Destiny Bay

by Sarah Abbot

  “I don’t care for your cryptic warnings, Ryan Brannigan, nor do I care to be brushed off. If you haven’t the courage to speak plainly, then don’t waste my time.”

  He circled the bar as easily as a shark. “Don’t question my courage. Ever.”

  “Don’t question my determination. Ever.”

  They were nose to nose, unmoving and surrounded only by the breathless silence of their rapt audience.

  “Why did you come?” he asked, his voice quiet with rage.

  Abby folded her arms, lifted her chin. She was suddenly more nervous than angry, suddenly more afraid than she cared to admit, but there was no way she was going to let him know that. “You know why I’m here. I want to find out everything I can about my mother, and I won’t leave until I do.”

  Ryan’s face flushed. “I’ll tell you the only thing you need to know about your mother, Abrielle. Celeste Rutherford was nothing but a common tramp.”

  The words shot out and snatched the breath from her, prowled around her in a wicked dance that left her head spinning, her heart racing. She blinked away the swath of tears that filmed her eyes, drew back her hand, and slapped his face with a ferocity that exploded from the pit of her soul. “You liar! How dare you talk about my mother that way! You didn’t even know her!”

  Ryan glared at her. He touched his cheek, looked at the hand he withdrew from the mottled flesh, as if expecting a streak of red to stain it. “I know all that matters. Now, so do you.”

  Abby snatched her purse and burst through the doors of the bar. Her tear-blind eyes darted left and right, and at last settled on the road directly ahead. The road Cora Brannigan lived on. Surely she’d put to rest her son’s horrible lies.

  She started running as if the words were nipping at her heels. It can’t be true! It just can’t!

  She heard other feet then. Someone was right behind her, his breath in her ears, his anger unfurling around her like a noxious cloud.

  Ryan grabbed her arm, turned her to face him. He was breathless. Sweat beaded his brow as he glared down at her. “You have no right being offended. You came here to find the truth about your mother, and I just gave it to you.”

  “Get your hands off me!” She shook free of him, breathless herself. “You’re a liar!”

  “Am I?” He stared into her eyes unrelentingly. There was no hint of dishonesty in their depths, but there was something else.

  The rage in her heart stilled as she saw a flicker of something unimaginable. Hurt. Vulnerability. The truth was right there in his eyes, and there was nothing angry about it.

  “Do you know that some nights I can still feel the hard floor beneath me, because my mother couldn’t afford child care, and I’d have to sleep behind the cash register while she worked nights at the grocery store? Do you know it took years for her hands to recover from cleaning other people’s toilets? Or that to this day I can remember the taste of cold, canned spaghetti, because heating the stuff over a candle was damn near impossible and the electricity had been cut off again—and why? Because the man who should have stepped up to the plate and looked after us was so enthralled by another woman, he forgot he had a family to feed!”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be whispered about behind your back? To be expected to fail because of who you are and who you came from? Do you know what it’s like to endure shame for being the bastard of a man who never wanted you?”

  Abby’s heart caught as she remembered the whispers about her mother’s suicide, the shame she felt in the knowledge that her mother hadn’t loved her enough to go on living, the abject loneliness. Only moments before, she had slapped him. Now, unimaginably, she wanted to reach out and touch him, to forgive him for his rage and tell him, I understand. Because she did understand. She’d been there.

  “Ryan?” she asked softly, her fury draining away from the tender parts of her soul, uncloaking the compassion that only another abandoned child could know.

  Ryan’s mask reappeared. He was stony again, though lit by the red haze of resentment. “Your mother snatched Douglas McAllister and left my mother without a dime to put food on our table,” he said through clenched teeth. “I was born a bastard, and don’t think for a moment that I don’t know where blame ought to be placed.”

  Where has he gone? The real, feeling Ryan Brannigan I just witnessed?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, taking a step back, feeling bruised and dizzy from the ricocheting emotions that pummeled her insides.

  “I’m talking about the legendary Celeste Rutherford,” he shouted. “I’m talking about the woman who waltzed into town and stole my mother’s chance to give her son his father’s name, who stole her dignity.”

  Cora! The woman Douglas threw over was Cora!

  Abby froze, felt the blood in her veins do the same as it seemingly slowed to a labored halt. Can it be true? What had Franklin O’Donnell said? That the artist had thrown over another woman for her mother; that people had called her names.

  And all this time Cora had held her silence, had welcomed her kindly and even assisted her in her quest!

  Abby grasped at her midsection, feeling suddenly ill. “I…I—” Her voice caught, she swallowed, squeezing her eyes tightly closed. She wouldn’t, couldn’t let him see her cry. When she opened them at last, she caught a flicker of something in his eyes, something she had never seen there before.

  Was it pity? Did he actually pity her?

  Well, she wouldn’t give him the opportunity. The last thing she needed was his pity.

  She deliberately paced her breathing. She wouldn’t reveal her distress to him; she couldn’t. To give him that satisfaction would be completely unthinkable.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to know?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” she said, blinking tears from her eyes. “I’d like to know how on earth you were raised by a woman like Cora Brannigan, because right now, you bear absolutely no resemblance to her. And if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about the lack of a name. I’d be willing to bet that you’re your father’s son, through and through!” Abby turned her back to him and started to run.

  Chapter Eleven

  All she could think about was escape. All she wanted to do was pack her bags and follow Ryan Brannigan’s suggestion to the letter.

  Abby ran around the corner of a warehouse, leaned on the mustard-colored wall, then slid down its length. The rosebushes she settled between were mercifully bereft of thorns, and the mulch beneath her smelled of forests.

  Abby shook her head, marveling at the wicked twist of fate that revealed Cora as the woman her mother had replaced. She caught her head in her hands and concentrated very hard on breathing in and out.

  When at last she could, she rose, rounded the corner of Suffolk Lane and skirted the village, eyes intent upon locating Cora Brannigan’s house in the twilight darkness.

  She passed stately homes once owned by sea captains and the sturdy, simple abodes of long-dead whalers, and at last huffed up and found the periwinkle blue colonial that Cora had described to her.

  By the light of the rising moon, she could make out shutters the color of goldenrod and a bevy of petunias fluttering in window boxes.

  Abby placed her hand on the glowing white wood of the gate, hesitating as the smallest of movements caused the gate to squeak on its hinges.

  A head poked around the corner.

  “Abby! You’re here. Come round the back, love. I’ve just got home, myself.”

  Abby flushed with apprehension, felt a sudden slickness beneath her palms. She wiped them against her thighs and strode through the gate, hoping she looked better than she felt. The last thing she needed was to have Cora coddling her.

  She walked around the house, saw the garden looking mysterious in the moonlight, and felt her stomach wince with a surge of acid. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what, dear?”

  “About
my mother and Douglas McAllister. About you and my mother and Douglas McAllister.”

  Cora looked at Abby, hands falling to her sides. “Who told you?”

  Abby ascended the steps, head at a thoughtful angle. “The artist’s son.”

  “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan,” Cora said, rummaging for her keys. The hinges of the screen door squealed as she pulled it open. “I told him to leave well enough alone.”

  Abby’s hands were trembling almost as badly as her stomach. She felt ill at having relied upon Cora as a landlady. All the while, Cora had never let on—not for a moment—that she had regarded Celeste Rutherford as anything but a friendly acquaintance. “You should have told me.”

  Cora’s face softened with concern. “Come in, dear.”

  Abby allowed herself to be steered into the kitchen and seated in a captain’s chair.

  “Tea?”

  “No, thank you.” She folded then unfolded her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I saw no need for it,” Cora said, her tone gentle. Pretense seemed to fall away from her, every hint of discomfort vanished. Abby felt—for the first time since meeting her—that Cora was being 100 percent truthful.

  “My son’s the one who can’t stop dwelling on the past, not I.”

  “Tell me,” Abby said. “Tell me everything. Don’t worry about hurting me or offending me. Don’t worry if I cry.” She leaned forward, her expression raw with need. “Cora, I only want the truth—every bit of it, no matter how much it hurts. Celeste Rutherford was my mother, and all I’ve ever been told is half-truths. Tell me. Please.”

  Cora gazed down at the woodgrain that swirled over the tabletop, hands nestled around a piping cup of tea. She was silent for so long, Abby wondered if Cora had forgotten she was there.

  “It took me six long months to convince him to marry me,” she said at last. “Six months of groveling—I disguised it as reminders of his Christian duty, honor and love, mind—but it was groveling, nonetheless.

  “I was nineteen, pregnant, unmarried and terrified.”

  Abby stared at her thoughtfully. “It’s hard to imagine you terrified by anything.”

  “Oh, trust me on this.” She placed a cup in front of Abby and stirred in a splash of milk. “When he finally agreed to marry me, I was so overjoyed I convinced myself that he would grow to love me the same way I loved him—and I did love him something fierce. Heaven only knows why.

  “I loved him regardless of his faults—and believe you me, they were many; not the least of which was a roving eye. Ah, the more fool I, for believing it was harmless.” Cora stared into the depths of her teacup, as if drawing a faraway memory into focus. “Douglas was poor, and too proud to fish. Fancied himself better than all the rest of us, I guess. He’d sit on the corner of Hyde Street and Brigantine Way, paintings propped around him, trying to sell his wares to the folks with money…the fishermen,” she said, smiling sadly at the irony.

  “At last, he accepted a summer job teaching at a college in New York. For me, he said. Me and the baby.” Cora stared into space. “He sent a few checks back to me. I rented a tiny apartment, painted a nursery blue and hoped for a boy. Then the letters stopped. It wasn’t long after that he came home with the young art student he’d met. Brought her home to Destiny Bay. His muse.”

  Abby bit her lip. “My mother.”

  Cora nodded. She patted her hair, tucked a strand behind her ear, and smiled sadly. “I could hardly blame Douglas for loving her. Celeste Rutherford was the most beautiful woman I had ever clapped eyes upon—and lovely, too—kind, like. How could I blame any man for falling head over heels?”

  Abby lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “I feel…guilty, somehow.”

  Cora wafted the suggestion away with a wave of her hand. “I forgave them both, long before you were even thought of, dear. Life’s too short to hold grudges.”

  But not long enough to forget a broken heart. Not completely. “I doubt your son agrees with you.”

  The open face clouded significantly. “Ah, now there’s a horse of a different color.” Cora refilled her cup. “Ryan is a sort who feels things deeply, you know?”

  “No need to convince me on that point.”

  “Douglas was a miserable father, but Ryan always hoped that he’d come ’round. The fact that he never did was unforgivable to Ryan.”

  “I think I understand how he felt, in a way. My mother took my father from me, too.”

  Cora looked startled. “In what way?”

  “He loved her so much that when she died, so did he. In every way that matters, anyway. Just left his body here to mourn her loss. I was raised by my grandmother, who was wonderful…but I still wished I’d had a mother and a father who still had love to give.”

  “It seems Celeste Rutherford was unforgettable to many,” Cora said quietly.

  “And I’m the only one who can’t remember her.”

  “Oh, surely you remember her, love?”

  Abby shrugged. “I was a baby when she…” No need to sugarcoat it, Abby. “When she killed herself.”

  Cora stiffened. “Oh, Abby. I had no idea.”

  Abby felt the fight drain out of her. “My grandmother never touched her room. It’s still the same to this day. That’s where I used to go to talk to her.”

  Cora placed her hand on Abby’s. “I’m sure she heard you, lass.”

  Abby wanted so much to believe she had. “I found this old bottle of perfume. It was thick and rancid by the time I discovered it, but I could tell it once smelled like gardenias. I still have that bottle.” She ran a finger beneath her eye, caught a ripe tear on its tip. “I wore her scarves, I cuddled her winter coats. They all smelled like gardenia, at first.”

  “Why?” Cora asked, her brow furrowed. “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “No one knows. That’s why I’m here, to find out anything I can. I can’t leave any clue unsearched. It’s my own heart at stake, Cora. This is for me as much as it’s for her.”

  Cora nodded slowly. “My son was rude, but only because he struggles with a cross of his own. I know he wouldn’t have hurt you like he did if he knew your story. Forgive him his anger, will you? You don’t need to carry the weight of that along with what you already shoulder.”

  Abby shook her head. “I don’t know if I can. You didn’t hear the things he said.”

  “I can only imagine. He’s a passionate person, aye?” She smiled sadly, picked a cookie from the plate and stared at its crinkled surface. “Serves him well in some respects, but it fires up his anger something fierce. I’d never tell him so, but he’s inherited his father’s temperament every whit.”

  “I’ll try to forgive him, but only because he’s your son, and you love him.”

  “Like nothing you could imagine,” Cora said, a hint of her own passion rising. She smiled gently, patted Abby’s hand. “You just leave this business with Ryan to me, aye? I have a way of making him see reason.”

  Abby was skeptical, but she smiled and nodded. “If you can do that, you’re either a miracle worker or a wizard.”

  “I’d have to say wizard, since my ways depend upon my own secret alchemy.”

  Wizardry indeed—Abby’s anger was slowly dissolving in a mist of curiosity, and Cora had dispelled it with her soothing voice and her mysterious promise. “What kind of alchemy?” she asked cautiously.

  “Like I said, you just leave that to me.”

  Ryan Brannigan slid down the frame of his mother’s door, landing with a dull thud at its base.

  He had come here with the intention of heading Abby off, of forbidding her to go to his mother and discuss what he had just revealed to her. The last thing Cora needed was to be reminded of that painful phase of her life.

  But he had been too late.

  Because he’d gone to the wharf to breathe, regroup, collect his scattered emotions, he had given Abby precious time to get to Cora. By the time the thought occurred to him that Abby would likely go to her in order to ver
ify his story, it was too late. She was in there, talking about Celeste Rutherford…to his mother.

  What else should I expect, he had seethed silently. Since when do society princesses have a clue how to fight fair?

  His blood was on the verge of boiling when he’d heard the timbre in her voice, the tremulous query about her mother, then the admissions that followed: Celeste’s suicide, a coat to cuddle, a beloved fragrance, turned rancid with time.

  Ryan felt a hitch in his heart as he remembered another child, other questions. I saw Dad at the market today, Mom. He said I was getting real tall. Do you think he’d come to my birthday if I invited him? And: See what I drew, Mom? Do you think Dad would like it? And, later: No. I don’t want to go to his funeral. I’m just glad he’s dead.

  A volley of memories thudded within him, pounded against the surface of his mind with a howling, internal commotion that had made his hands tremble on his knees.

  Left behind. Just like him.

  He could see her hands through the screen—all that was visible from his vantage point. Delicate fingers twisting and knotting a tissue. The sight of it stirred something visceral within him, something that found its home in his soul…that same twisting and knotting was within him, now.

  This woman, his enemy, was suddenly not.

  Pure understanding thundered through his being. They were not so different, he and she, except for the fact that what he had seen as weakness and despised, she had seen as need, and accepted. Where he had felt hatred, she had felt longing, and all at once, he understood the heart of her, understood why she had come to his cloistered oasis in the Atlantic, and it had nothing to do with destroying his carefully ordered peace.

  Much as he still despised her mother, he had no choice but to acknowledge that Abby wasn’t her mother.

  Not once in his entire life had anyone in the village of Destiny Bay compared him to the man who fathered him. Not in his wild childhood, his rebellious youth, the heart-breaker years that followed—not once had anyone said the waited-for: You’re just like your father. That was a measuring stick he’d never desired to be held to, and yet, it could have easily been done, as Abby had pointed out.