by Maisey Yates
Rachel felt... She didn’t know. “I never let myself think about my life past him. I knew it would happen. I knew for a long time. I watched him die for years, Anna.”
“I didn’t let myself think about a different life for a long time. I didn’t even tell myself I was unhappy. I hid it. So that I wouldn’t...well, so that I wouldn’t do what I did. And once I really looked at my life I knew I couldn’t go on the same way I had been.”
“Well, I know I can’t. But doesn’t loving someone mean... Doesn’t it mean not moving on fully?”
“I have no idea,” Anna said.
“That’s not helpful at all.”
Anna moved over to the window and moved the lace curtain, and revealed a clump of bugs. She wrinkled her nose. “Well, until then we can vacuum ladybugs. Endlessly.”
“That seems like a poor substitute for sex.”
“It’s less complicated,” Anna said.
Rachel looked around at her surroundings—her haven for all these years, her first job and her continued passion.
Yes. It was simple. Here in this bedroom, cleaning with her sister, things seemed manageable.
Maybe she should just be happy with manageable.
Heaven knew that there was less guilt involved.
WENDY
It had been over a month since John Hansen had left the inn, much to her relief. He unnerved her. Not because he was off-putting in any way.
That was the problem.
He wasn’t off-putting at all. He was the best-looking man she’d seen in she didn’t know how long, and he was also plainly interested in her.
And not just in her, but in the house. In its history.
Basically, in absolutely everything she cared about.
And that made him feel...dangerous.
She was fifty-seven years old. She should not be thinking about a man like that. Dangerous. Handsome.
And she shouldn’t be...nervous around one.
She was way too jaded for that. She knew exactly how this sort of thing ended up.
She’d been happy enough in her life as it was for years. She’d wished, of course, that Jacob had been in better health. But she’d been surrounded by her family, her girls. Now it was all changing. Emma was going off to school. Anna and Rachel seemed to be finding a bond with each other, but Anna was still so distant from Wendy.
She tried to put it out of her mind as she knocked on the door with her elbow, her hands full of a cheese platter that she had made for the night’s cribbage game.
She and a few of the other female business owners got together once a month to talk about business, town politics and everything else under the sun. Mostly it was an excuse to eat and laugh, and this was the first time she’d gone since Jacob’s death three months earlier.
The group fluctuated and rotated, depending on the season, who was in town and who wasn’t, who was busy and who wasn’t.
As soon as Cynthia let her in, the woman who owned one of the jewelry stores in Old Town, Wendy could see that there were a few more than just their core group there tonight.
One of the younger women, Jo, who ran Fog coffee along with her husband, Nick, was there. She was in her early thirties, and had a nose ring and the sides of her head shaved, while the top was left long and black and glossy. She was the same age as Anna—Wendy assumed—but she didn’t engender maternal feelings in Wendy. She was bright and sharp, and utterly unintimidated by anyone or anything.
In Wendy’s past experiences, younger women were sometimes cowed by a group of older ones. But not Jo, who was always happy to lead a discussion on what it took to make nondairy yogurt at home, or how to brew your own kombucha. Which was something almost no one who came to these gatherings was ever going to do.
But they all smiled and nodded along, anyway.
Lisbeth, the owner of the yarn shop, was there. She was always popular, as she tended to bring overstock to share around the table.
Wendy didn’t often knit anymore, but it was something she had once enjoyed doing, and she’d taught her girls how as well, so she was always happy to take extra yarn and hoard it, even if she didn’t have anything pressing to make with it.
She set down the platter on the table. “Hi, everyone,” she said.
She received a round of cheerful greetings from the group.
Wendy made a beeline for the wine, which was already open and sitting out on Cynthia’s sideboard.
Cynthia’s house was like an architectural representation of her as a woman. Bold, eclectic and deliberately unfussy. Her business, her home, her wild black hair and the locally made jewelry she wore all seemed to flow together. She was one of the most truly her people Wendy had ever known.
She could be bold, and outspoken, but with Cynthia it was always genuine and never from a place of manipulation.
She’d developed a good friendship with Cynthia over the years. Though, like with everyone in town, she talked mainly about her life as if it had started the moment she’d come here. But it had been more than thirty years now. It was the only life that really mattered.
When Wendy saw Lillian Chase, who owned the little children’s-clothing store, Peapod, she felt a kick of concern.
Lillian was very involved in Sunset Church, and where Cynthia was open-arms and authenticity, Lillian was narrow, polished reserve. Wendy had a feeling genuine conversation sometimes hit her perfectly coiffed hair and bounded right off. Because of all the hair spray, or maybe the real reason was that her heart was smooth and polished, too. With no space for love or compassion to slip in and take hold.
But then, the owner of Sunset Bay Coffee Company, Natalie, was involved in the church as well, and she gave Wendy the brightest smile imaginable upon entry.
So it wasn’t really fair to assume that it would be difficult with people from the church.
But, then, that wasn’t the real issue. It was Lillian’s involvement in the church, plus Lillian being who she was. It made Wendy feel on guard.
Lillian seemed to find new heights in the falling down of others, as if she saw an opportunity to step on the back of someone who stumbled and raised herself up higher.
Natalie wasn’t like that at all.
“Is there any business gossip?” Wendy asked.
“Pico’s is closing,” Cynthia said, tapping brightly painted nails against her wineglass. “It’s a shame.”
She didn’t actually think Cynthia thought it was a shame, as the store had crossover competition with Cynthia. They weren’t a jewelry shop, but an eclectic mix of different local goods.
They’d only been there for a couple of years.
It was Wendy’s experience that most people didn’t know how to get through those first years in a town like Sunset Bay.
They didn’t understand that you were going to have to lose a lot of money before you could find a groove. Before you could figure out how to cover the lean months, and live for Christmas, and summer, and those times that brought an influx of people to town.
There was just a limit to the amount of local people who were going to stop in on a regular basis and buy clothing at a boutique store, when they could go down the road from the cute little walkable tourist community and buy things cheaper in a big box store.
They settled in and began the game, conversation continuing lightly between moves.
“So,” Lillian said, her blue eyes sharp and cold, like fractured ice. “How are you, Wendy?”
The words didn’t sound light, or casual. And the fact of the matter was, she hadn’t asked them when Wendy had come in, so it was clear that this was a buildup to something.
The thing about small towns was that everybody wasn’t inherently nice. They were territorial, and the connections ran deep, like roots of old-growth trees into the soil. Or blackberry vines. You might see the plant on one side of the street
, but the roots could extend all the way across, originating from another place entirely.
She had learned to navigate sticky situations over the years as a result of these realities.
And she could sense when words had more weight to them than they should.
“Well enough,” Wendy said. “The loss of Jacob has been hard. He was a good man. We all miss him. Rachel is doing as well as can be expected. And Emma has a job in town—I’m sure you’ve seen her.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of that,” Lillian said. “Of course, that’s been difficult. But after what Anna did... Honestly, Wendy, I think the way that you’ve been showing your face about town is brave. Poor Thomas.”
Lillian shook her head and clucked her tongue. The divide of reactions across the long table was sharp and stark, and would have been funny if it wasn’t Wendy at the other end of Lillian’s verbal sword.
The reactions were either total disapproval, interest, or a strange, squishy sympathy that Wendy didn’t like any more than she liked the interest.
“Anna’s life is her own business, and she’s my daughter whatever happened,” Wendy said, hoping that would put the matter to rest.
“I mean, we all know what happened to you, Wendy,” Lillian continued. “Your husband had an affair, that’s why you had to come here in the first place and start over. I can’t imagine that it’s been easy to watch Anna follow in his footsteps, after all the good work that you’ve done in this community, after the reputation that you’ve built. And after the way that you were hurt by behavior like that. It’s almost a crime against you.”
A chasm opened up inside of Wendy’s chest. No. This was not supposed to be what her fresh start had brought her girls.
Greater judgment? No, that had never been the idea behind coming here. It had never been the idea behind sharing the story of how she’d made it here.
It had been to prevent them from being judged. It had never been to bring extra judgment.
As a single mom, she had known that she had to get in there and build up sympathy for her circumstances early, otherwise they would think that her daughters were from an immoral background, and the judgment that would’ve been heaped on them for Wendy’s actions would have been...terrible.
So it had been important that everyone had known the story of her husband leaving her for another woman.
But it had never been for sympathy for Wendy. It had always been for freedom from baggage for her girls.
And here it was, an unexpected bag, being hurled through the air, aimed directly at Anna.
“I don’t see what my past has anything to do with what Anna’s done now. And I don’t see how her behavior is any of your business. Are you friends with Thomas?”
Wendy had avoided this very thing ever since she’d moved here. Judgment. She’d done her best to keep her head down and be a hard worker. She’d turned away from confrontation whenever she could.
But that had been for her.
This was her daughter.
And when it came to defending Anna, Wendy wouldn’t shy away.
“He’s my pastor,” the other woman said. “His pain matters to me.”
“But you don’t know him,” Wendy said. “And it hit me when he announced what my daughter had done in church—without warning me, without warning Rachel or Emma, when he exposed all of us to censure like that, not to mention the way that it immediately cast Anna as the villain in the story—that I didn’t know who he was. Because I would’ve told you that he would’ve never done that.”
“What else was he supposed to do?” Lillian asked. “He didn’t want there to be rumors.”
“What is this, if not gossip?” Wendy asked. “You know one side of the story. Don’t allow yourself to confuse someone being a pastor with being perfect. He was my son-in-law for fourteen years, and I can tell you that at the end of the day he’s just a man like any other. Unless Anna has a chance to stand up in church and share her side of it...you won’t know the whole truth, will you? Unless you’re able to blend the two perspectives into one, then you really don’t know what happened. Who can know the truth of a marriage from the outside of it?”
“You’re taking this very personally,” Lillian said. “I just wanted to express concern for you. Because I feel that you did work very hard to build up a reputation in the community that was beyond reproach... And now—”
“A reputation doesn’t matter very much if you don’t have your family. And I’m certainly not going to distance myself from my daughters because people can’t stop from wagging their tongues down in town. I work with tourists, anyway, thank God. And I would rather see them. At least if this is what I get from the locals.”
That seemed to wake up Cynthia. “That’s enough, Lillian. I’m not here for this kind of talk in my house, or anywhere.”
Wendy stood, shaking with rage, because it was too little, too late, as far as she was concerned. She went over to the sideboard, collecting her cheese platter. “This is coming back with me.”
And before anyone could speak again, she swept out of the house and out onto the cold street.
Which felt warmer than that house, particularly after that.
And she knew that it was likely shock that had prevented anyone but Cynthia from speaking up in her or Anna’s defense, but it didn’t much matter.
She had been left on her own to defend.
That, she supposed, was common enough.
And something she was used to.
She had forgotten. Somewhere along the way, she had forgotten.
That everything she was now had been to protect Rachel and Anna.
The way she had reacted to what Anna had done, even just on the inside... She had forgotten who she was. And she had let her fear over Anna being in pain transform into anger, into disappointment.
But nothing that she had, nothing that she was, mattered at all if she lost her relationship with Anna. If she let her own knee-jerk judgment affect the way she treated her daughter.
Because how, then, was she any better than Lillian? She wasn’t. Her job wasn’t to find out the facts and then decide how she felt after that. Her job was to stand by her daughter.
She was going to do just that.
She might eat this entire cheese tray by herself first, but she was going to do it.
She only hoped that she didn’t have too much damage control to do.
That she didn’t have too much damage to repair.
14
Inspection today. I negotiated with the Coast Guard to allow me to paint the walls approved colors. Mint and lavender. If I can’t have sun outside, I will make it in here.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, MARCH 5, 1900
RACHEL
Rachel pulled into the parking lot of the plumbing store and put her head on the steering wheel. It was rainy and cold, as April—even late April—on the Oregon Coast could decide to be at any given moment, and she didn’t want to be shopping for plumbing parts.
But you didn’t always get what you wanted in life.
She was just sick of being the poster child for that particular truth.
She got out of the car and scurried quickly into the store, dodging raindrops as she went.
They were having their first dinner at the inn tonight, and people from town had made reservations, as well as some current guests.
And, of course, they were having a plumbing issue.
Thank God it was a contained, standard sink-plumbing issue, and not an explosive, toilet-plumbing issue. Rachel was intimately acquainted with both.
Rachel, Wendy and Anna had not run an inn by themselves for this many years without learning how to fix things. From basic electrical to plumbing, they were all pretty accomplished in household repairs.
Repairs, epic stain removal—a hazard of working in the hospitality industr
y—and deep cleaning.
The house was old, and they’d fixed things when the occasion arose more times than Rachel could count.
Jacob had joked often throughout their marriage that his wife was handier than he was.
And it was true. She was.
Jacob had a flair for the artistic, a brilliant eye for photography, and his work had hung all over the different buildings on the property for years.
But he couldn’t fix anything.
Rachel had to go buy a U joint, and it would be easy enough to repair the pipe under the sink, but it still necessitated a trip into town.
Willy’s Electric and Plumbing was the primary source for projects, and Rachel liked them, because she knew them all, and they didn’t try to explain to her how a project needed to be done.
Sometimes, when she went into the chain hardware store that was a little bit larger, and had more product on hand, a random, spotty-faced male employee would try to instruct her on how a job should be done. And she would have to stand there and grit her teeth and not say—to the pencil-slim boy who probably still lived with his parents—that she knew more than him.
She never had to explain that to Mark or Jerry or Willy himself.
The store itself was almost entirely the color of oatmeal, from the floor to the ceiling, with a cartoon mechanic painted on the wall the only real character in the place. The shelves were mainly utilitarian boxes, black drawers and open bins, with small signs indicating what you were looking at. Plumbing or electric. Sinks, toilets. Commercial and residential.
Rachel knew exactly what she was after.
She slipped into one of the aisles and found the U joint in a bin of parts, picked it up and headed toward the counter.
It was Mark Bronson who was working today. A pleasant-looking man with graying brown hair and a beard. He was husky and tall, with a ready smile and dark eyes. He was maybe five or six years older than Rachel, if she had to guess.