Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She gave a wobbly smile and was warmed when Anna reached out and squeezed her hand.

  A moment passed before she could trust her voice to continue. “Right now we need to work on trying to regain the strength she lost through the month she spent in the hospital with the bone marrow transplant. I hope by Christmas things will be better.”

  Sage smiled. “Well, now you’ve got two more of us—four, counting Abigail and Conan—on your side.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, immeasurably touched at their effortless acceptance of her and her children.

  * * *

  AFTER SIMON WAS finally settled in bed, Julia stood in her darkened bedroom gazing out at the ripples of the sea gleaming in the moonlight. Though she had a million things to do—finding bowls they could use for cereal in the morning hovered near the top of her list—she decided she needed this moment to herself to think, without rushing to take care of detail after detail.

  Offshore some distance, she could see the moving lights of a sea vessel cutting through the night. She watched it for a moment, then her gaze inexorably shifted to the houses along the shore.

  There was the cottage where her family had always stayed, sitting silent and dark. Beyond that was Will Garrett’s house. A light burned inside a square cedar building set away from the house. His father’s workshop, she remembered. Now it would be Will’s.

  She glanced at her watch and saw it was nearly midnight. What was he working on so late? And did he spend his time out in his workshop to avoid the emptiness inside his house?

  She pressed a hand to her chest at the ache there. How did he bear the pain of losing his wife and his child? She remembered the vast sorrow in his gaze when he had looked at Maddie and she wanted so much to be able to offer some kind of comfort to him.

  She sensed he wouldn’t want her to try. Despite his friendship with Sage and Anna, Will seemed to hold himself apart, as if he had used his carpentry skills to carefully hammer out a wall between himself and the rest of the world.

  She ached for him, but she knew there was likely very little she could do to breach those walls.

  She could try.

  The thought whispered through her head with soft subtlety. She shook her head at her own subconscious. No. She had enough on her plate right now, moving to a new place, taking on a new job, dealing with twins on her own, one of whom still struggled with illness.

  She didn’t have the emotional reserves to take on anyone else’s pain. She knew it, but as the peace of the house settled around her, she had the quiet conviction that she could at least offer him her friendship.

  As if in confirmation, the sweet, summery scent of freesia drifted through the room. She smiled.

  “Abigail, if you are still here,” she whispered, “thank you. For this place, for Anna and Sage. For everything.”

  For just an instant, she thought she felt again the gentle brush of fingers against her cheek.

  * * *

  WILL MANAGED TO avoid his new neighbors for several days, mostly because he was swamped with work. He was contracted to do the carpentry work on a rehab project in Manzanita. The job was behind schedule because of other subcontractors’ delays and the developer wanted the carpentry work done yesterday.

  Will was pouring every waking moment into it, leaving his house before the sun was up and returning close to midnight every night.

  He didn’t mind working hard. Having too much work to do was a damn sight better than having too little. Building something with his hands helped fill the yawning chasm of his life.

  But his luck where his neighbors were concerned ran out a week after he had helped carry boxes up to the second-floor apartment of Brambleberry House.

  By Friday, most of the basic work on the construction job was done and the only thing left was for him to install the custom floor and ceiling moldings the developer had ordered from a mill in Washington State. They hadn’t been delivered yet and until they arrived, he had nothing to do.

  Finally he returned to Cannon Beach, to his empty house and his empty life.

  After showering off the sawdust and sweat from a hard day’s work, he was grilling a steak on the deck—his nightly beer in hand—watching tourists fly kites and play in the sand in the pleasant early evening breeze when he suddenly heard excited barking.

  A moment later, a big red mutt bounded into view, trailing the handle of his retractable leash.

  As soon as he spied Will, he switched directions and bounded up the deck steps, his tongue lolling as he panted heavily.

  “You look like a dog on the lam.”

  Conan did that weird grin thing of his and Will glanced down the beach to see who might have been on the other end of the leash. He couldn’t see anyone—not really surprising. Though he seemed pondeorus most of the time, Conan could pour on the juice when he wanted to escape his dreaded leash and be several hundred yards down the beach before you could blink.

  When he turned back to the dog, he found him sniffing with enthusiasm around the barbecue.

  “No way,” Will muttered. “Get your own steak. I’m not sharing.”

  Conan whined and plopped down at his feet with such an obviously feigned morose expression that Will had to smile. “You’re quite the actor, aren’t you? No steak for you tonight but I will get you a drink. You look like you could use it.”

  He found the bowl he usually used for Conan and filled it from the sink. When he walked back through the sliding doors, he heard a chorus of voices calling the dog’s name.

  Somehow, he supposed he wasn’t really surprised a moment later when Julia Blair and her twins came into view from the direction of Brambleberry House.

  Conan barked a greeting, his head hanging over the deck railing. Three heads swiveled in their direction and even from here, he could see the relief in Julia’s green eyes when she spotted the dog.

  “There you are, you rascal,” she exclaimed.

  With her hair held back from her face in a ponytail, she looked young and lovely in the slanted early evening light. Though he knew it was unwise, part of him wanted to just sit and savor the sight of her, a little guilty reward for putting in a hard day’s work.

  Shocked at the impulse, he set down Conan’s bowl so hard some water slopped over the side.

  “I’m so sorry,” Julia called up. Though he wanted to keep them off the steps like he was some kind of medieval knight defending his castle from assault, he stood mutely by as she and her twins walked up the stairs to the deck.

  “We were taking him for a walk on the beach,” Julia went on, “but we apparently weren’t moving quickly enough for him.”

  “It’s my fault,” the boy—Simon—said, his voice morose. “Mom said I had to hold his leash tight and I tried, I really did, but I guess I wasn’t strong enough.”

  “I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Will said through a throat that suddenly felt tight. “Conan can be pretty determined when he sets his mind to something.”

  Simon grinned at him with a new warmth. “I guess he had his mind set on running away.”

  “We were going to get an ice cream,” the girl said in her whispery voice. He had no choice but to look at her, with her dark curls and blue eyes. A sense of frailty clung to her, as if the slightest breeze would pick her up and carry her out to sea.

  He didn’t know how to talk to her—didn’t know if he could. But he had made a pledge not to hurt others simply because he was in pain. He supposed that included little dark-haired sea sprites.

  “That sounds like fun. A great thing to do on a pretty summer night like tonight.”

  “My favorite ice cream is strawberry cheesecake,” she announced. “I really hope they have some.”

  “Not me,” Simon announced. “I like bubblegum. Especially when it’s blue bubblegum.”

&
nbsp; To his dismay, Julia’s daughter crossed the deck until she was only a few feet away. She looked up at him out of serious eyes. “What about you, Mr. Garrett?” Maddie asked. “Do you like ice cream?”

  Surface similarities aside, she was not at all like his roly-poly little Cara, he reminded himself. “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “What kind is your favorite?”

  “Hmmm. Good question. I hate to be boring but I really like plain old vanilla.”

  Simon hooted. “That’s what my mom’s favorite flavor is, too. With all the good flavors out there—licorice or coconut or chocolate chunk—why would you ever want plain vanilla? That’s just weird.”

  “Simon!” Julia’s cheeks flushed and he thought again how extraordinarily lovely she was—not much different from the girl he’d been so crazy about nearly two decades ago.

  “Well, it is,” Simon insisted.

  “You don’t tell someone they’re weird,” Julia said.

  “I didn’t say he was weird. Just that eating only vanilla ice cream is weird.”

  Will found himself fighting a smile, which startled him all over again. “Okay, I’ll admit I also like praline ice cream and sometimes even chocolate chip on occasion. Is that better?”

  Simon snickered. “I guess so.”

  He felt the slightest brush of air and realized it was Maddie touching his arm with her small, pale hand. Suddenly he couldn’t seem to catch his breath, aching inside.

  “Would you like to come with us to get an ice-cream cone, Mr. Garrett?” she asked in her breathy voice. “I bet if you were holding Conan’s leash, he couldn’t get away.”

  He glanced at her sweet little features then at Julia. The color had climbed even higher on her cheekbones and she gave him an apologetic look before turning back to her daughter.

  “Honey, I’m sure Mr. Garrett is busy. It smells like he’s cooking a steak for his dinner.”

  “Which I’d better check on. Hang on.”

  He lifted the grill and found his porterhouse a little on the well-done side, but still edible. He shut off the flame, using the time to consider how to answer the girl.

  He shouldn’t be so tempted to go with them. It was an impulse that shocked the hell out of him.

  He had spent two years avoiding social situations except with his close friends. But suddenly the idea of sitting here alone eating his dinner and watching others enjoy life seemed unbearable.

  How could he possibly go with them, though? He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to be decent for an hour or so, the time it would take to walk to the ice-cream place, enjoy their cones, then walk home.

  What if something set him off and brought back that bleak darkness that always seemed to hover around the edges of his psyche? The last thing he wanted to do was hurt these innocent kids.

  “Thanks for the invitation,” he said, “but I’d better stay here and finish my dinner.”

  Conan whined and butted his head against Will’s leg, almost as if urging Will to reconsider.

  “We can wait for you to eat,” Simon said promptly. “We don’t mind, do we, Mom?”

  “Simon, Mr. Garrett is busy. We don’t want to badger him.” She met his gaze, her green eyes soft with an expression he couldn’t identify. “Though we would love to have you come along. All of us.”

  “I don’t want you to have to wait for me to eat when you’ve got strawberry cheesecake and bubblegum ice-cream cones calling your name.”

  Julia nodded rather sadly, as if she had expected his answer. “Come on, kids. We’d better be on our way.”

  Conan whined again. Will gazed from the dog to Julia and her family, then he shook his head. “Then again, I guess there’s no reason I can’t warm my steak up again when we get back from the ice-cream parlor. I’m not that hungry right now anyway.”

  His statement was met with a variety of reactions. Conan barked sharply, Julia’s eyes opened wide with surprise, Simon gave a happy shout and Maddie clapped her hands with delight.

  It had been a long time since anyone had seemed so thrilled about his company, he thought as he carried his steak inside to cover it with foil and slide it in the refrigerator.

  He didn’t know what impulse had prompted him to agree to go along with them. He only knew it had been a long while since he had allowed himself to enjoy the quiet peace of an August evening on the shore.

  Maybe it was time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THIS WAS A mistake of epic proportions.

  Will walked alongside Julia while her twins moved ahead with Conan. Simon raced along with the dog, holding tightly to his leash as the two of them scared up a shorebird here and there and danced just out of reach of the waves. Maddie seemed content to walk sedately toward the ice-cream stand in town, stopping only now and again to pick something up from the sand, study it with a serious look, then plop it in her pocket.

  Will was painfully conscious of the woman beside him. Her hair shimmered in the dying sunlight, her cheeks were pinkened from the wind, and the soft, alluring scent of cherry blossoms clung to her, feminine and sweet.

  He couldn’t come up with a damn thing to say and he felt like he was an awkward sixteen-year-old again.

  Accompanying her little family to town was just about the craziest idea he had come up with in a long, long time.

  She didn’t seem to mind the silence but he finally decided good manners compelled him to at least make a stab at conversation.

  “How are you settling in?” he asked.

  She smiled softly. “It’s been lovely. Perfect. You know, I wasn’t sure I was making the right choice to move here but everything has turned out far better than I ever dreamed.”

  “The apartment working out for you, then?”

  “It’s wonderful. We love it at Brambleberry House. Anna and Sage have become good friends and the children love being so close to the ocean. It’s been a wonderful adventure for us all so far.”

  He envied her that, he realized. The sense of adventure, the willingness to charge headlong into the unknown. He had always been content to stay in the house where he had been raised. He loved living on the coast—waking up to the sound of scoters and grebes, sleeping to the murmuring song of the sea—but lately he sometimes felt as if he were suffocating here. It was impossible to miss the way everyone in town guarded their words around him and worse, watched him out of sad, careful eyes.

  Maybe it was time to move on. It wasn’t a new thought but as he walked beside Julia toward the lights of town, he thought perhaps he ought to do just as she had—start over somewhere new.

  She was looking at him in expectation, as if she had said something and was waiting for him to respond. He couldn’t think what he might have missed and he hesitated to ask her to repeat herself. Instead, he decided to pick a relatively safe topic.

  “School starts in a few weeks, right?” he asked.

  “A week from Tuesday,” she said after a small pause. “I plan to go in and start setting up my classroom tomorrow.”

  “Does it take you a whole week to set up?”

  “Oh, at least a week!” Animation brightened her features even more. “I’m way behind. I’ve got bulletin boards to decorate, class curriculum to plan, students’ pictures and names to memorize. Everything.”

  Her voice vibrated with excitement and despite his discomfort, he almost smiled. “You can’t wait, can you?”

  She flashed him a quick look. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I’m glad you’ve found something you enjoy. I’ll admit, back in the day, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a schoolteacher.”

  She laughed. “I guess my plans to be a rich and famous diva someday kind of fell by the wayside. Teaching thirty active fifth-graders isn’t quite as exciting as going on tour and recording a platinum-s
elling record.”

  “I bet you’re good at it, though.”

  She blinked in surprise, then gave him a smile of such pure, genuine pleasure that he felt his chest tighten.

  “Thank you, Will. That means a lot to me.”

  Their gazes met and though it had been a long, long time, he knew he didn’t mistake the currents zinging between them.

  A gargantuan mistake.

  He was almost relieved when they caught up with Maddie, who had slowed her steps considerably.

  “You doing okay, cupcake?” Julia asked.

  “I’m fine, Mommy,” she assured her, though her features were pale and her mouth hung down a little at the edges.

  He wondered again what the story was here—why Julia watched her so carefully, why Maddie seemed so frail—but now didn’t seem the appropriate time to ask.

  “Do you need a piggyback ride the rest of the way to the ice-cream stand?” Julia asked.

  Maddie shook her head with more firmness than before, as if that brief rest had been enough for her. “I can make it, I promise. We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

  “Yep. See, there’s the sign with the ice-cream cone on it.”

  Somehow Maddie slipped between them and folded her hand in her mother’s. She smiled up at Will and his chest ached all over again.

  “I love this place,” Maddie announced when they drew closer to Murphy’s Ice Cream.

  “I do, too,” Will told her. “I’ve been coming here for ice cream my whole life.”

  She looked intrigued. “Really? My mom said she used to come here, too, when she was little.” She paused to take a breath before continuing. “Did you ever see her here?”

  He glanced at Julia and saw her cheeks had turned pink and he wondered if she was remembering holding hands under one of the picnic tables that overlooked the beach and stealing kisses whenever her brother wasn’t looking.

  “I did,” he said gruffly, wishing those particular memories had stayed buried.

  Maddie looked as if she wanted to pursue the matter but by now they had reached Murphy’s.