“Truly?”
Evan sounded both appalled and amused. And that, of course, made Michael frustrated. He was beginning to really regret giving him a call. “Yes, truly.”
“Sorry, but I’ve never known you to make friends with hotel staff.” He lowered his voice. “Are you sure she is safe?”
This time, he didn’t even try to hide his feelings. He started laughing. “What do you mean by that?”
“Half the girls we meet want to be your wife. They want to tour the world by your side as Mrs. Michael Knoxx.”
“Which would be such a treat, because being Michael Knoxx is so exciting,” he said sarcastically.
“They think it is. And the other half want to start a rumor about you! Michael, are you sure that this, this maid isn’t going to try to take advantage of you?”
“Pretty sure. She’s a shy girl.” Thinking about Penny, the guarded way she talked about herself, and how she’d never been to Siesta Key except by her parents’ side, made him think she might need their excursion even more than he did. “Penny isn’t just a maid. She’s a sweet girl who’s given me a lot of her time. And we’re going to the beach, Evan. The beach. Stop making everything into such a big deal. I fear your imagination is starting to get the best of ya.”
“I’m going to tell Molly, but I don’t know if I’m going to tell Mamm and Daed. Were you going to?”
“I wasn’t sure,” he said sheepishly. “I wanted to let you all know what I was doing, but didn’t want to have this discussion. I’m a grown man, Evan.”
“I know.”
“And I’m missing the bottom portion of a leg, not my brain.”
“I realize that, too.” He sighed. “Sorry if I sounded patronizing. It’s just that you are you, and, well, Molly and I see how people look at you. They see you as someone larger than life.”
“We both know I am nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I know that we’re all proud of you. I know that you have no idea the impact you have on other people. I’m proud to call you my brother.”
Evan’s words humbled him. “All I’m doing is going to Siesta Key for the day. That’s it.”
“Enjoy yourself. And, just for the record, you’re right. It is a shame that we haven’t taken the time to go to the beach. All this time, we’ve been preaching to folks about taking what the Lord gives us with an open mind and heart and we haven’t even been doing that. I can’t remember the last time we took a few hours to tour the beautiful places we’ve gotten to visit.”
“Let’s make a vow to change that habit,” Michael said. “We owe it to ourselves.”
“We absolutely do.”
Glancing at the clock on the wall, Michael knew it was time to wrap things up. “Listen, I’ve got to go. If you want to tell Mamm and Daed about me going to the beach, go ahead, but I won’t be here when they decide to give me grief about it.”
He laughed. “Gotcha. Have someone call us tomorrow after your surgery.”
“Will do.”
“Hey, Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll be praying for you tomorrow.”
“Danke. I appreciate that.” He had no doubt that his family’s prayers would see him through even the darkest days.
After all, they already had.
TRICIA WAS STILL HAVING a difficult time getting used to the inn’s routine. After she’d arrived, her aunt Beverly had encouraged her to spend some time making sure she was at peace with her decision to move to Florida.
But though her aunt imagined Tricia might be having second thoughts, she hadn’t had a single one. She wanted a new life. She was ready to give the Lord her burdens and move forward. Of course, she wasn’t sure what she wanted her new life to look like.
Therefore, in the meantime, she was determined to be as helpful to her aunt as she possibly could. It was simply too bad that so far Tricia felt she was as out of place in the Florida inn as a grove of blue spruces. Obviously it was going to take some time to adjust. That was the only explanation she could give herself as she rushed into the kitchen and practically ran over one of the guests.
“Hey, now,” a man said, holding out a hand to steady her.
Or maybe it was to steady himself? He was holding himself up on crutches . . . and he was missing part of one of his legs! “I’m so sorry,” she blurted. “I don’t know what—”
He interrupted her. “It’s all right.” Little by little, his expression eased. “No harm done.”
“Thank goodness. I really am sorry.” She smiled at him. Then, when he smiled back at her, she got a little flustered. Okay, a lot flustered. He was a very handsome man. “Are you a guest?” It was obvious he was, but her mind had suddenly gone blank.
“I am. You?”
“Nee. I mean, I’m staying here, but I’m not really a guest. Beverly Overholt is my aunt.”
“Ah. Well, nice to meet you.” Now that he’d regained his balance, he hopped forward. “Have a good morning,” he said as he obviously prepared to leave.
“My name’s Tricia,” she said quickly.
“I’m Michael.”
She felt her cheeks flush as he edged away, almost like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. Gosh, what had she done wrong? But just as he stepped forward, the door swung open again, forcing him to hop backward on his crutches. The moment he did so, he winced.
Now it was obvious that he wasn’t okay. Concerned, Tricia reached for his arm. If she could guide him to the kitchen table, she might be able to see how she could help him.
Just then, Penny, Aunt Beverly’s shy new employee, rushed to the man’s side. “Oh, Michael! Are you all right? I didn’t knock into ya, did I? I didn’t see you there.”
“Don’t fret, Penny. I’m learning this doorway is a particularly bad place to take a break.”
Without a glance in Tricia’s direction, Penny wrapped an arm around Michael’s waist and helped him to a chair. The moment he sat, she pulled up a chair next to him and stared at him intently. “Now, please be honest. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he replied.
Tricia raised her eyebrows at that. He’d knocked into a door, not fallen off a cliff. And he was a grown man, not a boy. Why was Penny acting that way?
Still ignoring Tricia, the girl said, “Do you want some ice?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said again, his voice warm and kind. “What I want to do is get on our way. Were you able to pack a lunch for us?”
“I did.” She smiled sweetly as one brow arched. “Were you worried about that? I promised you I would.”
“I wasn’t worried.” Tricia noticed that his eyes warmed for a moment before he adopted a far more friendly expression. With a grunt, he got to his feet. “So, are you ready? If so, let’s get out of here.”
“Do you mind if I first tell Miss Beverly that I’m going?”
“Of course not.”
Tricia was thinking that maybe it was time to say something. Since, well, it was becoming pretty obvious that both of them had forgotten she was in the room. “Um, I can tell Beverly that you left.”
Penny turned to her. “That would be mighty kind of you, Tricia.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry. I think I walked right by you without even a hello.”
“Don’t worry about it. You two looked kind of busy.” Tricia smiled. “Anyway, I’ll be happy to tell my aunt that you two left.”
“That would be wonderful-gut. Danke. Oh! I didn’t even ask if you two have met. Michael, this is Tricia Overholt, Tricia this is Michael—”
He cut her off. “Everything’s okay, Penny. We’ve met.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Bye, Tricia,” Michael said as they walked out.
Tricia raised her hand to tell them a cheery good-bye, but they were already gone. Their behavior was as puzzling as it was cute, she decided, as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She never would have imagined her aunt Bever
ly would have permitted her employees to be so friendly with the guests. But who was she to judge? Maybe Penny and Michael had known each other for years. Maybe she had a lot to learn about relationships in general.
When her aunt passed through ten minutes later, Tricia was enjoying her second cup.
“Hi, dear,” Aunt Beverly said, a dozen neatly folded dish towels in her hands. “How has your morning been?”
“All in all, uneventful.” She almost mentioned running into Michael, and then Penny almost running into him, and the pained expression he’d worn, but she was afraid Beverly might remind her that the guests’ business was definitely not any of hers. Instead, she merely passed on the information she’d been asked to share. “Penny wanted you to know that she took Michael to the beach today.”
“I was hoping to touch base with them before they left, but I suppose it’s just as well I didn’t. Michael needs to have a good day, I think.” Tricia held her breath, more than ready to hear the story.
But instead, Beverly merely eyed her carefully. “Now that you’ve had a good night’s sleep, do you feel like you’re settling in?”
“Oh, jah. I am yearning to simply relax and try to help you as much as I can.”
As if she’d finally gotten the opening she needed, Beverly set down the dishcloths and faced her. “I’m so glad you brought that up. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about why you came to visit me.”
She should have known Beverly wasn’t going to allow her to stay very long without an explanation about why she’d shown up in the first place. “I told you . . .”
“You told me nothing.” After sighing, Beverly stared hard at her. “And because you’ve told me practically nothing, I called Edward last night.”
“You called my daed?” A slow, sinking feeling settled in her, mixing with a dark sense of betrayal. “Aunt Bev, there was no need to get my father involved.”
“After speaking to him, I’m glad I did.” Her mouth settled into a firm, disapproving line. “He was worried about you. Tricia, he said that you came here without his permission.”
“I know.”
“And then I had to share that I knew nothing of this visit, either.” Her glare deepened. “This little escapade was beyond irresponsible. It borders on sheer stupidity.”
“Don’t say that.” She sniffed. All the lightness of her morning had faded and now she felt as troubled as she had before she’d gotten on the bus to Sarasota.
“Why not? Your actions were not smart. At all.” Holding out a hand, Beverly started listing off reasons, using her long, slim fingers to illustrate her points. “You went out of state without telling anyone. You got on that bus without even knowing where I was.”
“I knew you would be here in Sarasota, Aunt Bev. Everyone knows you are here working.”
But instead of reassuring her, Beverly looked even more irritated. Her voice rose. “What if I hadn’t been home? What if you had run into trouble on the bus? Did you think of that?”
She hadn’t. She’d been too afraid not to count on everything working out. “But you were.”
Beverly closed her eyes for a long moment, visibly attempting to maintain her composure. “Tricia, you are a grown woman of twenty-two, not a teenager. It is time to tell me the truth, and it better be the truth, or I will send you back home like the truant child you are being.”
Tricia flinched. “You can’t do that. Please don’t.”
“Why? What happened?”
She stared down at her mug. “Things I can’t talk about.”
“Not telling me isn’t an option.”
“Aunt Beverly, please, just trust me—”
“Nee. You haven’t been straight with me. Your father is worried, which means your mother is most likely frantic, and that won’t do. I love my brother, but I also love your mother too much to cause her pain. I’m not going to be the cause of her tears. What happened?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
Obviously out of patience, Beverly waved a hand through the air. “Sweetheart, I was left at the altar by my fiancé and best friend. That is embarrassing. I doubt you have experienced anything close to the like.”
“It was bad.”
“What was bad?” When Tricia didn’t immediately reply, Beverly’s eyes flashed. “Spit it out, Tricia. Your parents are waiting to hear—and I’ve got too much to do to wait for you to think of the perfect way to tell me.”
“I was being bullied.”
Her aunt stilled. “What? By whom?”
“By some girls who didn’t like me.” Though she tried to stop them, tears formed in her eyes as all of the terrible pain and embarrassment and, well, total humiliation came back. “I liked a man. One day, during a particularly long sermon, I wrote some stupid notes about him. Then I did something even more stupid. I was in a rush so one of my girlfriends said she would throw out my notes on her way home. Except, she didn’t throw them out.”
“That is too bad, but things pass, child. Next week, it will all be forgotten.”
“No, Beverly, it wasn’t forgotten in a week. It’s been months. And things have snowballed.”
“Oh, Tricia. I am sorry. What happened after she took the notes home?”
“She showed them to Ian.”
“Really? She wasn’t much of a friend, was she?”
Tricia shook her head. “It gets worse. After the man—Ian—saw what I’d written, he was shocked. And then my girlfriend decided to tell tales about me.” Closing her eyes, she gathered her courage and shared some more. “They told everyone I was sneaking out at night. Spying on him.” Actually, they’d made up far worse things, but Tricia wasn’t in any hurry to share that with her aunt.
“Were you spying on Ian?”
“Nee! But it didn’t matter. One of the girls? One of the girls has a lot of freedom. Her parents don’t check on too many things she does. She lied and said she was with me.”
“Therefore everyone believed her.”
Tricia nodded. “She made up awful things. I don’t even know why people would think they were true,” she added, “but they did.”
“What did your parents say? I can’t imagine Edward putting up with that for a minute.”
“I never told them,” she whispered.
“No? Why on earth not?”
“I was afraid they’d believe those rumors, too.” She’d been afraid to find out if they believed the worst of her because she had started to believe the worst of herself.
“They wouldn’t have. But they could have helped you.”
“They might have had doubts. I already had so many people thinking I was terrible, I couldn’t risk them thinking that way about me, too.”
“But you made things worse by keeping them in the dark.”
“Aunt Beverly, by the time I boarded the bus, it wasn’t simply my word against three or four girls. It was me against almost everyone I knew. People didn’t want to be associated with me.”
Beverly reached out and clasped her hand. “Oh, Tricia. I am so sorry.”
Tears filled Tricia’s eyes. This was why she’d come to Pinecraft. Not simply to run away but to be accepted. “I had to come here, Beverly. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t risk you refusing me. I couldn’t stay there another second.”
“How did you get the money for your ticket?”
“I had most of it saved.”
“And the rest?”
“I took it from the envelope in the kitchen,” she admitted, hating how that made her sound. “It was my mother’s grocery money.”
Beverly shook her head. “Oh, Tricia. That was bad of you.”
“I know. I’m really sorry. I promise, I really am. But you don’t know what it’s like. If it had just been those stupid letters, I could have dealt with it. If it had been just a week or two? I would have stayed. But it’s been months and months of dodging questions and comments about things I didn’t even understand. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Wrapping an arm
around Tricia, Beverly squeezed her tight. “While I don’t agree with your actions, I feel for you. What you’ve been going through was very, very hard.”
“Terrible.”
“Terrible, indeed.”
“What should I do now?”
“First, you need to call your parents.” When Tricia started to shake her head, Beverly said, “Tricia, it is time to start acting like the person you want everyone to see. That means you need to put your parents’ minds at ease. “Call them and tell them everything.”
“And then?”
“And then you may help me with the inn today. Since Penny is away for the day, I’ve got a lot of cooking and cleaning to do.”
Tricia braced herself. She knew this phone call was going to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But Beverly was right. It was time to start doing the right thing, not simply running from everything that was so very wrong.
CHAPTER 12
You know, if you keep looking at me the way you are, everyone is going to start to stare,” Michael chided as they walked down Bahia Vista’s sidewalk toward the SCAT stop.
Penny started. Was her attraction to him that obvious? “How am I looking at you?”
“Like you think I’m about to fall down any second.”
Relief made her smile. “Sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help it. See, I am kind of afraid that you are going to fall down any second.” Unable to help herself, she examined him again.
He didn’t look especially hurt or offended, which was good news. Instead, he wore a weary expression, as if he was reluctantly resigned to being coddled.
“I can’t seem to catch a break,” he said after she’d looked her fill. “Pretty much everyone I talk to only wants to make sure I’m not making things worse.” As he stared off into the distance, he added, “When I called my brother this morning, he made sure to tell me I was being an idiot. My quick check-in turned into an exhausting conversation where I had to defend myself the whole time. Within five minutes, I felt like I was his pesky little brother again.”
She couldn’t help but grin at that. Though she was thinking of him more and more as just plain old Michael, there were still times when he said things that made her shake her head—like the idea of someone treating him as a “pesky” anything. To her, he was still a bit larger than life. It would be hard to deny him anything—which was part of the reason why she’d agreed to go with him to Siesta Key.
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