by Dana Mentink
Manny headed for the melee. He would be crushed between the two enraged fighters. Rosa had to act fast. She plopped Baggy down onto Bitsy’s lap and went for the nearest weapon she could find. Snatching up the can of nonstick cooking spray she sprayed the stuff in the faces of the brawlers.
They immediately let go of each other and covered their eyes.
“What is that?” Cy sputtered.
“Nonstick spray.” She held the can at the ready. “Do you need another squirt?”
“No,” they said in unison, rubbing at their eyes.
“Then get up. But I warn you, I will not hesitate to spray you again.”
“Sheesh, sis, you probably blinded both of us with that stuff. Do you know what kind of chemicals are in that?”
Manny helped Cy up. He had a scratch on his chin, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Pike climbed to his feet, a red mark darkening his cheekbone. Fury shone in his eyes.
“So holier-than-thou, aren’t you, Manny? Looking to destroy my family name when it was you who lusted after a married woman. My father was guiltless and you wanted him defamed so you could go after Bitsy.”
Cy let out a grunt and took a step forward, but Manny held him back. “Look, kid. I love your aunt, and I had a grudge against your dad, true enough, but you aren’t seeing things clearly and you never have.”
“Let’s stop this,” Rosa pleaded. Whatever box had been opened, it had unleashed the darkest memories of sins best left forgotten. The anger in the air felt like acid.
“It’s too late,” Pike said. “We’re all together here in this place for a reason. Now the truth is out about what you are, Manny.”
“No one is without guilt,” Bitsy said, her voice harder than Rosa had ever heard it before. “No one, young man.”
Pike stopped and looked at his aunt. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
She shook her head. “You’ve always been very black-and-white about things, like Ben was. It can blind you.”
“I think I’m seeing things clearly right now, all right.”
“No, Pike,” she said with a plaintive sigh. “You’re not, honey.”
Pike stared, his gaze wandering to the bulge in Bitsy’s pocket where she’d stowed the photos. “Those were Manny’s photos in Captain’s Nest, weren’t they?”
She pressed her hands together. Rosa struggled to breathe, as if the oxygen had been vacuumed from the room.
Manny gaped. “In the Captain’s Nest? All this time? And you kept it from me, Bitsy?”
Bitsy looked at her hands. “My brother, you, Pike, Leo. What could I do? How could I keep you all from getting hurt?”
Pike moved a step closer, realization dawning on his face. “Leo was the one who stole the film out of Manny’s car. He had the pictures developed and you know what’s on them.”
Her lips trembled.
“I think you need to give them to me, Aunt Bitsy.”
“No, Pike. It’s over and done. There’s no reason.”
He held his hand out. “There is every reason. Give them to me.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, honey, remember that,” she whispered. Her hands shook as she reached into her pocket and gave the pictures to Pike. “Your father felt he had no other choice.”
He opened the package and thumbed through them. Though nothing changed on his face, something flattened out in his eyes, extinguishing every emotion except one: a deep and penetrating despair.
Rosa reached a hand toward him. “Pike, what is it?”
He put the pictures back into the packet and tossed them to Manny, who caught them against his chest. “Here,” Pike said, tone hard and bitter. “I think these belong to you.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Manny said, staring at Bitsy.
Pike headed for the door.
“Wait, Pike.” Rosa started after him, but he waved her away.
He slammed the kitchen door with such force the house shook. For a long moment, everyone stared at the door, the panes of glass rattling.
Manny gripped the photos, tapping them absently on his thigh. “That was a long time coming.”
Bitsy’s face was ashen. “Not long enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ROSA DID NOT SLEEP that night, even with Baggy curled up between her ankles, snoring. Cy tossed and turned, as well, a thing unheard-of for her twin. The photos stored in the Captain’s Nest were exactly what Manny had claimed all those years ago, proof that Ben Matthews tampered with Poppy’s Dream to sink her for the insurance money. At least Manny now understood that Pike had no idea what his father had done. It was clear in the naked anguish of Pike’s eyes. The sound of the slammed door still vibrated in her ears.
She could not imagine how Pike must be feeling, learning the truth of what he had steadfastly refused to believe. His father, lawyer, mentor, champion, had been a liar and a fraud. Worse yet, the man was deceased and Pike had been cheated out of a chance to confront him. Bitsy had known the truth, as had Leo and Manny, and that probably shamed Pike all the more. The scene from the night before rolled across her memory in frightful detail.
It upset Rosa to learn that her father had been in love with Bitsy even while his own wife succumbed to alcoholism, but she found she could not be as angry as she would have been some two weeks before. Manny Franco had loved his wife enough to stay faithful—so much, in fact, that he kept returning to her as his mind slowly departed. Bitsy was right. Emotions did do their own thing sometimes.
Hers were rioting at the moment. All she could think about was Pike. Why? she wondered. Her father’s life mission, during his working years, had been to finish the case against Ben Matthews and now he had. Pike obviously had no involvement in the crime. The wound that surfaced on his face at the moment he saw the pictures haunted her, and she would give anything to comfort him.
Why? Why? Why?
Wind jiggled the shutters into a mournful symphony.
Because you love him.
It was the unavoidable conclusion and one she did not want to make. They had so much negative history, and she did not want to love again, not after Foster tore her heart in two. Yet she could no longer deny it. She loved Pike Matthews, and she’d watched him destroyed, right there in the kitchen of the inn that he cherished as much as she did, his spirit sunk like Poppy’s Dream.
Cy might have said, once upon a time before Piper, that they could get past it, that old wounds would heal in the face of relentless love. Piper’s betrayal had tarnished some of his bright optimism and made him more like Rosa, a realist. They would not get past it, because Pike was a proud man who now would want nothing to do with the Freako Francos who had hammered the nail in the coffin of his father’s guilt. So love for Pike would remain locked away in the silent place in her heart where no light ever shone.
She got up well before dawn. Cy was not in his bed. She scooped up the groggy dog and made her way downstairs where she found her brother painting the bathroom.
“It’s four in the morning.”
He continued to apply the paint in smooth, steady strokes. “I shouldn’t have hit him. I’m not a hitter.”
“He provoked you. I think he had a feeling about what was in that packet and he wanted to lash out, to keep it from happening, maybe.”
“No excuse.”
The smell of new paint was thick in the small space. “Cy, what do you think about Dad and Bitsy?”
His brush paused. “I think they made the right choice to stay faithful.”
“Me, too.” She twiddled with Baggy’s ear. “What do you suppose they’ll do now that they’re, er, unattached? I mean, with Dad’s condition and all?”
“They’re adults, Rosa. They’ll decide what’s best for themselves.”
Two adults free to make their
own choices, with many hard years behind them and even harder ones ahead. It was far from romantic. The reality of life often was.
“I’ll go check on Dad.”
“Already did. He’s asleep, but just to be safe, I hid the ladder.”
She sighed. “Good plan. I’ll go make some coffee.”
“I shouldn’t have hit him,” Cy repeated.
Rosa squeezed his shoulder. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, she thought. Maybe if her ferocious need to prove herself hadn’t brought them here, none of this would have happened. Cy’s beautiful, nail-framed mirror sat on the floor against the hallway wall, reflecting her brother’s efforts and the angst expressed on his generous face.
“I think Pike probably feels the same way.” She gave him a final squeeze and padded to the kitchen, filling a bowl for Baggy with some dog kibble she softened with chicken broth.
When the coffee was perking, she stepped out into the garden, inhaling the storm-washed air. The flowers were bowed down with moisture, bent and nearly broken from the deluge the day before. Rocky emerged from the henhouse, startling her, Stu just behind him.
“Sorry. Didn’t get the eggs gathered yesterday. Figured we’d get ’em before we clean up from the storm damage and start on the attic once everyone is up.”
She smiled. Faithful friends, these two. She was sorry she had not paid them more attention in the years she lived there as a teen. “Coffee’s perking inside and I think there’s cinnamon bread for toast. Help yourself.”
“Gonna scramble me and Stu some eggs. Stu does better with protein in the morning. That okay?”
“Only if you make extra for me and Cy. We’re early birds this morning, too.”
He gave her a thumbs-up.
“Rocky, you knew about the stolen things, and you kept Bitsy’s secret for her. I understand now why you did that. Leo didn’t make things easy on Bitsy.”
He shrugged. “People do bad things—doesn’t make ’em bad. Leo wasn’t bad.”
She sighed. “I suppose that’s true.”
“We were gonna make it right someday. Just never happened.”
The sky began to shift ever so subtly from black to gray, reflecting the puddles of water that dotted the delicate stone walkway. She felt the weight of the ruin all around her. “Everything is a real mess. I don’t know what to do.”
“Do?” He blinked, hoisting the basket. “Finish what you started.” She watched as he carried the collection of Esmerelda’s best work into the kitchen.
A light flicked on in the carriage house and Manny opened the door, clad in a pair of pajamas borrowed from Rocky. He wore the confused look she’d come to dread.
“Dad, do you need something?”
“Oh, I was just looking for your mother. She’s putting together all those silly scrapbooks in the kitchen, I think.”
Rosa took his arm and turned him back to his makeshift room. “I’ll check on her, I promise.”
“Dunno why she sticks down all those pictures. I told her we’re a great family and we don’t need photographic proof.” He laughed and allowed her to guide him inside, where he slid back underneath the covers.
“Go back to sleep for a while, Dad. It will be morning soon.”
“All right then, princess.”
She turned to go.
“I was, wasn’t I, Rosa?”
“Was what?”
“I was a good dad, wasn’t I?”
The vulnerability in his expression skewered her with a razor-sharp pain. A good dad? Who loved another woman? Left his children because he was too weak to handle their pain and his own? Losing his mind one slow minute at a time?
Flickers of memory danced through her heart like an old-time penny slide show. The tears, hurt, joy and hardship that rolled them along through the years. She recalled the feel of the sand in her mouth when she’d thrown herself down onto the beach and screamed her anger and betrayal into the ground, the smile on her father’s face when she’d learned how to stand on a surfboard. She relived the thick and weighty fear that she felt when she saw him standing on the slick roof in the middle of a howling storm. Was that what love was? A kaleidoscope of feelings that turned around one pivotal fact: in all the world, there was only one man whom she called Dad. Flawed, weak, selfish, nutty, genuine, ridiculous, petty. Dad.
“Yes,” she said, through eyes gone blurry with tears. “You were a good dad.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and pulled the blanket around him before she stumbled out into the garden again, mind and heart spinning.
Dad. Bitsy. Cy. Rocky. Stu...and Pike. What was she to do with this life that had been turned upside down and backward since she arrived a couple of short weeks ago? Filled with people she’d come to love and desperately did not want to disappoint.
Finish what you started.
What had she started here? Refurbishing an inn that had meant so much to people for more than a hundred and fifty years? Her eyes wandered over the regal house, the peaked roof, the Captain’s Nest that had preserved secrets across the generations. She’d thought she’d come back here to prove something to herself, that she was good enough professionally. She’d discovered something altogether different; that she was good enough to be loved and big enough to forgive. In spite of the ache in her heart at the thought of Pike.
Finish what you started.
It was not the will to win a contest anymore that fired inside her, but a desire to restore the home that was as battered as the hearts within it. It was all she could do, and by gum, she would do it.
She went into the house and cracked open a can of paint.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ROSA PAINTED, SANDED, taped and tidied her way through the day, until the dinner hour arrived and she found herself sitting at a table full of weary workers. Rocky and Stu reported that bee containment had been achieved and the last comb removed. That was a relief, since decorating while sporting a beekeeping hat had proved next to impossible. Shining jars of amber-colored honey now filled the cupboard, including the batch Bitsy insisted Rocky keep to sell at the farmers’ market.
Manny had scurried along in Rocky’s wake, reapplying Sheetrock and completing the taping and texturing work. The guest bath was once again painted and the incredible mirror installed, to everyone’s admiration. The Marmoleum floor remained in pristine condition. Rosa should have felt a sense of satisfaction at a job well done.
Instead, she looked at the kitchen, which she hadn’t really finished. The garden was still a storm-ravaged wreck since Stu and Rocky had been pulled away for hive removal duty, and the lovely first-floor bedroom, nicknamed the West Bedroom, was waiting to be tackled. Everywhere she looked, there were unfinished projects and none of them were the real root of her dissatisfaction.
Pike was gone.
His withdrawal cast a pall over her that would not lift even if she completed a project worthy of a House Beautiful cover. Bitsy felt it, too, she was sure. She’d overheard her aunt leaving message after message on Pike’s cell phone until the voice mailbox was full and would accept no more. Though Bitsy insisted on preparing a full dinner despite being on crutches, her face was lined with fatigue. At least Manny seemed to have forgiven her for her subterfuge.
Poor Bitsy. Was she regretting ever inviting Cy and Rosa back to Tumbledown? There had to be something Rosa could do to improve the situation.
“Hey, you two,” Rosa said to Manny and Bitsy. “Julio called to say there’s a marshmallow roast on the beach tonight. I think it’s a fundraiser for the Historical Society. He’s angling for funds for a new display to share the power of Mr. Herzberg’s written word or some such thing. Why don’t you go? I want to pick up a few things at the hardware store before it closes, so I’ll take you.”
Bitsy waved a hand. “Oh, I’m too tired, Rosa. You and Cy go, if you
want to.”
Manny straightened in his chair. “Hold on. Are you telling me that the leading lady of Tumbledown isn’t attending a fundraiser for the good of Mr. Herzberg’s legacy? I can’t be hearing that right.”
Bitsy laughed. “I’m not the leading lady of anything. Soon I won’t even be in charge of this inn anymore.”
Manny stood and gave a courtly bow. “All the more reason to celebrate while we can. Would you do me the honor of coming to the marshmallow roast with me, Bits? You don’t want an old man to go all by himself, do you? They’re all hoping for you to come, and I’ll be a sore disappointment, for sure.” He offered puppy-dog eyes and a quivering lip.
Rosa was relieved to see the sparkle return to Bitsy’s face. “How could I resist an offer like that?” She accepted his hand as he assisted her out of her seat. “I’ll go spruce up and get my warm coat. We’ll have to put my leg in a garbage bag or something, to keep the sand out.”
Cy loaned Manny a heavy jacket since his father’s had burned up in the trailer fire. Manny picked up the packet of photos from where it had been flung on the coffee table and pocketed it. “Better keep a closer eye on these this time.”
Rosa wanted to ask what he intended to do with the photos but she didn’t want to ruin the mood, so she pressed a kiss to his temple.
“What’d I do to earn that?”
“You cheered Bitsy up. And I happen to know you don’t even like marshmallows.”
He chuckled. “At least I’m still good for something.”
She smoothed his collar. “You’re good for Bitsy. I know it hurt you that she kept the photos a secret.”
He shrugged. “She had to protect her brother and her husband. I would have done the same for Katy, if I had to.”
A soft warmth banked in her chest. For however long it would last, her father would bring out the best in Bitsy, and she in him.
Cy elected to tear up the worn carpet in the West Bedroom instead of roasting marshmallows, so Rosa left Baggy in his care. The dog seemed happy to park himself in the hallway outside the project area to both keep an eye on his energetic owner and stay out of the danger zone. Now that the storm had passed, Baggy was his usual jolly self.