Secrets from a Happy Marriage

by Maisey Yates

  Rachel cleared her throat and continued. “Marrying a good man certainly didn’t insulate me from pain. I’m so thankful for the life that I had with him. And it was stupid of me to get bound up in being jealous of you. But I thought...a good marriage was a good marriage. The same as any. I said the other day that our vows were the same, but the men weren’t. It isn’t the same.”

  Rachel shook her head definitively, and she reached out, putting her hand on Anna’s arm. “The way things were with Jacob and me... It wasn’t a sacrifice in the way people think it was. He showed me that men could be good. And he showed me that a good father could make such a difference. Emma had the best father, Anna. I’m so thankful for that. For him. He made me believe in love in a way that I didn’t before. I didn’t want to fall in love head over heels, because I didn’t want to get hurt. Mom might have made you afraid of passion causing you pain. She made me afraid of love. But I couldn’t resist him. Not at all. I was head over heels the minute that he asked me out in math class. And not just because he was more interesting in comparison to the subject.” She took her hand away from Anna’s arm and wiped her forearm over her cheek, dashing away a tear. “He made me something better. He took a girl who was scared of emotion, and he made me embrace it, all the way to the end. And I am hurt. I’m heartbroken. I don’t know what to do with this new shape my life has taken. I can’t regret the time we had together. I can’t even look at it as a sad ending. Not when it was such a happy life.”

  Anna’s heart felt crushed. A martyr. She’d thought of Rachel as a martyr. And she’d forgotten about love. Because if she’d had her marriage, and had to end up caring for Thomas...she would have resented him. Resented being stuck. “Jacob was a good man.”

  “Thomas isn’t,” Rachel said. “What he did to you at the church... It was wrong. What he did to you during your marriage was wrong.”

  Something in Anna rejected that, too. “I don’t know what Thomas is. I think Thomas isn’t a good husband. But I don’t think he’s a bad man. That’s another thing, Rachel, and I haven’t had the words for it until now. I was afraid to talk to anyone about it because I know that Thomas has changed people’s lives for the better. And...a person doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. To be used. And he has been. His books have...changed people. He’s brought people out of the depths of despair. He’s taught them how to hope. He’s made them feel closer to God. He’s made them feel joy. And what was I going to do? Talk about his failures? Invalidate what he’s done?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “But...making yourself the bad guy can’t be the solution, either.”

  “I don’t know what I am.”

  She’d thought her sister was a martyr. Maybe she’d been the martyr the whole time.

  She felt like the kitchen had been turned over on its head, but the dough, the rolling pins and everything else were right in the same position.

  “Well,” Rachel said finally, “there’s nothing stopping you from being whoever you want.”

  That felt like a revelation, and it washed over her like a wave. Maybe she had been the martyr. But that didn’t matter now. Because now wasn’t the end.

  “Isn’t that the whole point of a new beginning?” Rachel asked. “Starting again?”

  “I’m afraid,” Anna said.

  Because now she felt like she was staring at the horizon line of the ocean, at the angry waves, knowing she was going to have to cross them. Knowing she was staring at vast, endless possibilities that she would have to work through, and it was going to be hard.

  “Me, too,” Rachel said. She seemed to consider something for a long moment. “We don’t have to be alone in this, though. We’re both here at the same time.”

  Anna looked down at her hands, down at the dough. “We are.”

  “We’re sisters,” Rachel said, the words coming slowly, as if she was testing them out. “And we’re both still here, alive and...if not well, then just alive. We didn’t miss a chance at having a relationship, a friendship. We don’t have to be alone.”

  “Okay,” Anna said. “Okay.”

  “You chose to start again. I didn’t. But in the end, it doesn’t matter, because what we have to do is the same. So now we have to...find that life.”

  She stared down at the puff pastry. They’d rolled and folded and created layer after layer after they’d talked.

  They’d found new layers with each other.

  “Mom never wanted us to be heartbroken. Not like she was.” Anna didn’t know how she would begin to repair the relationship with her mother.

  “Of course she didn’t. She didn’t want us to be hurt. Life happens. We can’t be protected from it forever.”

  “And you would be so relaxed about that when it came to Emma?”

  “No. I’m not relaxed about anything when it comes to Emma.”

  Anna smiled slyly. “Well, you let her have her job.”

  “Yes. I did. One point to me,” Rachel said.

  “Yes. And no more, not if you’re going to keep handling the dough like that.”

  “You’re so critical.”

  “And you’re going to make sure it doesn’t laminate properly.”

  “Well, you can put the failed croissants in a basket and label them Rachel’s Follies.”

  Suddenly, Anna wished it were that simple. That she could bundle up the misshapen aspects of her life and put them in a labeled basket.

  Anna’s Follies.

  But she was living them instead.

  Rachel was right. It was the chance to start over. And she really wouldn’t go back. Not even if she could.

  So starting over was what they were going to have to do.

  She was just glad that she didn’t have to do it alone.

  And maybe just like dough, and just like her relationship with her sister, it wasn’t about sailing toward new, infinite horizons.

  Maybe it was just about making things better. Layer by layer.

  12

  Sometimes the right thing isn’t the fun thing. But the fun thing hurts later on. Still, if he’s cute enough the fun thing is worth it.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF SUSAN BRIGHT, AUGUST 1961, DURING HER TIME AT THE CAPE HOPE LIGHTHOUSE

  WENDY

  It was much more common for a guest to stay at the inn for two or three days than it was for them to linger for two weeks. John Hansen was lingering. And he made Wendy feel like she was on the verge of a hot flash, which she hadn’t had for more than ten years.

  It was strange, being exposed to a man who made her feel quite this off-kilter.

  When it came to swearing off men, Wendy was a champion. She had been hurt so badly by Anna and Rachel’s father that it had been the simplest thing in the world to simply shut down that part of herself and focus on raising her girls and running her business.

  She was attracted to John, though.

  Wednesday morning he had been the only guest, and Wendy had been the only one preparing the food.

  She felt a little bit guilty that she had time to think. Time away from the tension between everyone. Emma and Rachel, Anna and Rachel, Anna and herself.

  Sometimes there were moments where they were the family they’d started as. Where they could bake and chatter and laugh. And then the reality of where they were at now would creep in and shatter the solidarity.

  They did all of their bread baking at the beginning of the week, often prepared the crab cakes for a whole month and then put them in the freezer. And that meant that on days like today, Wendy didn’t need any backup in the kitchen.

  But it also meant that she was alone with her problematic guest.

  Who was as polite as a man could be, and hadn’t made any untoward advances or anything like that.

  No. All of the untoward everything was inside of her.

  “Another cup of coffee?” she ask
ed.

  He was taking breakfast at the small, round table in the lavender parlor. The small table with the lace tablecloth and floral china set on top of it seemed almost ridiculously fussy in front of this no-nonsense man.

  He had a directness to his manner that suggested he was not a man who much cared for lace.

  But he also hadn’t complained.

  She suspected it would go against his sense of chivalry to do so. He had that air about him, as well. A man who cared deeply about manners and the right way of doing things.

  Rare, in other words.

  He was a very nice break from real time. A piece of this place she loved brought into the present. A chance to feel something other than grief or sadness, worry over the present state of the family.

  “Yes, please,” he said. “Would it be all right if you set down for a spell?”

  “Well, I was planning on giving you a history talk once you were finished with breakfast.”

  “Does that mean you can’t sit now?”

  The thing was, she could. She had one last course to bring out for him, a slice of cake with cherries baked into it, and there was no reason that she couldn’t sit.

  Except that... It would be crossing the line between innkeeper and guest. Not that she was inherently opposed to that. If he had been a pleasant woman whom she enjoyed speaking with, she would have done so without thought. Or a pleasant couple.

  Truly, if he had been a man that she didn’t feel attracted to, she would have done it.

  But she did feel attracted to him. And that was the problem.

  “Have a cup of coffee,” he said.

  It was a pleasant-enough-sounding invitation, except it wasn’t actually an invitation so much as a command, and she should be annoyed by it.

  But she was hard-pressed to be annoyed by him.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me go get your final course.”

  She returned with cake. Two pieces of it, because if she was going to sit, then she was going to eat.

  She couldn’t pretend that she was doing it for any reason other than that she wanted to. Couldn’t pretend that she was trying to be polite because he was a guest and he had asked her to sit.

  If she’d been a younger woman with slightly less self-awareness, then perhaps she could have.

  But she was too old for games like that. Even in her own head.

  She was sitting with him because he was handsome. Because she wanted to be near him.

  Because even though she was never going to allow anything to happen between the two of them, it was nice to have someone look at her like he might want something to happen.

  She’d spent years avoiding situations like this, but she didn’t feel vulnerable anymore. Didn’t feel like she would lose her sense of self over a man.

  What was the harm in a flirtation?

  “I’m sure you must find it strange that I am lingering around here by myself,” he said.

  “I don’t ponder the strangeness of guests overly much. If I did, I wouldn’t get anything done.”

  He chuckled. “I bet you have some stories.”

  “Working in hospitality for this long... Yes. A lot of stories.”

  “And they are?”

  “Honestly, it’s difficult to think of only one. But what I will tell you is that no matter where people come from, no matter what they do for a living, how much money they have, what corner of the world they’re from... People are strange. That is consistent.” She lifted her coffee cup to her lips. “And half of all guests leave a pair of underwear under the bed.”

  That earned her a laugh. “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure why. Or how they don’t think to look. Because I assume that if they lose that many pairs of underwear at my inn, then they lose them everywhere. And you would think they would start checking.”

  “Well, I will be sure to check for my underwear beneath my bed before I go.”

  Her face got hot and she took a bite of cake, resenting that he’d somehow managed to make her blush. She didn’t even know she could blush anymore.

  “Good plan.”

  “I told you that Olaf Hansen was an ancestor of mine,” he said.

  “Yes. You did mention.”

  “Well, this is all news to me. You see, my father had a falling-out with his father. And as a result, all my family history was basically lost. There is no one for me to ask. And I’m discovering that there’s this whole rich history to my family I didn’t know about. That when we came to this country, Oregon was where we landed. I’m fascinated by it. And maybe I’m trying to feel closer to those people that came before me because I’m getting older. Because my father dying kind of drew a line beneath my own mortality.”

  “I can understand that,” Wendy said softly. “It’s a difficult thing, those family grudges. I was estranged from my own mother, and she died without us ever fixing it. I just tried to make our own history here. Because... My family history is filled with spite and judgment.”

  “For all I know my father’s was the same. But I’m curious to know the history of my family.” He paused for a moment. “Sorry about your mother.”

  “It was a choice I made,” she said. “A choice not to live beneath her judgment. We make the choices we have to. But it doesn’t mean they don’t have unintended consequences. Like you not knowing where you came from. And, of course, those things become more important... Now.”

  “I find that I tend to wonder a lot more about where we came from. You know, I know where I’m going. We’re all going there. But... I don’t know, something about that makes me want to feel more anchored to the past.”

  “I have some letters,” Wendy said. “Some letters and diary entries from Jenny Hansen. Did you know she was a mail-order bride?”

  “Can’t say as I did.”

  “We keep all the walls here pastel in her honor. The lavender parlor has been lavender for over one hundred years. We’ve freshened the paint up, but the color is the same. Jenny hated the gray Oregon weather, having come up from California to marry Olaf. She convinced the Coast Guard to allow her to paint it. And you know how hard it is to convince the government to do anything. She was something, was Jenny.”

  “Well, that stubbornness certainly runs in my family,” he said.

  “I have pictures.” She stood up and went to the small antique table that housed an old sewing machine and the stereoscope, with specially made photos of the lighthouse. She picked up the photo album, and took a seat next to John. “This, here,” she said, opening it up, “is a photo of Olaf and Jenny on their wedding day.”

  She looked up at John, and was struck by the resemblance between him and his ancestor. Oh, they weren’t carbon copies, but there was something there that she could see. Similar lines and angles, and the way that he held himself.

  In the photo, the man was wearing a dark jacket and hat, reminiscent of a naval uniform, and holding the hand of a woman in a white dress.

  “‘Keeper Olaf Hansen,’” John said, reading, “‘and his bride Jenny. Nineteen hundred.’”

  “That’s her. She was unhappy for a while. A long while. But from what I can gather of her diary...that changed.”

  “What do you suppose changed?”

  “I—I think they fell in love.”

  “Well, that would be a nice story.”

  “I can get you some pages from the diary if you’d like. A lot of it is down at the museum, but some of it we have here. You can go over them while you’re here. It’s your family. You have a right to the history.”

  “I’d like that,” he said, looking at her, his blue eyes intent.

  She suddenly wished it was that easy.

  Just falling in love.

  Sadly, in her life it never had been. Or for Anna and Rachel. And as simple as she made it sound when she spoke
of Jenny, she knew that it hadn’t been for Jenny, either. It had been change and sacrifice and compromise.

  All things that Wendy hadn’t had to do in a very long time.

  Things she didn’t want to do.

  No. She didn’t want that.

  But it made her ache a little bit when she looked at him.

  “Well,” Wendy said, standing, “I had better get to doing the dishes.”

  “I can help, if you like.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It’s a...certified kitchen. You need a food-handlers card.” He didn’t really need one to help her with dishes, but she didn’t want him back there. She needed a break from him. And she certainly didn’t need him acting gentlemanly and confusing her feelings even further.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be checking out tomorrow. I’m hoping that I can come back soon.”

  “Well, we always like return guests.”

  “Well, I hope that you look forward to me returning, too,” he said.

  “I’ll set the diary pages on the table for you. You can go over them this afternoon.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and Wendy felt a blush rising in her cheeks again.

  And then she turned and ran like she was fleeing temptation.

  But she tried to pretend it was just that she had dishes to do.

  EMMA

  “Can you run this across the street?”

  Emma looked at her boss. Then looked around. “Me?”

  The first month at her new job had gone by quickly. It was a relief, especially after the weirdness that she experienced every day at school. People were so strange with her. So careful.

  She was thankful for Catherine, who was real, and normal, and who had been with her the whole way through the journey of her father’s illness, and seemed to be able to handle his death a lot better.

  What a stupid thing.