“You have to join us,” Sophie said. “I want to hear more about the hoarder house you cleaned out.”
“Yes, my dear. Please join us.” Eleanor added her voice to Sophie’s entreaty.
“I don’t want to intrude on your family dinner.”
“You’re not intruding at all,” Nate assured her. “Anyway, you have to eat. Nothing wrong with a free meal, is there?”
“I suppose not,” she finally said.
“I just need to change out of this dress,” Sophie said. “I don’t want to spill food on it. I might wear it to school tomorrow. We’re supposed to dress up from our favorite decade and this would be perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask you before if you had anything I could wear, Gram.”
“Glad you found it before we give everything to Goodwill.”
“Or send it to the consignment shop,” Jess added.
“It’s a lovely evening,” Eleanor said. “Why don’t we take the food out to the terrace so we can hear the ocean?”
“Good idea. I’ll grab some plates and utensils.”
“I’ll do that while you and Jess carry out all this food. Sophie, join us as soon as you change out of that dress.”
“Okay.”
“Wow. You did buy a lot,” Jess said, looking at several bags, each holding containers of food.
“I can never decide what sounds best. Anyway, it makes good leftovers for a day or two.”
“True.” She looked at Eleanor. “Can I carry out some glasses and beverages for people?”
“Oh, good idea. There’s a pitcher of fruit-infused water in the refrigerator. That’s what I’ll have and I know Sophie likes it. What about you, son?”
“I’m not picky.”
By the time they carried everything out to the patio, which was a lovely spot in the May evening air, surrounded by vibrant spring flowers overflowing their pots, Sophie had changed her clothes and joined them.
He usually loved eating al fresco with his family. This was a place that generally left him with a great sense of peace, especially after a long day of wrestling with subcontractors and struggling with suppliers.
It was hard to feel peace with Jess Clayton around, especially given the awkwardness of their last meeting.
He wanted to apologize now to clear the air between them but couldn’t figure out a way to do that while his mother and daughter were there.
To his vast relief, Sophie managed to put away her new surliness toward him for the evening, too busy being fascinated by their guest. Gone was the moody, intense thirteen-year-old girl he walked on eggshells around these days. Instead, she was bright and animated.
He had forgotten how funny and vivacious his daughter could be. He found himself just watching her and marveling that she was his child, this amazing human who had somehow survived being raised by a clumsy single father and her grandparents, losing her mother before she could even remember and her beloved grandfather six months ago after a long illness.
Nate was damn lucky to be her father and didn’t take enough chances to tell her that.
“That was delicious,” his mother said, pushing her plate away with satisfaction. “Thank you for being so thoughtful.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It really is a lovely evening,” Jess said, looking out at the ocean. “If this were my terrace, I think I would eat out here every night.”
“We should, but the weather doesn’t always cooperate. We are often chilly, so close to the coast, and we get plenty of rain,” Eleanor said. “But you’re right. I’m afraid we take the view for granted sometimes. Sometimes entire days go by when I only have to pinch myself once or twice a day that I really live here.”
Jess laughed, a low, enticing sound that slid across his skin like a warm breath.
“I love it here,” Sophie said. “I know Sunshine Cove isn’t really our own private beach and other people can use it if they want to. But hardly anyone ever does so it kind of feels like ours.”
“It is one of the best things about Whitaker House,” Eleanor agreed.
“The tide is out,” Sophie said suddenly. “We should go see if we can find a sea glass stopper. It’s been forever since we’ve even looked.”
Nate felt a pang in his chest at her suggestion, which reminded him so much of the days when she used to adore him.
They used to love beachcombing on their beach at low tide to see what new treasures the sea had delivered to them.
She was right. It seemed like forever since she had wanted to.
“A sea glass stopper?” Jess asked, looking confused.
“It’s one of the most elusive of beachcombing treasures,” Eleanor explained. “The stopper from a bottle or a jar. It’s easy enough to find agates and your average, everyday sea glass washed smooth by the ocean. But an intact stopper is almost impossible to find. We’ve been on the hunt for years.”
“We never find one, but it’s still fun. We might not find what we’re looking for, but we always find something,” Sophie said.
“What a good idea and the perfect end to a delightful day,” his mother said. “Let me change into my beach shoes.”
“Are you sure you feel up to that?” Jess asked.
Again, his mother looked slightly perturbed at the question, though she quickly concealed it.
“I’ve been traipsing up and down that path since long before you were born. I’ll be fine. You can go ahead without me, if you want.”
“We’ll clear away the food while you change your shoes,” Nate said.
While they carried the dishes and the take-out meal inside, Sophie kept up a long-running conversation with Jess about surfing, about the end of the school year in a few more weeks, about her plans for the summer.
In about five minutes, she freely spilled out to this virtual stranger more info about her world than Nate could drag out in a week.
“Okay. I’m ready,” his mother announced as they were loading the last few dishes into the dishwasher.
They set out on the walk that made three hairpin turns down a fairly steep hill to reach the bottom.
California’s beaches were all public up to the high tide mark but access to them was sometimes closed when they were surrounded by private property. In the case of Sunshine Cove, the only egress was through the land surrounding Whitaker House.
The Whitaker family had always allowed townspeople to park on the road and walk through to reach it but as there were easier beaches to reach without the longish walk, few visitors ever found their way to the small beach.
Sophie was right. In many ways, it still felt like their own private little cove, shared only with the seals, otters and seabirds who sometimes visited.
“What will you do with a stopper if you find it?” Jess asked as they made their way down.
“I don’t know. Maybe a necklace or something, don’t you think, Gram?”
“Yes. We could find something fun to do with it.”
“Gram makes jewelry with the sea glass and agates we find. I have a bunch of cool earrings and a ring she made. She also has a display case in her house that contains some of the things we’ve found in our cove.”
“I’ll have to remember to show that to you,” Eleanor told Jess. “I believe that’s not something I plan to get rid of anytime soon.”
“Cherished treasures should definitely stay in the save category.”
Sophie held the leashes of both dogs as they trotted down the path first. That was another family rule. Though they could let the dogs off leash as it was basically their own private spot, his parents had always insisted dogs remain leashed until they reached the cove to make sure there weren’t any seals or sea turtles on the sand that the animals might bother.
Eleanor was next in line, which left him taking up the rear with Jess walking beside him. She
didn’t seem particularly comfortable with the arrangement but he decided this was his best chance to apologize.
“I’m glad to have the chance to speak with you privately,” he said when his mother and Sophie had moved farther down the pathway ahead of them.
“Are you?”
Her tone wasn’t at all encouraging but he pressed forward anyway.
“I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I owe you an apology.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever for? Threatening to call the police on me?”
Had he really done that? He winced. “I’m afraid I didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for you. I do apologize. I was hoping I would have the chance to apologize last night, but you didn’t come to dinner.”
“I’m sorry I inconvenienced you.”
Her dry tone again made him wince. “I’m doing it again.”
“Doing what again?”
“Stepping in it. I’m trying to apologize and not doing a very good job of it. Let me try again. I’m very sorry I was a jerk. The last thing I expected to find when I came home to grab some blueprints and a sandwich was a stranger parking a trailer on the property.”
“Did Eleanor explain why she didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“Not really. Only that she was afraid of my reaction, that I might think she was trying to close the book on the chapters of her life involving my father.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No! Of course not. She loved my father very much. She was a loving, caring wife to the end.”
“I’ve only known your mother through correspondence for a month or so and in person for only a day but I received the same impression. She doesn’t want to forget those years, she only wants a fresh start as she prepares to move on with her life alone.”
He looked ahead at Eleanor smiling down at something Sophie was saying to her. Where would he have been after Michelle died without his mother’s calm, steadying presence?
“I’ve become a bit protective of her since my father died. She lives alone here. Though Sophie and I are technically on the property, our house is through the trees. Plus, I work long hours and Sophie has school and her friends. We’re not always here.”
“She has Charlie.”
He snorted. “Right. Her killer Cavapoo, who is more likely to lick an intruder’s face off than bite him.”
Jess smiled slightly, just enough for Nate to feel as if he had accomplished something remarkable. “Even without Charlie, your mother strikes me as someone who can take care of herself.”
“In most situations, yes. But she has a soft heart.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Not at all. It’s one of the things I admire most about her. But she can be too ready to always believe the best in people. I could easily see her opening up her property to someone down on his or her luck whom she met online or through her volunteer efforts. Someone who might have an ulterior motive for staying on the property of a widow who is financially comfortable.”
Jess gave him a sidelong look that made him realize how his words could be interpreted.
“I’m not suggesting you have any ulterior motive. My mother explained all about hiring you to help her clean out the clutter in the house. She told me you come highly recommended.”
“And let me guess. You checked out my credentials.”
He debated how to answer that before deciding honesty was really his only choice.
“Guilty. And I learned she was right. Your reviews are all positive.”
“Good to know.”
“So far my apology isn’t going very well, is it?”
To his surprise, her smile widened slightly. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first suspicious family member I’ve had to deal with since my friend and I started Transitions. Children aren’t always happy when their parents decide it’s time to downsize.”
He frowned. Who said anything about downsizing? Eleanor had simply said she was clearing things out. Was she planning to move out?
She wouldn’t sell the house without speaking to him first. He knew that much. But she could be making all these arrangements in a roundabout way of telling him she wanted to leave Whitaker House.
No. He and his mother had a good, loving relationship. She wouldn’t keep a secret like that from him. Or at least he didn’t think so.
He decided to change the subject away from his own disquiet. “Helping people declutter seems an odd career choice for a former staff sergeant.”
She frowned. “Is that something you found in your research?”
“Indirectly. When I was looking at your company’s Facebook page, I ended up on your partner Yvette’s profile and saw an old picture of her in uniform with another soldier who was unmistakably you. I wasn’t cyberstalking, I promise.”
He really was making this worse.
To his relief, she didn’t seem upset. “Yvette and I went through basic training and were deployed together.”
“How did you decide to go into the, er, transition business.”
“We both got out at the same time, around the time her grandmother was about to enter a nursing home. I didn’t have anything else pressing to do so I agreed to help Yvette clean out her grandmother’s house. We both realized we enjoyed the process. A couple of Yvette’s older relatives asked us to help them, as well, and by the end of the summer, we realized we both had found something we love. I’m good at sifting through a house, parsing out what might hold value financially or emotionally and what can go in the bin or to Goodwill. Yvette is fantastic at marketing and design and has made connections in the resale market so our customers get the best prices for their excess items.”
“You do this full-time?”
“More than full-time, if you want the truth. We really need to think about taking on someone else to help us. We seem to have an endless waiting list of people who don’t know where to start.”
“What do you like about it?”
She looked surprised by the question, as if she had never stopped to think about it.
“This may sound silly or even grandiose but I feel like I’m making a difference, one job at a time. People have a hard time with change. If I can facilitate that a little and give them one less thing to stress about, it’s worth it.”
They had reached the sand by now.
“Can I let the dogs off the leash?” Sophie asked.
He scanned the area to make sure they wouldn’t disturb any fragile sea life. Charlie and Cinder were both well-mannered dogs and would back off on command but he didn’t like to take any chances. When he couldn’t see anything but a couple of seagulls pecking through a string of sea kelp washed up on the shore, he gestured to Sophie.
“Go ahead.”
The moment she unclipped them, both dogs raced around the sand like they were kids out at recess.
Eleanor headed straight for the bench he and his father had built a few years earlier, just above the high tide line.
“You’re not going to beachcomb with us?” Sophie asked her.
“You go ahead. I am perfectly content here, watching the sunset and the dogs. You have fun.”
His mother sat down, gazing out to sea with her head slightly bowed.
She was thinking about his father. He didn’t need to see her expression to know. Since his father’s death, he had felt closer to Jack Whitaker here by the ocean than anywhere else.
Grief was a horrible thing, sometimes a living, breathing beast constantly prowling through a person’s heart.
It was lovely to let the worries of the day go. His day had been a busy one, with multiple meetings on the various projects Whitaker Construction had a hand in right now.
Jess seemed to share his feeling as she walked beside him, looking out to sea more than she was pe
rusing the sand for treasure.
“This is a truly lovely way to end a busy day. If this were my cove, I would be here every night. In fact, I think I would pitch a tent right there between those trees.”
He had done that when he was a kid, plenty of nights when he was tired of butting heads with his father.
In retrospect, Nate felt stupid and childish at his own obstinance, especially now that his father was gone. Jack Whitaker had not been overly controlling. He only had high expectations for Nate, as most parents did for their children.
Whether it was grades, sports, his after-school job working for their neighbor’s construction company, Nate had never felt as if his efforts were enough for his father.
They had fought most about college. His father, a tenured professor, researcher, scholar, had insisted Nate’s future would be grim if he didn’t graduate.
Nate probably would have done fine at university. There were times he regretted he didn’t have a business degree, which would still come in handy these days.
His grades had only been average, from what he now knew was a combination of attention deficit disorder and undiagnosed slight dyslexia.
At the time, he had simply felt stupid and so very ready to be done with his educational journey. While he had weighed professional surfing, the military had seemed a more sensible choice.
Nate wanted to think he and his father had managed to attain some level of peace after he and Sophie moved back. Jack had never been anything but supportive as Nate faced the challenges of single parenthood.
His construction company, begun with only his meager savings and plenty of hard work, had taken off exponentially. His father must have seen what a better fit that had been for Nate than an academic track would have been.
By the time the damn cancer came for Jack, the two of them had healed those old wounds from his angry adolescence.
“I found something!” Sophie suddenly exclaimed from ahead of them. She scooped something up and brushed sand away while the dogs raced around them, sensing the excitement.
“Oh, what is it, darling?” Eleanor called. She rose from the bench for a closer look. “Did you find a stopper?”
The Path to Sunshine Cove Page 7
