Cooper looked stunned and a little lost, as if everything he thought he knew about his world had been tossed off the cliffs and into the Pacific.
“I have a kid. I have no idea where to go from here.”
“You have a great kid. Caitlin is an amazing girl. She’s creative and funny and kind. You two are lucky to have each other.”
He ran a hand through his hair, his usual calm nowhere in evidence. “I have a daughter.”
Did he think saying it enough times might make it feel more real? “I’m sorry you missed so much of her life. Natalie should have told you.”
She still had no idea why her sister had chosen to keep that information from her best friend. It was a question they would likely never answer, especially if Caitlin hadn’t been able to learn more through the journals Natalie had left behind.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I was so determined to leave Cape Sanctuary. She knew all about that, knew I wanted so much to become the man your dad wanted me to be and I didn’t see a way to do that here. Nat was my best friend. She knew my dream was pararescue.”
“You wouldn’t have done that if you had known about Caitlin, would you?”
“No. Or I would have tried harder to convince her to marry me, anyway, and tried to take her along.” He gazed out at the darkening sky. “I guess history doesn’t really matter. It’s done. My job now is to build a strong relationship with my child.”
“Juliet will help you figure out the best way to move forward with Caitlin.”
“I don’t want to change things. She has a wonderful home here. I would like to be part of her world but I would never want to completely uproot her life.”
She forced a smile. “The good news is, you’re already here in Cape Sanctuary with the fire department. Imagine how much more difficult this would be if you were still stationed all over the world.”
“But you won’t be here.”
She looked out at her mother’s flowers, their heads bobbing in the increasing wind that seemed to chill her to the bone. “No.”
“Do you have to leave?”
His words cut through her and she gripped her hands together tightly. “My stay here was always temporary,” she said. “My mom is healing quickly. She’s anxious to return to the garden center. She doesn’t need me like she did right after the accident.”
“She might not need you as much, but I don’t think Juliet wants you to leave.”
“I have a job waiting for me in Seattle. Clients for my company. Friends. A life. Mom understands that.”
“Sure. I get that. I just wish you could stay.”
She caught her breath at the low intensity of his voice. What did he mean? Her gaze flew to his and she saw emotions there she couldn’t decipher.
She wanted so much to be brave right now, to find the strength to ask him why he wanted her here. Because they were friends? Because of Caitlin? Fear tangled the words.
“Everyone here will be fine,” she said briskly. “You don’t need me to help you navigate this new relationship with Caitlin. Juliet will be here.”
For a crazy moment, she thought he would take her hands, pull her to him and kiss her. She could imagine the words he would say. What if the reasons I would like you to stay have nothing to do with Caitlin? Or Juliet, for that matter? What if I’m in love with you and can’t imagine my life without you?
Instead, he gave a slight smile that she thought held traces of pain and nodded. “I hope you know I wish you all the very best in Seattle. I’ll miss you.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek, and then with one last solemn look, he headed down the steps toward his pickup truck.
She wanted to call him back, to say everything inside her, but she couldn’t seem to untangle the words from her fear, and so she watched him drive away as the sky began to spit cold raindrops that plopped against the sidewalk and the flowers and her heart.
* * *
She stood for a long time on the porch, fighting tears and the terrible sense of her own inadequacy, wishing things could be different between them.
Finally, knowing she couldn’t stay here all day with the rain beginning to blow in and soak her clothes, she walked inside the cottage, hoping her mother didn’t ask questions she wasn’t at all prepared to answer.
Juliet and Caitlin were going through Natalie’s journals and hardly looked up, much to her relief.
“I’m heading over to the garden center,” she announced. “I probably won’t be back in time for dinner. Can you warm up some of that soup we had the other day?”
“I can take care of it,” Caitlin said. Her belligerence seemed to be gone for now. Olivia hoped they were past that and could go back to the way things used to be. Except nothing stayed the same, she knew, and they could never really go back.
Grabbing an umbrella, she headed toward the garden center and stayed busy until closing taking care of paperwork and organizing files for her mom’s return.
Right after close, Doug Carlson popped into her office, the college kid she had met that first day back. She had become fond of him over the past few weeks. He was earnest, if a bit distracted by his own grow operation.
“Your mom is really coming back soon?” he asked.
“That’s the plan. It might take her a few weeks to ease up to full speed, but you all seem to have things under control and I know everyone will help her.”
“I’m happy to work as many shifts as you need until she’s back to her old self. Even overtime, if I have to.”
“Thanks, Doug. I appreciate that and I know my mom will, too. I’ll be sure to let her know when she’s working up the schedule over the next few weeks.”
“She’s a nice lady, your mom.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty lucky in the mom department.”
“Too bad about her MS, you know, but she doesn’t seem to let it get her down.”
She stared at him, certain somehow that she must have heard wrong. He did tend to mumble his words, as if he didn’t remember how to talk without a bong nearby.
“Sorry. Her what?”
He blinked at her. “You know. Her multiple sclerosis. My mom has it and they go to the same clinic. Dr. Hall. He’s a great guy.”
“I didn’t know your mom has multiple sclerosis.” She felt as if she had entered some alternate universe. None of this was making sense to her.
“Yeah. She’s had it most of my life. Over the past few years, it’s gotten worse. That’s why I left school and came home, only a few classes away from becoming a pharmacy tech. I might go back someday but she needs me right now. She can’t drive on her own now because she can’t see too well, so I take her to appointments. I do the shopping, pick up her meds. That kind of thing.”
All this time, she had thought he was just a pot-smoking college dropout living at home and working part-time while he tried to figure things out. Now she felt terrible for making assumptions, for not digging deeper.
Of course, he was still completely wrong about Juliet.
“I’m sorry about your mom but you must be mistaken about Juliet. Maybe she was taking a friend or something.”
Doug looked doubtful. “It was about a month ago or so, during Dr. Hall’s MS clinic. She was in one of the rooms, in a hospital gown. I was pushing my mom’s wheelchair down the hall when a nurse slid open the door to one of the rooms and I happened to look in. I wasn’t snooping on purpose—it was a total accident. I don’t think she saw me, though.”
“If it was just a fleeting look, you were probably mistaken.”
Her shock and denial must have finally filtered through to Doug. His eyes widened and he suddenly looked horrified. “Oh man. You didn’t know. I shouldn’t have said anything. Juliet will kill me. I just figured, you’re her kid. You would know about her MS. Forget I even opened my big mouth. Who knows? I could be totally wrong.�
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Could it be possible? Could Juliet have kept something as significant as a serious medical diagnosis from Olivia?
She had broken her hip and Olivia hadn’t found out for hours. This was vastly different, though.
“Just forget I said anything, okay?” he repeated.
She forced a smile for Doug. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Thanks for everything today.”
He waved and shuffled out of her mom’s office, leaving Olivia alone with shock waves still rippling through her.
She wanted to think it was a terrible mistake, an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. But the longer she sat there, the less that theory made sense. Doug might not be the most reliable witness but he wasn’t stupid. Yeah, he was probably stoned a lot on his free time, but not when he was driving his mother to a doctor’s appointment. Surely he would recognize his own boss.
Why else would her mother be there? Maybe the doctor saw people for a multitude of things. Headaches, maybe.
Except he said it was an MS clinic. Why would Juliet be there for something else during an MS clinic?
Was it true? Did her mom have multiple sclerosis? If she did, how long had she known? And why would she keep something like that from Olivia?
This day was turning into the most surreal of her life. First finding out about Natalie’s history and her involvement in the fire that killed her dad, then discovering Cooper was Caitlin’s father, now this, if it was true.
She wanted to go back to Sea Glass Cottage, climb into her bed and pull the covers over her head for a few months.
With great effort, she forced herself to work another half hour on social media postings for one of her clients for an urgent event the following week, then turned off her laptop, stowed it in her bag and headed out of her mom’s office toward home.
The storm had intensified while she had been holed up. She hadn’t realized. As she walked the short distance to home, the wind blew so hard off the ocean, wet and cold, that she could hardly stay upright.
It was after ten and the lights of Sea Glass Cottage were off, the house quiet. After the tumult of the day, she might have expected to find Juliet and Caitlin in the sunroom, heads close together as they talked and laughed and watched the storm, one of Juliet’s favorite things to do.
Maybe they were both exhausted. Olivia certainly was. Even Otis didn’t come running, as she might have expected.
He was probably curled up next to her mother. The dog had fallen hard for Juliet, which didn’t really surprise her. Everyone did.
Perhaps she ought to leave him here when she returned to Seattle.
The thought sent a shard of ice through her heart. How could she even think it? She loved him beyond words. He had brought so much joy and light into her life.
But at least here, he wouldn’t have to be alone all day while she went to work and then all evening while she was stuck at her phone and tablet, taking care of her clients. Juliet could take him to the garden center with her during the day. Otis would love frolicking in the plants, greeting customers, helping her mother.
He even loved her mom’s two cats, who had finally come to tolerate him.
She couldn’t leave him. She absolutely adored Otis and couldn’t imagine how cold and lonely her apartment would seem without him. But was she being selfish to take him back to a place where he spent twelve hours a day alone in her apartment?
She didn’t have to decide this now, she thought as she set her laptop bag down on the table without bothering to turn on a light.
“Hello.”
Olivia gasped at the disembodied voice suddenly emanating from the dark room. Now she did flip on the lamp and found her mom sitting in her favorite recliner with Otis and one of the cats on her lap.
“Mom! You scared me to death.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. We fell asleep out here and only woke up when you opened the door. I guess I thought you must have seen me.”
“No. No, I didn’t.” She pressed a hand to her still-pounding heart.
“You’re just getting home. It’s so late! You put in a long day, honey.”
Yes, and she felt it in every single one of her muscles. Only half of her exhaustion was physical. Maybe less than half.
“I was trying to finish the month-end reports for you before I leave, and then while I had the chance, I scheduled some social media posts for some of my clients, to run next week.”
“You love doing that, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “It’s fun when you find something you’re good at. I never realized I could be so creative. Plus, I love that every project is different. There’s no chance for me to get bored.”
“Unlike your regular job.”
Her mom had said it. She hadn’t. But it was true. She was coming to dread returning to work and facing the same routine, day after excruciating day.
“It’s a good job that pays the bills.”
“I can’t understand why you don’t leave and focus on building Harper Media. You love it and you have such a gift.”
“Do you have any idea how expensive the Seattle real-estate market is? I would be living in a cardboard box on the street if I didn’t keep my day job.”
“Or you could come home and live here. You can do your freelance work from anywhere. Sea Glass Cottage is certainly big enough. We could even finish that apartment in the garage your dad always wanted to build so you could feel a little more independent.”
The idea had immediate appeal. She could stay here. Work on her relationship with Caitlin and with Juliet. See where things led with Cooper.
She loved Cape Sanctuary. These past few weeks of being home had reminded her of the good people here and how much she loved the sense of support and community here. The idea was so very tempting. She could go home now, put in her two weeks’ notice, get out of her apartment lease and pack everything up and come home.
And then what?
She looked at her mom. It was completely impossible.
She had built her entire life away from Cape Sanctuary since she left as a college freshman. She didn’t belong here anymore.
What if she failed, if she threw all her energy into building Harper Media and ended up falling flat on her face?
And Cooper. He would be focused on Caitlin, as he should be. It would be so difficult to be close to him, to allow her feelings to grow until she’d be left with only a broken heart.
She would have traded a solid portfolio and comfortable retirement for possibilities that might never happen.
No. She couldn’t do it.
“I have a good job that pays well and has amazing benefits. I would be a fool to walk away for something that could disappear tomorrow.”
“Or that could take off beyond your wildest dreams. Life is about taking chances, honey.”
“I can’t leave my job, Mom.”
“People leave their jobs all the time. It’s a paycheck, not your identity. Anyway, the risk is great, but the reward might be so much greater, too. Why are you so afraid?”
The words seemed to slice through her, cutting her to the bone.
She was.
The attack on that barista had shown her the truth with painful clarity. She was always so worried about things that might go wrong that she was often paralyzed into inaction. While she had cowered under that booth, she had played a hundred different scenarios in her head about how she might stop the attack, but had done nothing because all she could see after every possible course of action were negative outcomes.
That was the same reason she knew she had to push Cooper away. She was only looking ahead to her own possible heartbreak.
But what if she took the chance? What if instead of focusing on her fear of pain, she embraced the possibilities instead?
She wasn’t thinking clearly. She couldn’t make
this decision right now, after the emotional, tumultuous day that felt as if she’d lived a week in about twelve hours.
“Let’s forget about me for a minute, Mom. Why don’t we talk about you?”
Juliet frowned. “You’re trying to change the subject.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I don’t want to talk about my career path right now. Just like you apparently haven’t wanted to talk to your only remaining child about the fact that you have multiple sclerosis.”
Juliet gave an involuntary gasp then went deathly still. She stared at Olivia, her eyes wide.
“How...? You didn’t... You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Until that moment, she hadn’t really believed what Doug had said, certain he must have somehow made some kind of egregious error, confusing Juliet for someone else. As she watched the color seep from her mother’s features, heard her fumble for words, she knew it was no mistake.
“It’s true,” she breathed. “You do have multiple sclerosis. Mom. Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known?”
Juliet was quiet for a long time, her features pale and still but her eyes distressed. “I wanted to tell you,” she whispered. “I just... I didn’t want you to worry.”
She was so stupid, Olivia thought. She should have realized. She had sensed something was going on but she hadn’t pushed.
So many things began to make sense. Juliet had been secretive about her health, insisting on preparing her own medicine dispensers. That must be why, because she was adding the medications she must take for her MS.
“How long have you known?” she asked again.
“Four years.”
“Four years. You kept a secret like this from me for four years?” She struggled to comprehend the depth of what felt like a vast betrayal.
“I would like to know how you found out,” Juliet said, instead of answering her. “Only a few of my dearest friends know and I’m certain they would never...”
“Other people know but you couldn’t be bothered to tell your own daughter. Does Caitlin know?”
Her mother made a face. “Are you kidding? If I ever told her I have multiple sclerosis, she would never leave my side. You know how protective she is. How did you find out?”
The Sea Glass Cottage Page 32