“And how lucky that Cam moved in just before you,” Erin added.
Meredith stifled a groan. Here it came. “Technically he didn’t move in. He’s staying there temporarily.”
“Summer’s a long season. Things can change,” her mom said, and she was smiling as she took a sip of her iced tea.
“Oops.”
Meredith looked back to the Wiffle Ball game just in time to see the ball sail out over the dock and land in the water.
“Well, that’s a foul ball,” her father reported drily.
“It floats,” Sophie said. “Can we get it, Grandpa?”
“I have a fishing pole in my truck,” he said. “I guess it’s time to teach you how to fish.”
“Mommy, can you do the cheese? Me and Grandpa have to learn fishing for my Wiffle Ball.”
Meredith pushed herself to her feet. “What do you think the chances are Sophie’s going to fall in and Dad’s going to have to jump in after her?”
Erin laughed. “I’m betting on your father thinking Sophie’s about to fall in and making a grab for her, then she doesn’t fall in but he does.”
Meredith was still laughing when she reached Cam’s side, and she pulled a slice of cheese out of the package on the grill shelf.
“Will you still be laughing when you have to haul her out of the lake?”
“Absolutely. She can swim and my dad’s the one who’s going to have to haul her out.” She peeled the wrapper off the cheese and leaned past him to place it on a burger.
“She loves spending time with them.”
“That she does. They talked a lot on the phone and did video chats, but it’s not the same. Being able to spend so much time together this summer has brought them even closer, and it’s been so good for Sophie.”
“Any chance she’s going to go home with them?”
She laughed and placed another slice of cheese. “No, they’re not taking her home with them.”
“Maybe they’ll be so tired after a long day of Wiffle Ball and accidental swimming that they’ll just crash at your place?”
“Doubtful. But never give up hope,” she teased.
Finding alone time with a six-year-old underfoot during summer vacation wasn’t easy, and they’d managed it only a few times over the last month. A sleepover with her grandparents. One sleepover at Kiki’s house. And two afternoon quickies while Sophie was with Kiki’s mom at summer program events.
Cam was good about it, though. He understood that she was very sensitive about Sophie’s attachment to him, and he hadn’t yet visited Meredith’s bed. Sophie still remembered climbing into Meredith and Devin’s bed early in the mornings, and she was afraid finding Cam in that position would lead to a whole lot of questions there were no answers or easy explanations for.
Another reason, which she hadn’t shared with Cam, that the current arrangement worked was that it was something of a built-in braking system for their relationship. Stolen interludes at his place helped her remember that she and Cam were just enjoying each other’s company. It wouldn’t end anywhere but with him back in the city.
The summer was almost over. Labor Day was coming in two and a half weeks, and Sophie started school the following Tuesday. The long holiday weekend was the unofficial end of summer and, while there was still a lot of work to be done with the cottage, it had become the date the countdown clock in her subconscious was ticking down toward.
Maybe he’ll change his mind.
It was a thought that kept popping up more and more often, but she did her best to squash it each time. He wasn’t going to change his mind about having an amazing life in the city to move to Blackberry Bay and...do what? Besides Meredith and Sophie, he had nothing here. And there were no promises between them. Just some fun.
“You look very serious all of a sudden.”
Cam’s voice jerked her out of her thoughts and she laughed off his concern. “No, just lost in thought for a minute.”
“You also stopped putting cheese on the burgers, so they’re not all going to melt the same way.”
“They’ll be fine,” she said, loving how the grill brought out a need to succeed in him.
They managed to get lunch served with acceptable cheeseburgers, and Sophie and her grandfather were both still dry after retrieving the Wiffle Ball, so Meredith counted that as a win.
Under the table, Cam’s leg pressed against hers, and she savored the warm contact of his body. It was the only touching they’d do with her parents and Sophie present, which was frustrating even though it was at her request. She wasn’t ready to make things more confusing for Sophie.
“Cam, how are things going with the cottage?” Erin asked when they’d pushed away empty plates and leaned back in their chairs.
“Slow,” he admitted. “I should probably spend more time in the cottage and less time in my hammock. Tomorrow I’m going to dig into the last box of journals, though. I’m getting there. I guess if I was smart I would read the journals while in the hammock.”
They all laughed, but Meredith suspected the truth behind the joke. He was dragging his feet on the process, and while he talked about how overwhelming it was, she knew that wasn’t all there was to it. For one thing, he could afford to have all the help he wanted. And he could box up the journals and take them with him to read later. That wasn’t the task he should be doing if he was trying to finish up the estate work.
He was getting attached to Carolina’s belongings. She could see it in the way he’d pick something up and hold it, his gaze shifting to the pictures that were still hanging on the walls. The journal entries. The ridiculous Chihuahua tablecloth that was still on the table. They were all pieces of the puzzle that was his grandmother and, even though there would probably always be missing pieces, he wasn’t ready to sweep them all into boxes and put that puzzle on the shelf.
It seemed to her as though he wasn’t ready to go back to New York. Maybe he didn’t want to go back to what sounded to her like a cold and sometimes awful relationship with his parents. Or Carolina and Michael could be holding him in Blackberry Bay. Leaving would be like putting them in his rearview mirror and he might not be ready to let them go yet.
There was also the possibility he was reluctant to leave her. Maybe he was having as hard a time imagining his life without her and Sophie in it as she was picturing her life without him.
She’d gotten used to having him around. Sure, it was weird having a secret relationship with her neighbor, but they still spent a good part of their days together. There was a lot of playing with Sophie in the backyard. They’d spend time helping him in the cottage. They were all working on taming Carolina’s garden patches together. They’d eat on one of the decks together at least three nights of the week.
It was times like this that made it hard. They were beginning to feel like a family to her, and it was only when she snuck him a kiss good-night and sent him home alone before putting Sophie to bed that shattered the illusion.
And if they felt like a family to her, they probably felt like a family to Sophie, and with each passing week, her concern grew. It was impossible to keep them apart, though. All Sophie had to do was see Cam and she was across the yard like a shot.
The only boundary she could maintain was not having Cam fill the role of the man of her house. They ate on the deck. He never slept in her bed. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it would help when the inevitable separation came.
His knee bumped hers and she looked at him. His brow was furrowed and he tilted his head in a questioning way. What’s wrong?
She should have sat on the other side of the table from him. Smiling, she shook her head and tried to focus on the conversation going on around her, which seemed to center around Sophie’s friendship with Kiki. They’d found out they’d be in the same class and, judging by her daughter’s enthusiasm for the subject, it was the best thing
that had ever happened to her.
It was her mother’s smile that really caught her attention. She wasn’t beaming at her granddaughter. Her gaze was bouncing between Cam and Meredith, and there was no mistaking the look in her eyes.
Great, Meredith thought. They didn’t just feel like a family. They looked like one, too.
* * *
Today at the library, I learned how to search in the Google and I searched for my grandson. There are some pictures of him on the internet and it both hurts my heart and makes me happy at the same time that he looks so much like my Michael. Some of the pictures have his parents in them and, in those, none of them ever look happy. They smile, but they don’t look like real smiles. And I know my grandson’s aren’t. He has Michael’s eyes and I could always tell by his eyes when he smiled if it was real or not. My grandson looks like he’s playing a part in a movie he didn’t ask to be cast in and maybe he just needs to know he can quit if he wants to. He can find another role to play that suits him better.
I swore to Michael I would never interfere. I promised him I would go to my grave without ever revealing the truth and I’ll honor that promise. Technically. I’ll be buried before my grandson gets the letter.
Cam closed the journal and then shut his eyes against the wave of emotions. First, the familiar anger at his mother. The sense of regret and loss. But then he laughed, startling Elinor, who’d curled up at his side. She gave him an affronted look and then went back to sleep.
Carolina really was something else.
Now he had the answer to one of the questions that had simmered in the back of his mind all through this adventure—why, if she was going to blow up his life, didn’t she do it while she was still alive so he could at least get to know her?
Because she’d made a promise to her son and that letter from her lawyer was the only way she could see around it.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he pulled up the information the lawyer had given him and punched the number for Tess Weaver into his phone. He was finally ready to talk to somebody who’d really known her well, and from what he understood, nobody had known her better than Tess.
An hour later, Cam sat at the most private table he could find in the café, fighting the urge to rub his palms on his thighs. When he’d called her, he hadn’t expected things to move quite so fast, but Tess seemed to prefer not letting grass grow under her feet.
He’d met some of the most powerful people in the country. He dined regularly with senators and he’d gone to school with people who now kept the private jet industry in business. And he’d never once felt out of his depth.
But as an older woman with long gray hair hanging in a braid over her shoulder, wearing jeans with a sparkly pink T-shirt and matching sneakers, walked in, he felt as anxious as he’d ever felt going into a meeting.
Sophie would love her outfit, he thought, but then the woman spotted him and froze. For a few seconds, she simply stared, and then she seemed to gather herself and moved toward him. He stood to greet her.
“I wasn’t prepared for how much you look like Michael,” she said, holding out her hand for him to shake. “I’m Tess Weaver.”
“Cam.” He gestured to the chair across the table from his. “Please, sit down. And thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I’ve been waiting. To be honest, I’d about given up hope you were going to reach out, so I’m glad you did.”
“It’s been a lot to deal with,” he admitted. “I didn’t know anything about her or Michael until I got the letter, so I’ve been trying to come to grips with it all. And I’m not one who likes to talk things out. But I guess there are some things you can never totally wrap your head around.”
“I promised Carolina I wouldn’t interfere at all. If you’d chosen to send somebody to throw everything away and sell off the cottage, then that’s all that was going to happen. And if, by chance, you did come yourself, she asked me to let you be unless and until you wanted to know more and started asking questions.”
“I have her journals,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I’ve found specific answers to questions, but I’ve gotten to know a lot about her and quite a bit about her son from reading them. I’m sorry I never got to meet her.”
Tess’s smile was sad, but her eyes warmed. “I’m sorry, too. She loved being a grandmother, which sounds ridiculous since she never got to see you, but she liked knowing you were out there.”
Emotion clogged Cam’s throat, so all he could do was nod. The server showing up to take their orders gave him a couple of minutes to compose himself, so by the time they’d each ordered the pasta salad special and drinks, he was ready to talk again.
But he didn’t have to worry about talking because Tess liked to talk and she talked fast, even for a New Englander. She told so many stories about her adventures with Carolina—only some of which he knew from her journals—that he knew he’d never keep them straight in his head.
“When my mom left,” he said when she finally took a breath, “how did that play out?”
“She just left.” Tess shrugged. “Michael told Carolina she was keeping the baby but she was going back to her husband and the baby would have a good life. Michael signed off on it and swore Carolina to secrecy. She didn’t like it, but Michael was sure in his heart it was best for you.”
“So he just let her go? Just let me go? Just like that.”
“He knew who Melissa’s husband was and he wasn’t going to win. He couldn’t afford a lawyer, never mind a lawyer who could fight the Maguire family, so all it was going to do was bring you into a world of conflict and anger.”
What about the money? The question burned in his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask it. Tess not mentioning the check made him wonder if Carolina had even known about it. What if Michael had accepted the money and never told anybody about it?
Maybe his biological father hadn’t been a good guy. That was the problem with Carolina’s journals. Everything he knew about Michael Archambault was filtered through the eyes of a loving mother.
“So I hear you’re running around with Erin Lane’s girl. So sad about her husband, but it’s good she’s moved home again so she can be near her mom.” Tess paused. Frowned. “I probably shouldn’t have asked about you dating her and talked about her husband in the same breath.”
He tried to catch up with her conversational curveball. “We’re not dating. And Meredith is comfortable talking about her husband. It sounds like he was a great guy and it is sad, for both her and Sophie.”
“You’re not dating?” Her skepticism couldn’t have been more obvious, but he was determined to hold the line. Meredith wanted their business kept very private and he wasn’t going to blow it. “Rumor has it you kissed her right in the middle of the sidewalk after the fireworks so people trying to get back to their cars had to walk out around you.”
Cam couldn’t help laughing at her description. “That’s a little dramatic. I did kiss her, yes. There’s not much sense in denying it, since everybody in this town seems to know about it. But that doesn’t mean we’re dating.”
“Guess you’re not much of a kisser, then, huh?”
“I...” Nonplussed, he shut his mouth and just blinked at her until she laughed.
He had no intention of telling this woman he and Meredith had progressed to a lot more than kissing when opportunity knocked, which wasn’t often. But he was okay with that because it made their time alone together all the sweeter.
“Just kidding with you. And it’s none of my business, anyway.” She shrugged and stabbed her fork into a cherry tomato. “It’s probably for the best you’re not dating because, last I heard, you haven’t made Carolina’s cottage your permanent address.”
He was tempted to ask how she would know anything about that. But he didn’t bother. Blackberry Bay seemed to be the kind of town where everybody seemed to know things�
�or thought they did, at least—and they weren’t shy about sharing the info with each other.
“Do you know anybody who might be interested in some of Carolina’s things?” he asked, determined to get the conversation back on track. “She liked crafts. And...well, she liked a lot of things.”
Tess laughed. “That she did. Boy, you need to have yourself a yard sale. The long Labor Day weekend would be perfect. And don’t you worry. I’ll help.”
Cam stifled the groan that seemed to rise up in him from the very depths of his soul. A yard sale.
Great.
Chapter Fifteen
“How many books did you get, Cam?”
They were sitting on the grass in the park, eating ice cream after a trip to the library, as they did once a week. Meredith and Sophie were there several times each week, thanks to the summer reading program, but Cam only accompanied them once because there was only one ice cream per week.
“I only got one,” he said, showing Sophie the hardcover thriller he had stashed in his tote.
“Just one? What are you going to do when you finish it?”
“I’m pretty busy, so I don’t have a lot of reading time right now.”
And he’d be leaving soon, and he couldn’t take Spurr Memorial Library’s books with him. The thought blindsided Meredith and she sucked in a breath. They both looked at her, but she forced a smile.
“Brain freeze,” she lied, holding up the ice-cream cone to back her claim.
“Can we go down on the dock?” Sophie asked. “I’m all done with mine.”
“I am, too.” He nodded his head toward Meredith. “Your mom’s slow.”
“She says she likes to savor it.” Her impression of her mother was very dramatic and they all laughed.
“You guys go. I’m going to stay here and savor my ice cream since, unlike you two, I still have some.”
Cam held up his hand and Sophie pulled on it, laughing when he made a big show out of struggling to stand up. She was chattering like usual as they walked away, with Sophie skipping a couple of steps ahead, and Meredith watched them go with a full heart.
More than Neighbors Page 15
