Forever Starts Now

by London, Stefanie

  There were so many questions, right now.

  Like whether or not he’d ever find out the true identity of his father. What would happen if he did? Would there be any point to this whole exercise? Did his life back in Australia still exist? What should he do about the Monroe situation?

  That question was the toughest of them all.

  Not because she’d lied. He understood why and he believed her when she told him why…but that was exactly it. They were developing feelings for one another when neither of them had any business doing so. Ethan didn’t know if he’d be moving on in a week or two. Maybe in a month. Hell, maybe he’d find out tomorrow that this Matthew Brewer wasn’t his father…and then what? The idea of walking away from Monroe hurt like a nasty spider bite. Which was exactly why he needed to deal with this situation.

  He had not come looking for forever in Forever Falls.

  Ethan’s phone rang, and he picked up the call. “Hello?”

  “Hi, is this Ethan Hammersmith?” a gruff male voice asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “This is Mike from Coastal Metalwork. My assistant left a message saying you’d called to speak to me. Anything I can help you with?”

  “Yes, actually there is. Thanks so much for calling.” Ethan pushed up and dusted his free hand down the front of his jeans. “Any chance I could come by now and talk with you in person?”

  “Sure thing. I’m around all afternoon. You know where we’re located?”

  “I do. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Ethan felt something churning in his stomach—something told him that he was on the verge of finding out an important piece of information. By the time he made it to the Coastal Metalwork workshop, he was so wound up that he was worried he’d lose his lunch all over the ground. He hadn’t felt like this in all the places he’d been in the past year.

  Something here was different.

  He walked up to the small glass door that led to a modest-looking reception area, and an electronic beep announced his arrival. Ethan got the impression this wasn’t a large operation, since all their tech seemed quite out-of-date. A picture hanging on the wall showed a young man and two older gentlemen in black and white, standing next to a very large piece of what appeared to be an industrial air duct of some kind.

  A minute later, a man walked through from a back room. He was tall and lean, with a black and gray beard and thick hair peppered with more silver strands, and he wiped his hands on a red handkerchief.

  “You must be Ethan,” he said without asking.

  “You can tell that from the way I look?”

  The man chuckled. “I know all my clients by name, so it wasn’t hard to make the guess. Anyway, I’m Mike. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m actually looking for some information about a man named Matthew Brewer.”

  The friendly smile dropped right off Mike’s face. In its place was cold surprise. “What about him?”

  At that moment, Ethan was too tired to keep up the pretense of the letters anymore. After a year of spinning stories and skirting the truth, he was done with it all. “I think he might be my father.”

  “No kidding?” Mike came closer, squinting his eyes as if trying to see some resemblance.

  Ethan told Mike the whole story about his mother spending time in the U.S., including a summer in Cape Cod and how she’d told him on her deathbed that his father’s name was Matthew Brewer. The older man leaned back against the reception desk, shaking his head.

  “Family, eh.” He let out a dry laugh. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.”

  “Do you know anything that might help me?”

  Mike scrubbed a hand over his face, like he really didn’t want to get involved. But when he looked at Ethan, he let out a long sigh. “He knocked up a woman he met on vacation. That much I know.”

  Ethan’s heart jolted. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Mike nodded. “He came home and we got drunk on his first night back. He let it all out—how he loved this woman and she was going to have his kid and that he had no business being a father because he was terrible at everything.”

  “Did he say anything about the woman?”

  “I wish I could remember, but it was so long ago. But she wasn’t American, I know that, because she left and went back to the place where she’d grown up. Matt told her to leave, broke both their hearts. But his own father had been a drunk and a bully and, in all honesty, Matt was a lot like him. I think he knew he wasn’t fit to be a dad.” Mike bobbed his head. “He swore me to secrecy. Far as I know, me and his mom were the only ones who knew about it. Matt and I were tight, back in the day ’fore I got straightened out.”

  “I heard from someone that Lottie might know something. Do you think that holds any weight?”

  “Who told you that?” Mike’s face darkened.

  “I can’t say. I’m sorry but I promised.” He held up both hands. No matter how much he wanted to know, he wasn’t going to betray Monroe’s trust.

  “Lottie May is a good woman.”

  “I know, I’ve been helping her around the inn while I was staying here.”

  “Oh? You’re that kid.”

  Ethan wanted to laugh at being called a kid, but he supposed to someone in their mid-sixties he probably looked like one. “I guess so.”

  “Then she tells me you’re good people.”

  “She said that?” Ethan wasn’t sure whether Lottie hated him or felt nothing about him. But he’d never thought she liked him.

  “She did. She might seem like a tough old nut—and trust me, she is—but she has a heart of gold that woman. Looked after Matt’s mom while she was sick, nursed her into the afterlife, rest her soul.” Mike bowed his head for a minute. “There were always rumors, you know.”

  “Rumors?”

  “About her and Mrs. Brewer…”

  Suddenly a piece of the puzzle clicked into Ethan’s brain. Lottie and Mrs. Brewer weren’t only friends. Given Brian said the only time he ever saw her cry was when she came to pick up the sentimental bits they were clearing out of Mrs. Brewer’s house and yet Ethan had seen her crying over a letter in her office…

  Could it be? Were they in a relationship?

  “Course it wasn’t confirmed, or anything,” Mike said, frowning. “Folks are generally good ’round here, but there’s still plenty who are living in the past. Personally, I think you should be with whoever you want to be with, so long as they treat you right. Love is love and all that.”

  “I totally agree.”

  “You didn’t hear anything from me, okay? Lottie helped me out when I was having a rough time and she gave me somewhere to sleep when I didn’t have a place to put my boots, if you know what I mean. I owe her a lot. But if you really are Matthew Brewer’s son and if his mother knew anything about it, likely she told Lottie.”

  Everything seemed to circle right back to her and the inn. He needed to find out what she knew. And if she didn’t know anything, then Ethan was at a dead end. But Matthew Brewer had been to Cape Cod around the time his mother was there, he’d supposedly gotten a girl pregnant and sent her back home overseas…that was too many coincidences.

  This had to be it.

  “I really appreciate your transparency.” Ethan stuck his hand out and Mike returned the gesture, his eyes locked onto Ethan’s face.

  “I don’t know if it’s my mind playing tricks on me, but you do look a bit like him,” the older man said. “Not what he was like in his later years, but when he was younger. I wish I had an old photo to show you.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll see what else I can find out.”

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Mike bid him farewell and Ethan walked about in the breezy early-spring air.

  He could hear the sound of the ocean from here, and it fill
ed him with a sense of finality. Like the end was coming. Like the truth would be revealed. Like this chapter was almost over.

  But at least he would know the truth, and that had to count for something right?

  Something told him that he was looking in the right place, but that the right place might turn out to be a hollow victory. A man with no family and a dark past wasn’t exactly closure. And Ethan might go home with nothing more in hand than when he arrived.

  He couldn’t shake the seed of doubt that had started to take root in his mind. What if this had all been for nothing?

  Chapter Twenty

  Monroe took the rest of the afternoon and evening to prepare herself for what was to come. She’d texted Ethan asking him to come over for dinner and gotten Loren to help her style her hair. She’d bought fresh flowers from the florist and popped them into a vase, had cooked up a storm making her famous “easy but delicious” mushroom and pesto pasta with a homemade vanilla creme brulee for dessert.

  Then she’d riffled through her closet, looking for something to wear, and had found the dress she’d worn to the semi-final of Sugar Coated. The grand finale dress had belonged to the show’s wardrobe team and it had been a grand princess-y thing. But the semi-final dress was all hers—a floral wrap dress in three pretty shades of green that she hadn’t worn since the filming. It had been kept in a garment bag, forgotten in the back of her closet.

  Shaking the nervous energy out of her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror. It was like peering into a magical time-shifting object and seeing the Monroe from three years ago…though with a few extra little lines and a couple extra pounds. But the flush in her cheeks and the budding smile on her lips…well, that was all old Monroe.

  The old Monroe who dreamed big. The old Monroe who didn’t keep her feelings to herself. The old Monroe who still had a stinging sense of humor, but who only got her spikes out when something called for it, not as her modus operandi.

  Most importantly, she was like the old Monroe who wouldn’t hesitate to put herself out into the world by asking for what she wanted.

  “You can do this,” she said to her reflection, drawing her shoulders back. She tried to smile at herself, but that just felt weird, so she stuck her tongue out instead.

  Okay, so she wasn’t going to turn into the kind of person who chanted positivity mantras in the mirror or anything like that. And that was okay. Monroe was going to let herself be whoever she was naturally—no pressure, no expectations. A mix of the old and the new—taking the best parts of who she used to be and who she was now.

  Some days that would probably mean pie-in-the-sky dreams. Other days that might mean being scared and doubting herself. Both of those things were part of her, like two sides of the same coin, and she was going to embrace them both.

  A knock at the front door made her jump and she raced to answer it, excitement skittering through her veins like a pebble skipping over a pond. When she yanked the door open, her heart almost leaped out of her chest.

  “Wow.” Ethan shook his head, a smile blossoming on his lips. He had a bottle of wine in one hand and, as usual, looked like every fantasy she’d ever had.

  “Wow yourself,” she said. “That leather jacket really does it for me, you know.”

  “Like the bad boy image, huh? A little James Dean get you going?” He walked into her apartment, pressing the bottle into her hands and leaning down to capture her lips in a kiss.

  Only something didn’t feel right.

  Usually when Ethan kissed her it felt like the world was melting away. Like they were both losing themselves in the kiss. But he felt…detached. Almost like he was holding something back.

  You’re just being paranoid because you’re planning to open up tonight. That’s all you, not him.

  But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

  “How was your day?” she asked, walking over to her tiny dining table where she’d set up some wineglasses and the flowers. Ethan’s eyes were tracking over the scene, like he was cataloguing every little detail.

  “Uh good.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Wow, you’ve gone to so much trouble. I wasn’t expecting this.”

  “It’s not that much trouble.” She smiled and opened the wine, pouring some into each glass. “Honestly, it never felt like it was worth the effort cooking proper meals when it was just for me. Is that weird?”

  “Nah, I lived on my own when I first moved to Melbourne, so I totally understand that feeling.” He nodded. “I used to get sushi or tacos most nights.”

  Monroe laughed. Ethan did not look like a guy who lived on takeout.

  “But I don’t expect you to wait on me, you know,” he said.

  “I wanted to do this.” She blinked. “And trust me, as much as I like you, cooking this pasta was as much for me as it was for you.”

  Ethan laughed. “Okay, so long as you don’t feel pressured.”

  “Is everything okay?” She set the wine bottle down and went to him, touching his arm. “You’re acting weird.”

  “Sorry.” He blew out a long breath and shook himself off. “It’s nothing to do with you. I had an…interesting afternoon.”

  “Tell me everything.” Monroe had planned to dish up as soon as he arrived, but she figured it was more important to let Ethan clear his mind than worry about whether the pasta felt a bit overdone. She pressed a wineglass into his hand and motioned for him to follow her to the couch. “What happened?”

  He sat next to her, taking a long draw from his glass. The red liquid sloshed back into place as he set it down on a coaster on the coffee table. “I went to see Mike.”

  Butterflies congregated in Monroe’s stomach. He must have heard something about his father.

  “I uh…” He looked down at his hands. “Mike confirmed that Matthew Brewer got a woman pregnant while he was on holiday and that she wasn’t American.”

  “Whoa. That’s big.”

  “It’s not anything until it’s something,” he said. “But it would be a huge coincidence, right?”

  “Yeah, massive.” She couldn’t help the excited bubble building in her stomach—did this mean that Ethan might stay in Forever Falls a while? Maybe…long-term? “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know, honestly.” He looked at her and she could see the turmoil in his eyes. The indecision. The fear. The hope. “I mean, finally finding out who my father is was the entire point of coming to America. But I guess…I don’t know what I was hoping to find.”

  “Family?” she offered.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But if this guy is my father then I don’t get any of that. There are no relatives left that I can tell. It’s not exactly like he left behind any kind of legacy I could connect with. From all accounts he was a deadbeat who didn’t do anything but get people into trouble. Did I really go through all of this for that?”

  Monroe’s heart split clean in two. The pain in his voice was like running herself through with a knife. “Just because we get the truth doesn’t always mean it’s the answer we want.”

  “Truer words have never been spoken.” He sighed. “I’ve got one more lead to chase up, but I think this is it.”

  Monroe’s blood ran cold at the finality in his tone. “It?”

  “The end of the road.”

  You knew this was coming.

  Ethan had never made any promises about sticking around and he’d never shared what his plans were beyond the hunt for information. But Monroe had hoped there’d be something worth staying for. That maybe she could contribute to that.

  “Well, I mean you’ve still got a lead to chase up and…” Her mind was whirring, like she was trying to find the right thing to say, and let him know that she wanted him around. “If it turns out he was your father then there might be more relatives to find?”

  “I don’t think
so. Nothing in my research so far has pointed to there being anyone else around.”

  Monroe felt a mild sense of panic stirring in her gut. “But what about the inn?”

  “The inn?” He looked at her strangely.

  “You’re helping Lottie fix it up, right?”

  “That was a trade for my accommodation. I was never planning to stay until the whole place was done. Frankly, that’s a long-term project.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why she doesn’t sell it to a developer or something.”

  “That’s not how we do things here,” Monroe said, shaking her head. “There’s a reason we don’t have big condo buildings or concrete cubes. We don’t pass the buck because something is hard work.”

  Ethan looked at her, his blue eyes searching her face. “Who’s acting weird now?”

  “Sorry.” She dropped her gaze and shook her head, feeling the waves her sister had spent a good thirty minutes styling fall around her shoulders. What the hell was she doing anyway, getting dressed up like this meant a damn thing? “I feel strongly about that. Same goes for the diner, I don’t want to see it sold off to someone from outside the town. Especially a developer who’ll just knock it down and put something ugly in its place.”

  “You really care about this town.”

  “I do.” She nodded. “It’s where my family chose to make a life and it’s where my sisters and I chose to stay. Any of us could have left, but Forever Falls needs people who are going to keep this place going, you know? We need people who care to keep small businesses around and keep us from getting overrun by McDonald’s and Starbucks.”

  “Maybe it also needs people who are going to build something new?” he said softly. “Maybe the diner has run its course.”

  Monroe gaped. “How can you say that when you agree that Big Frank’s eggs are the best on the coast?”

  “Oh they are, no denying that. But what I guess I mean is that things have a natural lifecycle to them.” He clasped his hands together, leaning his forearms against his thighs. “Some things must end so other things can begin, because nothing lasts forever.”