The Path to Sunshine Cove

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “Not even close. And from the outside, I can tell you that I find it very unfair of you to take out the anger and hurt you might be feeling about not having your mom around on the one parent who was here the whole time to take care of you. How would you feel if it were your dad who was here sick in the hospital, after the way you’ve treated him lately?”

  Sophie seemed struck by that as she gripped the handle of Eleanor’s overnight bag. “I still wish he hadn’t lied to me all this time,” she mumbled.

  “You should tell him that. But remember when you do that your father loves you with his whole heart. I saw that the first day I came here. That’s what matters most, isn’t it?”

  Sophie sighed. “I guess.”

  Jess hoped her words had made some kind of impact on Sophie. It gave her some comfort to hope that after she was gone, the two of them could find some measure of peace together.

  They went in the front doors, as Nate had texted earlier that his mother was being moved to a room in the cardiac unit.

  “Oh, Sophie. Hi, honey.” The woman at the reception desk jumped up and circled the desk to give the girl a hug.

  “Hi, Mrs. Aoki.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear your grandmother was admitted. She’s in room 112. Take a left past the atrium and look for signs that say ‘Cardiac Unit.’”

  “Okay.”

  The woman gave Jess an appraising look. She braced herself to face off against another gatekeeper spouting off about family and limited visitors. Instead the woman gave her a broad smile.

  “And you must be Rachel McBride’s sister who has been staying with our Eleanor, right? You look like her.”

  People rarely said that, mostly because their coloring was so different. “That’s right. Do I need to wait out here?”

  Mrs. Aoki shook her head. “Oh no. You can go in, too. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”

  The two of them walked down the hall until they found the right unit and then Eleanor’s room. Despite what the receptionist had said, Jess wasn’t sure whether she belonged there. She hovered outside the room as Sophie hurried in to hug her grandmother.

  Through the doorway, she spotted Eleanor on the bed. Her color looked much better than it had before and she didn’t seem as wrung out.

  Nate must have been standing in the corner where she couldn’t see. He walked out into the hallway, the same warm look in his eyes she had seen earlier.

  “You don’t have to stay out in the hall. Come in.”

  In her head, Jess could hear the receptionist in the waiting room of the emergency department telling her visitors were limited to family. As much as she had loved helping Eleanor these past few weeks, Jess wasn’t family. The sooner she remembered that, the easier it would be to move on Monday without looking back.

  How was she ever going to leave the Whitakers? The thought ripped at her heart.

  Already she could feel the void they were going to leave in her life. All of them. Eleanor. Sophie.

  Especially Nate.

  This was the very reason she tried to compartmentalize her emotions when she was working. She didn’t want to get involved. She didn’t want to care so deeply about her clients that the thought of leaving them to move on to the next job hit her like a punch to the gut.

  On this particular job, she had thrown every one of her personal tenets out the window. What was wrong with her? How was she going to drive away when she would be leaving a huge part of her heart behind, here in Cape Sanctuary?

  “Everything okay?” Nate asked, and Jess realized she hadn’t spoken since they arrived.

  She forced a smile. “Super,” she lied. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better, Eleanor.”

  “I am. I’m wishing I weren’t stuck here in this hospital bed, but other than that I’m fine.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “I was so scared, Gram,” Sophie said, resting her head on her grandmother’s shoulder.

  Eleanor patted her. “I’m sorry I worried you all. Hopefully they will be able to figure out what’s going on with my ticker and I’ll be out of here soon.”

  “I hope so, too,” Jess said.

  She stayed a few more moments while Sophie showed her grandmother what they had brought to help her feel more comfortable. Eleanor exclaimed over everything.

  Finally, when the walls of the hospital room began to close in on her, Jess edged toward the door. “I should go.”

  “You don’t have to,” Eleanor assured her.

  “Yes. Stay. I can go find another visitor chair for you,” Nate said.

  Jess shook her head. “It’s a small room. I don’t want to be in the way. And, anyway, we left a mess behind in Eleanor’s bedroom. I should go back and finish up, so you have a clean room to come home to when you’re done here in a day or two.”

  “Hopefully sooner rather than later,” Eleanor said.

  Nate gave her a searching look and she wondered if he could sense her restless feeling of not belonging. It was a feeling she ought to be used to by now, after thirty years.

  “Thank you again for everything today,” he said. He kissed her cheek and she knew she didn’t imagine how his mouth lingered on her skin.

  She forced a smile, gave Eleanor and Sophie each quick hugs then hurried out of the room.

  She would return to Whitaker House to finish cleaning out Jack’s closet and then turn her attention to the remaining work.

  With a few more hours of hard effort, she could be done by midafternoon the next day.

  The sooner she finished the job she came to do, the quicker she could hitch up her Airstream and drive out of town.

  36

  Nate

  Nate watched Jess rush out of the room as if the nurses were chasing after her with giant needles. What was her big hurry? She had looked as if she couldn’t wait to get away. Eleanor looked at the doorway through which Jess had disappeared. “She’s the sweetest girl, isn’t she? I’m so glad I had the good sense to hire her to help me clean out that big house. Isn’t she wonderful?”

  “Yes,” Nate said, then looked away, not wanting his mother to see how much meaning that single world held.

  She was wonderful. And beautiful. And stubborn.

  His feelings were a wild, confusing jumble in his chest. Now was not the time to sort them out, when he needed to focus on his mother’s health.

  “I like her a lot,” Sophie said. She gave Nate a meaningful look. “Just in case, you know, anyone felt like my opinion mattered. You have my permission.”

  He gawked at her. “Permission for what?”

  “To date her. If you wanted to.”

  Yeah. This wasn’t the time or place for this discussion. “We’re friends,” he said gruffly. “That’s all. Anyway, she’s leaving town in a few days so there’s no point to this discussion.”

  “I think you should. Ask her out, I mean,” Eleanor said. “You have my permission, too. As if you ever needed it.”

  How had this conversation spiraled out of his control? Nate shifted, more awkward than he had been in a long time. Before he could respond, the door opened and a new nurse came in.

  His mother’s face lit up. “Hi, Brooke. I was wondering if I would see you while I was here.”

  The woman was a neighbor who also attended book club with his mother. That was one of the perils and joys of a small town. All of their lives seemed to intersect in multiple ways.

  “Lucky me, I get to be your night nurse.”

  “Oh wonderful. You can catch me up on all the good gossip around the hospital.”

  “Ha. I’m a battle-ax when it comes to my patients. No gossip here, just making sure you take your meds, try to rest and do what the doctors tell you.”

  Eleanor made a face. “You’re no fun at all.�
�

  “Hospitals aren’t supposed to be fun. Hasn’t anybody told you that yet?”

  His mother laughed. It was weak, thready, but Nate still felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  Only then did he fully acknowledge how worried he had been. For the first time since he listened to that voice mail from Jess, he felt the stirring of optimism.

  If his mother could try to manage his love life, she must be feeling better.

  * * *

  They stayed until the nurses brought Eleanor dinner, then he and Sophie ate a quick meal in the cafeteria before heading home to take care of Cinder and Charlie.

  They were almost to Whitaker House when the topic of Jess Clayton came up again.

  “I’m sorry I teased you before. About Jess, I mean,” Sophie said out of the blue. “But I do like her. She’s nice and she’s smart and she’s easy to talk to.”

  He agreed with all of those things. Added to that, she was compassionate, caring, generous.

  He really had it bad.

  He glanced over at Sophie before turning back to focus on the road. “While I appreciate the, er, vote of approval, I’m afraid it’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not? Don’t you like her?”

  “That’s not really the point.” He was falling in love with her, but he really didn’t want to have that conversation with his daughter right now.

  Sophie was quiet for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was hesitant. “Jess basically told me today that I’ve been acting like a jerk to you. Usually that would make me mad but it didn’t. Especially because she’s right.”

  Nate held his breath, wondering if he was finally going to get to the bottom of Sophie’s seismic mood change a month earlier.

  “She told me I should apologize to you and tell you why I’ve been so mad.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He was exhausted from the tumultuous afternoon and evening spent in the hospital but if he and Sophie had any chance of returning to their previous easy, affectionate relationship, he would sit here all night.

  “I overheard something I don’t think I was supposed to hear a month ago. Something about my mom.”

  Nate tensed. “Something I said?”

  “Yes. You and Gram. You were talking about me and how much I had grown up and looked like my mom. And then you talked about when we first came back to Cape Sanctuary, how hard it was knowing my mom would never get the chance to know me and how different my life might have been if she had chosen to defer her deployment. And you told Gram that even if my mom hadn’t died, you probably would have ended up divorced because you didn’t want me to ever know I wasn’t my mom’s first priority.”

  She sniffled and Nate closed his eyes, cursing himself for not making sure Sophie hadn’t been within earshot when he and his mother had that indiscreet conversation.

  He rarely talked about Michelle. That brief part of his past seemed a lifetime ago. She had given him his most precious gift, Sophie. Other than that, he didn’t think about her much.

  He could remember that particular night clearly. It had been the night of what would have been his wedding anniversary and he had been feeling low, a little lonely as he looked back at the path he had chosen to travel as a single father.

  “I’m sorry you heard that,” he finally said.

  “Yeah. It was a lot easier when I thought she was some kind of war hero like everyone else does.”

  Damn it. He had never wanted this. The wounded hurt in his daughter’s voice broke his heart.

  “She was, Sophie. She was. Your mom was an amazing woman. She gave her life to protect other people from a terrorist attack. I still call that heroic.”

  “All this time, you let me think she was the big love of your life, the reason you hardly ever date anybody else.”

  He had never said that to her. Had he?

  “I did love your mother,” he protested.

  “How could you? You said you were going to divorce her!”

  He sighed, wishing they didn’t have to have this conversation right now. He wanted his daughter to always believe in happy endings. It was his fault. If only he had kept his mouth shut, instead of making a few half-forgotten comments to his mother in passing.

  “Your mom and I...we weren’t a good match. I know this might be hard to understand but you can love somebody with all your heart and still not be a good fit together.”

  The words resonated in his chest. He was doing it again. Falling for someone who was completely wrong for him. His life was here in Cape Sanctuary. He had a business here, his mother, Sophie, while Jess had created an entire business model based on being willing and able to travel as needed.

  “I loved your mom. If she hadn’t died serving her country, I hope we could have tried hard to make it work. We might have figured out a way.”

  “It hurt that you lied to me all this time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  This was the crux of the matter. She felt betrayed that the worldview he had always created for her was only one perspective of the wider picture.

  “I was trying to protect you. I can see now where you would feel like I kept important information from you. I’m sorry for that. I don’t blame you for being upset with me. I wish you had told me this a month ago, though, so we could have avoided all the slamming doors and cranky comments.”

  “Jess basically yelled at me and told me to stop being a baby. She didn’t use those words but that’s what she was really saying.”

  “Was it?”

  “She told me it wasn’t fair to take out my anger at the parent who stayed and took care of me all this time.”

  Warmth and gratitude seeped through him along with more of those tender feelings he didn’t know what to do with. Nate had to swallow hard before he trusted himself to answer. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

  “Yeah. I hadn’t thought of it that way. She’s kind of right. I’m...sorry. Next time, I’ll talk to you before I go all pissy for weeks at a time.”

  “I hope there’s not a next time. I missed you.”

  “Same.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder for a minute, just as she used to do when she was small and sleepy from a long car ride, and Nate felt emotions rise up in his throat again.

  He had Jess to thank for this, too, this rare and precious peace with his child. Just another reason he was falling for her. She was amazing. Strong, feisty, loyal.

  How was he supposed to simply stand by and let her walk away?

  37

  Nate

  Nate drove home from the hospital late Saturday completely exhausted.

  He found it quite odd that he could work on a construction site in the hot summer sun for twelve hours straight and be perfectly fine, yet a day sitting around in a hospital while his mother underwent testing left him so drained.

  If he was tired, his mother had been completely wiped out. She was sleeping soundly when he left. He didn’t think she would stir for most of the night, even when the nurses came to check on her.

  He pulled up in front of his house feeling guilty about leaving Sophie all day but she would have been bored senseless hanging out in a waiting room.

  After Sophie had spent a long visit with her grandmother in the morning and had been all but climbing the walls, Jess had popped in to check on Eleanor and had asked Sophie to help her finish a few cleaning projects at Whitaker House.

  He suspected the request had mostly been a ruse to distract his daughter from driving Eleanor too crazy with her restlessness. It had worked wonders, though.

  He’d checked on them around dinnertime with a phone call and Sophie told him they were going to walk down to the beach and do some beachcombing and have a picnic.

  That had been three hours earlier. He imagined Jess mu
st have gone back to her trailer hours ago, but no lights were on when he drove past and pulled around to his house.

  To his surprise, he found her at his kitchen table, working on a laptop. A fierce yearning hit him hard. How wonderful would it be to come home to her in his kitchen, in his house, in his bed on a regular basis?

  She smiled a greeting, obviously with no clue what crazy things were running through his head. “Hi. How’s your mom?”

  “Doing well for now. She’s sleeping. The cardiac docs are saying she can probably go home tomorrow.”

  “Really? That’s great news.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “The verdict is in, though. She does need a pacemaker, which she’s not too happy about. They’re talking about putting it in later in the week.”

  “So soon?”

  “Believe it or not, they’re hoping it will be an outpatient procedure and she won’t have to stay overnight again.”

  “Wow. That’s amazing!”

  “Definitely.” He looked around. “Where’s Sophie? Has she gone to bed?”

  Jess gestured over her shoulder to the small family room he had added on to the house, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water. “Asleep in there, last I checked. We had been watching The Princess Bride, which she said is her favorite movie, but about halfway through, she fell asleep, so I came in here to take care of some paperwork.”

  “I don’t think she slept well last night. She was too worried about Mom.”

  “I don’t blame her. I didn’t sleep well either.”

  Why? Because of his mother? Or because of something else?

  “I still can’t believe my mom never told me she hadn’t been feeling well.”

  “I don’t think she wanted to admit it,” Jess said.

  “You could be right. She also said she didn’t want to worry me, so soon after losing my father.”

  Jess gave a soft smile that made him wish he could drag her into his bedroom and spend the night with her wrapped in his arms.

  “She loves you. You’re her miracle baby.”