The Sea Glass Cottage

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I’m no expert, but it sounds like your first order of business is hiring a few more people to help you out.”

  “You’re absolutely right. Well, maybe my second order of business. My first order of business is probably walking around to familiarize myself with the place so I don’t sound like a total idiot to the next person who needs pruning shears.”

  He had to smile at that. Suddenly he had an idea, one that he was stunned he hadn’t thought of before. “She’ll probably kill me for mentioning it to you before talking to her, but have you thought about asking Melody to help you out?”

  She stared, clearly shocked at the suggestion. “Melody? Is she looking for work?”

  “She mentioned something last night about starting to look for a job. I think she’s been so shell-shocked the last few months with the separation and everything that she has mostly been focused on survival and dealing with the boys.”

  “Do you think she’d do it?”

  “You know how much she loves gardening. I think she’d much rather work here than stock shelves and bag groceries over at the supermarket.”

  “Melody. Oh, Cooper. I could kiss you.”

  As soon as she said the words, Olivia blushed. “I mean, that’s an absolutely fantastic idea. Genius, even. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first.”

  “I can’t guarantee she’ll do it. She still has her youngest at home and all three boys will be home for the summer once school gets out.”

  “All I can do is ask. And you can be sure I will. I’ll call her this afternoon. Thank you, Cooper. I owe you a beer. Or a half dozen, if we want to be technical, from all the unpaid help you gave Mr. Trevino this afternoon.”

  “I would take you up on that offer but something tells me you’re going to be too busy for a while to be buying me beer.”

  That was a pity, he wanted to add, but caution held his tongue. He couldn’t flirt with Olivia Harper, as much as he might want to.

  He was swiping his credit card to pay for his purchase when Olivia’s niece walked in, tall and pretty and the spitting image of her mother.

  Caitlin was a good reminder of another reason he couldn’t pursue this attraction to Olivia. Natalie. Olivia’s sister, who had once been closer to him than anyone else on earth.

  Yet another person he couldn’t save.

  Caitlin looked startled to see him. “Oh. Hi, Chief Vance.”

  The girl always acted oddly around him and he couldn’t seem to figure out why. She seemed like a nice kid, though. Melody certainly trusted her with her tribe of unruly boys.

  “Hi, Caitlin. Hey, Jake.”

  “Hi, Chief Vance.”

  The teenager reached out to shake his hand and he was once more impressed by him. Jake was part of the youth EMT program in the community, the same program where Cooper had started. The boy demonstrated a calm leadership Cooper had to admire in one so young.

  “What are you two up to today?”

  “Uh. Not much.” Caitlin didn’t meet his gaze. He could never figure out what he had done to make her so nervous around him.

  “We took a bike ride to the hospital to see Mrs. Harper and decided to stop here to grab a soda before we head home,” Jake said.

  “Mimi keeps them in a fridge in her office for me,” Caitlin said, rather defiantly.

  “She’s really thoughtful about things like that,” Jake added with a smile.

  “Do you want one?” Caitlin asked Cooper, her expression oddly hopeful.

  “Um, no. But thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a drink,” Olivia said.

  “I’ll see if there are enough but I doubt there will be.”

  She headed through a door that had Head Gardener stenciled on the doorjamb but returned with only two sodas. “Sorry. This is all I could find,” she said to Olivia, popping the top of one and handing the other to Jake.

  “You can have mine,” Jake said instantly, holding it out to Olivia, who shook her head.

  “Thank you but I think I’m good. I can find some water.”

  Caitlin took a swig of her soda then turned to face Cooper, who should have left the moment he paid for his pruning shears but found himself strangely reluctant to leave, for reasons he wasn’t sure he wanted to identify.

  “You knew my mom, didn’t you?” Caitlin said to him suddenly, the question coming out of the blue and just about knocking him over.

  Olivia gave a sharp intake of breath, Jake looked startled and Cooper had no idea what to say.

  “She was my best friend,” he said, his heart aching at the thought of Olivia’s sister.

  “That’s what my grandmother said. She said you guys were always together and you used to eat at Sea Glass Cottage a lot.”

  “Yes. Your grandparents were very kind to me.”

  “So, did my mom drink Coke?” she asked after a minute.

  “Yeah. Diet Coke. She loved the stuff. Why do you ask?”

  Caitlin shrugged, not meeting his gaze. “I just wondered. I don’t remember her at all. I like talking to people who do, to kind of keep her memory alive. Mimi doesn’t like to talk about her too much. It makes her sad.”

  It made him sad to remember, too. All that potential, wasted.

  Every time he went out on an overdose call, he thought of Natalie and how she had thrown her life away.

  “If you want to know about Natalie, you could always ask me,” Olivia suddenly said briskly. “She was my sister. I lived in the bedroom next door at Sea Glass Cottage.”

  To Cooper’s surprise, Caitlin flashed a look of deep loathing at her aunt. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say about my mother,” she snapped, then turned and marched out of the store, leaving all of them staring after her.

  Jake gave them both an apologetic look. “Sorry,” he mumbled, as if her outburst was his fault, and hurried after her.

  “See? We’re a full-service nursery. Come for the pruning shears, stay for the drama,” Olivia said.

  He smiled at her attempt at a joke, though he could see she was still hurt by Caitlin’s sudden attack.

  “Anyway, thanks for your help. When you’re ready to plant the garden at the fire station, let me know. We would love to help.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, then waved and headed away, aware as he did that anticipation curled through him, knowing he would have an excuse to see her again.

  9

  CAITLIN

  “Wow. That was unnecessarily harsh.”

  Caitlin, in the middle of trying to get her bike out of the rack in front of the store, glared at Jake, mostly to keep from bursting into tears.

  She couldn’t believe she had gone off on Olivia like that, in front of Cooper Vance. Her mother’s best friend.

  She was such a child.

  “I know. I shouldn’t have said that. I swore to myself I would be polite to her the next time I saw her. But then we walked in and she was laughing with him and hanging out at the cash register like she worked there and I just got so...pissed, you know?”

  Jake raised an eyebrow and Caitlin fought the urge to kick him.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry, but I really don’t. Olivia’s always been cool to me. Remember that time in eighth grade when I had to do a report for computer tech about someone who worked in the industry and she let me interview her for like an hour and sent me all that swag from her start-up? She didn’t need to do that but she went out of her way to help me.”

  She didn’t want to answer. All she could think about was the hurt she hadn’t been able to shake, even though weeks had passed since she found out how her aunt really felt about her.

  “Big deal,” she muttered.

  “I don’t get all this antagonism. You used to think Olivia was totally chill. Now you can’t stand to be in the same
room with her.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she snapped again. Somehow it made everything worse that Jake wasn’t on her side on this.

  “You’re still going on about the journal, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted, hating that he made her feel like she was six years old, crying on the playground because another girl called her a name.

  This was so much more than a playground squabble. She had always adored Olivia. For most of her life, she thought her aunt loved her, too. To read the truth felt like someone had tossed her over the cliffs above town, into the cold waters of the Pacific.

  Worse had been reading Olivia’s feelings about Natalie. Her own sister. It had been more than clear that Olivia had despised her.

  “You need to let that go,” Jake said, for about the hundredth time. “It’s totally unfair to blame Olivia for things she wrote years ago.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. If somebody had called you an annoying, bawling little brat who was ruining your life, you might not be so quick to forgive.”

  Okay, yeah. She shouldn’t have read the journal. Duh. Those had been Olivia’s private words, written when she was around Caitlin’s age.

  She got that. She wasn’t stupid. She totally understood that Olivia hadn’t written those things to be hurtful and mean but to vent about her feelings, about her dad’s death and her sister’s drug addiction and the void her mother had left in her life by focusing so much time and attention on Natalie’s bratty daughter. The bratty daughter who should have been given up for adoption to a loving family so she could have a chance at a normal life instead of growing up with a junkie for a mom.

  Those words Olivia had written seemed scarred on her subconscious.

  It seemed so stupid to focus on them, to let them haunt and torment her, especially with all the other things she had to worry about.

  She couldn’t seem to help it. Every time she looked at Olivia or saw Mimi talking to her on the phone or heard her grandmother mention her name, those words seemed to echo in her head like a fire alarm.

  “You know you’re going to have to let it go, at least if you want to have a relationship with your aunt,” Jake said, his brown eyes soft and compassionate.

  She frowned and tossed her soda in the recycling bin outside the greenhouse. “That’s kind of the point. I don’t want to have a relationship with her. I don’t want her anywhere around. She doesn’t belong here anymore. We’re doing fine without her. As far as I’m concerned, it would be better for me and Mimi and the garden center if Olivia would just pack up her weird dog and head back to Seattle, where she belongs.”

  “Wow. Don’t hold back, Cait.”

  At the words behind her, Caitlin’s insides seemed to shrivel. She turned around and found Olivia standing in the doorway to the main building, studying them both with an impassive expression.

  How much had she heard? Did she know Caitlin had read her journal? Judging by the confused hurt in her aunt’s eyes, Caitlin doubted it. Instinctively, she wanted to apologize, to assure Olivia she was talking smack and didn’t mean anything by it.

  That would be lying, though. On some level, she was kind of relieved her feelings were out in the open. Not that she’d really made a secret of them, but at least Olivia now knew where they stood.

  “That’s how I feel,” she said defiantly. “Mimi says you can’t argue with someone else’s feelings. They are what they are.”

  “True enough. But I’m sure Mimi has also told you that whatever your feelings about them, you should not go out of your way to hurt people deliberately.”

  Oh, like writing down those horrible things about Caitlin and her mother hadn’t been hurtful?

  “I didn’t know you were there,” she said stiffly.

  “I came out to see if you were still here. I was going to see if you happen to know my mom’s computer password. I can always call her and ask her but didn’t want to bother her while she’s resting. Unfortunately, my weird dog and I are here to stay, at least for a few weeks, and I have work to do.”

  The dog wasn’t weird. He was odd looking, yeah, but in an adorable way. She shouldn’t have said that part. Still, she bit her lip to keep from apologizing.

  At her stubborn silence, Jake gave her an exasperated look. “I can tell you the password, unless Mrs. Harper changed it recently. I helped her update some software recently. The password is flowers. Lowercase.”

  Olivia smiled at Jake and the traitor seemed to glow under her approval.

  Seriously?

  Sure, Olivia was pretty. She had that boho style thing down, with her wavy blond hair and hazel eyes and cool clothes. That didn’t mean Jake should just roll over like his dog Rosie, looking to have his belly scratched.

  “Flowers. Got it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Glad to help.”

  “And I don’t have to bother my mom,” she said. “The sooner she heals from this accident, the quicker she can return here to work and I can go back to Seattle, where I belong.”

  She gave them both a cool smile and headed back inside the garden center.

  Jake drained his soda and tossed the can into the recycling bin. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but you have to let go of your anger or you’ll be in for a miserable month while your aunt is here.”

  A month. How would she endure it?

  “Maybe I’ll just move to your house,” she said. “Or better yet, I’ll find my dad and go live with him while Olivia’s here.”

  Jake rolled his eyes, but to her relief, he didn’t nag her as they grabbed their bikes and started up the hill.

  10

  JULIET

  On her fifty-third birthday, Juliet woke up in a hospital bed, wondering how she had become so ancient.

  Until four days earlier, she had felt young for her age, healthier and more active than she’d been in years.

  She went to the gym three times a week; she walked; she had a physically demanding job that kept her moving all day long. When she looked at her smartwatch every night at the end of a long day, she was thrilled at the step count on her tracker.

  She ate better than she had as a young mother; she cooked healthy meals; she meditated most mornings before she went to work.

  She had lost forty pounds over the past four years and she did everything she could to stay healthy and fight back the inevitable progression of age and disease.

  Now, because of one stupid decision, one ridiculous moment in time, she felt as if all her progress toward becoming a healthier version of herself was for nothing.

  She had stopped wearing her watch because the step count for each of the past four days was laughably small. She had hardly gotten out of this hospital bed. When she did, each of those trips had been assisted by someone else.

  She sighed, telling herself not to be too depressed. Today was her birthday, not her death day. She was still strong, still vibrant, still committed to being her healthiest self.

  Yes, she was injured, but she wasn’t out of the game yet.

  She was still trying to give herself a pep talk when her orthopedic surgeon came in for morning hospital rounds.

  “Everything looks good,” Dr. Adeno said after going over her chart, then giving her a quick physical exam. “I think you should be able to go home today, as long as we have all the home care elements in place to make sure it’s a safe place for you.”

  Home.

  An image of Sea Glass Cottage formed in her mind, warm and welcoming. Her refuge and her retreat.

  “That would be wonderful,” she said. Could Dr. Adeno hear the longing in her words?

  “You obviously can’t be there on your own, at least at first. I need to ask, will you have someone there who can help you for the first few weeks, until you’re a little more independent? After that, you shouldn’t need as much care.”<
br />
  “My daughter and my granddaughter.”

  “Perfect. Now let’s talk logistics. Tell me some particulars about your house. Is your bedroom on the main floor?”

  “Yes. And I have an en suite bathroom as well.”

  “Good. Good. What about getting into the home? Do you have stairs?”

  “Yes. Four up to the porch. I’ve been worried about that.”

  “That will present a problem,” Dr. Adeno said.

  “No. It won’t.” At the new voice, she looked up, beyond Dr. Adeno. Henry Cragun stood framed in the doorway, looking big and tough and wonderful.

  “Why is that?” Dr. Adeno asked him.

  “She has a ramp now.”

  “Since when?” Juliet exclaimed.

  “Since Jake, Caitlin and I built one last night. It’s only temporary, from the sidewalk out front up to the porch, but it should work while you need some extra help. When you no longer need it, we can take it down and you’ll never know it was even there. We didn’t trample so much as a flower while building it.”

  His thoughtfulness made her want to cry, though she told herself it was simply a side effect of the pain medication. “Thank you!” she breathed, her heart warming.

  “You’re welcome. Like I said, Jake and Caitlin helped. It was really a team effort.”

  Maybe, but she was fairly confident she knew who provided the brains and the brawn and the pocketbook behind it.

  “Happy birthday.” Henry came closer and her heart danced a little, as it had been doing for weeks whenever he was near.

  “Thanks,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the heat she could feel rising on her cheekbones.

  “You didn’t tell me today was your birthday,” Dr. Adeno chided. “I should have noticed that on your chart. What are you now? Thirty-nine?”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. “Considering I have a granddaughter who is a sophomore in high school, thirty-nine would certainly make me precocious.”

  Today in this hospital bed, she felt every one of her fifty-three years, but she chose to focus on the positive. “I can’t believe you built a ramp.”