by Olivia Miles
She locked eyes with him across the little girl’s head, and for the first time since coming back to Blue Harbor, she didn’t feel the need to run from the memories of the past. For just this moment, she was happy to have them at all.
6
Every Thursday after school, Keira went to an art class in town, and Robbie’s fridge was now covered in her weekly creations, ranging from water colors to pastels to some three-dimensional creations he’d had to ask her to explain to him, lest he call it something it wasn’t, like the time he thought her clay sculpture of a polar bear was a cat. The weekly activities were something he’d put in place as soon as he’d returned to town. Structure. Routine. Keeping busy was better for both of them, and it wasn’t much fun for Keira to spend every afternoon hanging out at the inn with his mother. So there was ballet, and art class, and in the summer there would be camp. Last summer had been the most difficult, of course, with Keira wanting to be by his side, not used to being sent away for the day, since Stephanie had worked part-time from a home office.
Now, a year after they’d returned to Blue Harbor, he couldn’t help but reflect on how far they had come. He didn’t have the same sense of apprehension when he sent her off to school in the morning, or went to pick her up at the end of the day. As he climbed out of the truck and walked up the gravel path to the doors of the cottage that served as one of several local art studios, he felt comfortable and even relaxed, and at home.
As difficult as it was to start over again as a single father, coming back to Blue Harbor had been the right choice. It was home. It always had been. And Britt had reminded him of that today. There was history here. Laughter. Good times. Times that he didn’t think about often enough, because so often it was easier to forge ahead, without looking back.
Inside the studio, parents were busy collecting their kids. It was a small space, with a large table in the center of the room, and trays of supplies in the center to share. Today’s project had involved painting birdhouses, and Keira excitedly held up her messy creation.
“Can we hang it up on the tree in front of our house?” she asked hopefully.
Another reason to come back here, he thought, as he admired her handiwork. Back in Boston, they had lived in a condo in a high-rise building that overlooked more buildings. They didn’t even have a balcony; the only thing Keira knew of nature was from their trips to the park and playground. Here, they had a house, a yard, trees, and fresh air. Keira was thriving, which Robbie knew would please Stephanie, even if it did make him feel guilty for having this daily joy that she had been deprived of, her life cut unfairly short.
He knew it was his responsibility to give their daughter the best life he could, but it felt wrong to see her adjusting, and moving on, when he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
He still yearned to talk to Stephanie, or turn to her when things became too overwhelming, like when Keira got the stomach bug or the time she lost her favorite stuffed animal, and Robbie didn’t even know which one she was talking about, because they all looked pretty much the same and had similar names too, all cutesy, many named after some sort of color or food group. He had mistakenly assumed that Rainbow was the pink unicorn and Coco was the brown horse, but it turned out that Coco was the brown bear and Rainbow was…Well, he didn’t really know what Rainbow was, at least not for a while. Now he knew. She was a lama. And a unicorn. How that all worked, he didn’t know, but there it was all the same. It had taken over a year of doing this on his own to learn the ropes and to be a family of two instead of a family of three.
But they’d done it. They’d made it.
“She has quite a unique style.” The art teacher, a woman a few years younger than him, who had long, flowing red hair and bright blue eyes, set a hand on his arm and looked at him so earnestly that he had to glance away.
There really weren’t enough single men in this town, and that was the problem. He’d love to offer up his brother, but seeing as Jackson was hell-bent on staying single, he doubted that this would be much help. Besides, Mila was pretty, and this town was small. Jackson had probably already dated her, considered dating her, or was still considering dating her. And with dating Jackson came inevitable heartbreak. At least with Robbie, there was no chance of that. For anyone.
He carefully stepped back, retracting his arm. “She gets it from her mother,” he said, honestly. Stephanie had been a costume designer for several local theatres, and she was always sketching something, or admiring different colors, getting new ideas. She had made many of Keira’s clothes when she was little. Now, they were all too small. Figuring out what size clothing to buy Keira had been another learning curve. One they’d figured out. Together.
He glanced at his daughter now as she came and took his hand. Gone were the mixed prints that she, then at the age of five, had to instruct him did not match. He had chuckled, thinking of how much she had learned from her mother, but his heart had felt like it was splitting in two when he hoped that she would hold onto it, that this wisdom would last her a lifetime, because it had to.
Now Keira was dressed in a pink cotton dress and functional slip-on sneakers in sparkly canvas. Her hair was pulled back in an albeit messy ponytail, but he could at least say she had started the day with it looking neater than the just-rolled-out-of-bed look she had going for a while there. Had it taken about a month to master that ponytail? Yes. Could he do the braids she was asking for? Not yet. But he was watching online videos. He’d get there soon.
The art teacher gave a little sigh and moved on to another parent who had just come through the doors, giving Robbie the opportunity to slip out without any more exchange.
He breathed in the cool, early evening air, something he had never appreciated until he’d gone without it, something he hadn’t even missed, until he’d rediscovered it.
Time had a funny way of doing that.
With people too, he thought, as his mind drifted back to Britt.
“Can we order a pizza tonight?” Keira asked as they loaded up into the truck, and he made sure her seatbelt was secure.
He laughed. “No, we cannot have pizza tonight. That’s for weekends.”
True, it used to be a daily thing, at the beginning, because cooking had never been his strength either, and because ordering takeout was just so much easier. But there weren’t many options for that sort of thing in Blue Harbor—another adjustment.
“I’m grilling chicken for us tonight,” he said. “But if you want, we can swing by the store on our way home and pick up something for dessert.”
“Brownies?” Keira asked with a devilish look.
He gave a rueful smile. “I was thinking ice cream.”
She loved to push, and once he would have caved, but that was the easy path, and this parenting thing…it wasn’t easy at all. Especially on his own.
But bringing in another person wouldn’t make things any easier, he told himself every time things got difficult or the nights felt lonely. It would only complicate things. For him. And for Keira. And he couldn’t afford to let that happen, not when he now had not just one, but two women leave his life without warning.
Even if one had returned.
*
Britt had decided that enough was enough. She’d been in town for nearly a week, and in that time, it seemed that Candy was determined to feed her father a steady diet of so-called comfort food. It was time to get some fresh produce in the house and make herself more useful. Besides, Amelia had her hands full at the café; there was no reason for her to be troubling herself with dropping off meals that Britt knew Candy usually just set aside and never served, even if Britt did enjoy them for herself.
She stopped by the grocery store on her way home, happy to get a space just in front and knowing that it wouldn’t be this easy come tomorrow, when tourists flocked to town for a summer weekend. She could only hope they would also flock to the market on Sunday. Now that it was deep into June and the weather was warming up, it was the orchard’s best time
to recapture some of their losses during the other less busy seasons.
She laughed at herself as she pushed through the door into the air-conditioned store. Maybe Robbie was right. She was only here temporarily, and she couldn’t stop looking at ways to improve things. She couldn’t help it; it was in her nature. Righting wrongs, turning bad situations into good ones, and breathing life into dying companies had kept her going since she had graduated from college. It wasn’t just the escape. The travel and the moving from place to place had been the distraction she needed, sure. But she thrived on the ability to take something that felt hopeless and salvage it. To know that some things were still within her control.
She might technically be unemployed right now, but that didn’t mean she could sit back and relax. When you relaxed, things fell apart. And helping the business was the only way she could help her father.
Or herself.
She took a cart and began pushing it through the aisles. Even though she hadn’t been back to this store since she’d come here as a kid, with her mother, she remembered the layout, with the fresh items around the perimeter and the processed and frozen items distributed through the six short aisles in the middle. Small, but efficient. She saw no room for improvement here, and she liked to think she had a trained eye.
In no time, she had collected enough to at least get her through the weekend, and, with any luck, offer up a meal or two to her father (and Candy, she thought, with a sigh) that might offset all the cholesterol that Candy was feeding him.
She unloaded her items and scanned her card. And waited.
“I’m sorry.” The teenage boy behind the counter gave her a nervous glance. “It said the card was declined.”
“Really?” Britt froze, but her mind was on overdrive. She had paid off last month’s statement, at least the minimum balance, and her next payment wasn’t due for another two weeks. She surely couldn’t have already exceeded her limit—could she?
Her heart began to pound as her cheeks turned hot. She’d been cash poor recently, and knowing that not much would be coming in had made her rely on credit more than usual. But she hadn’t kept track. And now…
“I’ll try again,” the boy offered, even though she wished that he wouldn’t. A line was starting to form and she could feel the heat of several pairs of eyes on her. “Sometimes there’s a glitch with the system.”
Britt managed a watery smile, but she was starting to shake. She should leave, collect her maxed out credit card and what was left of her dignity and go to the car. She’d call the company when she got back to the house. Transfer some funds out of her savings account. Only there wasn’t much left in there anymore. Rent in Chicago was steep. And she hadn’t received any more responses to the jobs she’d applied to, or any feedback from the interview last week.
With a heavy heart, she knew she could always tap into her special savings account where she had a small but not insignificant inheritance from her mother. She’d held onto it all this time, hoping she would know how to use it, and when.
Sure enough, the kid shook his head. “Nope. Declined again.”
Really, did he have to say it quite so loudly? She narrowed her eyes on him as she took back her card and stuffed it with a shaking hand into her wallet.
“If you have another form of payment—”
“You know, I’ll just come back for these,” she managed. Her face was burning, and she kept her eyes low, unwilling to look around her and take in the all the curious gazes.
“You sure?”
He just wasn’t going to let this drop, was he?
“I’ll take care of it,” a voice behind her said.
Britt closed her eyes against the shame because as much as she wished the husky, deep voice belonged to her father, or her uncle, she knew that it of course belonged to Robbie.
He was standing beside her now, giving her a grin so wicked that she managed to forget her humiliation for a moment as a mixture of fury and gratitude spread over her.
“Just combine it with my items,” he told the kid behind the counter.
The kid shrugged and began scanning the new groceries before Britt had a chance to protest. “Thank you,” she managed, but her voice was locked in her throat and she still couldn’t bring herself to fully look at him.
They were standing close, so close that she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, sense the hair on his arm against her own bare skin, and she moved to the side, waiting for the heat to leave her.
“Did she run out of money, Daddy?” a worried voice asked as Keira emerged from behind his back.
Britt gave Robbie a withering glance. He winked in response.
Ah, so this was fun for him, was it? Saving the day? Stepping in and acting all responsible when she so clearly wasn’t?
“She’s just having a problem with her credit card, honey,” Robbie replied, giving Keira’s shoulder a squeeze.
“Good thing you’re here to save the day!” Keira smiled broadly and Britt managed to grit her teeth into some semblance of a smile in return.
She could feel a dull headache coming on as she waited for her bags to finish being packed. It seemed to take an extremely long time. Long enough for Robbie to calmly pay the tab. Long enough for him to saunter close to her and say, “Seems I have a knack for getting you out of trouble.”
Except something told her he wouldn’t be kissing her after today’s rescue mission.
“I just forgot to pay the bill,” she said in a huff. “I left Chicago in a rush, after all.”
Technically, four days after she’d heard the news, and Robbie was no doubt aware of this. She was all too aware that her cheeks were on fire.
But Robbie just cocked an eyebrow and fought off a grin. “Must be the case. After all, you’ve got that big, fancy job, telling people what to do, how to run their businesses, who to keep, who to fire…A job like that pays pretty well.”
She reached out and grabbed the handles of her paper grocery bags. “It does. And I should go home right now and remedy this. I’ll pay you back in the morning.” She stared at him, pushing out a breath. “And thank you.”
“Just a little favor between friends,” he said mildly. “After all, you would have done the same for me.”
He had her there. It was true, she would have. But friends? They weren’t friends. Friends knew your ups and downs and kept tabs on your daily life. They were there for you when you needed them the most.
Robbie was not a friend. Britt didn’t have friends. Not anymore.
“Still, you didn’t have to step in,” she said. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the words, help me.
Robbie picked up his own two bags and followed her out of the store. “If I hadn’t, someone else would have. That’s what’s nice about a small community like this. We all look out for each other.”
“All know each other’s business, is more like it,” she said ruefully. How many times, that last year she was here, did she feel drained and overwhelmed by the endless questions she was met with everywhere she went? She couldn’t find an escape, couldn’t go to the library or even to a store without someone asking about her mother. She couldn’t breathe in this town.
“They just care,” Robbie said gently.
“It’s true,” Keira offered. “Natalie always offers to bring me home from ballet class and she keeps saying she can bring dinner over, too.” She shot a look at Britt. “I think she knows Daddy is just learning to cook…”
Britt laughed, but the little girl’s comment wasn’t lost on her. She’d grown up with Natalie Clark and her sisters—spent holidays with their family when Aunt Miriam wanted to include her sister’s family too. There was always a spot at the dining room table for everyone, always enough food, too. Britt’s mother had made sure of that. And, looking back, she loved the house when it was loudest, and most full.
But Natalie wasn’t just being friendly. Natalie was a single mother living in a small town with limited bachelors. Of course she
’d take an interest in one of the Bradford boys. Who wouldn’t?
Pushing aside the flutter of jealousy that had no business existing, Britt jutted her chin at Robbie as Keira climbed into his truck. “It seems that you have some admirers in town.”
So a woman wanted to hint her way into a date with Robbie. Who was Britt to care? But she did, she realized. She still cared.
“There’s only one girl for me,” he said, shaking his head. “And she’s six.”
She frowned a little. “Oh. So, you haven’t…dated at all?”
“Nope, and don’t intend to.” He loaded his bags into the back of the vehicle and met her eye.
Well, then, she thought, as she loaded her own bags into the car and waved good-bye, she supposed that took any possibility of a second chance for them off the table.
Not that she’d been planning on one.
*
By the time Britt returned to the house, she had a plan. It was what she did best, what kept her grounded and the anxiety at bay. She would spend the entire evening applying to new jobs, expanding her search beyond Chicago to the greater Midwest region. She would create a budget. And she would call her landlord to ask about breaking her lease or subletting it come July. She lived in a trendy part of the city where there was always demand for rental space. She could do with less space for the time being; after all, she was used to living out of hotel rooms most of the time anyway.
Or…But no. Her stomach tightened as soon as the thought took hold. She could stay here, she supposed, just until something else came along. But staying here with an end in sight and staying indefinitely were two very different things, and once her father was back at work, she wouldn’t really be needed much.
Still, she could make herself useful while she was here, and she intended to do that. Tonight. Before she got a start on her career plans.
She unloaded the groceries directly through the back door and into the kitchen, relieved to see that Amelia had followed up on her word and that a blue and white striped apron from her café now hung on the hook in the pantry where their mother’s had always been. Still, somehow seeing her mother’s apron removed, gone from its rightful place, cut her deep, and she moved quickly to focus on the task at hand. To unload all the groceries. That Robbie had paid for.