Even as she murmured the apology, she wasn’t entirely sure what it was for. Was it for being so judgmental? For not making amends? Or simply because now they would never have the chance to recapture the warmth and closeness that had once existed between them?
Overwhelmed when she finally stepped into the bedroom, Hannah moved quickly to the overstuffed chair by the window and breathed in the room’s lavender-and-sea-breeze scent. For one fleeting moment she was able to imagine that her mother was still in the room and think of all the things that should have been said. Why hadn’t she realized in time just how much she was losing by holding on to so much bitterness and anger?
“Mama, I am so sorry I judged the choices you made,” Hannah whispered. “I’m sorry for holding you accountable for a decision that Dad made. I wish I’d been a better daughter to you, the kind of daughter that Kelsey’s been to me. We had that relationship once and I let it slip away.” No, the truth was, she had carelessly thrown it away.
For just an instant, the scent of lavender seemed to be stronger and a breeze fanned her cheeks, drying her tears. Then the scent faded and the breeze stilled, leaving her feeling more peaceful than she’d felt in years. It was impossible to explain the sensation that she’d been forgiven. Perhaps, in reality, she’d simply forgiven herself.
Either way, she felt comforted. Brushing the last of the tears from her cheeks, she stood up and began emptying drawers, creating piles of clothes to be discarded and another of things that could be donated to the church thrift shop. From time to time, she lingered over a remembered sweater or a favorite scarf, setting some of those things aside for herself or for Gran or Kelsey.
When she found the drawer filled with papers, she almost closed it again to leave that chore for another day. Something, though, kept her from doing that. She took the neatly bundled papers and spread them on the bed, trying to determine if there was any rhyme or reason to them.
Some were related to the inn, papers that should have been in files. Hannah set those aside to take to the office downstairs. Some, amazingly, were her old school papers—essays and tests on which she’d gotten an A, report cards all the way back to elementary school, even a few drawings she’d done in crayon.
Next she came across an envelope marked “Hannah’s stories.” Puzzled, she opened it to find half a dozen amateurish attempts at writing children’s stories, along with accompanying sketches. As she read through them, she winced at the awkward writing, but to her amazement, the stories themselves weren’t bad. She recognized that they were stories she’d made up for Kelsey, then written down at her daughter’s urging. How they’d gotten here was beyond her. Had Kelsey brought them with her and left them behind? And why had her mother saved them? Why had she saved any of these mementoes after the way Hannah had abandoned her with hardly a backward glance?
As she sat there fingering the old pages, she thought she understood. After all, she herself was a mother, and no matter what happened between Kelsey and her in the future, there were a thousand and one things she would treasure. In fact, she had papers just like this back home in New York. She still had a framed childhood drawing of Kelsey’s on the wall in the hallway leading back to their bedrooms, right alongside signed and numbered prints from rising stars in the New York art world. Saving things like that was just something mothers did, and it made her feel a fresh connection to her own mom.
Reaching into the drawer for the final packet of papers, she saw at once that these were letters—unopened letters. And they were all addressed to her. Shaking, she studied the handwriting and knew at once who they were from: her dad.
Two seconds ago, she’d let everything from the past go and now this. This was fresh evidence that her mother had withheld letters meant for her, letters that might have made everything right. She felt queasy just looking at the small bundle tied with a pink ribbon. Ironically, she remembered that exact ribbon from a dress her mom had made for her for her sixth birthday, a day her dad had brought a pony home for all her friends to ride. It had been the most memorable birthday she’d ever had. Somehow seeing that ribbon around these letters made it even worse.
Unable to stay in the room another moment, she bolted for the door, the letters clutched in her hand. She ran down the stairs and out onto the porch, pausing at the top of the steps to catch her breath.
“Hannah, what is it?” Gran asked, starting to rise from her rocker. “Hannah, are you okay?”
“Not now, Gran. Not now.” She forced herself to keep walking, crossing the street to the beach, then plodding through the deep dunes until she reached the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. She kicked off her shoes and, still clutching the letters, kept going. The cold water was a shock on her bare feet, but at least it told her she was still alive. That was better than the dead-inside feeling that had come over her when she’d realized what the letters meant—that her dad had tried to stay in touch, but her mother had prevented it.
The worst thing about making the discovery now was that there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t scream at her mom over the betrayal. For all she knew it was even too late to find her father and make things right with him.
After she’d been walking for nearly an hour, she finally began to feel calmer. She turned slowly and headed back toward home, but when she was about to pass a bench in the park at the end of Main Street not far from Lila’s, she decided what she needed most was a few more minutes alone to really think about her discovery. She had just enough money stuffed in her pocket for a cherry snow cone from Lila’s. She bought one, and with that refreshing treat in hand, she sat on the bench and set the letters next to her, eyeing them with a mix of curiosity and dismay.
Eventually, she tossed the snow cone wrapper in the trash, then picked up the letters and untied the ribbon. It was a long time, though, before she could bring herself to open the first one, after making sure that she would be reading them in chronological order.
“Hi, Hannah Banana,” she read, and found herself tearing up again at the nickname only her dad had ever used. “I don’t know if or when you’ll read this, but I just want you to know that I love you and miss you. Someday, when you’re old enough to understand, I hope your mom will explain why I had to go away. I hope when you know the whole story, you’ll forgive me. Love you. Dad.”
There were only five letters in all, the first two written months apart right after he’d gone. The rest had been sent over a span of years. She’d been eighteen when the last one had been sent. The theme was always the same, that he loved her and hoped she’d forgive him.
Though there were no return addresses on any of them, Hannah studied the postmarks. She was stunned when she realized that most had been mailed from nearby cities on the mainland, cities she’d been in hundreds of times as a child and even a few times recently.
Tying the letters back together, she practically ran back to the inn, ignoring Gran for a second time as she raced inside shouting for Jeff.
“Mom, what on earth?” Kelsey said, coming out of the office with Jeff on her heels. “What’s happened?”
“Can you find someone online?” she asked Jeff. “I mean, I know it’s possible, but can you do it? I’d do it myself, but my hands are shaking and I can’t even think straight.”
“I can try,” he said at once.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Kelsey asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“In a way, that’s exactly what’s happened,” she said, holding out the letters. “These are from your grandfather. Today’s the first time I’ve ever seen them.”
She heard a gasp then and turned to see Grandma Jenny grab onto a chair, her complexion ashen. Hannah stared at her in shock. “You knew about the letters?”
Kelsey went to her great-grandmother and helped her to a chair, scowling at Hannah. “Mom, not now!”
“When, if not now?” Hannah said, beyond being reasonable. “For years I thought my dad left and forgot all about me. Now I discov
er that there are letters that have been stuffed into a drawer for years.”
Gran brushed off Kelsey’s attempt to help her. “Did those letters tell you one single thing that your mother and I hadn’t told you?” Gran demanded. “We told you over and over that your dad loved you, that his leaving had nothing to do with you.”
“How can you say that? He was my father and he was gone. That had everything to do with me.”
“Would it have helped to see a piece of paper with a few words on it?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “Yes!”
Gran sighed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It would have raised more questions than it answered. Next you would have wanted to know where he was, when he’d be back, why you couldn’t see him or talk to him.”
“Of course I would have wanted to know all that,” she said.
Gran’s jaw set stubbornly. “You were too young to understand any of the answers.”
“What about later?” Hannah demanded heatedly. “Would I have been old enough at sixteen? Or when I graduated from high school? After college? When I got married? Last week?”
“Mom, stop it,” Kelsey said. “None of this is Grandma Jenny’s fault.”
“She knew about the letters and she went along with keeping them from me.”
“Your mother and I thought we were doing the right thing,” Gran said, the lines in her face deepening with anguish. “We really did. After a while, when you stopped asking about your father, we were even more convinced that it had been the wise decision. You’d moved on with your life.”
Jeff had listened to most of this in silence, but then he turned to Hannah. “What was your father’s name? Not Matthews, right, because your mother took back her maiden name after she’d divorced your dad and she changed your name, as well?”
“His name was Clayton Dixon,” Hannah said. “Do you think you can find him if he still lives in the area?”
“I already have,” Jeff told her.
All three women stared at him in shock. Hannah felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her.
“You have? Why?” Kelsey asked.
“Luke came to me right before he left and asked if I’d do an online search. He never said who the person was. He just gave me a name. I found this Clayton Dixon in Clearwater Beach.”
“So close,” Hannah murmured, “My God, all these years and he’s been right under my nose.”
“And yet he never came looking for you,” her grandmother said quietly. “Maybe before you cast blame on me or your mother, you should ask yourself about that. Other than that pitiful handful of letters right there, what effort did your father make to settle things with you?”
“He probably thought I’d never forgiven him because…” Her voice faltered when she realized he’d never given her a phone number to call or an address where she might find him. Maybe Gran was right. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to be found, hadn’t wanted anything more than to be able to tell himself that he’d tried to keep in touch. Perhaps that had been enough to absolve him of guilt in his own eyes, if not Hannah’s.
“Hannah, I’m sorry,” Gran said. “It was complicated. Sometimes even your mother and I had a hard time making sense of it.”
“Making sense of what?” Hannah asked. “Why did he leave?”
“That’s not for me to say,” her grandmother told her.
“But you know?”
She nodded.
“Then tell me,” she pleaded.
“I think if Jeff has located him and he’s so nearby, then you should see him for yourself. Let him tell you his side of it. That way you’ll never question whether I’ve told you the whole truth or some version of it that suits me.”
Hannah could see the sense of that, but she wanted to know now. Suddenly the importance of something that Jeff had said struck her. “Why was Luke looking for him? Had you told him about my father?” she asked her grandmother.
“No. Luke never mentioned him. Not to me.”
Hannah turned to Jeff. “Did he tell you why he wanted to find him?”
“Not a word, just that it was important,” Jeff replied.
“And you told Luke that you’d located my father before he left for Atlanta?”
Jeff nodded.
Hannah wondered if that had anything to do with Luke’s decision to leave earlier that Friday morning than he’d originally planned. Had he gone to see her father en route to Atlanta? If so, why?
“I need to speak to Luke,” she said, leaving them to go in search of her cell phone. It was ironic that something that had always been within reach was now missing when she needed it the most. She found it tossed in the drawer of her nightstand, but when she called Luke’s number, it went straight to voice mail.
“Luke, call me when you get this, please,” she said. “It’s important. No, it’s urgent!”
She tossed the phone back on the bed and paced around the perimeter of the room. The sensible side of her nature told her to wait for that call, not to do anything rash. If Luke had found her father, she needed to know what he’d learned before blundering into a situation she might not understand.
The need-to-know-now side of her overruled the sensible part.
Grabbing the cell phone and her car keys, she ran back down the steps.
“I’m going out,” she called out to anyone in the vicinity.
“Hannah, wait!” her grandmother commanded. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You can’t stop me,” she said.
“Fine, go,” her grandmother said dryly. “You won’t get far. The last ferry left an hour ago.”
“Well, damn and hell,” Hannah muttered in frustration.
“Watch your language,” Gran said automatically.
“Sorry.”
“I thought you were going to talk to Luke, anyway,” Gran said.
“I couldn’t reach him.”
“Well, he’ll check in before the night’s out, I imagine. In the meantime, why don’t we go inside and fix dinner for the two of us? All the guests are settled down for the evening. Kelsey and Jeff left a few minutes ago to walk into town. They probably won’t be back for hours. They said something about going to play bingo at the Catholic Church, just the way we used to do when you were little.” She smiled hesitantly. “Do you remember that?”
Hannah had forgotten that half the town played bingo at the church or at the fire department or wherever else it was being played on any given evening of the week. These were Seaview social events as much as fund-raisers for various organizations. She’d won a few prizes, including a treasured doll which was still in her room.
“I remember,” she said at last. “Maybe we should go with Jeff and Kelsey.” The last thing she wanted to do was sit across the kitchen table from her grandmother and be forced to bite back all the questions on the tip of her tongue. Gran had already made it plain that she was through talking about Hannah’s father, and that was the only thing Hannah wanted to discuss.
Disappointment spread across her grandmother’s face. “You go if you want to. I’m not up to going out tonight.”
The rare admission forced Hannah to drag herself out of her own misery to take a good look at Grandma Jenny. She did seem paler than usual. Instantly guilty, she said, “I’ll stay here, but why don’t I go in and fix something? You’ve been on your feet most of the day. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Gran looked skeptical. “You’re going to cook?”
“I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m totally incompetent in the kitchen. Kelsey and I never starved.”
“The way I hear it, she taught herself to cook, and before that the two of you survived on takeout.”
“It was not that bad. Actually, I fix a fairly edible omelet and I think there are some of Merilee’s biscuits left. How does that sound?”
“Filling,” Gran responded with a smile. “And it’s hard to talk with a mouthful of biscuit.”
Hannah smiled back at her. �
��My thought exactly.”
Somehow she’d manage to hold off asking all those questions about her father until she was with someone who might actually be willing to answer them.
Luke had two urgent messages from Seaview. The first was from a highly agitated Hannah, but it was the second one from Jeff that was most disturbing. Jeff admitted he’d told Hannah about finding her father for Luke. That explained Hannah’s message that had come in not two minutes earlier. He turned off his cell phone and tried to decide what to do. He could call Jeff and try to find out what was going on down there, or he could just call Hannah and face the music. She hadn’t sounded happy.
There was also a third choice, of course. He could ignore both calls and deal with the whole situation when he got back to Seaview. By then, perhaps he would have more news. His attempt to speak to Clayton Dixon on Friday had been fruitless. No one had been home at the address Jeff had given him. A neighbor said the Dixons were away for a few days but expected back on Sunday. With luck they would be there when Luke drove back from Atlanta on Monday morning. Yep, he liked that option the best. He’d already had his fill of messy confrontations since arriving in Atlanta.
Brad had been home when he’d arrived late Friday afternoon to pick up Gracie and Nate. This time he refused to back down when Luke told him to get out of his face.
“We need to have this out,” Brad said. “Not for me or you or even for Lisa, but for the kids. This house can’t be a battleground every time you turn up.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Luke told him. “You just need to clear out when I’m expected. I’ll be civil to Lisa, because she’s the mother of my children, but I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
“But we were—”
“Don’t say it,” Luke said. “Maybe we were friends at one time, but that didn’t stop you from hooking up with my wife while I was in Iraq. Maybe I can even understand that from her point of view. She was furious with me. You were handy. Who better to have an affair with and then throw it in my face? But what had I ever done to you, Brad?”
Seaview Inn Page 28