The Home They Built

by Shannon Stacey

  “She lives here in Blackberry Bay. She came back after...well, after she left you and your dad. Nobody in town ever knew she’d had a baby while she was away. But I figure you either came here looking for her or this is the world’s most wild coincidence.”

  “A little of both, actually. The Bayview Inn application was a coincidence. But when I chose it, I was hoping to get to know more about her.”

  “Well, you can actually get to know her. But only if you want to.”

  A chill went down Anna’s spine, making her shiver despite the warmth of the evening. “I...don’t know.”

  She’d expected—hoped—to learn more about the woman who’d abandoned her to her father. But somehow she’d never considered the possibility she might actually be able to meet her mother. The show getting an application from the town where her mother had been born decades before had seemed an unlikely coincidence. Her mother still living there had seemed too far-fetched to even consider.

  “You don’t have to decide right now,” Brady said. “I’m not going to tell anybody—well, except Reyna, because spousal privileges and all that. And I know Tess’s house well enough to know you’re not leaving anytime soon. Your assistant has my contact info, so just reach out if you decide you want to meet her. Or just...to keep in touch with me, if you want.”

  “I go out for ice cream and get an instant brother,” she said with a chuckle.

  “I’ve known I have a sister a little longer than you’ve known you have two brothers, so I’m not going to push. But no matter what you decide about our mother, I’d love to have you over to the house to spend time with me and my family before you leave town.”

  She nodded, unexpected tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m an aunt.”

  “Three instant nephews.” He blew out a breath. “I do hope you’ll at least meet her. I think it would bring both of you some peace. And Parker’s not really talking yet, but at some point Auntie Anna might get mentioned.”

  “Give me a few days to think about it,” she said, though she already knew she wasn’t going to be able to leave town without at least meeting Christy. Especially since keeping in touch with her nephews was already feeling important to her.

  “No pressure,” he said, giving her a warm smile before he pushed back his chair and stood. “I should grab that ice cream and get home, but you can call or text me anytime.”

  She stood and reached out to shake his hand. Somehow a hug felt more like the thing to do, but there were people around and that would be a lot harder to explain. “I’ll shoot you a text later so you’ll have my number instead of going through Eryn.”

  “Perfect. And listen, this town is fueled by gossip, like I said before, and more than a few people might try to ferret out why you and I were seen having a conversation today, but nobody needs to know the truth. Just tell them you had some questions about the electrical work I’ve done at the house—at the inn, I mean—because everybody knows I’ve spent years trying to keep that woman from burning the place down with antique extension cords.”

  Anna blinked. “That’s right. You’re Finn’s friend.”

  “Yeah, we go way back.” He held up his phone. “Let me know what you decide, okay?”

  She nodded and then watched him walk away, wondering if she should call him back and make him swear on whatever she could come up with that he wouldn’t tell Finn she was Christy Nash’s daughter.

  What a tangled web she’d managed to get herself wrapped up in.

  * * *

  It had been about eighteen hours since Finn walked into the upstairs bedroom and found Anna alone. And he’d spent every one of those eighteen hours regretting not kissing her again. Except for the hours he’d been asleep, of course. Hours during which he’d had a dream he really wished hadn’t faded from his mind within minutes of waking up.

  No more kissing.

  He’d respect her decision, of course, but he was grumpy about it. And having spent the morning with his entire family and the whole Relic Rehab crew in the kitchen—which had felt a lot smaller than it usually did—arguing over the best way to renovate it certainly hadn’t helped his mood. They’d spent a solid twenty minutes just convincing Gram she didn’t need an espresso-and-latte-making station.

  “People like those sorts of drinks,” she’d said, putting her family in the unpleasant position of not being able to point out there were no people. They’d had to rely on Anna trying to make her understand there really wasn’t space for it and that regular coffee was fine in the mornings.

  And Finn had almost choked on the water he was drinking when Gram essentially confirmed she was actually planning to keep this ridiculousness going by actually making the house an inn. He’d really been hoping her comments to that effect had simply been to support the renovation scheme, but if she was going to try to make the house pay for itself by inviting strangers to stay in it, there were going to be a lot of phone calls from his mother in his future. They were going to need a better plan.

  Now that everybody had scattered to other parts of the house—probably all needing a break from each other—he was alone in the kitchen, taking the cabinet doors off and other mindless tasks that gave him an excuse to not be a part of whatever else was going on.

  When Anna walked in, notebook in hand and frowning in concentration, he had mixed feelings about the interruption. He wasn’t thrilled about giving up his alone time. But, on the other hand, he did like seeing her walk into a room.

  She’d been out of sorts today, though. Just as she’d been toward the end of yesterday. Distracted, as though she was lost in thought when she was usually focused on every detail of what they were doing. And he wasn’t sure if it was the kiss, or something else. Or maybe Gram or one of his parents had let something slip—said something that wasn’t adding up when it came to the falsified history of the inn. That possibility kept him from coming right out and asking her if anything was bothering her.

  “I need to make a run to the hardware store,” Anna said as she tore the sheet out of her notebook.

  Finn wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to herself, but he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her going to the hardware store alone. While Gram might think she had everybody on board with her plan, Albert Foss was definitely a wild card. “We can take a short road trip in my dad’s truck if you want. Hit the big-box store.”

  “I don’t need that much. And I like small-town hardware stores. They usually have decades’ worth of cool stuff to pick through. You never know what you’re going to find.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t turn down a ride, if you’re offering. It won’t fit in the car, and the crew is in and out of the SUV all day. They use the back like a mobile storage closet.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.” Being alone with her was going to cause all sorts of problems with his willpower, but her being alone with Albert at the hardware store could cause even worse problems.

  “Five minutes?” she asked after a glance at her watch. “I just want to ask the others if they can think of anything else we need right now.”

  That gave him five minutes to give himself a stern talking to. This wasn’t a date. They weren’t going cruising down a back road. They weren’t parking by the lake and making out as best they could in the bucket front seats of his pickup. It was a quick errand and he was going to be all business. Drive her to the hardware store. Help her find the stuff she needed. Load it in the bed of the truck. That was it.

  No more kissing.

  When she walked out of the house almost ten minutes letter, her cheeks flushed with what looked like a mix of exasperation and heat, that resolve slipped a little. She wasn’t a great actress. He knew he could get her to rescind her no-kissing rule with very little effort on his part.

  But he wouldn’t, because that would make him a jerk. She’d given him her boundaries and he would abide by them.

&n
bsp; She was quiet during the ride, her gaze alternating between the passing scenery and the list in her hand. Her head moved slightly in time to the radio, so he just let her enjoy the music while he navigated the narrow streets, looking for a place to park near the hardware store.

  “This town seems to get busier every day,” she said as he turned the ignition off. She handed him the list to hold while she unbuckled and sorted her bag and her phone before getting out of the truck.

  “It’s the Friday of Memorial Day weekend,” he pointed out. “Tourists are good for our economy, but not great for parking. It gets worse when schools let out for the summer, and between July Fourth and Labor Day, most of the people who live here just walk or do their errands on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.”

  After pulling open the hardware store’s wooden screen door for her, he took a deep breath and followed her inside. This had the potential to be a very bad day.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” Albert asked in his standard, gravelly-voiced greeting.

  “I have a list of things,” Anna said, “but I’d rather just look around for a while. I love hardware stores.

  “You look familiar,” he said, scowling heavily as he tried to place her.

  “Just one of those faces,” she said lightly. “I get that a lot. Finn, do you have the list?”

  “Right here,” he said, holding up the sheet of paper. “Let’s start at the back of the store.”

  “You need any help finding something, just give a shout. Though Finn probably knows where everything is, since his family’s had an account here since my grandpa first opened the doors.”

  “So much history,” she said, and Finn bit back a growl. The last thing he needed was for Albert to start talking. He talked entirely too much. “But this will all be going on my company card, since it’s for the Bayview Inn project.”

  “The what?” When Finn gave him a very pointed, wide-eyed look over Anna’s head, Albert sighed and folded his beefy arms across his chest. “Right. The inn.”

  “Should we pick up some more caulking while we’re here?” he asked Anna. Anything to steer her away from the conversation and back onto their task. “You can never have too much caulking.”

  “Yes, you actually can have too much caulking.”

  To Finn’s relief, she took the list out of his hand and started walking toward the back of the store. He shot Albert a final warning look and then followed her down the aisle.

  Sometime in the early 1970s, Albert and Finn’s grandfather had had a falling out. Gramps had been the road agent at the time, and Albert felt that when snow got plowed, extra was being deposited at the end of his driveway deliberately because the cherry pie Albert’s wife had made beat out Gram’s for a blue ribbon at Old Home Day. So in retaliation, Albert started a rumor that Tess Weaver made her pie with canned filling, and the next time it snowed, Gramps had spent hours using the town’s plow truck to build a veritable mountain of snow across Albert’s driveway.

  You didn’t slander a woman’s pie recipe in Blackberry Bay.

  Blowing the whistle on Tess Weaver’s big scheme would be quite the payback, decades in the making, so Finn didn’t breathe an easy breath until Albert had added up all their purchases and handed Anna her credit card back.

  But on his last trip out the door with the supplies, Albert called him over. “Hey, Finn. You tell Tess I haven’t had a decent cherry pie since my wife passed on. Sure would be nice of her to make me one, even if it is second-best.”

  “I’ll give her the message,” Finn promised, and then he got the hell out of there before Albert changed his mind.

  Or before he really threw caution to the wind and let Albert know in no uncertain terms that nobody in this town currently baked or had ever baked a better made-from-scratch cherry pie than Tess Weaver.

  Chapter Nine

  “Are you sure about this? I feel like if I hit a bump too hard, you might shatter into a bunch of pieces.”

  Anna inhaled deeply, trying to force her body to relax before turning to look at Brady, who was driving. “I’m not totally sure, but I’m mostly sure. I guess that’s as good as it gets when it comes to this sort of thing.”

  Maybe it was the fact it had been a week since her trip to the hardware store with Finn, who had left town shortly after to avoid the tourists, or so he’d said. But he hadn’t come back when they resumed filming on Tuesday, and Alice had only told her something had come up, but that he would be back as soon as he could.

  A week without Finn to distract her had opened the door for the realization she’d been in Blackberry Bay for over three weeks and there was an expiration date on her time here. She’d come here to learn more about her mother, and the best way to do that was probably to talk to her. Before she could talk herself out of it, she’d texted Brady.

  Now it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and the brother she’d just met was driving her to the house he’d grown up in so she could meet their mother. It was a lot to wrap her head around.

  When the very long driveway ended in front of a small house in a clearing, she told herself it would all be okay. If it didn’t go well, she trusted Brady to drive her out of here, no questions asked, as he’d promised he would. And she was going to get a few of her own questions answered.

  When the wooden screen door pushed open and two yellow Labs ran out, Anna found herself smiling. Dogs always helped.

  “That would be Taffy and Bean,” Brady said as he opened his door. “They love absolutely everybody and will try to get you to throw sticks, but once you start, they won’t want you to stop.”

  She ruffled their fur, laughing as they pushed at each other, each trying to be the one to get all the love from the stranger. But when she straightened and looked at the woman who’d just stepped out onto the porch, the laughter stopped abruptly.

  No wonder the people in town had been doing double takes since she arrived. If Anna took a Snapchat selfie and one of the lens options aged her around twenty years, the result would be the woman standing in front of her.

  “Anna.” It was just her name. One word. But coming from her mother’s lips, it crashed into Anna and sent her mentally reeling from the impact. “You found me.”

  Inside Anna’s head was a swirling hurricane of thoughts and emotions, but her mother’s words triggered the storm surge of anger. “I found you? Were you just hanging out here, living your life and waiting for me to show up? Sorry to take so long, but I didn’t actually know you existed until I was a teenager, and then I was a little busy.”

  Christy flinched, but her voice was low and calm. “Can we sit here on the porch and talk?”

  Anna wanted to reject her—to give her a hell no and walk away, just as this woman had when she was an infant. It was what she deserved.

  But some part of her that was still rational knew this was the moment she’d come here for. Finding her mother was why she’d come to Blackberry Bay and was humoring the Weaver family as they tried to scam her.

  She’d been looking for information. And after talking to Brady, she thought she’d prepared herself for coming face-to-face with her mother. It hadn’t helped. There was no way to prepare herself in advance for this, but if she backed out now, she’d probably never try again.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said softly. “I was sixteen when I found out Naomi—my dad’s ex-wife—isn’t my biological mother. I think that was my inner teenager lashing out.”

  “I understand. I really do.”

  When Anna took a step toward the porch, Brady touched her arm. “I’m going to take the dogs around back. If you want to go, just call for me and we’ll go.”

  She nodded and then sat in one of the rocking chairs Christy gestured to before sitting in one a respectful distance away.

  “How much has your father told you?” Christy asked softly.

  “Not much. He doesn’t r
eally like to talk about you.”

  “I guess I can’t blame him for that.”

  Anna made a sound of disbelief. “You guess? You left him with an infant and never looked back.”

  “I looked back,” she said softly. “But it was too late.”

  “I don’t have children,” Anna said. “But if I did, I don’t think there would ever be a too late when it came to them.”

  “I think every mother wants to believe that.” There was so much sorrow in Christy’s eyes that Anna had to look away. “I drank a lot before I had you. And I drank even more after. Now I recognize that I suffered from postpartum depression, but at the time, I was just exhausted and failing and I drank. A lot. That’s not an excuse. Just a reason. But I was not only toxic, you weren’t safe with me, and I had just enough lucidity to recognize that, so I left.”

  She wasn’t safe with her? “What did my dad do?”

  “We were young, Anna. So young. And he knew I was unhappy and drinking too much, but we’d fight about it and then he’d leave. He had to work two jobs, so I’m not sure he knew just how bad off I was.”

  “He didn’t know I wasn’t safe with you?” That was hard for her to wrap her head around. Outside of the lie that had tainted their relationship for a long time, she’d always considered herself lucky to have such a loving dad.

  Christy leaned forward in her chair, her body language showing her sense of urgency. “I never hurt you. I swear I didn’t. I just...there were always these thoughts in my head. That I might hurt you, and that you’d be better off without me. But it was the thoughts that I should spare you from a life of hardship that really scared me. That’s when I left.”

  Anna forced herself to meet Christy’s gaze, and she could see the pain in her mother’s eyes. She didn’t even want to imagine how lost and terrified Christy must have felt, and she felt empathy swelling inside of her. If she’d been in that dark a place, she probably did believe abandoning her daughter was the best thing she could do for her.