Seeking Carolina (Bitterly Suite Book 1)

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  Nina, a Wagner dream of Valkyries—blond and bold and brutal, her hands wrapped around a teacup as if she would crush it, or hold it together.

  Emmaline, who, like Johanna, had inherited dark curls and cocoa-brown eyes from their mother and, unlike Johanna, was spared her frenzy.

  And Julietta.

  Johanna’s brimming eyes overflowed.

  Awkward even when sitting still, as blond as Nina without any of her beauty, Julietta was a sprite straight out of a fairy story, all arms and legs and ears. Thick glasses accentuated the enormity of her pale eyes. Perpetually childlike, ridiculously brilliant, Julietta was the one. And they all loved her best.

  Johanna wiped her eyes with her scarf, her nose with the back of her hand. She gave up trying to pretend she hadn’t been crying, hadn’t been frantic and furious and ready to succumb to the madness always looming like tomorrow’s shadows. Stumbling to the back door that would be open because the lock had broken when she was fourteen and never been fixed, Johanna Coco went home.

  * * * *

  The truck slid to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Charlie rested his head to the steering wheel. He breathed deeply, inhaling the aromas of pizza and Johanna. Memory sparked. Summer after junior year. Her body pressed to his. The music, and the crowd, and the sand beneath their feet. She had turned and smiled that earth-shattering smile when he slipped his arms around her waist, pulled her against him so she wouldn’t get crushed by the head-bangers moshing outside of the mosh pit. Charlie remembered her leaning into him, her hands holding him in place, the sweetness of her perfume ignited by sweat, and the seemingly inconsequential moment of contact that changed his world.

  Headlights approached. He lifted his head. A plow-truck going up the hill stopped. Charlie rolled down his window as the other driver did the same.

  “You stuck, Charlie?” Dan Greene, best pal since childhood, leaned an elbow out his window. “Need a tow?”

  “Nah, just taking a few minutes peace. The kids are home waiting for their dinner.”

  “What are you doing way out here?”

  Charlie thumbed over his shoulder. “I just dropped Johanna Coco off. I found her in the cemetery.”

  “At this hour?”

  “You know those Coco girls.”

  “I sure do. Too bad she didn’t make it to the funeral.”

  “She tried. This damn snow—”

  “Don’t you be cursing my livelihood. This damn snow is taking my sister’s kids to the beach this summer. Kind of ironic, huh?”

  Their laughter faded into the night. Charlie felt suddenly drained. Tight as he and Dan had always been, he didn’t have the words to express his sudden chaos of thoughts. Tapping the side of his truck, he waved and let up on the break.

  “Right. See you, Dan.”

  “See you, Charlie.”

  The scrape of Dan’s plow on the road vanished as Charlie’s window went up, trapping the scent of pizza lingering. Johanna’s, like the woman herself, did not. Wild as the Coco girls had always been, Johanna was the wildest. She left after high school and seldom returned. For Charlie, that had been a good thing. He glommed every bit of news, every shred of gossip over the years. Her travels. Her pie-in-the-sky business ventures. Lover after temporary lover she brought home to Bitterly, never the same guy two visits running. Seeing her was always hard, harder when he and Gina stopped getting along. Last time, when she returned to Bitterly for her grandfather’s funeral, the twins were newborns, Charlotte, Will, and Caleb were still in elementary school and he was still married, happily-enough. That was eight years ago, and now none of those things were true. Johanna was home, for however long, and Charlie was not going to let her escape Bitterly without hearing the words he tried to tell her that summer night on the beach and hadn’t stopped thinking since.

  * * * *

  Johanna woke, blinking away the bright sunlight streaming through lace curtains. Not the cluttered bedroom above the bakery, the one that always smelled of baking and the sea, it was yellow. White bookshelves. A desk under the window, and a Nirvana poster on the closet door. Her nose was cold but her body, warm under downy blankets. A heavy, scraping sounded somewhere outside. She pushed up onto her elbows.

  Bitterly.

  Home.

  Her old room, bed, even the comforter.

  Gram was dead.

  “Farts.”

  Johanna flopped back into the pillow. The reunion with her sisters had been tearful, and comforting. Wrapped in their arms, she laughed at her fury, at the thought that they’d abandon her at the train station because they were collectively angry.

  “Last we heard, you didn’t think you were going to make it,” Nina had said, thumbing tears from Johanna’s cheeks. “After the burial, we all went out for pizza and didn’t see you’d called until we were there. Charlie McCallan offered to go find you and bring you home.”

  “And here you are.” Julietta had thrown her arms around her. “Oh, Jo! I’m so sorry. After all you went through to get here, you didn’t even get pizza.”

  They talked long into the night. And they cried, none harder than Johanna. Emma and Julietta still lived in Bitterly and Nina made certain she returned home for every holiday. Only Johanna stayed away with a million excuses and none of them good enough to justify an eight-year absence.

  The aromas of coffee and bacon crept into her room. More snow in the night kept Emma with them instead of going home to her husband and boys. It would be she doing up breakfast the way Gram always did. Johanna pulled back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. The nasty scraping sound outside continued. She looked out the window to see a plow clearing the driveway. Someone was shoveling the front walk. A shock of red hair had her throwing open the window to shout, “Good morning, Charlie.”

  The young man who looked up was not Charlie for all he looked like him. Exactly, in fact, like the kid she used to know. Her heart caught in her throat for the memories pelting. This room. That boy. But it wasn’t Charlie, and everything was different now.

  “Hey,” he called back. “You looking for my dad?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “He’s in the truck. Will’s doing the back walk. I got this one. You’ll be shoveled clear in no time.”

  “And you are?”

  “Caleb. Which sister are you?”

  “Johanna.”

  “The one who lives at the beach. Cool.”

  “It’s far from cool, I assure you. Cape May is full of old people and tourists.”

  He laughed and waved and Johanna closed the window. If she could find the ingredients in the pantry, she’d make the boys her famous hot chocolate. She pulled on the thick robe perpetually hanging on the back of her door, wrapped it tight and followed her nose to breakfast.

  Faded school photos lined the hallway painted the same yellow as her bedroom. Gram had let them each choose her own colors when Emma and Julietta came to them in the big farmhouse in Bitterly. Nina, a cool and sophisticated thirteen-year-old, chose blue with white trim. Emmaline, only six, wanted mauve and olive green. Head still bandaged and arm in a sling, Julietta’s four-year-old love of purple and orange had been indulged. But Johanna, eleven and confused as to why they were decorating rooms when Mommy had once again vanished and Daddy was dead and now she had two little sisters as well as a big one, chose the soft, buttercream yellow.

  “You?” Poppy had asked. “My wild Johanna? Not red or crazy-girl pink?”

  He took her into his wiry arms, right there in the paint shop, when she started to cry. “It reminds me,” she whispered against his neck. Of the house in New Hampshire, the one that burned. It reminded her of them.

  He bought three gallons of the buttercream yellow.

  “What? It was on sale. Half price,” he told Gram when she scolded. He painted her room first, then the hallway. Last, because there was enough left over, he painted the room he shared with Gram.

  “It reminds me to
o.”

  It was their secret. One of many. She suspected he had them with her sisters too, those half-truths more story than anything real, like Weiner-schnitzel, the little man who lived in his pocket, whose voice only she could hear.

  Johanna stopped outside Gram’s bedroom door, pressed her hand to the wood panel. She let her hand slide to the knob, felt the cool metal, let it go before any more memories got loose. Instead she hurried down the stairs, her feet thumping like when she was a kid late for school. Already there were her sisters, lined up at the counter like pretty maids in a row, sipping coffee. At the table sat Nina’s husband, ridiculously gorgeous despite his dark hair sticking up in spikes, and the stubble of a man who needed more than one shave a day. Johanna stopped short of sliding across the polished wood floor into the kitchen the way she used to, but only because she wasn’t wearing the proper socks.

  “Hey, Gunner. I didn’t know you were still here.”

  “I went to bed early so you ladies could have some time alone.” He stood up and pulled Johanna into an embrace, kissed both cheeks. “Good to see you, Jo.”

  She tried to laugh. “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “Almost a year.”

  “No it hasn’t. Nina and I just…oh…” She pressed cool fingers to her burning cheeks. “I guess it has been a while. New Year’s right?”

  His smile crinkled in the corners of his blue eyes. “Right. Nina said you had a hard time getting here.”

  “It was insane. But I’m here now.” She slipped one arm around his waist, the other around Emma’s. “We all are. Gram would love it.”

  “Yes, she would have. At Thanksgiving.” Emma slipped out of her embrace but kissed her cheek. “You’re here now, and Christmas is in less than a week. You will stay, won’t you?”

  “I sup—”

  “Good. Eat. I have to go. Snow day. Got to get home to the boys so Mike can go to work.”

  Johanna let her arm slip from Gunner’s waist. Emma had every right to be upset, despite their tearful reunion. To go unchastised indefinitely was too much too hope for. She pulled out a vinyl chair and plucked a slice of bacon from the plate. Julietta dropped onto the chair beside her. “Emma’s been cranky lately,” she exaggerated a whisper. “I think she’s prego.”

  “I am not cranky,” Emma said, putting on her coat. “And I am definitely not pregnant.”

  “You and Mike not having sex again?”

  Emma froze. Johanna cringed but Julietta sat poker-straight, head cocked and her expression concerned.

  “Sex isn’t the issue,” Emma said, resuming her struggle with the zipper. “It’s…nothing. Nothing that needs discussing now. Supper at my house tonight. Nina, you and Gunner, too.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “What about me?” Julietta asked. Emma kissed both her cheeks.

  “You are a given, darling.” She headed for the door. “Seven o’clock. Bring wine.”

  Gunner’s cell rang just as Emma closed the door. Bits of her brother-in-law’s hushed conversation drifted back into the kitchen. Nina poured another round of coffee before sitting down herself, her attention focused on her husband.

  “He’s going to have to leave,” she said quietly. “It was nearly impossible for him to get out of the city to come here at all. Huge things happening at the gallery.”

  “How huge?” Julietta asked. “Da Vinci huge?”

  “Not art-wise. There’s been this firm out of Sweden wooing us for years. They want to buy us out, and I think temptation is starting to get to Gunner. If they succeed, the good news is neither one of us will ever have to work again.”

  “And the bad news?”

  Nina smiled into her coffee. “Neither one of us will have to work again.”

  “How tempted are you, Nina?”

  “I love the gallery. We’ve worked really hard all these years to grow it from that stinky little artist co-op into what it is now. But I’m ready to let it go, maybe travel a bit. I just don’t think Gunner would last a year living the life of the idle rich.”

  The sisters ate and chatted, but Nina’s attention remained on Gunner. When he came to the doorway and motioned her to him, she went without a word. The pair of them, arms around one another, shared the phone. Gunner’s hand moved up and down his wife’s spine, as unconscious an act as it was sensual. Johanna forced herself to look away, a little embarrassed and a lot envious.

  “Could you imagine the world devastation should those two ever have kids?” Julietta was still staring in that unnerving way she had. No self-consciousness, no apologies. “We’d all have to wear sunglasses or suffer some sort of beauty-blindness.”

  “Is that like snow-blindness?” Johanna joked.

  “No.” Julietta snorted. “Photokeratitis is real. I made up beauty-blindness.”

  “Well, they’re not going to have kids, so the world is safe.”

  “It’s not too late. She’s only forty-one.”

  Johanna let it go. Nina had vowed to never have children, to never pass along the genes they all inherited lest any child of hers suffer their parents’ fate. Emma seemed determined to prove her sister’s fears wrong with three sons in quick succession. And if Julietta’s suspicions proved right, perhaps another.

  Left alone with her youngest, unflappable sister, Johanna hedged, “So, Emma and Mike were having problems, you know, in bed?”

  “It was a few years ago.” Julietta bit into her toast. “When Gio was a toddler. She wanted another baby. He said they couldn’t afford any more, and didn’t trust her not to accidentally-on-purpose sabotage their birth control. So,” she shrugged, “no sex was the only way to make sure it didn’t happen.”

  “He didn’t trust her?”

  “I wouldn’t have either. She really wanted another baby.”

  In the next room, Gunner and Nina were laughing. Julietta’s attention diverted quickly, always too easily. She pushed out of her chair and joined them.

  Johanna sipped at her coffee, basked in the sunshine coming through the big kitchen window and the sisterly gossip she didn’t realize she missed. If I she were in Cape May, she’d have already put in half a day of work. Sleeping in, having her breakfast made for her, indulging in chatting with these sisters she loved, it let her, if only for a moment, forget all the reasons she had for staying far away from Bitterly.

  A soft knock on the back door opened her eyes. Charlie waved from the other side of the glass. She leapt too quickly to her feet and nearly spilled her coffee.

  “All done?” she asked as he stomped his boots clean.

  “Boys are just finishing up.”

  Johanna stepped aside to let him in. He put up his hands.

  “I’ll get snow all over the floor.”

  “Who cares? Get in here. And call your boys. I’m making them hot chocolate.”

  “No need to—”

  “It’ll take two minutes. Sit. Warm up. It’s the least I can do. Okay?”

  Charlie chuckled softly. “Sure.”

  Johanna called out to the boys who shouted in return. Head stuck in the pantry, she was relieved to find the ingredients necessary for a real cup of hot chocolate, and not the powdered stuff in an envelope.

  “Help yourself to the coffee,” she said over her shoulder, “unless you want hot chocolate.”

  “I’d love some. Thanks, Johanna.”

  He spoke her name softly, like a whisper before falling into sleep. Johanna stirred the melting butter and chocolate, added the sugar spoonful by spoonful. By the time she started incorporating the milk, she could speak without her voice cracking.

  “Thanks again for last night.”

  “No worries. That reminds me—I have your backpack. You left it in the truck.”

  “Oh, I did, didn’t I. Totally forgot about it.”

  “I’ll have one of the boys get it.” He passed behind her to call out to his sons.

  Johanna shivered. Lowering t
he heat, she stirred as if her life depended upon it not sticking to the bottom.

  Charlie peered over her shoulder. “Smells good. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything but the packaged stuff.”

  “I doubt there’s even any real cocoa in that.”

  “Probably not. You never struck me as the cooking type.”

  “I never was.”

  “But you own a bakery.”

  “An impulse decision, not a lifelong dream,” she admitted. “I was vacationing in Wildwood, and decided to check out Cape May. I fell in love with the town, the Victorian houses and quaint shops. It’s real old-world, you know? Even in the height of summer. When I saw CC’s for sale, I…” She bit the truth off there.

  Charlie answered for her. “You bought it.”

  She shoved him playfully. “I hocked everything I owned and mortgaged six of my nine lives, but I did.”

  “CC’s, huh?”

  “Cape Confectionary. It came with the name. CC’s for short.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “After all my failed attempts at earning a living, this one has turned out to be something good. Who’d have thought I would have a knack for baking? In the summer, I do breakfast and lunch too. It gets kind of crazy, tourists from all around the world there to see the famous Jersey Shore. It’s like no place else on earth. You should bring the kids down.”

  Her cheeks were burning before the words were out of her mouth. Johanna took the pan off the burner, kept her back to him as she poured three mugs. Stomping on the small porch off the back of the house signaled the boys’ arrival. Another moment and they were in the kitchen, stripping off snow gear in the boisterous way of young men.

  “Caleb, Will, this is Johanna Coco. Johanna, two of my boys.”

  “Hi, again,” Caleb waved, his smile wide. “We met through the window already. Here’s your backpack.” He retrieved it from the pile of coats and scarves. “Got a little snowy.”

  “Thanks.” She held out a steaming mug. “I’ll trade you.”