The Moonglow Sisters

by Lori Wilde

  She snapped her fingers. “Let me guess, it was that woman you used to work with before you started your own business. What was her name? It started with a C.”

  “Good memory. Her name was Cassandra.”

  “So why didn’t you ask her?” Something weird punched Gia in the gut. An odd feeling she couldn’t identify.

  “Cassandra scored a high-powered job in Houston. I couldn’t hold her back.”

  “You could have gone with her.”

  “Nah. I’m a Moonglow Cove man. Always have been. Always will be.”

  “You love your town more than her?”

  “Guess so.” He met her gaze. “That’s how I knew she wasn’t the One. If I wasn’t willing to leave Moonglow Cove for her—”

  “Not a legitimate excuse. You travel often in your Habitat for Humanity thingy.”

  “But I always come back home.”

  “Where’s the ring?”

  “Safe-deposit box at my bank.”

  “Please don’t tell me you were planning on keeping the ring to give to the next woman you wanted to marry. That’s truly tacky.”

  “No way,” Mike scoffed. “I’m frugal, but not an idiot. When the time came, I figured I’d trade it in and buy a much bigger ring. Now that I can afford it.”

  “I see.” It still bugged her that Mike had almost gotten engaged and she hadn’t known about it.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked.

  “What’s that?” she whispered.

  “One slip and the whole town will know our engagement is a fake. To pull this off, we’ve got to be convincing.”

  Her throat tightened. “Meaning?”

  “Public displays of affection.” He touched her elbow. “How do you feel about that?”

  “Um . . .” She moistened her lips. “You mean like holding hands?”

  “Yes . . . and more.”

  “Cuddling?”

  “At times.”

  She gulped, felt her entire body heat. “K-ki-kissing?”

  Mike leaned in so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. Gia’s heart stilled and for one long heartbeat she thought he might kiss her right then and there.

  “If the situation calls for it.” His voice turned husky.

  “I see.”

  “Still on board?”

  Mutely, she nodded. “Are you?”

  He eyed her up and down. Cracked a wide grin. “I wouldn’t call it a hardship.”

  Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and she had absolutely no idea why. My goodness, he was being so nice. How could she ever repay him? “So we’re really doing this?”

  “Looks like.” He bobbed his head. “My bank opens at seven. Should we go get that ring?”

  Chapter Seven

  Shelley

  RAW EDGE: An unfinished fabric edge.

  THE SOUND OF the front door closing woke Shelley.

  Unable to fall back to sleep, she got dressed and set off running on the empty beach, barefoot, just as she had every morning in Costa Rica.

  Last night filled her mind. Had she and Madison made headway toward repairing their relationship? It was hard to tell. Could her older sister be closer to forgiving her? Hope pounded through her with each footstep.

  Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

  Don’t count on it, whispered a skeptical, naysaying voice.

  Okay, perhaps she and Madison would never be close again. It was something she was prepared to accept. Life at Cobalt Soul had taught her a few things about acceptance and letting go. The trick was separating the beneficial lessons from the dogma and rhetoric.

  Bigger question: Why had Shelley expected things to be different simply because five years had passed?

  Magical thinking.

  On the trip home, she’d indulged in magical thinking, the same way a child fervently believed in Santa Claus, expecting a miraculous family reunion. Ha! They were trapped in the same old crazy-making conversations and conflicts.

  Madison wanted to control her.

  Shelley resisted being controlled.

  Would she ever learn? She was the odd one out. Always had been. Apparently always would be.

  Accept what is. Guru Meyer’s voice was in her head.

  Dammit.

  Shelley ran, flying down the beach, bare feet pounding the sand, heart slamming into her chest. Tears burned her eyes. The T-shirt she had on, relegated to a rag drawer, smelled like cedar and mothballs, but underneath that strong scent, a hint of lavender that reminded her of her mother.

  Shelley might not remember what her mother looked like, or the sound of her voice, but she remembered her smell. When she was little, Shelley would crawl up in her parents’ bed and bury her face in her mother’s pillow and take a big whiff, filling her lungs with the fragrance of Mom.

  After their parents, Beth and Liam Clark, died in an avalanche during a skiing trip, Madison put up a fight over the pillow. Since she was the oldest she claimed she should get it. But their foster mom, who’d looked after them immediately following their parents’ deaths, said Shelley needed the pillow more than Madison did.

  The message she’d taken from that conversation?

  Needy. She was too needy.

  In retrospect, a childish distortion. They were all needy, all of them crippled by their parents’ sudden deaths. But the foster mom’s words had seemed like an indictment. Shelley’s needs were a burden.

  Shelley kept the pillow long past the time it was threadbare. And Maddie claimed Shelley wasn’t sentimental. Grammy, who’d come into the picture at that point, had thrown away the gunky pillow one day while Shelley was at school.

  She recalled the stark hit of pain when she realized she’d lost the beloved pillow forever. Her last real connection with her mother severed. She’d acted out, howling like a she-wolf and trashing the bedroom she shared with Gia and Maddie.

  Her feet sank into the sand as she ran, pushing herself harder. She ran until her lungs felt as if they might burst, leaving the Moonglow Inn and her sisters miles behind. The sun gleamed orange, bluing the sky and spreading it with pink and purple hues.

  Dawning of a new day.

  Up ahead lay a fishing pier with a charming little gazebo. A tuxedoed man stood beside a woman in a wedding dress. Well-wishers in nice clothes surrounded the couple.

  Shelley stopped running, chest heaving, and bent over to catch her breath. She straightened, pressed her palms to her back, and stood on the beach near the pier, watching the ceremony unfold.

  A dawn wedding. How beautiful.

  Soon, her baby sister would get married to their next-door neighbor, Mike Straus. No, not their next-door neighbor. Not anymore. Shelley no longer belonged at the Moonglow Inn. Nor did she belong at Cobalt Soul. Not after she’d run away taking nothing with her but her knapsack and the clothes on her back.

  Honestly, she belonged nowhere.

  “I’m a woman without a home,” she whispered under her breath and clenched her hands.

  But you have a family.

  Ah, but did she? Yesterday’s welcome, especially from Madison, suggested otherwise. A fresh pain knifed her gut. Madison clung to her grudge with both hands. But Shelley deserved it. She had no right to expect sympathy, even though at the bottom of her actions, her motives had been pure.

  Shelley shifted her thoughts back to Gia and Mike. So sweet. She was beyond happy for her baby sister. Mike was a stand-up guy. Salt of the earth. Honest and open. The sort of guy who’d never appealed to Shelley. She’d gone for the bad boys, the rebels, the fringe dwellers, the disenfranchised.

  Which explained how she’d ended up in a place like Cobalt Soul.

  Would she ever have a real home? A man of her own? Somewhere to belong? A deep yearning filled Shelley. She wanted those things, but that need terrified her. Family could go so wrong. Had gone wrong in so many ways for the Moonglow sisters.

  You’re not the Moonglow sisters anymore.

  True confessions.

  At
twenty-six, while she’d had her share of lovers, she’d never had a serious relationship. Before going to Cobalt Soul, she’d been all about fun, fun, fun. In Costa Rica, they’d taught her to transmute her sexual desires into spiritual energy. She’d gone from promiscuous to celibate overnight. She hadn’t had sex in five years and she’d been happy about that.

  But watching the wedding unfold, she remembered what she’d been missing. Not just hot sex. But something deeper. Something like what Gia and Mike had.

  Connection.

  She realized with a start that marriage was no longer a turnoff. Even though she’d found no one who accepted her for her. No one who fully accepted her, warts and all. Not even her own family. Well, unless she counted Guru Meyer and the folks at Cobalt Soul.

  Except, looking back on that experience, she realized they’d only accepted her as long as she adhered to the group’s rules. Not that they’d overtly shunned her or anything. Their manipulation came through positive reinforcement. They lavished praise when you did what they wanted and when you didn’t, they withheld their approval.

  Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

  Guru Meyer had her salivating like Pavlov’s dog at the ringing of a bell. During the group healing sessions, the pleasure centers of her brain lit up, and she’d dived right into the thick of their midst, hungry for recognition and reward. What was wrong with her that she’d been so easily manipulated?

  The bride and groom kissed, and the crowd applauded. The ceremony was over.

  Leaving the beach for the boardwalk, Shelley meandered along Paradise Pier, reluctant to let go of the sweet wedding scene. She ticked off the day’s chores in her head. Visit Grammy in the hospital. Deal with Madison. Sew that cursed wedding quilt.

  It was still early, barely after seven. None of the shops or restaurants were open. She wandered along but stopped when she saw a poster in the window of an art gallery that read: Featuring Straus Handcrafted Furniture.

  On the poster was a photograph of Mike making the ornate baby crib that sat in the display case.

  Aww.

  Mike had hit his stride.

  Her pulse quickened, and she felt impossibly sad. Five years were gone, and she’d missed out on so much. Turning away, Shelley glimpsed her image mirrored in the plate-glass window. Her face was gaunt, her eyes hollowed, her hair frizzing about her face. She looked like a stranger. Distant and lost.

  But she had no one to blame. She’d brought this on herself.

  As far back as she could remember people labeled her impetuous. The first time, she recalled, her parents had taken Shelley and her sisters for a picnic in a Denver park after a fresh summer rain. Shelley had been fiveish because Gia was a toddler. Mama and Daddy told Madison and Shelley to wait while they unloaded the minivan, but Shelley had seen the playground swings and took off. She ran so fast that by the time she spied the huge mud puddle underneath the swings, it was too late to stop. She smacked into the puddle, tripped, and went slipping face first like a clean-up batter sliding home to tie the World Series.

  Covered head to toe in mud, she’d burst out bawling.

  “Shelley ruined the picnic,” Mama declared. “You can thank her for being impetuous.”

  Roughly, Mama dumped the picnic supplies from the big cardboard box, plunked a mud-covered Shelley inside, and stuck her in the back of the minivan. On the ride home, Madison pouted, Gia cried, Daddy frowned, Mama scolded, and Shelley shivered cold and dirty in cowering shame.

  From the beginning, she’d leaped before she looked, never bothering with a safety net. Time after time she acted without thinking things through and she paid the consequences, never learning from her mistakes.

  She’d done it with Raoul.

  She’d done it when she joined up with Guru Meyer at Cobalt Soul.

  She’d done it when she fled the compound.

  Why was she so intractable? Could she ever change? Shelley longed for the person she’d never been. Controlled and responsible like Madison, or easygoing and accepting like Gia. Either was preferable to Shelley’s slapdash approach to life.

  Yoga and meditation helped, but now she wondered if her practices were just a bandage covering a festering wound, tricking her into thinking she’d healed. Shelley shook off her gloom. Sighed. One good thing about being impetuous? It didn’t take her long to move on.

  She left the boardwalk, returned to the sand, and jogged back to the Moonglow Inn. When she reached the beach in front of the B&B, she saw Madison perched on a ladder on the porch, struggling to hang Grammy’s wooden quilting frame by herself.

  Grandpa Chapman, who’d died of a stroke long before any of them had been born, had rigged eyebolts to the ceiling so Grammy could sit outside and enjoy the ocean while she quilted.

  Madison was in full makeup. She wore a straw sunhat and a sleeveless white tiered sundress that tied at the neck and had small yellow flowers embroidered along the bottom tier. Yellow espadrilles with wedge heels graced her small feet. She looked cute as the dickens, but the espadrilles were not ladder-climbing footwear. Her sister could fall and bust her ass in those shoes, but Shelley would be damned if she’d warn her.

  She hesitated, reluctant to approach the house when it was just her and Madison without Gia around as a buffer.

  “Can you help me?” Madison called out.

  What could she do? Say no?

  “Sure.” Shelley climbed the porch steps, softly chanting under her breath, Keep things light, keep things light, keep things light.

  “Get the second stepladder from the pantry.” Madison was perched atop her ladder, four quilt frame chains clutched in her hands, the wooden frame dangling awkwardly beneath her. Madison didn’t smile, but she wasn’t frowning, either.

  Um, was there a hidden meaning in that? The pantry was where everything had gone down with Raoul.

  “Okay.” She should be safe with one-word sentences, right? Shelley fetched the stepladder and brought it back.

  “Open it parallel to my ladder.”

  On it, boss lady. Shelley placed the ladder underneath the second set of ceiling eyebolts and climbed atop it. Madison’s ladder was taller, and she towered over Shelley.

  “Here.” Madison handed her two of the chains.

  No please. No thank you. Just obey me.

  Should she salute? Shelley accepted the chains, the wooden frame swinging between them. She stood on tiptoes to reach the eyebolts.

  “Wait.”

  Shelley paused for further instruction.

  “Let’s do this together. On my count. One . . . two . . . three.”

  Simultaneously, Madison and Shelley lifted the chains and attached the hooks to the eyebolts, the wooden frame dangling between their ladders.

  Well, will you look at that? They’d worked together for a common goal and neither one of them had killed the other.

  Yet.

  “Good job,” Madison said.

  Shelley just about fell off her ladder. “Thanks.”

  They stared at each other over the wooden quilting frame and for a moment a truce seemed a sweet possibility.

  “Where’s the quilt?” Shelley glanced around.

  “I carried it over to the dry cleaners,” Madison said. “I want to get the quilting frame up before we go see Grammy. I promised Gia I’d do this, and I always keep my word.”

  Was that a dig at her?

  Shelley let it go and curled her bare toes around the edge of the ladder. Rubbed the end of her itchy nose with a knuckle. “Grammy says no one should own a quilt that has to be dry-cleaned.”

  “I know, but since the quilt is unfinished, I was afraid to wash it.”

  “But why are you so dressed up?”

  “I left the house.” Madison’s tone turned condescending.

  “And you can’t run to the dry cleaners in shorts and a T-shirt without war paint on?”

  Madison assessed Shelley’s attire with a cool stare. Shelley wore shorts—baggy because she was fifteen pounds ligh
ter than she’d been five years ago—and an even baggier blue T-shirt with a rip in the sleeve and a logo that said, regrettably, SORRY, NOT SORRY.

  “I’m a public figure. I can’t go out looking . . .” Madison roved another judgmental look over Shelley. “Shabby.”

  “Woo, a public figure.” Shelley shook her palms, jazz hands–style.

  “My show is number one on the CIY Network.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “House Boss went viral following my disastrous wedding. I did a show on creative ways to repurpose your wedding dress.” Madison’s voice came out slivered with glass shards. “If you’d bothered to contact any of us and let us know if you were alive or dead, you’d know this.”

  “Good for you.” Shelley hitched in her breath. “I mean that, Madison. I’m happy things turned out so well.”

  Madison did a diva head toss. “Yes, I took lemons and made lemonade.”

  “You’re welcome,” Shelley said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I hadn’t kissed Raoul, you wouldn’t be leading the life you have now. So yeah, you’re welcome.”

  Madison’s face turned to slate, and her skin blotched. Through clenched teeth she said, “No one has ever hurt me as badly as you did.”

  Here it came, the shame spiral, swirling over Shelley like a black swarm of bees. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

  “Your T-shirt says it all.”

  “Ignore the shirt. I am sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it.”

  “What do you want from me, Madison? A pound of flesh? You have everything, and I have . . .” She raised her arms, swept her hands. “Nothing.”

  Madison’s mouth dropped open, and she looked at Shelley as if she’d lost her mind.

  “Don’t you think I’ve suffered the consequences?” Shelley asked. “I have no home, I have no family. The only clothes I have are the ones I found stuffed in a drawer. Clothes I wore when I was twenty-one. I’m broke as hell and I owe you two hundred dollars for the taxi. I can’t even buy myself a breakfast burrito at McDonald’s. You flipping win!”

  Tears misted Madison’s eyes, and that shocked the hell out of Shelley. Maddie wasn’t a crier. This was more than their quarrel. Something had hurt Maddie.