A Beach Wish

by Shelley Noble

  “Why not?” Floret asked in her sweetly modulated voice. “You made this your home for twenty years. What’s one more night?”

  “Why would I stay in the house of betrayers? You’ve turned my family and the whole town against me. The laundry returned my clothes without cleaning them. The grocers refused to deliver my groceries. This is your doing.”

  Henry sighed. “When will you learn, Hannah? It’s your doing. All you. We had nothing to do with any of this. Everything that happens is because of you and your relentless greed and vendetta against Wind Chime and everything it stands for. And just so you know. I’ve offered to sell Wind Chime to Eve.”

  “No,” Mel gasped.

  “I turned him down, of course,” Eve said. “But maybe we can come to a compromise. My children have suddenly shown me the way.”

  Hannah’s eyes grew glassy. “You’ve planned this all along. I saved her from you once and you’ll do anything to get her back.”

  Henry for once looked shocked. “Hannah, have you lost your mind? What are you talking about?”

  Hannah coughed. “You dare ask? You’ve tried to take everything I ever had.”

  There seemed to be no answer to that. Even Chris had no rejoinder for once.

  Was this going to be the reveal of the terrible secret of the decades-long feud?

  “Lee. Then Eve. Now you think you can subvert Mel with that boy. Well, you won’t get her. And neither will he.”

  Henry’s jaw clenched, and for a minute Zoe was afraid she might be about to witness Henry actually lose his temper.

  He moved closer toward Floret; it was the first time Zoe had seen him make any kind of protective move toward any of them.

  “I think it’s time for you to explain,” Floret said. “This has been going on for too, too long. So tell us all why, because I don’t know. I never have. Henry doesn’t. I don’t think you even know why you’re so angry. We never tried to take Eve away from you. You left us to watch over her while you were building your business. It’s what friends do.”

  Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “You. You conniving witch.”

  Floret moved away from Henry as if she were afraid he might get caught in the cross fire of Hannah’s venom.

  “Tell me, get it all out and let’s settle this.”

  “You and my husband.”

  “What?” The question was pure gut-level. And suddenly Floret was all too human and not a bit ethereal. “Your husband? What on earth does he have to do with anything? He’s been dead for a good forty years.”

  “But not before you tried to steal him away.”

  Floret laughed. Clapped her hand over her mouth. “I beg your pardon, Hannah. It isn’t funny. But you’ll have to explain yourself.”

  “You seduced him.”

  “She did no such thing,” Henry said simultaneously with Floret’s “I did no such thing.”

  “Actually, Hannah, that’s an insult,” said Henry. “Stop this nonsense. We’re tired to death of it. Surely you are, too.”

  “Don’t play innocent with me, Floret. He came to you day after day. Night after night. With your salves and your massages and your—I knew what the two of you were doing.”

  “Love potion number—” Chris began.

  Zoe elbowed him in the ribs.

  “I knew what you were doing, I hated him even then, but he was mine.”

  Floret smiled. “Good heavens.” She made a quiet purring sound. A laugh maybe. “My dear Hannah. Free love is one thing, but I would never commit adultery in a sordid affair. Especially not with Ed Gordon. Where are your wits? He cheated on you—that was common knowledge—but not with me. He stole from you. Lost your home. Destroyed your future. He came to me because he was sick. He came for treatment for pain, and for a little understanding. You were too angry about what was happening to give him the strength he needed to die. So he came here. There was nothing else to it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe it. He was a drunken, uneducated oaf. But he was dying and I tried to ease his way out because you were our friend. You needed our support and were too stubborn, even then, to ask for it. We never tried to steal Eve’s affections. She was an affectionate child. There was plenty of her to go around. And Mel is young, with all her life before her. She has discoveries to make. We would never hold her back.”

  “You took in that girl, Eve’s mother, and look what it did to my son.”

  “What you did to your son,” Henry said.

  “Everyone is welcome here,” Floret staid. “Even you, Hannah. So all this has been for nothing.” Floret sounded suddenly very tired. “No more. We never guessed and we tried over and over again to understand. If you’d only let down your guard once in all these years to ask, I would have told you the truth about it all. Instead you spent years building up your resentment. I think you enjoyed it. But it’s over now. Eve can have Wind Chime House as long as she keeps the glen for those who wish to return for their final rest.”

  “No!” cried Noelle, Mel, and Eli. Zoe wanted to add her voice to theirs, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself and risk adding more flames to Hannah’s furor.

  It made absolutely no difference. Hannah turned on her. “And now this one shows up. Trying to take advantage. What will it take to get you to leave?”

  “I don’t know. What did it take to get my mother to leave?”

  The room dropped into silence.

  Zoe tried to swallow. Why had she said that? She didn’t want anything from this horrible old woman. Not anymore. Zoe had just wanted to hurt Hannah. Her venom had missed, but she was afraid that it had hit her sister instead. How could she have been so thoughtless?

  Eve stood immobile in the sudden vacuum that Zoe’s words had created. And Zoe didn’t dare to look up to see her face.

  Zoe turned on Hannah instead. “You can’t answer, can you? Because I know my mother would never have given Eve away to you. She loved her children—all her children—above everything. What did you do to her?”

  “How dare you.” The old woman struggled to get out of the chair.

  “What did you do, Mother?” A voice hardly recognizable as her father’s.

  And Zoe suddenly didn’t want to know the answer. What if she was wrong, what if her mother had left Eve willingly? It would destroy her sister.

  “I merely informed her parents of her whereabouts and they did the rest. Did you honestly think they would let their precious daughter give up all they had planned for her? Marry a drugged-out musician, always on the road? Is that any life for a pampered rich girl with the whole world at her feet?”

  Hannah pointed a palsied finger toward her son. “Did you think she would travel with you, her and the baby? Were you so bewitched you couldn’t see that there was no future for the two of you? The Campbells had no illusions as to where that would lead. So they came and got her. And they could have her, but by God they wouldn’t get my granddaughter.”

  Eve sucked in a raw, ragged breath that cut through the hollow silence. And then Floret was there by her side without seeming to have moved from her place across the room.

  “They agreed to let me adopt her with the understanding that they would keep their daughter away from her. They were only too happy to agree. They thought they were saving their precious Jenny from a terrible future. I was saving my son.” Hannah coughed out a dry, raspy laugh. “It was the best deal I ever made.”

  For a long moment no one moved; then Lee crossed the floor and took his mother’s arm. Hauled her out of her chair. “Come on, Mother, I’ll take you home. You’ve caused quite enough trouble for a lifetime.” He steered her out of the room.

  Several minutes later they heard the Cadillac drive away.

  The whole room exhaled.

  Henry squeezed Floret’s hand. “I think some tea would be in order, dear. Spiked with something a little stronger,” he added to the others.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Valerian for Mel, and then o
ff to bed with her.”

  A half hour later, they were all piling into Zoe’s car. David carried a sleeping Mel to the back seat. Eve sat in back with her, and Noelle, Zoe, and Chris squeezed into the front.

  “I’ll never complain about our boring Long Island family again,” Chris said as Zoe turned into the drive.

  Zoe smiled. “Yes, you will.”

  “Damn straight, I will. So, you crazy, cockamamie New Hampshire folks. Has the tempest been tamed? Do you think the drama is over yet?”

  No one even bothered to answer.

  Chapter 26

  At nine the next morning, Eve stood across from her grandmother’s house staring at the scene before her. A row of a dozen townspeople lined the sidewalk in front of the house, carrying placards. reopen kelly’s. don’t mess with our diner. it works both ways.

  Hannah was being picketed. Eve wondered if the backlash would also include her and her family. There was only one way to find out.

  She headed across the street.

  “Morning, Eve,” said Bobby Pritchard, owner of the local Cadillac dealership.

  “Morning, Bobby,” Eve returned, and raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Like we told Lee this morning when he came out to get the paper, there won’t be any paper this morning, or tomorrow, or the next morning. Not until Kelly’s reopens. We’ve had enough, Eve. Tell Hannah that until she backs off from Kelly’s and the stranglehold she has on some of the inhabitants of this town—”

  “And the council,” broke in Rudy Larsen.

  “And the council,” Bobby added. “She won’t get any more services from us. Nothing personal to you or yours.”

  Eve nodded. She didn’t argue. She agreed with them; things had gotten totally out of hand. But for all her faults, Hannah was her grandmother and she wouldn’t side against her. Not yet.

  She walked up the path to the front door. Lee opened it as she reached for the bell.

  “I was looking out for you. Wasn’t sure what your reception would be.”

  “When did this happen?” she asked, coming inside.

  “They were there when I got up this morning.”

  “You stayed here all night?” How could he after the things he’d learned the night before?

  Lee shrugged. “I couldn’t really leave her alone, could I?”

  Eve sighed. “Is she okay? Is she awake yet?”

  “Yep. And full of piss and vinegar. Already planning her attack. The woman’s incorrigible.”

  “She can’t go on like this, you know that.”

  “Yes, and I don’t intend to let her. There has been enough heartache all these years. Including hers. It’s got to stop.”

  Eve shot him a surprised look. “You mean—”

  “I’ve enabled her behavior—no, supported her—all these years, because, well, because I’m an ass. I didn’t see the harm it was doing to my own family much less the town. I saw it last night.”

  Eve gave him an impulsive hug. He patted her back, stiff and awkward as ever, and she loved him in spite of it, all the more for it.

  “We’d best go get it over with.”

  Hannah was sitting in a wing chair in the parlor, fully dressed and made-up, though it didn’t hide the bruises on her cheek and forehead; her pants suit probably hid a few more.

  She sat up when she saw Lee and Eve.

  “Well? Did you get rid of them?”

  Eve hesitated. Lee stepped ahead of her and a thrill of love coursed through her.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “It’s no more than you deserve. This has to stop. No more. It’s finished.”

  “So you turn against your own mother. I gave you everything.” She lifted her head at Eve. “I gave you your daughter.”

  Lee’s whole body tightened, and for a long moment Eve didn’t know whether he would back off or go for the old woman’s throat. Which, to her horror, Eve certainly was considering.

  “No, Mother, while I appreciate what you did, it was Jenny who gave me Eve, for which I’ll ever be grateful, though I didn’t always show it to my daughter, and for that I’m sorry.”

  Eve gulped back a cry.

  Lee plowed on. “We let you run roughshod over us—over the whole town—all these years. And I turned my back on what you were doing. Told myself that it had nothing to do with me. Hell, I even benefited from it.

  “But I was wrong. It took you turning on your own family for me to see how wrong I was. Well, it stops now. My God. You could have killed Zoe Bascombe.” He stopped as if the words had stuck in his throat. “My daughter. And Mel, my granddaughter, your own flesh and blood could have been killed last night because you couldn’t stand to let her be free. And for my sins, I abetted you in that, too. And for what? All for your wounded pride over things that you thought happened years before either was born.”

  Hannah glared at him, and the pieces of Eve’s heart that were left crumbled.

  “I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me?”

  “You didn’t give—you bought. Our love, our lives. And you didn’t have to. We loved you, every single one of us, but that wasn’t enough, was it? I looked the other way at your heavy-handedness, made excuses for your vindictiveness, because I thought you were doing it for the family, for me and my sisters and then for Eve and her children. But it wasn’t about us. Not really. It was all done in revenge, wasn’t it? For your upbringing, for an affair that never happened, for affection you mistook for a power play. For innocent love. You’ve been punishing us all for nothing—nothing.

  “I’m sorry for your unhappy childhood, for your disappointment in adulthood. I admire your courage, but not how you used it. This vendetta against Henry and Floret is tearing the whole town apart. Is that what you want?”

  Hannah lifted a shoulder. “I don’t care about this town. They never gave me anything I didn’t take.”

  “Maybe because you never asked.”

  Hannah turned hard eyes on Eve. “I suppose you feel the same way.”

  Eve nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d become so hypnotized by her father’s emotional outburst, she’d almost forgotten Hannah was there. “Granna, you’re family. We love you. We always will. But we love you too much to let you go on in this way. We won’t let you destroy our family or our town.”

  Though, really, seeing the people outside, Eve thought maybe Hannah had met her Waterloo.

  “Even though you hurt my father beyond bearing, and used me against your best friends, I still love you. How could you think that I would throw you aside for Floret and Henry? But they were a place of calm and safety against your unrelenting rage at the world, and I loved them, too. I loved you because you were my granna, I still do. But I don’t like what you have done. And I won’t sit idly by like I did before. Because that makes me guilty, too.” She glanced at her father.

  “And I’m done with that. The whole town is pretty riled up over the closing of Kelly’s. You went too far by dragging them into this. We’re going to appeal the condemnation of Kelly’s to the council. I’ll tell them you’re not in your right mind if I have to. And that we’ll lead a campaign to vote them out if they don’t.”

  “Hmmph. Get out, then. Go on and do your worst.”

  Eve turned to leave, years of reacting automatically to Hannah’s demands, but Lee grasped her elbow.

  “It’s over, Mother, you’re finished bullying this town and your family.”

  Hannah grasped the chair arms and tried to push herself to her feet. She fell back and tried again.

  Eve started to go to her, but Lee held her back.

  “Just stay in your chair. I’ll call Vicky Rogers and ask her to send someone over to help you until you’re feeling back to par,” he said.

  “Don’t bother. I can do for myself.”

  “I know, Mother.” Lee’s voice cracked on the word. “But you don’t have to. You never had to.”

  “You ungrateful—”

  Eve burst forward. “Stop it, Granna. Jus
t stop it. We have never been ungrateful. Just the opposite. Why would you think that? Is that what your family said to you, that you were ungrateful, when they barely gave you enough to exist? You ran away from them, but you carried their sickness with you and let it grow inside you. It has to stop now.”

  “Go.” Hannah barely croaked out the word.

  Lee took Eve’s arm and guided her out of the room. She was too numb to move on her own. Too numb to say good-bye.

  She did glance back as Lee opened the door. Hannah sat in her chair, chin against her chest, just an old woman who had chosen anger over everything else, her life consumed with bitterness, and whose bitterness had almost consumed them all.

  She stopped. “I should go back.”

  “No going back.”

  Eve looked up at him through blurry eyes. “You sounded a little like Henry.”

  He put an arm around her and pulled her close, and they stood on the porch looking out at the throng of people that seemed to have grown since Eve had gone inside.

  “We can’t leave her alone,” Eve said.

  “Nope, but she needs looking after and I don’t find myself having the patience right now.” Lee took out his phone. Keyed in a number. “Vicky. Glad I caught you . . .”

  Vicky Rogers agreed to come herself until they could find a caregiver. She was on her way over.

  “Hannah won’t take this lying down.”

  “Vicky is used to ornery patients. And she’s a good friend. She’ll be patient but won’t be bullied.”

  “Did we go too far?”

  “Maybe, but if we hadn’t waited so long, we wouldn’t have had to.”

  Perhaps he was right. Though Eve wasn’t sure that any of them could have changed Hannah’s course in life. Her determination was her most effective strength and her most debilitating weakness.

  They had reached this point because they had enabled her all these years. Walking that treacherous line between loyalty and revulsion. Between love and fear. And almost wrecked all their lives in the process.

  “It’s not your fault,” Lee said as if he’d heard her thoughts.

  “It isn’t yours, either.”