Sea Glass Sunrise

by Donna Kauffman

  Hannah knew she’d be sorry. So very sorry, but she grinned, too. “It’s going to be a good night.”

  Fiona reached over and twined her fingers with Hannah’s. “It already is.”

  Hannah would have sworn she was cried out, and not from the heartbroken tears she’d been so susceptible to since . . . Lord, it felt like a lifetime ago now. But the happy-happy, joy-joy wedding tears had been pretty prodigious as well. She squeezed her sister’s fingers. “Hasn’t it, though? It was so beautiful. Every part of it. And who knew our brother could dance like that?”

  “Fergus taught him.” When Hannah lifted her head to send an amazed look, Fi laughed. “He did. It was a secret. Well, I knew, but Alex didn’t.” They lay there in silence for a few minutes, then Fiona said, “Have you heard from Calder? How is his dad?”

  “I got a text last night saying he was still undergoing tests and they were waiting for results. They feel pretty certain it was a stroke, but the damage it caused isn’t known yet.”

  “It’s just awful,” Fi said in hushed tones. “I mean, Calder goes and does something so massively heroic, and then that happens. Seems really wrong. I mean, on top of it being wrong anyway.”

  “I know,” Hannah said. It had occurred to her, more than once that day, that beautiful, lovely day, just how much her life had changed in such a short time. It felt like a lifetime ago, another life completely, even, when she’d driven away from her newly sublet, fully furnished condo in Alexandria, a key to a newly leased storage unit in her pocket, heading to Maine with nothing more than a suitcase of clothes she hated and a bag of pity pretzels in her lap.

  “So . . . what are you going to do about him?” Fiona asked.

  “About Calder’s father?”

  Fi took their joined hands and popped Hannah in the stomach. “No, doofus. About Calder. I mean, something is going on there, right? And you’re going back to Virginia soon. So, are you just going to walk away?” She leaned up on one elbow, and added, “And don’t say you can’t go there because you just broke up with Tim. Fate is fate and timing is everything. Life doesn’t always hand you chances when it’s convenient or when it’s best for you.” She flopped back again. “I’m just saying, you should think about it.”

  “I am,” Hannah said, after a moment.

  Fi popped right back up on her elbow. “You are?” She leaned down and kissed Hannah on the forehead. “Good for you! I really didn’t think you would.”

  Fi flopped back again and Hannah groaned, thinking she was going to be the queasy one if her sister kept doing that. “Actually,” Hannah said, “I’m not going back to Virginia.” Best to just rip off the Band-Aid. But she closed her eyes and squinched up her face, which made no sense since it did nothing to keep Fiona’s squeal from pinging against her eardrums, and everything to make the still-tender skin on her nose sting as well. She covered her nose with her hand, and made an ow face under her palm. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to talk Bonnie into taking her stitches out before the wedding. But she’d refused to wear a bandage on her nose for the wedding photos.

  Fiona let her hand go and flipped to her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. “Tell me everything. I’m assuming you decided this before you came home, so just be aware, it’s only because you’re still in crash recovery that I’m not popping you one right now.”

  “Actually, if you don’t stop bouncing this bed, I’m going to throw up on you, and you’ll have much bigger things to worry about than why I waited until after the wedding to share that tidbit of news.” She lowered her hand, happy to see there was at least no blood on it. “I thought you were queasy,” she groused.

  “You have zero room to bitch right now. Tell me.”

  Hannah sighed, then took a breath. “The breakup was not good.” She spent a half second deciding if she should go there, and decided she was done giving Tim any stage time in her life. “But the truth is, I’ve been unhappy longer than that. The breakup was just the thing that made me review my life.” She rolled her head to the left, looked up into her sister’s compassionate gaze. “I thought I wanted to be a big city litigator. And, the truth is, I’m good at it. Really good.”

  “But being really good at something isn’t the same as being really happy about doing it.”

  “No,” Hannah said. “No, it’s not. I just . . . I don’t know. I feel guilty. Like I quit. Like I’m running back home again. And that’s not it. At least, I hope that’s not it.”

  “You know, when you went off to Georgetown, we were all so proud of you, so happy for you. I mean, if anyone could make the transition from a small coastal town in Maine to the most important city in this country, maybe the world, it would be you. You were the elegant one, the sophisticated one, the smart one.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes, despite being deeply touched by her sister’s heartfelt words. “The last thing I was when I left Maine was elegant and sophisticated, and as for smart, we all have smarts.” She laughed at Fiona’s pointed look, knowing she meant their younger sister. “Just because Kerry makes rash, impulsive decisions, doesn’t mean she’s not smart enough to know better.”

  “Actually, you’re right,” Fiona said. “Not about Kerry. She doesn’t have the smarts God gave a donkey. Wily and the nine lives of a cat, maybe. What you’re right about is that it’s true. You weren’t elegant and sophisticated.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Hannah said, wryly. “I think.”

  “I mean, when you were here, you were like we all were. Small-town girl, because, duh, what else could we be? But you saw yourself as what you could be. And because you saw that future so clearly for yourself, we saw it for you, too. Because we wanted for you what you wanted for you.”

  “So, are you saying I’ve just been faking it this whole time?”

  “No, you were—are—definitely those things, and more. You’re everything you always wanted to be.” She took her sister’s hands. “What I’m saying is, clearly you’re unhappy. Or unfulfilled, or . . . something. Maybe it is just the breakup aftermath, leaving you feeling wobbly. Trust me, I know what that feels like.” She eyed her sister with an affectionate smile. “In fact, we both know just how much experience I have with what that feels like.” She laid her hand over Hannah’s, which she’d folded over her middle, and squeezed them both. “But now I see you here, and see how you’ve so easily, so swiftly, so . . . naturally, slipped back into being the old Hannah.” She laughed. “Okay, maybe the old Hannah with a bit of D.C. polish and prestigious law school smarts, but what I mean is, it’s occurred to me that maybe you weren’t so much faking it, as forcing it.”

  The words hit Hannah with such unmistakable truth, she couldn’t even formulate a good dodge in her rapidly spinning mind.

  “I mean, the minute you get here, you shuck all of your sophistication, right down to the clothes, the way you wear your hair. It’s like you can’t wait to be free of your other self.” Fiona stopped, looked down. “I’m talking out of my ass. I don’t know what’s going on in your world. I guess maybe we all unwind when we’re away, like you do on vacation. I’m sorry—”

  Hannah covered Fiona’s hands to keep her from pulling them away, and okay, maybe a little to keep her from flopping again. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

  “I am. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to—”

  “You’re trying to help me. To love me. And you are, and you do. You’re also right. I think. Or maybe I know. Maybe some part of me has always known. I kept thinking if I finally felt like I’d made it, I could relax and maybe actually start to enjoy it.” She looked at Fi. “But that feeling never came. So I climbed harder, faster. And the relationship, I guess I pushed that, too, made it out to be more in my mind than it really was, because that was even more proof that things were going as I’d planned. I actually thought he was going to propose to me. Can you believe that?” She shifted her head back to stare at the ceiling, then just closed her eyes. Her thankfully dry eyes.

 
“Oh, Hannah—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s done, and it never should have been in the first place.” She opened her eyes. “It’s my past now. Along with the rest of my life in D.C.”

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, true excitement in her eyes. “What are you going to do? I mean, are you going to give up being a lawyer?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “I do like what I do. I just didn’t like where I was doing it. Or the kind of work I was doing. If that makes sense.”

  Now Fiona did flop. “Oh, it makes perfect sense.”

  Hannah turned her head and frowned. “Sounds like you need to spill it. Is this what you said you wanted to talk to me about? The first day I got here?”

  “Yes. Only now that I know you’re coming back, I think I know the answer. I think I answered it myself. Just now.” She turned her head to face Hannah’s and their gazes locked. “Is it more scary or exciting? Ditching your old life? Coming back to everything you know, where you feel like you fit in, but have no clue how to take what it is you do and earn a living from it where there might not be an actual demand for it.”

  “Oh my God,” Hannah said, almost on a whisper. “You want to leave New York! But I thought your business was booming.”

  “It is. In fact, I need to hire someone, maybe several someones. There’s a magazine spread coming out soon, and I know that’s going to hammer my already crammed calendar.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Which sucks.”

  “Because you don’t think you can find good enough help? Or because you don’t want to delegate?”

  She looked at Hannah again. “Because I hate, with every fiber of my being, the kind of work I have to do in New York, for the most stuck-up, god-awful, ungrateful, bitchy, entitled pains in the asses I’ve ever had the gross misfortune of thinking I wanted to design for.” She sighed. “There. I said it. God help me. I’m now officially the most ungrateful bitch on the planet.”

  Hannah lay there, dumbstruck for a moment, then burst out in a howl of laughter.

  “I’m not sure how to take that,” Fiona said, frowning.

  Hannah pushed herself upright to a sitting position, groaning when it made her champagne-loaded brain spin just a little. She tugged on Fiona’s hand until she sat up, too, and she groaned and pressed a hand to her stomach.

  “So, I’m an idiot, right?” Fi demanded. “I worked so hard to live my dream, and unlike ninety-nine-point-nine percent of those who try to do that exact same thing, I actually, somehow, pulled it off. And now I don’t want it. I want to come back to Blueberry Cove, and be broke and starving, and figure out how to make things that make me happy and also make other people happy, except I don’t have a freaking clue how to do it.” She looked at her sister. “Did I mention there’s this big magazine spread? About my design firm? That I want to close?”

  “Shit,” Hannah said.

  “At the very least.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” Hannah asked her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. What are you going to do?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Well, I’ve already sublet my place. All the rest of my stuff is in storage. All I have, literally, is what’s in my suitcase. And I even hate most of that.”

  “So, you’re here then.”

  Hannah nodded, then looked down at her bridesmaid dress, then at Fi’s. “For better or for worse.”

  Fi snickered, then Hannah snickered. Then they both laughed, and kept laughing until they fell back on the bed, gasping for air.

  “I know one thing you should do,” Fiona said.

  “Good. Guide me, oh Obi-Wan.”

  “Oh no, that’s still your job.” She rolled to her side. “You’re staying here. In Blueberry. Which is what, like an hour from Calais? Ninety minutes tops?”

  “Fiona—”

  “Hannah,” she mimicked. “You might not know what kind of lawyer you’re going to be here, but you do know a guy you’d like to have hanging around while you figure it out. I saw how he hugged you out there on that pier. Just . . . figure that out. Then the rest will fall into place.”

  “Says the woman who hasn’t been in a relationship longer than what, six months?”

  “I’ve been busy. And I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.” She squeezed Hannah’s hand. “Go to Calais. Figure that out. Then decide on the rest.”

  Hannah stared at the ceiling, and thought about what Fiona was saying. It seemed so simple. Obvious, even. But the very concept of reaching for Calder, of reaching for something . . . more, when it came down to actually doing it, was terrifying. What if she failed? Now that his life was even more upside down, what if he didn’t want her in it? She wanted to be happy. She was so very ready to be happy, and she was pretty damned sure she could be very happy with Calder. But only if he thought he could be happy with her.

  Could she handle heartbreak again? What Tim had done had leveled her. But having Calder look at her and tell her he didn’t want her in his life after all . . . she didn’t know how she’d come back from that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You’re doing great,” Calder murmured, leaning forward so he could run his hand along the side of Vixen’s neck. The mare’s ears flicked back, then forward again, but she didn’t break stride. They were ambling more than striding, making slow circles around the ring. Nothing major, as she still wasn’t up to that. “You’re going to live up to your name yet,” he said, smiling as he steered her toward the fence, then stopped and dismounted. “Come on, let’s go in and get you gussied up.”

  He was actually looking forward to the next hour, to the grooming, raking the stalls, bringing the other horses in for the night. The chores provided a routine that he found soothing, calming. Which was something he’d needed more and more over the past two weeks. They’d helped to take his mind off his father, the family situation. Who are you kidding? It’s Hannah you can’t get out of your head. Family you’re dealing with. One day at a time. Hannah, on the other hand . . . “Yeah,” he muttered. “Hard to take care of something that isn’t there.”

  The thing was, he understood. He truly did. His life was upside down at the moment, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. All he had to offer her was chaos and uncertainty, and that was the last thing she needed. She was trying to figure out her life, so no big surprise that figuring it out, for her, meant not getting involved in the crazy that was his world at the moment. Hell, if he had a choice, he wouldn’t get involved in his own life. Not as it was, anyway. She’d come back to Maine because she wanted peace, she wanted a quieter life. Thinking back on the scene in the hospital just that morning, between him and Eli, coming almost to blows over what they thought was the best course of action for their father’s care . . . yeah, that had been anything but peaceful.

  But understanding didn’t make it any easier. He told himself it was crazy to miss someone he’d only known such a short time. Sure, they’d experienced a lot in that short time, but it had been twelve days since he’d left the Cove for good. He’d known her what, five? “Yeah, you’re a damn fool to think she’d want you with the baggage you have, after such a short time.”

  A damn fool who missed her sharp mind. The way she gave as good as she got. That she could roll her eyes at him one moment, then blush the next. That she had the best laugh, and an even better giggle. That she made this noise, like a half gasp, half moan, and said his name like it was both prayer and plea when she came. Jesus, you really need to stop this.

  He had spoken to her. Sort of. He’d texted her that first night to let her know that his dad had indeed had a stroke, that the extent of his recovery was still being determined. She’d replied and had been exactly who she was, comforting, compassionate. She’d offered to come to the hospital, but he’d declined. That was the last place he’d want her right now. He’d texted her the following day when the scans Thaddeus had undergone had revealed that the cause of the stroke was a brain tumor. A fairly sizable one he’d apparently been ca
rrying around for quite some time. So long, in fact, it had finally tried to kill him. The surgeon had confirmed that, given its location, it could have been a factor in his mood swings and over-the-top behavior. It had been the first time he’d been thankful that his father was one stubborn son of a bitch. Too stubborn to let a tumor kill him. So far, anyway. Now they had to figure out how to get the damn thing out of him without killing him in the process.

  Calder had debated even telling Hannah. Technically, he was out of her life. But, frankly, the news had terrified him, and with his family leaning on him, he’d needed someone to confide in. Even then, he’d texted rather than called, only giving her the bare bones of it. She didn’t need to know all the details, though she was smart enough to realize there was more going on than he was saying. But she was sensitive enough, compassionate enough, not to press. And she probably felt it wasn’t her place. He so wished that were not the case; he wished it were exactly her place. And yet, how selfish was that?

  He led Vixen into the barn and put her into the cross ties, patting and stroking the side of her neck. “Pampering time,” he told her, then took his time taking off the saddle, the saddle pad. She hadn’t worked enough to sweat, but he took the currycomb, smoothed her out where the saddle had been on her back, then used a hoof pick to clean her feet.

  He hefted the saddle and the pad and strode down the short, dirt-packed aisle to the tack room to stow it. He stepped inside and lifted the saddle onto the rack and laid the pad on the stack on the floor, glancing out the single, small octagonal window on the far wall to gauge how much daylight he had left. He turned to head back to Vixen, then stopped, frozen.

  He straightened, turned, and looked back through the window again. For a split second, he wondered if tumors were genetic, or if he was the one having some kind of a stroke. Because he hadn’t imagined it. He could swear that was the big blue beast parked outside his rambling, falling-apart farmhouse, about a hundred yards away from where he currently stood.

  Only one person he knew drove a car like that. “Mustang Scarlett.”