What Makes a Family

by Debbie Macomber

  “You’re improving. Go on.”

  “Nothing seemed right after you left. There was this giant hole inside me I couldn’t seem to fill. Work didn’t satisfy me any more. Nothing did. Gloria and Eddie asked about you and I didn’t know what to say. I was grateful Mom’s Place was closed, because I couldn’t have eaten there.”

  A part of her longed for all the romantic words a woman wanted to hear from the man she loved. But it wasn’t too likely she’d get them from Nolan. He wasn’t telling her he’d heard her name whispered in the wind or seen it written in his heart. Nolan would never say things like that.

  “You want me to move back to Seattle so I’ll quit haunting you,” she finally said.

  “No. I want you to come back because I love you.”

  “And need me?”

  He nodded. “I still think you could do a hell of a lot better than marrying an ornery guy like me. I promise to be a good husband—that is, if you’re willing to put up with me…” He let the rest fade. His eyes grew humble as he slowly, uncertainly, pulled her into his arms. “Would you…be willing?”

  She smiled, and hot tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She nodded jerkily. “Yes. Oh, you idiot. I could slap you for putting us through all of this.”

  “Wouldn’t a kiss do just as well?”

  “I suppose, only…”

  But the thought was left unspoken. His kiss was long and thorough and said all the tender words, the fanciful phrases she’d never hear.

  It was enough.

  More than enough to last her a lifetime.

  EPILOGUE

  It was Christmas morning in the Adams household.

  The wrapping paper had accumulated in a small mountain on the living-room carpet. The Christmas tree lights twinkled and “Silent Night” played in the background.

  Maryanne sat on the sofa next to Nolan with her feet up, her head on her husband’s shoulder. The girls were busy sorting through their stash of new toys and playing their favorite game—“being grown-ups.” Bailey was pretending to be a young college graduate determined to make a name for herself in the newspaper business. Courtney played a jaded reporter from a rival newspaper, determined to thwart her. It was Maryanne and Nolan’s romance all over again. The girls had loved hearing every detail of their courtship.

  “They don’t seem too disappointed about not getting a puppy,” he said.

  “I’m so proud of them,” Maryanne smiled. Both Courtney and Bailey were thrilled about the new baby, and although it had been hard, they’d accepted that there wouldn’t be a puppy in the family, after all. Not for a few years, anyway.

  “They’re adorable,” Nolan agreed and kissed the top of her head. “Just like their mother.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “When did you say your parents would—” Nolan didn’t get a chance to finish the question before the doorbell rang. “Is that them?” Samuel and Muriel Simpson had come from New York to spend Christmas week with the family.

  Maryanne nodded. Sitting up, she called to her oldest daughter, “Courtney, could you please answer the door?”

  Both girls raced to the front door, throwing it open. They were silent for just a second, then squealed with delight. “Grandma! Grandpa Simpson!”

  “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.”

  Maryanne’s parents stepped into the house, carrying a large wicker basket. Inside slept a small black-and-white puppy.

  “A puppy?” Courtney said in a hushed voice. She stared at her grandparents, who grinned and nodded.

  “We think every family needs a dog,” Maryanne’s father said.

  “Oh, he’s so cute,” Bailey whispered, covering her mouth with both hands.

  “He’s perfect,” Courtney said, lifting the squirming puppy from his bed. “Is he ours? Can we keep him?”

  “Oh, yes, this is a special-delivery Christmas gift for my two beautiful granddaughters.”

  Maryanne came over to take the puppy from Courtney. She cuddled the small, warm body and looked into sleepy brown eyes.” I guess you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?” she murmured. The puppy gazed up at her, unblinking, and Maryanne fell in love. Just like that, all her concerns disappeared. At least this baby would be house-trained well before their son was born. And the girls could help look after him. She looked up to meet Nolan’s eyes, and he nodded. So, despite everything, there’s be two new additions to the family this next year.

  Nolan ushered her parents inside and took their coats. “Sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Maryanne and I have a Christmas surprise, too.”

  “As good as a new puppy?” her father asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Courtney told him after a whispered consultation with her sister. She stroked the puppy, still cradled in her mother’s arms. “I don’t know what we’re naming that surprise, but we’re calling this one Jack.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s next book set in beautiful Cape Sanctuary,

  The Sea Glass Cottage

  available April 2020 from HQN Books!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Olivia

  She could do this.

  Olivia Harper approached the nondescript coffee shop across the street from her apartment in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.

  The place wasn’t necessarily her favorite. The servers could be rude, the food overcooked and the coffee rather bland compared to the place she preferred a few blocks east. The ambience at the Kozy Kitchen wasn’t particularly cozy, or “kozy,” either, for that matter, featuring cracked vinyl booths and walls that had needed a new coat of paint about a decade earlier. The Kitchen, as those in the neighborhood called it, was too tired and dingy to attract many hipsters, with their laptops and their slouchy knit caps and their carefully groomed facial hair.

  Right now, it was perfect for her needs. Olivia stood outside the door, ignoring the drizzle and the pedestrians hurrying past her on their way to somewhere far more interesting and important than this run-down diner.

  Every instinct inside her cried out for her to rush back down the street, race up the three flights to her apartment, climb into her bed and yank the covers over her head.

  Any normal person would feel the same in her situation, especially after enduring a life-changing event like she had experienced five days earlier.

  Her reaction wasn’t out of the ordinary. In the five days since she had witnessed a horrific assault at another diner, the nightmares still haunted her, so vivid she had awakened every morning smelling spilled coffee, blood and fear.

  She closed her eyes, still hearing the screams of the barista, the enraged yells of the junkie senselessly attacking her, Olivia’s own harsh, terrified breathing.

  She could feel the floor tiles under her knees and the cushions of the booth pressing into her back as she huddled on the floor, trying to make herself disappear.

  Until that experience less than a week earlier, Olivia had blithely gone through life with absolutely no idea what a craven coward she was.

  If she had ever thought about it, which, quite honestly, she hadn’t, she might have assumed she would be the kind of person always ready to step up in the face of danger. Someone who could yank a child out of the way of a speeding car or dive into a lake to rescue a floundering swimmer or confront a bully tormenting someone smaller than him.

  Someone like her beloved father, who had given his life to save others.

  Instead, when her moment to stand up and make a difference came along, she had done absolutely nothing to help another human under attack except crouch under a table and call 911, all but paralyzed by her fear.

  Shame left a bitter taste, even five days later. She hated remembering that she had done nothing while that junkie had fired a gun in the air then used it to pis
tol-whip the barista again and again.

  Olivia had wanted desperately to run out of the coffee shop and find help but she’d been afraid to do even that, not sure if he had more rounds in his weapon.

  The attack had seemed to last hours but had only been a moment or two before the barista herself and another customer, a woman approximately the age of Olivia’s mother, had finally put an end to the horror.

  That customer, just walking into the otherwise empty coffee shop, had sized up the situation in an instant and demonstrated all the strength and courage that had completely deserted Olivia. Instead of hurrying out of the coffee shop to safety, she had instead run to the barista’s aid, yelling at the junkie to stop.

  Startled, he had paused his relentless, horrifying random attack and had eased away slightly. That had been long enough for the barista, battered and bleeding and crying in pain, to pick up a carafe of coffee and throw it and its piping hot contents at him.

  Olivia could still hear his outraged yell and the shouts of a neighborhood police officer who had finally responded to her call, ordering everyone down to the ground.

  In five minutes it was over, but Olivia had relived it for days, especially coming face-to-face with the stark realization that she was a craven coward.

  Steve Harper would have been ashamed of her.

  Amazing, the lengths a person could go to deceive herself. All this time, Olivia thought she was strong and decisive and in control.

  In certain areas of her life, maybe. Hadn’t she moved away from her hometown in Northern California to go to college twelve years earlier and never looked back? That had taken strength. And she had built her own social media marketing company in her own time, working nights and weekends until she now had clients across the globe.

  Of course, she was terrified to take the leap and make her side hustle her full-time job. She still put in long hours handling information technology for a medical conglomerate because the pay was good and the benefits amazing—even though her ex-fiancé worked in the administration for said conglomerate and made her life unnecessarily difficult, simply because she had broken off their engagement six months earlier.

  She was constantly running from any situation she found emotionally threatening.

  “Are you going in?”

  A man was holding the door for her, she realized. He was about her age and not bad looking in a slightly rumpled, professor sort of way.

  She started to take a step inside after him but fear froze her in place. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” she lied.

  “Here’s a crazy idea. You could always wait inside where it’s dry.”

  He smiled, his brown eyes friendly and with a glimmer of interest.

  “I’m good,” she mumbled.

  He shrugged and let the door between them close with a disappointed sort of look.

  Yeah, she was a coward when it came to dating, too. She had one serious relationship in college that had ended by mutual agreement, then she’d become engaged to the first guy she dated out of school, until she realized neither one of them loved the other. They were simply together for convenience.

  She had convinced herself that a mildly enjoyable relationship was the safer choice. What if she loved someone passionately, fiercely, and then lost him suddenly, as her mother had her father? Sixteen years later, there were times Juliet still seemed shattered.

  So many things could go wrong. A car accident. A plane crash. A heart attack.

  A burning building where a man might run inside to save people, despite his daughter begging him not to do it.

  Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets against the damp Seattle afternoon. Nothing would take the chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave, huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done anything but make her crave cake.

  She couldn’t hide away in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have reenter life and go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a typical spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.

  This was stupid. The odds of anything like that happening to her again were ridiculously small. She couldn’t let one man battling mental illness and drug abuse control the rest of her life.

  She could do this.

  She reached out to pull the door open but before she could make contact with the metal handle, her cell phone chimed from her pocket.

  She knew instantly from the ringtone it was her best friend from high school, who still lived in Cape Sanctuary with her three children.

  Talking to Melody was more important than testing her resolve by going into the Kozy Kitchen right now, she told herself. She answered the call, already heading back across the street to her own apartment.

  “Mel,” she answered, her voice slightly breathless from the adrenaline still pumping through her and from the stairs she was racing up two at a time. “I’m so glad you called.”

  Glad didn’t come close to covering the extent of her relief. She really hadn’t wanted to go into that coffee shop. Not yet. Why should she make herself? She had coffee at home and could have groceries delivered when she needed them.

  “You know why I’m calling, then?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice.

  “I know it’s amazing to hear from you. You’ve been on my mind.”

  She was not only a coward but a lousy friend. She hadn’t checked in with Melody in a few weeks, despite knowing her friend was going through a life upheaval far worse than witnessing an attack on someone else.

  As she unlocked her apartment, the cutest rescue dog in the world, a tiny, fluffy cross between a chihuahua and a miniature poodle, gyrated with joy at the sight of her.

  Yet another reason she didn’t have to leave. If she needed love and attention, she only had to call her dog and Otis would come running.

  She scooped him up and let him lick her face, already feeling some of her anxiety calm.

  “I was thinking how great it would be if you and the boys could come up and stay with me for a few days when school gets out for the summer,” she said now to Melody. “We could take the boys to the Space Needle, maybe hop the ferry up to the San Juans and go whale watching. They would love it. What do you think?”

  The words seemed to be spilling out of her, too fast. She was babbling, a weird combination of relief that she hadn’t had to face that coffee shop and guilt that she had been wrapped up so tightly with her own life that she hadn’t reached out to a friend in need.

  “My apartment isn’t very big,” she went on without waiting for an answer. “But I have an extra bedroom and can pick up some air beds for the boys. They’ve got some really comfortable ones these days. I’ve got a friend who says she stayed on one at her sister’s house in Tacoma and slept better than she does on her regular mattress. I’ve still got my car, though I hardly drive it in the city, and the boys would love to meet Otis. Maybe we could even drive to Olympic National Park, if you wanted.”

  “Liv. Stop.” Melody cut her off. “Though that all sounds amazing and I’m sure the boys would love it, we can talk about that later. You have no idea why I called, do you?”

  “I…why did you call?”

  Melody was silent for a few seconds. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she finally said.

  The breath ran out of Olivia like somebody had popped one of those air mattresses with a bread knife.

  “Oh no. Is it one of your boys?” Oh please she prayed. Don’t let it be one of the boys.

  Melody had been through enough over the past three months, since her jerk hole husband ran off with one of his high school students.

  “No, honey. It’s not my family. It’s yours.”

  Her words seemed to come from far away and it took a long time for them to pierce through.

  No. Impossible.

  Fear rushed back in, swamping her like a fast-moving tide. She sank blindly onto th
e sofa.

  “Is it Caitlin?”

  “It’s not your niece. Stop throwing out guesses and just let me tell you. It’s your mom. Before you freak out, let me just say, first of all, she’s okay, from what I understand. I don’t have all the details but I do know she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay. It could have been much worse.”

  Her mom. Olivia tried to picture Juliet lying in a hospital bed and couldn’t quite do it. Juliet Harper didn’t have time to be in a hospital bed. She was always hurrying somewhere, either next door to Sea Glass Cottage to the garden center the Harper family had run in Cape Sanctuary for generations or down the hill to town to help a friend or to one of Caitlin’s school events.

  “What happened?”

  “She had a bad fall and suffered a concussion and I think some broken bones.”

  Olivia’s stomach twisted. A concussion. Broken bones. Oh man. “Fell where? Off one of the cliffs near the garden center?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know all the details yet. This just happened this morning and it’s still early for the gossip to make all the rounds around town. I assumed you already knew. That Caitlin or someone would have called you. I was only checking in to see how I can help.”

  This morning. She glanced at her watch. Her mother had been in an accident hours earlier and Olivia was just finding out about it now, in late afternoon.

  Someone should have told her, if not Juliet herself then, as Melody said, at least Caitlin.

  Given their recent history, it wasn’t particularly surprising that her niece, raised by Olivia’s mother since she was a baby, hadn’t bothered to call. Olivia wasn’t Caitlin’s favorite person right now. These days, during Olivia’s regular video chats with her mother, Caitlin never popped in to say hi anymore. At fifteen, Caitlin was abrasive and moody and didn’t seem to like Olivia much, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

  “I’m sure someone tried to reach me but my phone has been having trouble,” she lied. Her phone never had trouble. She made sure it was always in working order, since so much of her freelance business depended on her clients being able to reach her and on her being able to tweet or post something on the fly.