Allyn chose that moment to stick his head out the front doorway. “You okay?”
I managed a nod. He kept his eyes on me a moment longer before closing the door.
Back on the sidewalk, the little family was gone. I stood and peered over the edge of the porch rail for a better view, but I didn’t see any sign of them. I ran shaky hands over my hair and straightened my dress, then opened the door and walked back in.
After a quick snack, consumed in stolen moments in the back office, my cell rang. I was busy with a customer, so Allyn answered.
A moment later, he mouthed something to me from across the room. I shook my head in confusion. He crossed the room and whispered, “It’s Vernon Bains. The lawyer?”
I took the phone and left the customer in Allyn’s care.
“Mr. Bains, this feels like déjà vu with you calling me here at work,” I said as I stepped into our tiny courtyard and pulled the back door closed behind me. “Last time you had bad news.”
“Ah, Miss Jenkins, a common misconception. A lawyer on the phone doesn’t always mean bad news. In this case, I have very good news for you. At least, I think it’s good.”
“I’m listening.”
“It appears Mr. Grosvenor has withdrawn his plan to take over The Hideaway’s property.”
“Excuse me?”
“He called me early this morning and said he was going in a different direction. When I pressed, he said he bought another piece of property near Mobile Bay. He’s scrapping the boardwalk idea and building his condos there instead. For better or worse, it appears Sweet Bay is destined to remain the secluded town it’s always been.”
“I—but I don’t . . .”
“I know,” Mr. Bains continued. “I was speechless too.”
I forced my brain into gear. “So if Sammy isn’t taking it, does it just . . . ?”
“Everything goes back to normal. I can’t say the mayor won’t one day try to run with the plan again, but without Sammy badgering him about it, and seeing as how most of the town of Sweet Bay was against it, hopefully he’ll let the idea die.”
Allyn stuck his head out the door. “Everything okay?” He walked into the courtyard and sat next to me. What is it? he mouthed. I shook my head.
“I don’t know what to make of Sammy’s change of heart,” Mr. Bains said. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”
“Tell me,” Allyn said as soon as I put down the phone.
“Sammy isn’t taking the house.”
“What happened?”
“I have no idea.”
Allyn sat back in the wrought-iron rocker and crossed his arms. “You said you needed something to make Sammy go away. I guess that something happened.”
A grin pushed at my cheeks. I couldn’t wipe it away.
“You’re excited,” Allyn said.
“I don’t know what I am.” I stood and took a deep breath. “But I think I have to go.”
“Of course you do. Get out of here.”
“Wait.” I sat back down. “I can’t do this. Mrs. Girard is coming at four and I have a shipment—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of everything,” he said.
“But what about—?”
“Stop. It’s fine. You can go.”
“I don’t even know what I’m going there to do.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve already started a life there. Now you’re going to go back and pick up where you left off.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I said.
“Things aren’t always as difficult as you make them out to be. Sometimes you just have to turn your brain off and dive in. This may be the last time Sweet Bay tries to pull you back.”
I chewed on the end of a fingernail. “Crawford?”
“Only one way to find out.”
I hugged Allyn and went inside to grab my purse. On my way through the shop to the front door, I trailed my fingers on table-tops and chair backs. Pausing at the door, I turned to look through the room. Two women stood in the corner near an armoire, contemplating the big purchase. Allyn joined them, and within seconds he had them laughing and moving toward the register. Bits and Pieces would be just fine.
On my way out of the city, I rolled my windows down as far as they’d go and dropped my heels on the floorboard next to me. I didn’t know exactly what I’d find in Sweet Bay when I returned, but I wasn’t going to let my last chance slip away without a fight.
I called Dot from the car and told her I was on my way home.
“Well, it’s about time. I guess Vernon called you?”
“He called this afternoon. I was going to give you the news, but it sounds like you already know.”
“Oh yes.” She chuckled. “A lot has happened since you’ve been gone. Let’s wait and talk when you get here though. I need to make a phone call.”
She hung up before I could ask what was going on.
A couple hours later, I pulled down the long driveway and shaded my eyes from one last sharp ray of light. Two people sat in rocking chairs on the porch, and one of them stood as I approached the house.
Crawford. But it wasn’t him.
When my eyes adjusted to the shadowy light on the porch, I recognized William’s slightly stooped figure. Dot sat in the chair next to him. I parked under the big oak and climbed out. Without stopping to grab my bag, I headed for the porch. William and Dot were both smiling.
“What in the world is going on?” I asked. “How do you two . . . ?”
“It’s been busy around here,” Dot said.
I looked at William. “I took care of Sammy,” he said.
“You—what?”
“A long time ago, I bought a piece of property down at the mouth of Sweet Bay. I didn’t think much about it until I decided that’s where I wanted to build a house for me and Maggie one day. It doesn’t have a name—we just called it the cove.” I glanced at Dot. She winked. “I never built the house, but I kept the property all these years in the hopes of—I don’t even know. I just couldn’t bear to part with it.”
“And you’re giving it up now? But how did you know . . . ?”
“It was Crawford,” Dot said.
William nodded. “He worked hard for this house after you left. He found me after digging through old land records looking for anything that could fend off Sammy. He was the one who put it together that the cove could be the thing to save the house.”
Crawford did it?
“But why would Sammy want the cove?” I asked.
“He visited me years ago and asked me about it. Turns out it’s quite a coveted piece of property. I told him back then I’d never let it go, but now that Maggie . . . Well, once I met you, I realized I have no reason to hang on to it. All it took was a phone call. Sammy bought the property from me on the spot and signed The Hideaway back to you.”
“I can’t believe you sold it,” I said.
“I hope it’s okay.” His face clouded with concern. “I could tell how much you loved this house, and I hated to see you lose it.”
“Okay?” I laughed. “It’s more than okay.” I didn’t have the right words, so I hugged him, and Dot too.
“William and Crawford just couldn’t give up on this old place,” Dot said. “Or you, it seems.”
“I don’t know about that. We haven’t . . . I haven’t talked to Crawford since I left.”
Dot arched an eyebrow. “And yet he’s been here doing all this work. Honey, he didn’t do it for us.”
“I got to know him a little this past week,” William said. “He builds things, you know.”
I nodded. “I know. You have that in common. And you two.” I pointed at William and Dot. “Looks like you’ve sparked an unexpected friendship.”
Dot looked over at William. “We had a lot to catch up on, that’s for sure.” Then she turned to me. “Let’s get you inside. I apologize in advance—it’s a mess in there.”
I followed her through the front door where box
es and suitcases spilled in disarray all over the sparkling hardwoods. Despite the mess and the remaining old furniture, the house felt new. Even unfinished, the open floor plan, extra space, and fresh paint gave it life and new legs. Excitement fluttered again in my chest.
“We meant to be all packed up by now, but it’s taking longer than we expected,” Dot said.
I put my hands on my hips and inhaled deep. “Maybe you should just stay here then.”
Openmouthed, Dot stared back at me. “What?” she asked, just as Major called down from the landing on the stairs, “Thank the Lord. We’re all old. Our kids can come visit us.”
I smiled and patted Dot on the arm, then headed for the kitchen to look for a celebratory bottle of wine. “Go ahead and unpack your bags. You’re not going anywhere.”
45
SARA
DECEMBER
I stood in The Hideaway’s gleaming new kitchen pouring a cup of coffee when Major stomped down the stairs.
“Sara! Where’s my Gillette? And my toothbrush? I can’t find anything in this blasted house.”
“It’s all in your new bathroom, the one attached to your room. You know you don’t have to keep using the hall bath. That’s why I built you and Glory your own.”
Major trudged back up the stairs, grumbling the whole way, until Glory called out to him. “Stop your whining, Major, or you’ll be brushing your teeth on the dock.”
I took my coffee into the light-flooded dining room and sat at our new heart pine table. I ran my hand across the top, my fingers finding the indentations of the skeleton key at the edge.
“See? You’d have missed all this if you’d stayed in New Orleans,” Bert said from across the table, working on his second apple scone. “What would you do without Major’s presence in your life?”
“For one, I wouldn’t have someone yelling at me about a toothbrush at seven in the morning.”
I heard a tentative knock and looked up to see Mr. and Mrs. Melman.
“Breakfast is at seven, right?” Mrs. Melman asked.
“Yes, please come in and make yourself at home,” I said. “Scones and coffee are just in the kitchen there, and muffins and fruit are on the table.”
“Thank you. This place is wonderful,” she said. “Has the house been open long?”
Bert and I looked at each other.
“It’s recently reopened,” I said.
Mrs. Melman touched her husband’s elbow. “We’ll have to tell Maylene and George. They just love quaint places like this.”
As the Melmans shuffled into the kitchen, Bob Crowe and his wife entered the dining room. Bob booked a weekend right after we opened for business. “You’ve outdone yourself.” He pulled a banana out of the basket on the table. “I know I talked this place up in the newspaper article, but I still had doubts it would make it.”
“You and me both,” I said.
“How’d you get Sammy to back off, anyway?”
“It wasn’t me. Someone offered him a better piece of property and he took it.”
“You sure got a lucky break. There’s no chance anything Sammy could build would be half as classy as this.”
The Crowes followed the Melmans into the kitchen in search of steaming coffee and pastries. The air smelled of cinnamon and apples mixed with a tang of salty air from the open windows. The sky was bright, the sun sparkled, and my heart was full. My new Hideaway. My new life.
It wasn’t lost on me that if it weren’t for Mags drawing me back to Sweet Bay, I wouldn’t have had any of this. I’d still be churning away in New Orleans, thinking I’d found all I was to do with my life. I’d thought I was done with The Hideaway forever, but family was the magnetic pull that drew me back. I may have given up on Mags a long time ago, but in her own unorthodox way, she was the one who saved me in the end.
The phone in the hall rang, and I jumped up to get it. “The Hideaway, this is Sara.” I loved the words as they left my mouth.
“Hey, babe,” Crawford said.
“Hey, yourself. Why didn’t you call my cell?”
“I know you love answering the house phone.”
I smiled even though he couldn’t see me.
“You’re out early this morning,” I said. The background noise told me he was in his truck with the windows down.
“I’m on my way to the McCaffertys’ house in Lillian to meet the floor guy. You’d love this place. It’s a rambling old Creole full of antiques. I mean antique antiques.”
“What are they doing to the house?”
“Adding on. Again. They need room for the grandkids. Although I don’t know how kids and all these antiques will mix. How did the night go? Was Major on his best behavior?”
“I didn’t hear a peep out of him until he got feisty this morning about his toothbrush. But he’s fine. It’s all perfect, actually.” It had been a few weeks since the last construction worker left, but the newness had yet to wear off for me.
“I can’t wait to see you,” he said. “I have a few more stops to make, then I’ll head your way. Need anything?”
“Just you.”
At ten, after giving the Melmans a map of the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay and suggesting a few places they could grab lunch, I went next door. It was a beautiful thing, my business being forty feet from my home. Sometimes I missed the clattering streetcars and morning “rush” of traffic in the Quarter, but you couldn’t beat walking next door with your coffee mug to flip the Open sign around and begin the day.
In the three months I’d been back in Sweet Bay—for the second time—renovations on The Hideaway had wrapped up, and Crawford and his team built a small cottage on the empty lot next door. We were fortunate to have a long stretch of good weather in early fall, and the builders made quick work of the cottage. It now housed my new shop, Lost and Found. Allyn was the one who’d convinced me I could do it.
“You started the first shop from scratch. Why can’t you do it again? Alabama surely has just as many estate sales and old barns to salvage as Louisiana does. They’ll eat your stuff up, just like they do here.”
Crawford was on Allyn’s side, of course. They met when Crawford and I drove to New Orleans to pack up my loft and bring a few things back home from the shop. Allyn insisted on taking us out to dinner. I picked a sidewalk café near Jackson Square, a place I thought would be just noisy enough to distract us from the fact that Crawford and Allyn would have nothing to talk about. But I was wrong—I could hardly get a word in between them bantering back and forth, first about farming and motorcycles, then about me.
“You’re the lucky one who gets all of Sara’s pent-up romantic yearnings,” Allyn said to Crawford, nudging me with his shoulder.
“That makes me sound like I’ve been locked up in a tower somewhere.”
“You basically have,” he said, then turned to Crawford. “No one has been able to break down that wall she built around herself.”
“You did the hard work,” Crawford said. “All your advice at least convinced her to give me a shot.”
“Do I even need to be here? I can scoot out if you two want to keep talking about me and my wall.”
Crawford smiled at me. A candle flickered on the table between us, right next to a red glass vase holding a plastic rose. His knee touched mine under the table.
The truth was, I’d had to convince him to give me a shot when I got back to Sweet Bay. I drove to his house after I told Dot and the others they didn’t have to move out. He didn’t believe I was there to stay.
“I can’t do this twice,” he said. “How do I know you’re not going to skip town again?”
“I’m not going anywhere. This is where I need to be—where I want to be. Everything has changed.”
Crawford leaned against his kitchen counter, hands in his pockets, and smiled, but it wasn’t his usual smile. “Of course it has. You have the house back.”
“Yes, I have the house, but it’s more than that. I’m sorry for not calling, for not explaining mys
elf to you. Once I got back to New Orleans, it didn’t take long to realize I’d made a huge mistake.” I stepped closer to him and put my hand to his face. “There’s nowhere else I want to be, and no one else I want to be with.”
He covered my hand with his own but still didn’t speak. Finally, he gave me a real smile. “You’re back?”
“I’m back for good.”
Despite being a week into December, it was a warm day. Sunlight flooded through the bank of windows facing the bay. Not long after I propped open the front door, a gaggle of ladies entered the shop, all fleshy arms and laughter.
“You’ll have to forgive us if we’re too loud, dear,” one of them said. “We’re just excited to be here on a girls’ weekend. Our husbands are out hunting and we have a lot of shopping to do.”
“You’ve come to the right place. I have a little bit of everything, so make yourselves at home. Let me know if you have questions.”
They were still puttering and gossiping when Crawford walked in. It may sound crazy, but I could have sworn the sun blazed brighter and the breeze turned warmer when he entered. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. He walked through the room, stopping to chat with the ladies and make them blush with nothing but his charm and easy smile. It was hard to believe I’d even considered leaving him—and everything else—for my overloaded life in New Orleans.
“This is perfect.” One of the women touched a buffet table in the back of the shop. “I’m looking for something just like this to go in my dining room. I love the rustic look. Where did it come from?”
“A woodworker up in Still Pond made it,” I said. “He’s been making pieces like this for most of his life. He can’t handle the workload he used to, so he only makes a limited number of pieces now. I have two tables in here and another handful next door that are also for sale. He does custom orders here and there, if you ask nicely.”
She chuckled and smoothed her hand down the length of the table.
“You won’t find another table filled with as much love as this one. Look here—see this key engraved into the wood? He cuts the key into every piece he makes. He started doing it fifty years ago when he fell in love with a girl named Maggie. He said she held the key to his heart.”
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