The Sea Glass Cottage

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Thanks, but I’m sure we’ll be fine. Caitlin and I can handle anything that comes along.”

  Her niece looked surprised at the vote of confidence but, she thought, pleased.

  They spoke for a few more moments to Mike about his background and learned he and Cooper had been pararescue troopers together. Caitlin seemed fascinated, asking him questions about the job, the training required and some of the exotic and remote places where he had performed rescues. She seemed to have no problem talking to Mike but grew tongue-tied when it came to Cooper. Olivia couldn’t really blame her. She felt much the same, though she had calmed considerably from when she first walked into the cafeteria. It was hard to feel threatened when they were at a table next to a couple of big, strapping firefighters.

  Mike was telling them about the apartment he was renting on the other side of town when Olivia heard a loud, sharp crashing noise coming from the other side of the cafeteria and all her thoughts of calm left her in a wild rush.

  Gunshot!

  She wasn’t aware of sliding under the table, but the next thing she knew, she was crouched there, heart pounding and hands shaking. She couldn’t catch a breath, waiting for screams and yells and panic.

  Caitlin. She needed to save Caitlin. She was grabbing at the girl to pull her down, too, but she wouldn’t budge. Why wasn’t anybody else panicking?

  “Easy, ma’am. Somebody just broke some dishes. That’s all.” Mike Walker gazed down at her with calm, kind, warm dark eyes.

  Dishes. Of course. That was what it had been. No one was screaming in terror or shouting out in unrestrained fury.

  “Oh. It sounded like...” Gunshots. She couldn’t say the word, mortified that she had completely overreacted.

  Cooper, who was closest to her, stuck a hand out to help her. “It’s okay. Come out. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  “Unless you happened to cut yourself on the broken plates, anyway,” Caitlin pointed out, looking baffled at Olivia’s reaction.

  More embarrassed than she remembered feeling in her entire life, Olivia ignored Cooper’s hand and climbed out on her own, sitting again at the table. She couldn’t meet any of their gazes and certainly couldn’t have explained to them all why she had completely lost it at such an innocuous sound.

  She lifted her coffee to her mouth with a hand that shook and drained it in one swallow.

  “I should...check on my mom. She’s probably ready to go by now.”

  “I’m done, too,” Caitlin said, rising from the table.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Cooper asked.

  No. She hadn’t been all right in a week. When would the nightmares and flashbacks leave her alone?

  “Fine. Just embarrassed at overreacting.”

  “No need to be embarrassed,” Mike said softly. “We all have things that make us jump.”

  They were firefighters who ran into burning buildings, she thought as she headed back to her mother’s room. They faced danger constantly.

  They couldn’t know how it felt to receive undeniable proof that you were a coward.

  CAITLIN

  She didn’t want to feel sympathy for Olivia. Caitlin wanted to nurture her anger and hurt against her aunt, this deep sense of betrayal that had been building inside her for months. As they walked back to Mimi’s hospital room, all of that seemed to fade, replaced with curiosity and something that felt like pity.

  “What was that about? You sliding under the table like it was an active shooter drill at school or something?”

  Olivia didn’t meet her gaze. “I was startled. That’s all. Can we just forget it happened? It was an embarrassing overreaction. I didn’t ask—how was your pizza?”

  Huh. Did her aunt really think she was that stupid? But if Olivia didn’t want to talk about it, Caitlin wasn’t going to push.

  “Fine.”

  She had more important things to worry about than Olivia’s weird freak-out, anyway. For one thing, she couldn’t believe that she had just sat next to Cooper Vance for fifteen minutes and hadn’t been able to find the nerve to ask him more questions about her mother. What was wrong with her?

  Just the day before, Jake had been bugging her to bring up Natalie with him.

  “Everybody says they were best friends. Don’t you think he might have known who your dad was?”

  “I can’t ask,” she had protested. “I don’t even know him!”

  “Chief Vance is a great guy. Not scary at all. He’ll answer your questions. If he knows anything, I’m sure he would tell you.”

  How could she possibly simply blurt out the question? “Look, I know you were my mom’s best friend for years. Do you have any idea who her baby daddy might have been? Any idea at all? I would kind of like to know.”

  It should be easy to do but she could never seem to find the words around him. She would stick to the DNA test. That would give her answers and then she would know.

  Another week or two. Excitement shivered through her. Soon enough, she would know who her father was. She was close; she sensed it. Soon she would have answers about who she was and where she came from.

  Then what?

  The question had bothered her since she started looking for her birth father. What if she found the man and discovered he had known all along about her, he just hadn’t given a shit?

  As always, that thought made her feel a little sick to her stomach. No. She wouldn’t believe that. She couldn’t.

  Instead, she focused on her aunt, who still looked red in the face as they reached Juliet’s room.

  What the hell had happened back there? Why had Olivia freaked like that?

  While she did feel sorry for her, Caitlin also couldn’t deny she kind of liked finding out Olivia wasn’t perfect.

  Her aunt might be successful and cool and always put together. But she could still shriek like a little kid scared by a monster when she heard a loud noise.

  Why, though? She wanted to ask again but knew it was a waste of breath.

  12

  OLIVIA

  “Are you good? Can I bring you anything before dinner?”

  From the recliner in the whitewashed and timbered front room of Sea Glass Cottage that had become her favorite spot in the week she had been home from the hospital, Juliet gave Olivia a small smile.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” her mother insisted. “Why wouldn’t I be? I have a good book, a glass of water and a view of the ocean. I’ve told you before. You don’t have to hover over me all the time.”

  What her mother called hovering, Olivia preferred to think of as concern. Juliet wasn’t doing as well as Olivia had hoped. A week out of the hospital, she was still in a great deal of pain and struggled to get around, yet she never complained. The ribs seemed almost more painful than the hip, yet she took as few of the prescribed painkillers as she could get away with.

  She slept restlessly and had difficulty even with the simplest movements.

  She seemed oddly fragile.

  Olivia had started sleeping on the sofa outside her mother’s room so she could hear Juliet stir and help her to the bathroom if she needed it. Because she was splitting her time between here and the garden center, Olivia had enlisted a willing army of Juliet’s friends to sit with her for a few hours in the morning so she could work. They were managing, though Olivia couldn’t remember when she had been so tired. It was all she could do to stay awake on these evenings when she worked at her laptop, trying to keep up with Harper Media content for her clients.

  The doorbell rang out suddenly, startling both of them. Otis hopped up from the rug and danced to the doorway, then planted his haunches expectantly.

  “Are you expecting someone?” she asked her mother. Olivia kept a detailed schedule of when the physical therapist and home care nurses were to come in and out but wondered if she’d missed something.
<
br />   “I don’t think so.” She set aside her book as Olivia went to the front door and opened it.

  “Oh, Jacob. How are you?” Juliet called to Caitlin’s friend, who stood on the doorstep holding a colorful bouquet of flowers.

  “Good. Thanks.” His smile was sweet and conveyed a maturity that never failed to impress Olivia. She wished she had been half as composed as the young man. “Hi, Mrs. Harper. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Thank you for asking.”

  He suddenly seemed to remember the flowers in his hand. “Oh. These are for you, from my dad. He’s at a job site today but wanted me to bring over a bouquet from our garden. He said you are particularly fond of the peonies.”

  “Your father knows me so well, doesn’t he?”

  Juliet looked more annoyed than pleased by this.

  Jake only smiled. “He was sorry he couldn’t stop this afternoon but said he will see you when he comes over tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Her mother looked slightly alarmed. “What’s tomorrow?”

  “It’s Melody’s birthday dinner at The Sea Shanty. Remember?” Olivia said. “We talked about it a few days ago.”

  “Oh. Right. I forgot which day it was today. They all seem to run together.”

  “I don’t have to go, if you would rather I didn’t.”

  “No. You don’t need to miss her birthday on my account. Melody should be out there socializing with her friends. It’s part of the healing process. I had just forgotten Henry was coming over, probably because it’s completely unnecessary.”

  “It’s not. Caitlin’s babysitting for Melody’s boys and you can’t be alone that long. Henry offered to hang out with you. Problem solved.”

  “So Henry is my babysitter,” Juliet said grumpily.

  “You can look at it that way. Or you can focus on how nice it will be to spend time with your friend.”

  “Is Caitlin in her room?” Jake asked, obviously uncomfortable with the conversation. “I’m helping her study for a Spanish test.”

  “She is,” Olivia answered. “You can go up.”

  The boy bounded out of the living room and up the stairs with all the enthusiasm and grace of his father’s Labrador retriever.

  “He’s a good boy,” Juliet said, admiring the flowers Olivia was arranging into a vase. “Always so kind and considerate.”

  “Like his father,” Olivia said, earning a pointed look from her mother.

  “I can cancel,” she finally said, when Juliet continued to look obstinate. “Mel has other friends who will be there to celebrate her birthday. I can take her out another night, just the two of us, when Caitlin can be available to stay with you.”

  Juliet sighed. “No. Henry and I will be fine. We can watch a few more episodes of Doctor Who. We’re almost done with the season we’ve been watching and will be moving on to the next Doctor.”

  Her mother and Henry were perfect together. Why couldn’t Juliet see what everyone else did?

  CAITLIN

  Jake looked over the list of names he and Caitlin had examined endlessly. She was sprawled out in the window seat overlooking the ocean while Jake was sitting in the hammock chair Juliet had let her hang from a support beam in her bedroom, the one where she did most of her studying.

  “What are you going to do if your father turns out to be none of these guys?”

  She wouldn’t even consider that possibility. “He has to be. I have scoured through every page of both my mom’s and Olivia’s journals. My mom mentions three names around the time I’m sure she got pregnant with me. One of them has to be my dad.”

  Jake didn’t roll his eyes at her, but Caitlin could tell he wanted to. “I have to say this again. You’re being shortsighted. You can’t know that for sure. It’s always possible Natalie didn’t write down his name. And it’s more than possible that Olivia didn’t know everyone your mom was hanging around with. She was only thirteen or fourteen, right? I would guess there are plenty of things your mom never told her younger sister.”

  This was the same argument he had been giving since she started out on this quest, that she might be going through all this effort and still have nothing to show for it.

  “I know. But I have to start somewhere, don’t I? The diaries are all I have.”

  He gave her a careful look. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed. What’s going to happen when your DNA tests come back without any connection to another soul in Cape Sanctuary.”

  “It’s possible,” she said. Even probable, though she wouldn’t admit that to Jake. “I’ll just have to assume that none of my dad’s relatives took the same test.”

  “You’re prepared for that?”

  “Yeah. Of course I am,” she lied. She was pinning all her hopes on the test and would be devastated if she couldn’t find any results, but she wasn’t about to tell Jake that.

  “Even though it might not be any of them, you still want to check them out?”

  She shrugged. “I just want to get to know them more. See if there’s any kind of instant bond between us, you know. I thought maybe I might be able to get them to talk about my mom.”

  “How, exactly, do you intend to do that?”

  She loved Jake but he was always such a doubter.

  “I’ll wing it. So let’s go through the names again.”

  “Coach Hardcastle, Paul Reyes, Jeff Seeger,” Jake recited from memory.

  “Right. Coach Hardcastle is a strong contender. He dated my mom a few times in high school. He’s mentioned in the journal and she liked him a lot.”

  “Paul Reyes, who used to party with your mom and whose youngest daughter, Melissa, goes to school with us.”

  “Exactly. I know they had an affair, even though he was married at the time and already had a couple of kids. Melissa’s older siblings.”

  That was the creepiest of the possibilities and she couldn’t imagine why her mom even used to hang around with him when he already had a wife and kids. It was another mystery into Natalie and one she knew she’d never solve.

  “And Jeff Seeger,” Caitlin said.

  “Pastor at the church on Shell Street.”

  “That’s right. Pastor Seeger, who used to be my mom’s pot dealer.”

  “It could be any of them. Or none. How do you expect to talk to them without revealing your suspicions?”

  “Well, I’ve signed up to take German instead of Spanish next year, which Coach Hardcastle teaches. And I’ve already been to Melissa Reyes’s house once to hang out, but her dad wasn’t there. I thought maybe I’d see if I could talk her into inviting me over again somehow.”

  “And Pastor Seeger?”

  She gave her partner in crime a long look. “How do you feel about checking out a new church youth group with me this week?”

  Jake sighed, showing no sign of surprise. “Do we have to?”

  “You don’t, but I’m planning to go. He’s a really promising possibility. My mom mentioned meeting up with him a lot in her journal. A girl who sits next to me in social studies goes there, so I asked her about it. She was excited to tell me all about it. She says Pastor Jeff is cool.”

  “I still can’t believe your mom’s dealer is now a pastor. Maybe it’s a completely different Jeff Seeger.”

  “I won’t know unless I ask him. I’m going Thursday. They only meet once a month and that’s the next time.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this awhile, haven’t you?”

  All the time. Somehow reading those journals had made her feel closer than she ever had before to her mother, which led her, naturally, to want to find out more about her father.

  “I just really want to know. If you were in my shoes, you would, too.”

  “First, I would be happy that I have a loving grandma and aunt who have taken care of me all these years,” he said. “But
, yeah. I would probably want to know.”

  “So will you come with me?”

  He shrugged, swinging the hammock with his foot. “Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do. Only mountains of homework to wrap up the school year.”

  She smiled and touched his hand. “You’re the best, Jake. I mean it. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  He gave her a long look, one she couldn’t quite figure out. Whenever he looked at her like that, she felt like she’d just dived from the cliffs into the Pacific.

  She had to stop being stupid about that. Jake wasn’t interested in her romantically. He was her best friend but that was all and she wasn’t about to ruin what they had by twisting his reaction into something it wasn’t.

  She had too many things going on right now. Her life was so stressful, with Mimi’s injury and Olivia’s return. Jake was like a steady lighthouse on a stormy day, reaching out to find her and bring her home safely, no matter what else was going on in her world.

  “When do you think the results will come back from the DNA test?”

  “It has to be soon,” she answered. “The website said four to six weeks and it’s been almost four.”

  “Again, you know you might be right where you started, with no more information about your father than you have now.”

  “I know. But I might find him, too. I had to take the chance.”

  If she ended up disappointed, at least she would know that she tried, and she would never forget that Jake had been willing to help her every step of the way.

  13

  JULIET

  Sometimes her daughter left her so exasperated, she wanted to scream. Not loudly. Just enough to get her attention and make her see how silly she was being. Instead, Juliet petted Olivia’s cute little chi-poo, Otis, and tried not to show her annoyance.

  “I thought we settled this already. You’re going out tonight and Henry’s coming over to watch Doctor Who with me.”

  Olivia sighed. “We did. Or I thought we did. But you’ve had such a difficult day and I have so much work to do, catching up with payroll and orders from the garden center and also trying to work on this big campaign one of my clients is doing to push their new line of services. I don’t feel good about leaving you and everything on my to-do list so I can go socialize.”