As a child, Hannah had had tea parties with all her dolls on the porch. Sometimes her mom and her grandmother had joined her. Those afternoons had been the best. Later, as a teenager, the porch had been a place for sharing dreams and plans with her friends over sodas and snacks. Eventually her first kiss had been in the shadows on the porch.
Now, bathed in the light of a spectacular sunset, the inn didn’t look as bad as it had at first glance. She could almost see its idiosyncratic charm and understand why her grandmother wanted to keep it open and in the family. The problem was that Grandma Jenny couldn’t possibly do it alone and there was no one in the family to help her. Hannah didn’t want to leave New York, especially with her team of physicians there, to say nothing of the demanding career she loved. Her twenty-year-old daughter, Kelsey, would probably wind up staying in California once she completed her studies at Stanford. Why keep the inn now, only to sell it to strangers in a few years, anyway? Her grandmother deserved to enjoy whatever years were left to her, not to spend them working her fingers to the bone waiting on strangers.
Hannah turned and caught her grandmother eyeing her speculatively.
“It’s a good time of day, isn’t it?” Grandma Jenny said quietly, her expression nostalgic. “Your grandfather and I spent many an evening out here watching the sunset with music drifting out the downstairs windows. And before that, my parents would spend their evenings doing the same thing. We didn’t sit inside and stare at a TV screen the way folks do today. We talked, getting to know the people who stayed here. We enjoyed the beauty God gave us in this place.” Her gaze met Hannah’s. “You loved it, too, once. Do you remember that? There were nights we could hardly drag you home from the beach.”
Suddenly Hannah remembered being maybe five or six and working all day on a sand castle, then being called inside. The next morning she’d rushed across the road to see her handiwork, only to discover that the tide had washed it away overnight. It had been her first hard lesson in the fact that some things simply didn’t last, no matter how well built and solid they seemed. Sometimes it was the foundation that mattered, not the structure, and sand had a way of shifting underfoot, much as her own parents’ marriage had crumbled a few years later.
As the years had passed and she’d developed more insights, there’d been little question in her mind that after the divorce her mother had felt trapped here by circumstances. What else could she do with a daughter not yet in her teens and no work experience beyond the family inn?
“I remember,” she said at last, but it was said in a faintly bitter tone that drew a sharp glance from her grandmother.
“There were good times, Hannah, whether you choose to remember them that way or not.”
“I wonder if Mom felt that way after Dad left. Wasn’t there a time in her life when she dreamed of going away and doing something else? He got to run away from her and from all of his responsibilities, but she was stuck.”
“What are you suggesting?” her grandmother asked indignantly. “That I kept her here when she wanted to go? Nothing could be further from the truth. She loved it here. She knew it was the best place to raise a child, surrounded by family and friends.”
“Dad obviously didn’t love it,” Hannah said.
“Oh, Hannah, that’s not so. Surely by now you’ve learned that relationships are complicated. Your parents were happy for a time, and then they weren’t. It had nothing to do with Seaview Key or the inn.”
Hannah didn’t waste her breath trying to argue. How could she? She’d been so young, just on the verge of adolescence. It was entirely possible that she’d been totally oblivious to whatever rifts there had been in her parents’ marriage. She relented now just to keep peace. “I suppose.”
Her grandmother’s shoulders seemed to sag. “I need to sit down,” she said flatly, clutching the railing tightly as she climbed the steps to the porch. She sank into her favorite rocker as the sun slowly slid into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the sky painted with streaks of orange and gold.
“Gran, are you okay?”
“Just a little tired. You go on in, if you want. Get yourself settled. I’ll just sit here for a while and enjoy the evening. Leave the dishes. I’ll do them when I come inside. Won’t take any time at all.”
“But we haven’t even started the list of renovations you want to do,” Hannah protested, feeling vaguely guilty for dampening her grandmother’s high spirits.
“You said it yourself. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
Oddly reluctant to go inside and leave her grandmother alone, Hannah stood in the doorway for a few minutes.
As twilight fell and a breeze stirred, the streetlight on the corner came on, illuminating the porch and yard. That was when Hannah noticed the tears glistening on her grandmother’s cheeks.
* * *
“Mom, what on earth are you doing in Florida?” Kelsey demanded when she called Hannah’s cell phone later that night and woke Hannah out of a sound sleep. “I called your office earlier and your secretary told me you’d taken time off again to go to Seaview. I’ve been trying to call all day, but you must have had your phone turned off. When you didn’t return my calls, I got worried. Is Grandma Jenny okay?”
Hannah sat on the side of the bed, almost regretting that she’d remembered to turn the phone back on before going to sleep. There had been five increasingly impatient messages from her boss and three from Kelsey. For once, she’d ignored them all, grateful that it was too late to call the office and deciding she really didn’t want to discuss this situation with Kelsey just yet. Now she had no choice.
“You mean besides her delusion that I’m going to give up my career and move back here to run the inn?” she replied.
“Oh, boy,” Kelsey muttered. “Is she serious?”
“She spent an hour at dinner talking about how we need to spruce this place up and get it open again in two weeks,” Hannah said. “I’d say she’s serious.”
“But you’re not going to do it, are you? You hate Seaview Key and the inn.”
“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Hannah said emphatically, then sighed. “Actually, I was thinking it might be a good idea to do a few renovations.”
“But why, if she’s not going to open the inn? You know she can’t manage it alone.”
Hannah hesitated. “I know,” she said at last.
Kelsey sucked in a breath. “You want her to sell it, don’t you? Mom, that will break her heart. You can’t do that to her.”
“What choice do I have?” Hannah asked defensively.
“None, I suppose,” Kelsey admitted, “but I hate this, Mom.”
“I know. So do I, but I can’t stay here. I just haven’t figured out how I’m going to explain that to your great-grandmother. You know how she is once she gets an idea into her head.”
“A lot like you,” Kelsey said.
“Yes, well, that is the problem, isn’t it?” she said wryly. Suddenly it occurred to her that there had to be a crisis of some kind for Kelsey to be calling from college in the middle of the week. “Enough about what’s going on here. I’ll figure out something. Tell me what’s up with you.”
Kelsey hesitated. “Maybe this isn’t a good time. We can talk about it when you’re back in New York after you get things straightened out down there.”
A sense of dread settled in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. “Isn’t a good time for what?” she prodded.
“You’re sure you don’t want to wait and talk about this another time?” Kelsey asked, sounding oddly hopeful.
“Now,” Hannah commanded.
“Okay, then. Remember how I told you at Christmas that school pretty much sucks?”
“And I said you were just going through a rough patch,” Hannah recalled.
“Well, it’s more than a rough patch, Mom. Don’t freak out, okay? I’ve really thought about this and it’s what I need to do right now. I’ve decided to quit college, come home to New York and get a job.”
&nb
sp; Hannah’s grip on the cell phone tightened. “In your junior year?” she said, her voice rising despite her best attempt to remain calm. “Are you crazy?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Kelsey said petulantly, sounding like a spoiled child rather than the responsible young adult she normally was.
“No, I don’t understand. And unless you’ve got an explanation that includes full-time employment several steps above flipping burgers, I’m not likely to understand. We had a deal. If I went into debt to get you into Stanford, the school of your dreams, you would stick it out and get your degree in graphic design, no matter what. Remember that?”
“I remember,” Kelsey said meekly. “But, Mom—”
Hannah cut her off. “No, there is no but, Mom. You got into Stanford. I’ve paid for three years at Stanford, and you are finishing at Stanford. Period. You don’t get to back out of the deal now.”
“I can’t stay here.”
Years ago, after her divorce, Hannah had learned the value of being stern and unyielding. Otherwise, even as a toddler, her strong-willed daughter would have run roughshod over her. She called on that skill now.
“Of course, you can stay. If your courses are too hard, if that’s what this is about, you can consider dropping one of them, but you’re not dropping out, and that’s final.” She told herself all her daughter needed was a pep talk. She’d probably gotten something below an A on a pop quiz and decided she was heading for failure. “Come on, kiddo. You can do this. You’re smart. You’re more than halfway to getting your bachelor’s degree. You just need to park your butt in the library and do whatever amount of studying it takes to get out of there next year with a degree.”
“You don’t understand,” Kelsey said.
“Of course I do, sweetie. We all hit bumps in the road from time to time. We can’t let them throw us off course.”
“Mom, this isn’t that kind of bump in the road. I’m pregnant,” Kelsey blurted.
If Hannah hadn’t already been sitting down, she would have fainted dead away and probably cracked open her skull when she hit the floor. Apparently things could get worse. And now she knew how.
Copyright © 2014 by Sherryl Woods
ISBN-13: 9781460325278
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Copyright © 2014 by Sherryl Woods
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