The Path to Sunshine Cove

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Maybe we could take it over one night this week.”

  “Okay. Not Thursday, though. That’s Jess’s birthday party.”

  Jess, who would be leaving soon. “Right. We can’t miss that.”

  “After we take the dollhouse out of my room, do you think maybe we could hang a swing in its place?”

  “What kind of swing?”

  “I was thinking maybe one of those cool hammock-type things. I’ve always wanted one in my bedroom. A place I can read and do my homework and stuff.”

  That was the first he had ever heard of that. Still, he would do all he could to encourage her anytime she actually asked for his help and seemed willing to carry on a halfway decent conversation.

  “Sure. We can go to the Harper Hill garden store this weekend if you want. They’ve got a good selection of hammocks. Meanwhile, you can start researching what hardware we’ll need for it. You’ll want a swivel hook so it doesn’t tangle and we’ll probably have to find a joist to hang it from.”

  “Where would we find a swivel hook?”

  “The hardware store can set us up. This will be fun.”

  “Yay! Thanks, Dad. I can’t wait! I’m going online to see if I can find the style I want before we go to the garden store.”

  To his surprise, she gave him a quick hug and hurried out of the kitchen to her room.

  He watched after her, feeling a curious mix of pride and sadness. She was growing up and he wasn’t ready.

  Still, the conversation had been cordial and even warm, the first one in weeks that hadn’t been underscored by her moodiness.

  He decided to focus on the positive and work a little harder to figure out what he had done to make her mad in the first place.

  23

  Jess

  “Happy birthday, my dear.” Eleanor beamed at her as Jess walked into Whitaker House on Thursday morning.

  “Thank you.” She hadn’t given her birthday much thought, though she had treated herself to an early-morning walk down to Sunshine Cove, where she had enjoyed the dawn by herself.

  “I think we should take today off so you can do something fun just for yourself.”

  She smiled. “What are you talking about? This is fun for me. I love my job. Why would I need to take time off when I’m doing exactly what I love to do?”

  She considered herself extraordinarily lucky to have found a job she enjoyed so much.

  “But work is still work, no matter how fun it is. You deserve some time off.”

  “I’m good. I think we need to finally tackle Jack’s side of the closet today.”

  She could tell by Eleanor’s sudden tension that the other woman wasn’t thrilled at that idea.

  “But it’s your birthday!”

  What did that have to do with taking care of the one thing Eleanor seemed to be avoiding?

  Anyway, her thirtieth birthday really wasn’t a huge cause for celebration. It was just another day.

  She wasn’t worried about growing older. She saw each year as a time of growth, an opportunity for reassessment and readjustments. Birthdays were fine but she was a grown woman. She didn’t need party hats and piñatas.

  “Why don’t we start with the kitchen today instead?” Eleanor suggested. “I was looking at it this morning when I had breakfast and thinking we could clear out all those old plastic containers I’ve saved through the years and never use. Plus, I have so many old cookbooks that are gathering dust now, since Sophie helped me digitize my favorites when she was home from school last summer.”

  Jess knew exactly what the other woman was doing. While it made her smile to picture Sophie poring through old cookbooks while helping her grandmother organize her kitchen, she knew they couldn’t continue avoiding the central job she had been hired to tackle.

  “We have to start clearing out his clothes at some point, Eleanor,” she said gently.

  “I know. And we will. Just not yet. Let’s work on the kitchen today. And we still have to do the bathrooms, right? And we haven’t even started the garage.”

  Her time here at Whitaker House would be wrapping up soon as they had already worked their way through most of the house.

  She truly would be sorry to leave. Jess had never enjoyed a job as much as this one.

  “All right. The kitchen it is.”

  “Once we clear out the kitchen, I need to mess it up again, just a little, while I make my favorite pasta salad for the party. I told Rachel I would take that.”

  Jess shifted, wondering if it was too late to call off her sister’s grand party. No. She couldn’t do that to Rachel. Her excitement had come through loud and clear the night after Jess had stayed with the girls, when her sister had called to thank her again and to confirm arrangements for Jess’s birthday.

  Rachel wanted to do this. She loved throwing parties. How could Jess deprive her of her fun?

  She would simply smile and be gracious and try to enjoy herself.

  For now, she could legitimately enjoy herself doing what she did best, cleaning out her client’s kitchen.

  Several hours later, Jess studied the stacks of cookbooks arrayed across the kitchen table with admiration. They had already worked their way through several cabinets and had finally reached the dusty cookbooks.

  Eleanor had not been exaggerating about her collection. She had at least a hundred, most dotted with dog-eared and marked pages, in addition to the dozen most-cherished volumes she was keeping for Sophie.

  “I can’t imagine how many meals have been prepared using these.”

  “The best parts are the handwritten notes in some of them. That’s why I’m keeping those few for Sophie. It’s a link to her grandmother and her great-grandmother. I don’t know if she’ll want them someday but I’m going to let her decide that. As for the rest, I have no idea what to do with them. Do you think Goodwill would even want them? Some were in Whitaker House when I moved in here. They were probably here when my mother-in-law moved in here.”

  “You would be surprised. There’s a healthy market for vintage cookbooks.”

  “I always thought I would hand the entire collection down to my daughter someday but I ended up only having a son who isn’t much interested in cooking.”

  At the mention of Nate, Jess could feel her face heat. Though she hadn’t seen him since Tuesday, when he had kissed her beside her truck, she felt like she hadn’t stopped thinking of him.

  It was hard to avoid the topic when she worked alongside his mother every day, especially when Eleanor had so much good to say about him.

  How was she supposed to resist him when his mother, apparently his biggest cheerleader, told her story after story that only made him more appealing?

  If she didn’t know better, she would almost think Eleanor had set out on a well-organized campaign to make Jess fall for him.

  She wouldn’t, no matter how hard Eleanor tried.

  Or at least that’s what she told herself.

  “Do you want to set all the cookbooks aside for Sophie? We could find somewhere in storage for them where we could protect them.”

  “No. I think I’ll stick to giving her the best of the bunch. With that and the few recipes out of the others that I’ve saved, she should have more than enough.”

  “Wise decision. As to the rest, I’ll box them up and ship them to a used bookstore we’ve worked with before in the Bay area. They’ll give you a fair price before their markup.”

  Eleanor waved her hand. “Whatever you think. You definitely know best, as I’ve learned over the past week and a half.”

  Did she? Jess wasn’t so sure. Her usual common sense seemed to have tumbled down into the ocean since she had arrived in Cape Sanctuary.

  Eleanor surveyed the kitchen. “This house will feel so empty without all my treasures.”

  Jess nudged her with her should
er. “Think of all the dusting you won’t have to do now.”

  “I know. I know. And especially all the rubbish Nate and Sophie won’t have to sort through after I’m gone.”

  “Which won’t be for a long, long time,” Jess said firmly.

  Eleanor wore a distant look as she gazed at the cookbooks, as if seeing all the previous generations of women who had thumbed through them, seeking an answer to the eternal and relentless question of what to fix their families for dinner.

  “I’m committed to cleaning out this house for Nate and Sophie’s sake,” she said. “I have no need to hold on to things I don’t use any longer and I don’t want them to have to deal with it later. Still, knowing all that, why do I find it so hard to let go of things?”

  “Most tangible things are associated with good memories of a place or a moment. It’s completely natural to want to hold on to that.”

  “Thank you for being so understanding. You’re a dear. I think your job must be equal parts cleaning and therapy.”

  Jess had to smile, charmed by the description. “I hope both are helping.”

  “More than you will ever know. I’ve felt better these past ten days than I have since Jack died. Thank you for putting up with me.”

  “It’s been my pleasure,” she said, and meant every word.

  Eleanor looked around her kitchen, which looked fresh and new, almost as if they had applied a coat of paint.

  “This looks like a new room. I honestly don’t know how you managed it.”

  “We managed it. You’re the one making the final decisions.”

  “You’re helping me every step of the way. What would I have done without you, my dear?”

  “I should run this next load to Goodwill.”

  “They must cringe when they see you coming. Here comes that nice girl with all of Eleanor Whitaker’s junk again.”

  “I doubt that. Just because you don’t want it anymore doesn’t mean your things don’t have value. Someone else might have been looking for that mismatched china you’ve decided you don’t need.”

  “I hope so. I always hated that china. But thank you again for working so hard on your birthday. Do something special to treat yourself this afternoon. You have more than earned it.”

  How about sleep with your son?

  The totally inappropriate thought made her blush. She could only be grateful Eleanor, as sharp as she was, couldn’t read her mind.

  “I’ll see you this evening at your sister’s house.”

  She was not sleeping with Nate, she told herself sternly. Even if it was her birthday and Eleanor told her she deserved a treat.

  “I’ll see you there.”

  She kissed the older woman on the cheek, thinking how dear she was. Of all the clients Jess had worked with over the past five years, Eleanor had quickly become her favorite. She was sharp, kind, funny, generous. She had embraced Jess from their first interaction, treating her with warmth and welcome.

  Jess would miss her when she left Cape Sanctuary.

  And Nate. And Sophie.

  All of them had impacted her life. This job would leave its mark.

  She frowned as she carried the box of mismatched china to her truck.

  That wasn’t the plan. She was supposed to be the impersonal hired help who swept into town, took care of business, and then hooked up her Airstream and moved on to the next job.

  She didn’t need or want to make connections. Connections only led to heartbreak. That lesson had been imprinted on her psyche after years as a military brat, moving bases and schools just as she started to form one or two solid friendships.

  It had always seemed more intuitive for Rachel, somehow. She always loved easily, gathering friends around her like Eleanor collected cookbooks.

  Jess struggled to say goodbye each and every time, until she decided when she was about twelve or thirteen that she was done trying. She had Rachel. She didn’t need other friends.

  And then Rachel had betrayed her, too.

  The ugly thought poked up like a noxious weed.

  She didn’t like thinking about that time, how lost and alone she had been after Rachel chose to remain here in Cape Sanctuary with her new foster family instead of coming to live with her once Jess turned eighteen and aged out of the system.

  Intellectually, she knew her sister had made the right choice. Rachel had bloomed like never before when she finally found a home with Kurt and Jan Miller. She had been thriving in school, had friends, played the flute in the marching band. She even had a boyfriend, Cody, whom she would later marry.

  The Millers had been wonderful to Jess’s sister, giving her a safe, supportive home to finish high school. They loved Rachel and she loved them.

  Even after she married Cody, Rachel had stayed part of their family. Jess knew Rachel’s children considered them their grandparents and wrote to them weekly on their church mission working at a South American orphanage.

  She couldn’t blame her sister for making the mature choice to stay in a stable home here in Cape Sanctuary instead of leaving it all behind to live in a crappy studio apartment in a bad neighborhood in Sacramento.

  Any sane person would do the same.

  It still hurt.

  When they had been separated after that first miserable foster care experience, Rachel had sobbed and sobbed, worse than the night their parents had died. Jess had vowed she would figure out a way for them to be together again as soon as possible.

  She had worked two jobs in fast food after school and on weekends, scrimping and saving for first and last months’ rent on an apartment. All along, through emails and phone calls and texts, she and Rachel had talked about moving in together, just as they had always planned.

  Things hadn’t worked out that way. Jess had stayed in the group home a few weeks after turning eighteen, until her June high school graduation, then she had packed up her few belongings and moved to her new apartment. She had paid a kid at school a hundred bucks to borrow his broken-down car so she could drive here to Cape Sanctuary and get Rachel and her things.

  They had a plan, one they had talked about for more than a year. They would be together, finally. The two Clayton sisters against the world.

  They had the small inheritance from their parents’ life insurance policies and Jess planned to work however she had to so she could support them while Rachel finished high school.

  She planned to take online classes at the local community college, then they would both use their military benefits inherited from their father to go to college together.

  It had been the only thing keeping her going that long, lonely last year of high school by herself at the group home.

  Instead, the day she had shown up here in Cape Sanctuary, Rachel had finally confessed that her bags weren’t packed because she wasn’t coming with her.

  Rachel had looked awful, Jess remembered. Shadows under her eyes, her hair a tangled mess. She told Jess she hadn’t slept in two nights, trying to figure out how to tell her that Rachel felt like she should stay in Cape Sanctuary.

  She wanted to be with Jess but this was the best place for her right now, she had tearfully said. Things were finally good for her. She was happy.

  That day—that horrible day—was permanently engraved in her memory. She had felt as if the entire world had crashed in on her. Her beloved sister, the one constant Jess had left, had chosen another life, another family.

  She had been completely gutted. The worst part had been trying to pretend to Rachel that she wasn’t. If Rachel had any idea how wrecked Jess had felt, she would have marched inside and packed her bags, even knowing it was the wrong choice for herself.

  Jess couldn’t do that to her. For her sister’s sake, she had to pretend she supported Rachel’s decision, that she understood completely and wanted this happy, rosy world for her. Jess had smile
d until her cheeks hurt, all while inside she feared she would crumble apart.

  Shattered.

  Rachel still probably had no idea how completely lost Jess had been. Instead of driving back to Sacramento with her sister as she had so eagerly anticipated, chattering about starting the rest of their lives together, she had driven her borrowed car straight to the nearest recruiting office. Why not? What did she have to lose now? She knew all about the military life from her childhood. At least in the army, she wouldn’t have to scramble to survive. She would have food, housing, somewhere to go.

  Rachel had made the best choice for her life. Jess knew that and couldn’t fault her sister for choosing stability and a family over chaos and uncertainty.

  In return, Rachel certainly couldn’t fault Jess now for protecting herself from the devastation of broken dreams.

  24

  Rachel

  She didn’t know how she pulled it off, but everything was turning out better than she could have imagined.

  The steak and chicken thigh pieces were on skewers along with fresh pineapple, ready to be grilled after soaking all day in a teriyaki marinade she had found on Pinterest. The coconut rice smelled delicious, keeping warm in her electric pressure cooker. She had bacon-wrapped shrimp appetizers ready on a pineapple-shaped platter and she was especially proud of the spinach dip with veggies served up in cute individual baguettes.

  She had to admit, her absolute favorite part was the birthday cake, a white-and-raspberry drip cake that was truly her best work. She had created colorful tropical flowers out of fondant that looked too real to be edible.

  She was fiercely tempted to post it to Instagram right now but she didn’t want to spoil the surprise for Jess. She had no idea if her sister even followed her, but she couldn’t take any chances. Instead, she would photograph it today and then post tomorrow and watch her feed explode.

  Rachel snapped another picture of the exquisite birthday cake, hoping Jess would love it as much as she did.