Cottage by the Creek

by Elizabeth Bromke

  Clara’s nostrils flared. How could her older sister still be so immature?

  Then again, was there something to be said for Amelia’s approach? Was there something to be said for bonding with a younger girl and shaping her into the person she wanted to be? Rather than pushing her away?

  Clara had no clue.

  And maybe that was the problem. All she knew was a life of directions. Rules. Studying and reading and passing that on to the next generation.

  “Just promise me one thing, Am,” she said at last, exasperated with the argument.

  “What’s that?”

  “Promise me you’ll leave her out of the Wendell thing. Okay?”

  Amelia’s face remained flat. “Fine.”

  “Really?” Clara’s eyes lit up. She’d made headway.

  “Yeah. I don’t have time for it anyway. It’s Michael’s focus now. And it’s dead. The whole case. I mean, as much as I’m desperate to know what happened, I don’t think we’ll ever get an answer.”

  It was coming too quickly. Too easily. Amelia was too ready to give in. Clara’s spine prickled in suspicion. “One more thing, actually. The whole yearbook discovery with Mom and Judith. You’ll let that go, too?”

  “Why should I?” Amelia returned, her cheeks growing red.

  “It’s the same problem as Wendell. A dead end. And it’s pointless, Am,” Clara said. “I just think you need a little focus, okay? And if you’re doing all this crazy stuff with your business and researching Wendell and researching Judith The Snake Carmichael… well, I worry you won’t be able to pull it off.”

  Amelia crossed her arms over her chest. “You know what?”

  Clara frowned. “What?”

  “I’m more worried about you.” Amelia uncrossed her arms and stabbed a finger at Clara.

  “What are you talking about?” Clara’s life was going great. New job. New house. New year…

  “I’m worried that you have a date in a few hours, and you’re here, nagging us.” A grin flickered along Amelia’s lips. “Come on. We’re going shopping.”

  Clara let her hands drop to her sides. Reasoning with Amelia was useless, but her sister wasn’t wrong. Clara’s priorities were perhaps a little misdirected. Her emotions, too.

  She could use a little fun. They all could.

  “Let’s grab Sarah and get out of here. I mean I talked to Sherryl, our stage manager, and she’s already going to set about hiring a writer. So, my wild ideas can wait. Your love connection cannot.”

  Following Amelia out of the house, Clara lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the midday sun as she searched the beach for Sarah.

  “Sarah!” Amelia called.

  There was no sight of her.

  Glancing back to Clara, Amelia called out again, louder. “Sarah!”

  Still nothing. Fresh panic rose in Clara’s chest, and she began to jog toward the water line.

  But as soon as she passed the lighthouse, she saw her, sitting in the sand just north of the dock, perfectly out of sight.

  “Sarah!” Clara cried over the throb of waves and the squawks of lake gulls. “You scared us, we couldn’t see you, and we—”

  Sarah stood up, brushed sand from her butt, and pointed.

  Clara followed her finger out to the water. “What?” she asked.

  Amelia came up behind them both, squinting into the lapping whitecaps as a speedboat chugged across their eyeline. A whipping wind threw her hair across her face, hiding her reaction.

  “Marine Patrol,” Sarah replied.

  Clara dropped her hand. “Oh, yeah. So what?”

  “I didn’t know there were, like, lake police or whatever.”

  Amelia bent over and grabbed Sarah’s hand. “Who cares about that? Clara and I have an errand to run, and you have a beach party to get ready for.”

  Chapter 8—Amelia

  They’d found something at White Birch Boutique in the Village. A coral dress with pretty lace cap sleeves. It hit just above Clara’s knees, and Amelia herself nearly swooned.

  After finalizing the sale and a lazy lunch, all three returned to the cottage. Jake was picking Clara up at five—early dinner and then an evening boat ride.

  Clara popped into the shower, leaving Amelia and Sarah to roam the cottage.

  “Does she really need us to stick around?” Sarah whined. “I was almost done with the pamphlet. I could still finish if we head back now.”

  Amelia rummaged in the cupboard for a snack—she’d eaten only a salad at lunch. It left her hungry, as usual. “She might need help with hair and makeup, so yes, we do need to stick around. At least, I’m sticking around. No way will I miss Clara’s first big date. But if you want to go back, I can call Michael to give you a ride.”

  Michael’s Saturdays had grown into a point of contention, truth be told. At the very start of their relationship (which was still new, of course), he and Amelia took daytrips together, toured the limits of Birch Harbor, and explored beyond into the suburbs and nearby towns. Those weekends settled into cozy nights at the lighthouse or at Michael’s house in Harbor Hills—a place he’d deemed too big and too fancy for a single man.

  Amelia had reminded him he wasn’t single, and he reminded her that, legally, he was.

  Oddly, it was one of the most romantic things he had ever said to her—the implication hung like a promising rain cloud after forty days of drought, and Amelia clung to it.

  But since then, Saturdays became something else altogether. If Michael wasn’t helping at the lighthouse, he was researching Wendell’s case. If he wasn’t researching Wendell’s case, Amelia hinted that he might join up with the other Hannigan women’s men at the field to put in a little sweat on that project.

  All too soon, Amelia realized that Michael had become something of an errand boy, and it didn’t sit well with either one of them. And more recently, Michael’s interest in her father’s case had turned into something else entirely—like an obsession that was separate from Amelia, almost.

  But even with his elbow-deep investigation, he continued to come up empty-handed, finding exactly what police had found in 1992 and the years thereafter: nothing.

  And that, Amelia suspected, was part of their disconnect—Michael’s impatience with his own inability to help Amelia achieve the one thing she needed.

  The thought was sweet, but even Amelia wasn’t sure how to handle the dead end. And she didn’t understand why their romantic weekends had slowed to a stop.

  “No, that’s awkward,” Sarah answered. “My mom always told me not to ride alone with men.”

  Amelia’s cheeks grew hot, and she frowned. “Oh. Right. I guess that’s probably good advice.” Though she didn’t know where Megan learned it. Nora had certainly never set that tone. Then again, maybe she should have.

  Amelia shook the thought, but her chest still felt heavy under the notion that Michael wasn’t trustworthy. Or at least, not trustworthy yet.

  “You know what, Sarah? I’ll just drop you home after this. I can finish the brochure, and you need to get ready for the party, right?”

  Sarah crossed her arms over her chest, sulking. “Please, come on,” she whined. “I really don’t want to go to that.”

  “Listen, Clara made a really good point when she and I were talking. She said you need to, you know, be well-rounded. Have friends and all that. And she’s right. My girlfriends in high school were the highlight of my life. And my sisters, too. So you need to go, Sarah. The party will be fun. All summer you went to these things. Why are you suddenly disinterested?”

  Sarah ignored her and instead pulled her phone from her back pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Amelia asked.

  “Getting a ride home,” Sarah answered, holding the device to her ear and staring at Amelia through a pout. “Mom? Can you come get me from Clara’s and take me back to the apartment?”

  Sighing, Amelia returned to the cabinet and found a box of crackers. She took it to the counter and munched mindlessly
, studying the place.

  In all her time traveling the world in search of a great role or even a good one, she’d missed a lot. She’d missed her mother’s decline, there in the cottage. She’d missed Clara’s fight to keep some semblance of normality. Suddenly awash with guilt, the crackers crumbling along her dry tongue, she shoved the plastic sleeve back in the box.

  Sarah finished her conversation and pushed her phone back in her pocket. “My mom’s at the field. She can’t get me.” Her expression sour, the teenager had moved well beyond the fun they shared browsing for clothes and gossiping over lunch.

  Amelia sighed. “I’m going to help Clara get ready. And you have the night off. So, you can either wait with me, or we can call someone else. Maybe Aunt Kate is free.”

  “The beach party starts at six. If I have to go, then I can’t just sit around here and wait. I need to get ready, too,” Sarah reasoned.

  “I’ll call Kate,” Amelia replied, growing more irritated by the second. Now, all that Clara had said felt even more appropriate, but for a different reason entirely. Amelia had no patience for children, and if her niece was going to act like one… well, then she could spend her weekend holed up at The Bungalows or wafting along the beach with a throbbing crowd of tanned teenagers. Amelia didn’t care which.

  “Hey,” she said to Kate when the call went through. “Are you busy right now?” She flicked a glance to Sarah who had plopped onto the loveseat, her phone glowing on her face.

  “Where’s Sarah?” Clara asked when she came out of the bathroom ten minutes later.

  “Kate picked her up so she could go to the beach party,” Amelia answered. “That dress is stunning on you. Have you been laying out or something?” she asked, referring to her little sister’s sun-kissed shoulders.

  Clara did a spin and grinned. “Fake tanning lotion. I bought some at the grocery store yesterday. It was on sale.” Then she added, “I’m happy for Sarah. She deserves a little fun. What happened, you know? She was hitting every party earlier in the summer.”

  Nodding, Amelia shrugged. “It’s hard being the new girl, even if you’re already in with the right crowd.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I was never even in with the wrong crowd,” Clara joked.

  Amelia’s heart burned for her little sister. With their age difference, it was easy to get lost in all the ways they weren’t alike. All the experiences they didn’t share—the ones that Amelia had blazed through a decade earlier. But now here she was, faced with the chance to be the big sister she didn’t quite get to be when she still lived at home and Clara was just a baby.

  “Okay.” Amelia rubbed her hands together. “Hair and makeup. I vote less is more, but we can experiment a little.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Clara led her into her bedroom at the far end of the hall. There, she’d set up a small vanity in the corner, complete with a mirror and a wooden box of organized makeup essentials.

  “I had no idea you were so prepared,” Amelia admired. “And where did you get this table?”

  “It was in the basement. I think it must have been Mom’s when she was a girl. I don’t remember ever seeing it when I was younger, though. Not even in the basement.”

  Amelia pulled Clara’s hair into a series of clips on top of her head. “Well,” she replied, “That was Mom for you. Always moving stuff around as if she was looking for a perfect hiding spot. Who knows what in the world she was hiding, though.”

  “Me, for starters,” Clara answered flatly.

  Amelia stopped mid-blush application. “What do you mean, ‘you?’”

  “Well, she sort of kept me hidden away. I mean first when I was born, right? And then the rest of my life. I was always at one of our houses, toiling away.”

  Swallowing, Amelia continued to work on Clara’s face, studying her smooth, clear skin. Her thin lips and small nose—two features that didn’t belong to the other Hannigan sisters. “Well,” she tried, letting out a sigh, “Mom didn’t know what to make of the whole thing. She didn’t have anyone other than us, you know? No family. Not even Dad’s parents. She had to forge her way into the social scene in town.”

  “Actually,” Clara replied, blinking as Amelia worked a few strokes of mascara into her lashes.

  “Don’t blink!” Amelia warned.

  “Sorry! Actually, what I was saying was I sort of had a revelation.”

  “What do you mean?” Amelia picked up the eyebrow brush and shot a layer of hairspray onto it, sweeping Clara’s sparse brows into neat arches.

  “When I found out I was Kate’s, everything made sense. Mom didn’t put me to work so she could go have fun. She put me to work so I couldn’t go have fun.”

  Amelia shook her head. “That wasn’t Mom. Trust me.”

  As Amelia drew a line of waxen highlighter down the center of Clara’s nose, Clara grabbed her wrist. “Trust me, it was.”

  Popping the cap back on each pencil and tube, Amelia leaned away. “You look perfect, but you’re wrong. Mom was desperate to keep her reputation intact, but not desperate enough to compromise your upbringing. It all goes back to your nature. If even once you’d have stood up to her and just said that you were going out, she’d have done nothing. I assure you. Take it from someone who couldn’t sit still in the house over on the harbor. We worked, too. Cleaned bathrooms, helped with repairs. But we played.”

  Clara shook her head. “That’s because you were the we, Am. I was just the me. I didn’t have what you had. I only had my chores. And my books.”

  “And if you wanted to, you could have had friends, Clar. I know Mom wasn’t trying to enslave you. Come on. You’re acting like you’re the next iteration of Cinderella.” Amelia tried to laugh, but it fell flat.

  Maybe Clara wasn’t all wrong. Maybe Nora did want to protect her from the same fate as Clara’s biological mother and grandmother who didn’t know quite how to protect themselves.

  Then again, did Kate need protection from Matt? Certainly not. She didn’t need protection at all. Clearly.

  “You know what?” Amelia pinched open the clips and combed her fingers through Clara’s hair. “You could be right, Clar. But it’s in the past. Tonight, we celebrate the new you. You’re not locked up. You’re unchained.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and Clara couldn’t help but giggle.

  “Speaking of chains, do I need jewelry?”

  “Don’t you have some?” Amelia glanced around the vanity.

  “Not really. Just silver hoops I never wear.”

  “What about Mom’s? Did you come across any more of her costume jewelry here?”

  Clara shook her head, but Amelia was already tugging open the vanity drawers, beginning with the bigger bottom ones and moving up.

  “Here, move over,” Amelia nudged Clara away from the center drawer. She pulled from the bottom lip, but it didn’t budge.

  “It’s locked,” Clara pointed to the tarnished brass-trimmed keyhole in the center. “I’ve tried already.”

  “A locked drawer?” Amelia gasped. “And you didn’t tell us?”

  Chapter 9—Megan

  She was at the field with Brian and a handful of others—the contractor, his site leader, plus Matt and Michael.

  “I think we can call it a day,” Megan announced. “Thanks for giving us your Saturday, everyone.”

  They hadn’t broken ground, but the plans were settled, and they were bigger than Megan and Brian initially planned.

  It was her sisters who talked Megan into adding a second building on the property—a barn for indoor events. Come winter, she wouldn’t regret it. So long as the business brought in a return on the investment, it’d be fine.

  Now she could settle her focus on Sarah’s new school and final year before college.

  But after the long day—and even longer summer—she figured it might be nice to break the ice with her new local friends.

  “Are you two up for joining Brian and me for dinner at the Village?” she asked Michael and Matt as they started for the park
ing lot on the far side of the access road.

  “I’ve gotta go get Vivi and bring her back to town,” Matt said.

  “What for?” Megan asked.

  “She’s meeting her friends for a get-together on the beach, I guess.”

  Sarah hadn’t mentioned a get-together. Was she invited? Maybe not. Maybe she was and didn’t want to go. Not if it was a freshman thing. Is that part of the reason she’d called Megan for a ride? Hopefully not, otherwise she’d just stood in the way of her daughter’s social career. “Is it another school bonfire?”

  Matt took a swig from his water bottle and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Just kids doing the beach thing.” He checked his watch. “Oh, hell. I’m late.”

  “Why not call Kate?” Brian suggested. “She can take the boat over and bring Viviana back for you, I’m sure.”

  Megan held up a hand. “It’s getting darker earlier, you know,” she reasoned. “Maybe it’s too late for a beach party?” Not normally one to rain on someone’s parade, Megan bit her lip. The suggestion came out awkwardly.

  Matt just shrugged. “She’ll be with Mercy and a few older girls. Besides, she’ll kill me if I change my mind and tell her no.”

  Glancing out at the shoreline, Megan frowned. Older girls? As in… Sarah? Maybe Sarah did plan to go but didn’t even mention it. “Well, Brian’s right. You could call Kate. Or even Amelia. She has Sarah with her, after all.” Pleased with herself for finding a way to pull Sarah back into the fold, even if not by her daughter’s own volition, Megan smiled.

  “Oh, perfect.” Matt dug his phone from his pocket and put a call through to his girlfriend. “Kate? Hi, how are you?” He nodded and glanced up at Megan. “Good, good. Hey, I have a huge favor to ask. I told Vivi I’d come pick her up and bring her back to the shore for that beach party tonight, but I’m just now leaving the field and—oh? You don’t mind? Yes, the keys are in the top drawer of your desk there.” He smiled at Megan. “Great, hon. Okay, I’ll see you at the Inn.” He clicked off and glanced back up. “Ferrying in and out from the Island is a hassle. I’ll tell you that. Soon enough, Viv will want her own boat. Mark my words.” He chuckled, but Megan’s smile faded.