The Shore House: An emotional and uplifting page turner (Dewberry Beach Book 1)

by Heidi Hostetter

  They stared at each other, like feral cats in a back alley, neither one willing to give in. But this was the hill Kaye was willing to die on. Her house. Her rules.

  It was Brad who spoke first.

  “Mom’s right, Iona,” he said. “Connor and Sophie wake me up in the morning when I’m here anyway. But you’ll like the guest room. It’s nice.”

  “That’s fine. I’m sure it’s great,” Iona said, her tone even though her eyes snapped with fury. “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Good. It’s settled then.” Kaye’s tone was brisk. “I’ll just get some sheets.”

  Once the dishes were done, the coffee set to brew in the morning, and the house was quiet, Kaye made her way upstairs to the master bedroom to get ready for bed.

  “I don’t like that girl,” Kaye began as she drew back the bedspread.

  “So you’ve said.” Chase had been roused from his chair in the den and helped pull back his side of the bedspread. “Several times.”

  “Something about her doesn’t sit right with me,” she mused.

  “That’s because you’ve never liked any of your son’s girlfriends.”

  Kaye stopped, stung at the accusation. “That’s not true. I liked—what’s her name, the one who came to Thanksgiving dinner his freshman year of college?”

  Chase snorted as he untied his bathrobe and tossed it on the chair. “The one with the nose ring? You did not.”

  “The athlete then.”

  “You made her cry.”

  Kaye paused, indignation returning as she remembered the incident. “She broke the kitchen window with that baseball. Anyone with any sense at all would have known not to hit a baseball so close to the house.”

  Without a word, Chase settled into his side of the bed and reached for his book.

  “I liked the bookish one. She was very intelligent,” Kaye continued. “We had a nice conversation.”

  “Until she asked to borrow one of your novels,” Chase countered absently as he found his place.

  “Everyone knows I don’t lend books.” Kaye voice was sharper than she’d intended. She was stung by the implication that she’d made someone feel unwelcome. She slipped off her robe and settled into the bed, feeling the fresh cotton sheets against her skin. “I would have gladly bought that girl a copy of her own, but the one she wanted to take was signed by the author.”

  “A local author,” Chase countered, as he bent the corner of the page and closed the cover of his book. “A woman with whom you have lunch frequently. How hard would it have been for you to ask her to sign another copy of her book?”

  “Hmm.” Arguing wasn’t good for Chase’s heart so she changed the subject. “I saw Nancy at the market the other day. She said she and George are here for the summer—the whole summer.”

  “Is that right?” Chase looked at her with interest. “I didn’t think George would ever take that much time away from his job.”

  “She told me he’d retired,” Kaye offered as she smoothed the bedspread. “She said he’s much more relaxed now. You should look him up; maybe have lunch with him.”

  Eight

  Three doors down, at the front of the house, Ryan and Stacy were also getting ready for bed. Stacy snatched the white cotton spread off the bed and balled it up before tossing it onto the floor. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing short and jagged. It occurred to Ryan that if Stacy had been a cartoon character, steam would have been shooting from her ears, but he knew better than to point that out just now.

  “Can you believe that harpy?” She crossed the room to open a window.

  “Who?” Ryan asked, though he knew perfectly well who Stacy was talking about.

  “Iona. Brad’s new girlfriend.” She snorted, impatient as she pushed a strand of hair from her face. “Don’t you think she’s awful?”

  Ryan had been married to Stacy long enough to know that she was fiercely protective of her brother, and also that Ryan’s opinion of Brad’s girlfriend didn’t matter just now. If Stacy didn’t like Iona, the best thing to do was steer clear of the skirmish.

  “I don’t know her well enough to judge. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Stacy snapped open the adjacent window too. “It’s hot in here, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe a little. You want me to turn on the window AC?”

  “Well, I think she’s pushy, that’s all,” Stacy continued, as if Ryan hadn’t spoken. “Did you see her telling Brad what to do—he’s not strong enough to stand up to someone like that.” She pulled the decorative pillows from the bed and flung them toward the chair. One of them missed and bounced against the wall. She ignored it. Instead she straightened and planted her hand firmly on her hip. “And what’s the deal with this Instagram account? She’s using him.”

  “Maybe he’s developed interests you don’t know about.” Ryan’s cell phone dinged with an incoming message. He glanced at the sender and suppressed a groan. Todd again.

  “I know Brad.” Stacy shook her head. “He hasn’t.”

  “He’s been traveling for the better part of six months. Travel changes people, you know,” Ryan said as he clicked on the text message.

  The VC partners’ meeting has been moved to tomorrow morning instead of next week. I need to present projections for next quarter. Urgent need for new schedule.

  Ryan’s body tensed as he skimmed the message. The data for the projections was stored on a company server, and Sean and Jeff both had the same access he did. Why did the job of mapping the data fall to him? He typed a snarky reply and hit send.

  Maybe Sean could take a break from car shopping and take care of it? He knows where to find the numbers, same as I do.

  Ryan watched his screen as the text was delivered, then the checkmark appearing beside it as the message was read. As he waited for Todd to reply, it occurred to him that he could have chosen his words more carefully. His reply wasn’t professional, but he was so tired of every task falling to him.

  Sean says you’re slides are better. he working on soemthing else.

  Ryan flinched at Todd’s sloppy text, wondering if the reply had been sent in anger. If Ryan’s refusal had gone too far. In his opinion, Todd was too slick, pushy, and untrustworthy, and those were on his good days. Overall, he was not helpful, his background in technology non-existent and his experience with start-ups minimal.

  Ryan composed a quick reply, designed to end the conversation.

  Get Jeff to do it. I’m taking time with my family. I told you all this.

  Ryan watched as the message was delivered and read. After a moment with no reply, he assumed the task of graphing the data would fall to someone else. Relieved, Ryan put his phone away and turned his attention back to Stacy.

  His wife was glaring at him. “Really? You’re texting while I’m talking to you about something this important?”

  Ryan sighed and he rose from his place. As he crossed the room, he picked up the thread of their conversation. Brad. Brad’s new girlfriend. “Maybe you should consider that Brad is a grown man and knows what he’s doing. Even if he doesn’t, maybe you could respect his choice and let him find his own way.”

  “She’s bossy,” Stacy declared. “She’s bossy and I don’t like her.”

  Ryan laughed and crossed the room toward his wife. “You’re no shrinking violet yourself, you know.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re a formidable woman, Stacy; both you and your mother are. The Bennett women are redwoods. Anyone who is not at least as strong won’t stand a chance with either of you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stacy scoffed.

  “I happen to like strong women,” Ryan replied, as he reached for the light. “But I knew what I was getting into when I married you.”

  Nine

  The front door was open, so Kaye called in through the screen door. “Brenda, you home?”

  She and Brenda Galbano had been friends for more than thirty years
. The women met as new moms, chasing after toddlers on the beach, and in the years following, their kids had played together every summer. Eventually the Bennetts and the Galbanos had felt equally at home in both houses, coming and going as they pleased.

  Brenda’s house was small, one of the smaller cottages at Dewberry Beach, not much larger than one of the oversized garages attached to the new mansions near the shore. It was a perfectly square structure on a tree-shaded lot, the way the town used to be before builders began subdividing the lots to make room for more houses. The cottage was a single floor with two rooms in front and a large, homey kitchen in the back. On one side of the kitchen were two bedrooms—the master that Brenda had shared with her husband, Eddie, and one for the children. On the other side of the kitchen was Brenda’s favorite room: her pottery studio. For their fifteenth anniversary, Eddie had surprised Brenda by converting a tumble-down screened-in porch into a fully functioning art room. It took him a month of weekends to finish because he insisted on doing all the work himself. He rolled the insulation, ran the electrical, and added wide windows so his wife would have a view of the bay.

  “I’m here, in the back.” Brenda’s voice came from the back of the house. “C’mon in.”

  Kaye pushed the screen open and slipped off her shoes. She walked on the braided rug down the short hall from the front door to the kitchen.

  Her friend stood in front of the white enamel farm sink in her studio and turned on the tap with her elbow. The water splashed over her hands, and rivers of clay ran down the drain.

  “Brought you something,” Kaye said as she set a lemon pound cake on the kitchen counter.

  “Don’t you have a house full of people? When have you had time to bake?” Brenda called from her place at the sink.

  “I didn’t bake this one. Mueller’s did.” Kaye pulled two mismatched plates from the cabinet.

  “I don’t understand.” Brenda emerged from her studio in her denim work smock, her hands dotted with clay. “You make the best lemon pound cake. Why would you buy one?”

  “I can’t have it in the house because I don’t want Chase being tempted by things he can’t eat.” Kaye lifted the coffee pot from the warmer and tested the side with her fingertips. It was cool to the touch. “Should I warm this up or make a new pot?”

  “The timer probably switched it off.” Brenda looked at the clay still coating her hands and frowned. “Go ahead and make a fresh pot. I’ll be right back.”

  Kaye knew Brenda’s kitchen as well as her own. The lighting was soft, with scarves gently draped over lampshades in the front rooms; framed photographs of her and her husband and the kids lined the walls. The air smelled warm, like the vanilla candle Brenda kept flickering on the counter. Brenda’s home was a true beach cottage, one of the few left in Dewberry Beach. She and her husband had furnished it with a comfortable mismatched collection of yard-sale finds, estate-sale pieces, and built-ins. People hired decorators to recreate the same mood that Brenda pulled together on instinct.

  Kaye found the coffee and filters in the usual place and had the coffee brewing by the time Brenda came back, wiping her now-clean hands on a strip of faded blue beach towel.

  “You look like you’ve been busy,” Kaye remarked.

  “Not as busy as I’d hoped.” Brenda sighed. “I’m a bit off today.”

  Brenda made her living as an artist. When she was younger, her parents had planned for her to attend art school in London, to study with the best instructors the world had to offer. But Brenda had other ideas. She married Eddie on the afternoon of her high school graduation. They had a courthouse ceremony and her parents cut her off, thinking she’d return to them when she realized her mistake. Again, Brenda had other ideas. She earned a teaching certificate and became an art teacher at a public school, working on her art at night. She and Eddie bought a starter apartment in Queens, New York and she fixed it up. She and Eddie had lived there for years and were very happy. Her parents never spoke to her again.

  Brenda retrieved two coffee mugs from the drainboard and set them on the table. She added a generous pour of cream to her coffee and set the pitcher aside, knowing Kaye preferred hers strong and black.

  “Have a seat.” She gestured to one of four wooden chairs positioned around her sturdy wooden kitchen table. “Are the kids here yet?”

  “Yes.” Kaye pulled out a chair.

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  “Brad got in last night and brought someone with him.”

  “What do you mean ‘someone’?”

  “I guess you could call her a girlfriend.”

  “I didn’t know he was dating anyone.”

  “I didn’t either. And she’s awful.”

  “How so?”

  Kaye sighed. “They have some sort of picture account on the internet. She poses him like some kind of doll, then posts his picture on this account.” Kaye waved her hand in the air. “And they’re vegan now, of all things—my son. So he wouldn’t even eat the lobster rolls I bought especially. I don’t know how to feed them, or even if I want to.” Kaye propped her elbows on the table and cradled her head in her palms. “It’s awful.”

  “How long is she staying?”

  “They haven’t said, but they came in the same car.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.” Brenda snorted. “Have you set a summer calendar out where she can see it?”

  Her eagerness made Kaye laugh. “Not yet, and I’m not sure if I can. Remember those people Chase invited down that one year? Them? They came for a ‘weekend’ and ended up staying for the month of July.”

  “I remember they were the reason you started the summer visit calendar in the first place.” Brenda said. “‘The shore house is for family.’ You’ve said it so many times, I should embroider it on a T-shirt.”

  “But if Brad leaves then Stacy will too, and I don’t want that” Kaye countered. “Not this year.”

  “Seems like an easy choice.” Brenda shrugged. “If you want Brad to stay, then you learn to get along with someone you don’t like. As Mrs. Ivey would say, life has presented a lesson for you.”

  “It gets worse.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Stacy hasn’t taken the kids to the beach yet.”

  “They just got here. Give her a chance to settle in.”

  Kaye shook her head. “Ryan let it slip that she’s afraid of the ocean.”

  “Oh dear.” Brenda set her coffee cup on the table with a gentle thump. “So you haven’t told her?”

  “I didn’t think I should. If I brought it up and she hadn’t remembered, I’d be stirring up something that was best left alone.”

  “Clearly she remembers something or she wouldn’t be afraid.”

  “Or she just doesn’t like the ocean anymore.”

  “You know that’s not it,” Brenda scoffed as she rose to collect the plates. “You have to do this, Kaye. You have to tell her.”

  While Brenda made a second pot of coffee, Kaye sat in silence, listening to the familiar sounds of Brenda’s kitchen and leaning into more than three decades of friendship. Brenda was right, of course—she usually was—but Kaye and her daughter had forged a bit of an uneasy truce as neither of them cared for Iona. Kaye didn’t want to upset that.

  Kaye glanced at her friend. “Enough about me. What’s going on with you?”

  Brenda scooped fresh coffee from a can, turned on the tap, and filled the machine with water then snapped it on.

  “Nice try,” she said as she scooped the coffee into the machine.

  “What?”

  “We’re not finished with you yet.” She flicked the switch and returned to her seat opposite Kaye.

  “You have to tell Stacy what happened but you already know that. Tell her yourself before she finds out another way.”

  “But I don’t want her to leave,” Kaye protested. “I want both kids here. I need them here.”

  “Why? Why can’t the summer be just for you and Chase?”

 
; “Because I need him to forgive me.”

  “What kind of twisted logic is that?”

  “It’s true, Bren. I wasn’t there when I should have been. I had no idea he was in trouble and I should have. I should have known.”

  “Listen to me.” Brenda’s gaze was sharp. “You’re not afraid because it happened, Kaye. It did happen and you’ve already survived it. What keeps you up at night is the idea that it might happen again, and I’m here to tell you that kind of obsessing will make you crazy. There is nothing you could have done to prevent Chase’s heart attack. Nothing. No sign you missed, no way you could have known it was going to happen before it did.”

  In the silence that followed, Kaye heard the vanilla candle on the countertop pop. The chirp of a bird outside the kitchen window. The laughter of children as they biked past the house.

  “Mrs. Ivey would have known,” Kaye said finally.

  Brenda snorted into her coffee mug and the mood was lifted. “Maybe so.”

  “That’s more than enough about me,” Kaye decided. “Tell me what’s got you in your studio this early.”

  Brenda’s expression veiled and her gaze shifted to the trees outside. “I got an invitation from the Families Group. The twentieth anniversary is next year and they want to plan something.”

  “Oh, Brenda,” Kaye breathed.

  Eddie Galbano’s dream was to be a firefighter. When he and Brenda were first married he worked construction during the day and volunteered at the firehouse while earning the accreditations he needed. Precious days off were spent at Dewberry Beach. The process took years but Eddie passed with honors and was offered his first-choice post assignment in Midtown Manhattan. To celebrate, the Galbanos bought a ramshackle cottage on the edge of Dewberry Beach and went about making it a home. Brenda and the girls made the trip down from their apartment in Queens on the last day of school, and for the rest of the summer, they met the commuter train from Grand Central Terminal to welcomed Eddie to the shore.