Herons Landing

by JoAnn Ross

  She laughed. “And here I thought we were the first kids to do that.”

  He winked. “Who did you think broke the windows in the first place?”

  “Truly, that would be wonderful,” she said, imagining his paintings hanging on the walls. They’d be perfect. “Of course I’ll have your gallery business cards to hand out.” Another idea occurred to her. “Would you maybe, just possibly, consider doing a monthly wine/painting class during the summer months? I could add it to the events calendar.”

  “I don’t have to think about it. I’ve considered the idea before but haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it. Sounds like fun, and anything that brings people into the gallery goes right back into the hands of local artists, which supports the town. Win-win.”

  “Thank you.” Brianna felt the sheen burning in her eyes and wondered how she could have stayed away so long. She was so fortunate to have been born into such a supportive, loving family. Which had her thinking of Seth and his father’s always difficult relationship and hoping that she wasn’t going to make it worse.

  While they all seemed enthusiastic, with even Quinn seeming to have gotten on board, she thought she viewed seeds of worry in her mother’s hazel eyes.

  * * *

  AS THE MEN worked in the kitchen, Brianna sat with her mother and grandmother on the front porch, watching the stars wink in a midnight blue sky.

  “I’d forgotten how many stars there are,” she said, as one went streaking across the sky over the snowcapped mountains that gleamed in the slanting silver light of the moon.

  “You don’t see anything like this in the city, that’s for sure,” Sarah agreed. “I missed it when I was away at college.”

  “I thought I wanted bright lights,” Brianna murmured, as much to herself as to her mother. “That’s why I left.”

  “Is it?”

  Her mother’s quiet question surprised her. Since changing her mind her final year of college, she’d probably bored everyone past tears with her talk of bright lights and big cities. How could her mother not remember that?

  “Of course. Why did you think I left?”

  “I doubt there’s ever just one reason any of us do anything. In your case, I think it was to explore new territory, to test yourself to see if you were up to the challenges without the support of your family and friends.” Her mother took a sip of her wine. “Small towns can be wonderfully safe places to grow up, but there comes a time when most of us need to test ourselves. Or, as your grandfather would say, test our mettle.”

  “That’s it, exactly,” Brianna said. And now that she’d proven herself, to herself, she was ready for the next chapter in her life.

  “And you’ve succeeded, spectacularly.” Sarah ran a tender hand over the top of Brianna’s head. “But I also always thought another reason you took off to parts unknown had something to do with Seth and Zoe.”

  “What?”

  “You changed your life plans shortly after their engagement.”

  “I guess.” She thought back to the timeline. “But it wasn’t because of that. It was simply triggered by what I’d learned in school opening up my mind.”

  “Which is what college is supposed to do. But did you ever consider that you didn’t want to have to see them together every time you came home? To have to stand by, watching them build the life you’d once dreamed of?”

  “I was a young girl when I had those dreams.”

  “As was I when I fell in love with your father.”

  “But he refused to let your relationship get serious for years. Because of the Mannion/Harper feud.”

  “People like to tell the story that way,” her grandmother, who’d been quietly rocking, seeming to only half listen, jumped in. “But I wouldn’t call it a feud. At least not in our branch of the family. Though I will admit that Jerome and I weren’t real happy about our girl falling in love with your father.”

  “Because you worried he’d keep me here,” Sarah said. “I’m not sure either of you ever understood what a big responsibility it was being the first Harper to go to college.” She looked down into her wine, as if it were a window into the past. “The family had so much invested in my succeeding.”

  “We did and we didn’t,” Harriet said. “You did more than your part, mostly paying your own way and getting all those scholarships and work study at that fancy school back east and even on to Oxford, but your father and I wanted you to do better than we had. Which is what all parents want for their children.”

  “Your great-great-grandfather was a fisherman who risked his life much of the year in the Bering Sea.” Her mother picked up the story Brianna knew by heart. “A sea that took his life and left his wife, Ida, a widow with a six-month-old boy his father had never seen, along with a toddler daughter and four-year-old son.”

  Ida Harper had lost her daughter at age eight to the Spanish flu, and the older son would be killed in the Japanese bombing of Alaska’s Dutch Harbor. The youngest, Jacob, Brianna’s great-grandfather, who’d also taken to the sea, had passed away in his sleep at the ripe old age of one hundred three.

  But Jacob’s son, Jerome, with constant pressure from his parents, had raised the family’s lot a notch by owning not just one, but a fleet of three wooden fishing boats. While life had gotten considerably better for that branch of the Harpers, both Brianna’s grandfather and grandmother had still wanted more for their only child.

  Brianna had heard the story how, having lost three children to miscarriages, and another to stillbirth, Sarah had been Harriet and Jerome’s “miracle daughter.” Thus the expectations to succeed that Brianna suspected her mother had carried on her shoulders most of her life.

  Which might be why she’d never pressured any of her own children.

  “Your grandfather didn’t have anything against your father, personally,” Harriet stressed. “I didn’t have any problem with him being a Mannion, either. Which, like I said, is an overexaggerated disagreement that didn’t start because of that vote on the town’s name, like most people think, but like most foolishness concerning men, over a woman.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what I was always told,” Sarah said. “That Nathaniel Harper and Gabriel Mannion were both courting the same woman, Edna Mae Kline. Who chose the Mannion boy. And while I can attest to the fact that some of the Harpers have long memories, your grandparents believed that I was like you turned out to be, destined to live in big cities, doing important things.”

  “Well, we were wrong about that,” Harriet allowed. “What you’re doing here, in your hometown, is just as important as heading up some English department in a big Ivy League university.”

  Sarah smiled. “Thank you, Mother. I like to think so.”

  “Do you know the most important thing I did last week?” Brianna asked. Then answered her own rhetorical question. “Arranged, and attended, a mid-six-figure high-society wedding.”

  “Well, although I don’t understand when or why weddings became such major productions, I suppose it was important to the bride,” Harriet said.

  “It was hard to tell since she wasn’t talking. Being a dog. Though she did take a nip at the groom when he tried to mount the bridesmaid.”

  Her mother, who’d just taken a sip from her glass, spit out wine. It wasn’t easy to rattle Sarah Mannion. Brianna felt a spark of pride that she’d come up with a first for her. “Well.” She bit her lip, obviously trying to keep from laughing.

  “It’s okay. You can laugh,” Brianna said. “It was a circus. Or a zoo. But my point is that I was merely catering to rich people who didn’t have anything better to do than throw their money around to prove their importance.”

  “I’m sure some of them must have supported charities and done good things with their money,” her mother said diplomatically.

  “There was a family, the Johnsons, outside
of Port Angeles, we bought our pork from when growing up,” Harriet volunteered. “When I was just a girl, about ten, maybe eleven, they had themselves a big barn dance to celebrate breeding their prize hog with a blue-ribbon sow they’d had trucked in all the way from Iowa. Guess your dog wedding party doesn’t sound all that different. The ham dinner they served all the guests ended up worthy of that shindig.”

  This was why she’d come home. Not the scenery, which was famous, nor the quaint, familiar town, nor the local history. But to be with her family, most of all these two women who could always look on the bright side and find good in anyone. Even, probably, Doctor Dick.

  She leaned over and kissed first her grandmother’s cheek, then her mother’s. “I love you both.”

  “And I love you,” her grandmother said.

  Warmth flooding from Sarah’s hazel eyes went straight into Brianna’s heart. “I love you, too, darling. I know it’s old-fashioned, especially coming from someone who’s taught feminist literature and believed every word, but a part of me hopes that you’ll settle in back here, be loved by a wonderful man and give me grandchildren to spoil.”

  “You never spoiled any of us.” But, oh, how her mother had loved each and every one of them, encouraging her four sons and daughter to seek their own destinies.

  “It’s different with grandchildren,” Harriet said with the authority of age. “Dinah Foster—you remember her, she owns Dinah’s Diner—once told me that the reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

  Brianna laughed. And felt a tug she hadn’t felt since Zoe had emailed her from Afghanistan, telling her all about her plans to start making babies with Seth as soon as she got home. She hadn’t given all that much thought to children. In her profession—former profession, she corrected herself—it hadn’t seemed practical. Plus, there was always the pesky little detail of needing a guy to make a baby and again, with her long hours and changing cities every few years, anytime a casual relationship looked as if it might turn serious, she’d break it off. Better to end early than face a divorce down the road.

  “Sorry, Mom, but you’re going to have to talk to one of your sons. Because I’m going to be too busy getting Herons Landing B and B going to take time out to even date. Let alone procreate.”

  “I’m not going to push. But—” she held up a hand to forestall any objection “—if you still have feelings for Seth, if I were you, I wouldn’t wait too long to act on them.”

  “Seriously? My mother wants me to jump the widower of my best friend?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. But your grandfather did have a point. It was obvious to everyone except probably Seth and Zoe, who only had eyes for each other, that you had a crush on Seth.”

  “Like I said, I was a girl.” Yet, as her mother had pointed out, she had decided against returning to Shelter Bay about the time Zoe and Seth had gotten engaged. Could she have been avoiding watching the two people she loved most, outside her family, build their perfect picket fence, two-point-five children, married life together? “But Seth and I are just friends.”

  “Your father and I are proof that friends to lovers to life mates can be a real thing,” her mother reminded her. “Just saying.”

  Then, having said her piece, Sarah switched gears. “Now, tell me all about your plans for the B and B. I do hope you’ll let me help.”

  Grateful for the change in subject, Brianna polished off her wine. “Believe me, I’m counting on it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HARPER CONSTRUCTION WAS located in a stand-alone building at the end of Old Fort Road, right before the jetty that housed the lighthouse. Unlike many in the main part of town, the two-story building had been built with Western cedar siding milled on the site. Over the years it had expanded, but while the Harpers might be a bit difficult to deal with from time to time—at least if you were a Mannion—they were artisans, who’d built the additions to look as if they were part of the original structure.

  The porch was wider than when Brianna had left town. And the siding, which had been a faded brown, had been restained a soft gray with toned-down blue trim. The door was a deeper burgundy red than her parent’s bright one, and green landscape bushes had been added at the foundation. The Harper Construction sign hung on a black wrought iron frame topped with a pelican on a post.

  An old-fashioned ship’s bell rang as she opened the door. Which wasn’t needed since the receptionist was seated behind a desk facing the front door.

  “Well, if it isn’t Brianna Mannion!” A pleasingly plump elderly woman with a cloud of pink-cotton-candy-hued hair accented with purple streaks jumped up and ran over to practically smother Brianna in a huge bear hug. “I heard you were in town and was hoping to see you before you headed off again so soon like last time. Not that I’d blame you for leaving, since that was such a sad time and your mama said you were as busy as a beaver down there in Vegas.”

  “It’s good to be home.” Brianna’s words were muffled by her face being buried in Ethel Young’s pillowy bosom.

  “Home’s where the heart is, that’s for sure.” Ethel backed away, put her hands on Brianna’s shoulders and gave her a long look, from the top of her head down to her feet and back up again. “You brought all that desert sunshine with you.”

  “I need to go shopping.” Brianna had decided that all her Las Vegas casual clothes, like today’s red, orange and hot-pink paisley leggings and hot-pink tunic, were not going to work if she was planning to spend every day at Herons Landing while it was being remodeled.

  “Well, you’re just in luck. Doris and Dottie Anderson have the cutest dress shop. The Dancing Deer. They’re identical twin sisters who originally had a shop in Coldwater Cove. But then they retired when they got an offer to sell the store to some Seattle software mogul who wanted to escape city life. To hear them tell it, after six weeks of watching daytime TV and puttering around in their gardens, they realized they’d made a big mistake.

  “So, they moved down to Oregon, started over and were doing well, when a tidal wave took out their shop and the greedy owner refused to renew their lease. So, looking for a new place, and being originally from Washington, they decided to settle here. They’re a hoot.” She laughed. “You’re going to love them. They’re probably in their nineties now, and still going strong. We should all hope to live as long.”

  “That’s a great story, except for the tidal wave,” Brianna said when Ethel, whom she guessed to be in her eighties herself, paused to take a breath. “I was going to order some things from the internet, but I’ll start there.”

  “Oh, Doris and Dottie will fix you right up!” She ran a plump hand laden with jewelry over the front of her purple shirt, which featured a red hat with Red Hot Grandma spelled out in red rhinestones. “It’s where I got this, for my Red Hat Club outings.” She patted Brianna’s arm. “But don’t worry. They’ve got lots of clothes for a pretty young thing like you.”

  She paused for another breath, then said, “I guess you’re here to see Seth.”

  “I am. We have an appointment.” Brianna lifted the small insulated cooler she’d brought with her. “And lunch.”

  “Do you happen to have your mama’s chicken in there?”

  “Yep. And her potato salad, my brother’s wings and rhubarb pie.”

  Ethel nodded her approval. “Best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she repeated what Kylee had said. Before Brianna could clarify that their meeting was strictly business, she’d turned and walked across the room to a double door. “I’ll just go fetch him.”

  She wasn’t after Seth Harper’s heart, Brianna assured herself. But that didn’t stop her own from taking a little jump when he came out of the office. The heck with lunch. The man looked delicious enough to eat up with a spoon.

  * * *

  THE GOOD NEWS was that Seth hadn’
t suffered any nightmares last night. The bad news was that was probably because he hadn’t slept long enough to get into REM mode. His mind had gone round and round like a hamster on a wheel, spinning between the dread of taking all Zoe’s stuff home from his in-laws to Bri being back in town.

  One thing he never would’ve admitted to anyone, especially his wife, was that he’d started to notice Brianna Mannion. All through their childhood, she’d just been that girl who’d palled around with her brothers and him. She’d also been gutsier than any girl he’d ever met. Hell, Seth had known guys too chicken to go into that ramshackle old house.

  “I ain’t ’fraid of no ghosts,” she’d quoted the Ghostbusters movie that first time, before squaring her skinny shoulders and marching right into the door that had lost its padlock long before Seth had started exploring all the nooks and crannies.

  While her brothers were acting like fools, leaping out of dark hallways and rooms trying to scare the shit out of each other, except for that little encounter with the bat she’d ignored the dust, the cobwebs, the signs of rats nesting in the gnawed-up upholstery. Instead, she’d talked to the house like it was a person, sympathizing with its neglect, assuring it that someday she’d come back and save it and it would be beautiful again. Although he hadn’t realized it then, they’d bonded over Herons Landing. While her affection for the place seemed to be mostly emotional, he’d been drawn to the workmanship, pointing out things that no one else was willing to listen to him talk about.

  Then one day she’d come to the school Christmas party wearing a fuzzy red sweater and a perky green-and-red-plaid pleated skirt that had showed off her surprisingly long legs and yeah, he’d noticed her in a different way. A way that didn’t have anything to do with coffered ceilings, dado rails or plaster molding.

  He’d spent the entire Christmas break thinking about what those suddenly budding breasts might look like beneath the stoplight-red sweater, at the same time feeling guilty because a guy wasn’t supposed to think about a friend that way. Fortunately, his family didn’t interact with hers, so he wasn’t in danger of screwing things up by acting weird around her before he could figure out what he was thinking. And, more importantly, what he was feeling. Even if she turned out to be thinking the same stuff about him, there was one—no, make that four—problems looming on the horizon.