll be all right, at least for a year or so.

  “And I won’t be coming here to the lighthouse as often. It’s time for me to start some new traditions, with Kitt.”

  She closed her eyes and just sat there for a minute, savoring the sound of lapping water from the bay and the scent of the tide. Her heart was heavy but not entirely in a bad way. It was full, of memories, of loss, of hope. This was in some ways her final goodbye to Gavin.

  She opened her eyes and stood to her feet, moving closer to the lighthouse. She leaned against it and looked out over the water. And then, slowly, she removed her wedding band, resting it in the palm of her hand. Its golden circumference caught the sun and glinted sharply. She ran her thumb over it.