Hawthorne Harbor Box Set

by Elana Johnson

  Adam looked at the twelve-year-old who was wise beyond her years. “That’s also true,” he said. “Like it would make no sense for me to wish that, oh I don’t know, that one of my officers would start bringing me lunch every day.”

  “Or for me to wish my mom and Drew would get married,” she said.

  “But your mom and Drew are getting married,” Jess said.

  “Now they are,” she said, giving him a small glare. “But I spent a lot of wasted wishes on it, and it wasn’t even something I could control.” She flipped the coin again, but Adam snatched it out of the air.

  “So, what are you going to wish for today?”

  Her cheeks grew rosy. “I don’t want to tell.”

  Jess peered down into the well. “I wish I could get my coin back. I think I’ve been wishing for the wrong thing.” He spoke in a hushed, emotional voice, and Adam’s heart twisted in his chest.

  He wanted to make everything right for Jess. Give him whatever he’d been wishing for. Drive him to school and spend time with him on the weekends.

  Not up to you, he reminded himself. But he could wish Janey could figure things out faster. Couldn’t he?

  Probably not. He couldn’t control her.

  He handed the dime back to Dixie. “Go on, then. The wind’s starting to pick up and if we don’t get back soon, all the pecan pie will be gone. My mother loves that stuff.”

  Dixie grinned at him, pressed the silver coin to her lips, and tossed it in the well. She turned away, a proud smile on her face.

  “What did you wish for?” Jess asked, falling into step beside her. Adam liked that neither one of them seemed concerned about his crutches and this uneven, rocky ground.

  “I can’t tell you, Jess.” Dixie’s voice suggested her statement had come with an eyeroll, and Adam made his way back to the ATV with a genuine smile on his face—his first since Janey had left his house and cut off all communication with him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  One Friday night a couple of weeks later, the doorbell rang. Janey was curled up on the couch, the television blaring something she wasn’t watching. Jess was with Matt’s parents, so she got up and went to see who it was.

  Mabel Magleby stood on the porch with a huge tray in her hands. Janey lunged forward to take it from her at the same time she said, “Mabel, how good to see you. Come in.” She backed up with the heavy tray, wondering how in the world the older woman had carried it.

  “It’s quick bread,” she said as she followed Janey inside and closed the door behind her. “We had a reception at the Mansion for this tech business something or other.” She spoke with disapproval, like technology shouldn’t be developed.

  Janey put the tray on the counter in the kitchen and swept the aluminum foil off the top. The scent of lemons and sugar met her nose, and her mouth started to water. “Wow, this looks amazing.”

  “There’s chocolate chip.” Mabel pointed to one wedge of the tray. “This is orange marmalade. Coconut lime. And lemon zucchini.”

  Janey selected the lemon zucchini and took a bite of the top part of the bread, where the sugary lemon glaze was. A party exploded in her mouth with sweet and sour, and of course, the lovely, dense bread.

  “This is so good.” She smiled at Mabel and gave the old woman a hug. “Do you have time to sit and talk?” It had been so long since she’d shared an evening with someone. Jess got home about the same time she did each evening, and promptly went into his bedroom. He always said he wasn’t hungry, and claimed to have homework that required his utmost attention.

  Never mind that he usually ate a couple sandwiches for dinner, or several bowls of cereal, or half a pizza if she’d ordered in. Never mind that he normally sat on the couch with her to do his homework, asking her questions about the math he already knew the answers to.

  Jess was simply upset with her that she’d broken up with Adam, despite the fact that she’d told him that Adam had ended things with her.

  Not that you gave him much choice, she thought.

  “I always have time to sit and talk.” Mabel gave Janey a smile, and she returned it, more relieved to have company than she expected to be. As Mabel moved back toward the living room, she asked, “How’s Jess doing?”

  “Oh, he’s okay.” Janey switched off the TV and tucked her legs under her as she took her spot on the couch again. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to give Mabel a smile that would smooth over the worry that had come through in her voice.

  “And you?” Mabel perched on the wingback chair in front of the window, the coldest spot in the house. Janey needed to put in more energy-efficient glass, but she didn’t have the time to research it, nor the money to actually get the job done.

  Janey glanced away. “I’m doing okay too.”

  Mabel scoffed, drawing Janey’s attention back to her. “I took one look at you and knew you weren’t okay,” she said. “Why do you think I brought you a platter of bread?” She cocked her head, her eyes as sharp as a falcon.

  The front door opened and Jess came inside with both of Matt’s parents. Janey jumped to her feet. “Hey, everyone.” She smiled at them, Matt’s eyes looking back at her from Jess’s face and from Mav’s.

  He stepped up to Janey and hugged her. “Hey, Janey-girl.” He’d always called her that, and she held onto him for an extra moment as a rush of love flowed through her.

  “Hi, Mav. How’s the tile business?”

  “Thrilling.” He let his wife step in and embrace Janey too.

  “Something smells good,” she said as Jess walked away.

  “Hey,” Jess said from the kitchen. “Can I have some of this?” He stood down at the end of the hall, a slab of bread in his palm.

  “Of course,” Janey called. “But Mabel’s still here. Come say hello.”

  He obliged, returning to the living room with a stack of chocolate chip bread. “Hey, Mabel.” He gave her a quick hug, gave each of his grandparents a slice of bread, and collapsed onto the bean bag. “This is great. What’s it from?”

  She told him, and Janey marveled that he spoke more to her in the next few minutes than he had to her in days.

  “Well, I should go,” Mabel finally said, exchanging a glance with Mav and LouAnn. “It’s already dark, and Jaime’s waiting for me to get back so he can go on home.” She scooted to the edge of the chair and pushed herself up.

  Jess leapt to his feet and steadied her with his elbow, his dark eyes smiling down on her.

  “You’re such a good boy.” Mabel looked up at him. “Don’t change that, all right?” She seemed to say more than that with just those words, but Janey didn’t understand the message.

  Jess obviously did, because he nodded.

  “She’ll come around,” Mabel said, walking past Janey with a steady glare. She paused, Jess just on the other side of her, and both of Matt’s parents standing there watching. Janey felt like they’d all ganged up on her and she wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

  “You broke up with the Chief.” Mabel wasn’t asking.

  Janey blinked, uncomfortable talking about Adam with Mabel, and in front of Jess and Matt’s parents. She wasn’t exactly sure what her hesitation with Adam was, which only complicated explanations. “I...needed some time to think.”

  “Oh, boo.” Mabel waved her hand like thinking was the stupidest thing to do. “You think too much. He’s a good man.” She took a few more steps and called back over her shoulder. “I told him not to break your heart, and he told me it would be the other way around. I didn’t believe him.”

  “I didn’t break his heart.” She got to her feet and followed Mabel and Jess around the corner to the front door.

  “Yes, you did, Mom,” Jess said in a real quiet voice.

  Mabel, however, wasn’t nearly as nice. “Of course you did, Janey. He’s in love with you, and you’re trying to figure out an answer to an unanswerable question. He’s confused. Lonely.”

  Janey held up her hand. “All right, Ma
bel.”

  Her blue eyes sparked with lightning. “Don’t let him go because you’re scared,” she said. “You’ll regret it forever.”

  Jess opened the door and Mabel shuffled through it. He went with her to make sure she got down the steps and into her car okay, leaving Janey numb and frozen to the spot.

  “We’re okay with it,” LouAnn said. “In case you were wondering.”

  “You’ve done so great with Jess,” Mav said. “He’s so much like Matt.” He pressed his lips together for a quick minute. “Grief sneaks up on me sometimes.” He looked away, and Janey felt the pinch of emotion in her heart too.

  “I don’t want to be disloyal to Matt,” she whispered.

  “Oh, honey, you’re not.” LouAnn put both hands on Janey’s shoulders and looked right into her eyes. “You deserve to be happy. Don’t be afraid of that.” LouAnn gave her a smile and a nod, and then she waved that she and Mav should leave too.

  They did, and Janey gripped the door as she watched them cross the porch to the steps. Mav kept his hand on LouAnn’s elbow to steady her as she took the steps one at a time until she made it to the sidewalk. Their love was palpable, and she’d enjoyed being their daughter-in-law.

  She’d always have them, just like Jess would always be Matt’s son. As she stood there, the only part of her body that seemed to be working was her brain, and that thing never shut off.

  Don’t think. Just act.

  Don’t let him go.

  Don’t be afraid.

  Everyone had such great advice. But no one told her how to do the things she needed to do. No one told her how to be brave enough to push past her fears. No one told her how to explain things to Adam, or how to get him to understand where she was coming from.

  Probably because you don’t even know where you are or where you’re coming from.

  Janey sighed as Jess bounded up the stairs and back into the house. “Jess.”

  He didn’t look at her or speak to her, but simply walked past, collected another stack of sweet bread, and went into his room.

  The sound of his bedroom door clicking closed felt so final to Janey, and her chest tightened until she could barely breathe. Since she didn’t know how to ease the tension or make things right, she got her own stack of sugary bread and went back to the TV.

  * * *

  “I swear I used to be a size six,” Janey grumbled, thinking of all that coconut lime bread she’d eaten this past week. But the size-six bridesmaid dress would decidedly not zip up. The shade of pale pink played nicely with her dark hair, but she definitely needed a bigger size.

  She opened the dressing room door to find Moira standing right there. “Need a different size?”

  “Eight, at least,” Janey said, wondering how the other women were faring. She hadn’t stepped foot in any of the shops on Wedding Row in years. Thankfully, the same anxieties she’d been entertaining since Adam’s departure from her life hadn’t reared their ugly heads yet today. She’d survived brunch with Gretchen and four more of her friends. Then they’d walked down the street, ogling the window displays in every shop though none of the rest of them were engaged.

  Flowers, photographers, videographers, shoe stores, jewelers, photo booth rentals, party supply stores, two salons, a men’s wear store and now the dress shop. Gretchen had scheduled an appointment, and each woman had her own attendant.

  Moira returned carrying two pink dresses as well as something that looked like an oversized gauze wrap. “Let me help you with the shaper,” she said.

  Janey didn’t even know what a shaper was. But she let Moira follow her into the dressing room and help her out of the pale pink dress that reminded Janey of cotton candy.

  “You step in here,” she said, holding the gauze open. “And it just shimmies on.” She tugged and sure enough, the shaper slid right over Janey’s hips, stomach, and chest. “It keeps you all straight.”

  Moira grinned as she turned to the dresses. “I think the eight will be just fine now. We could try the six again.”

  “Eight,” Janey said. No amount of stretchy gauze was going to get that size six dress to zip up. Moira helped her get into the dress, which zipped right up. She even had a little room in it and she smiled at her reflection.

  Thoughts of her own wedding flashed through her mind, and the grin on her face flipped upside down.

  Her own wedding?

  Who was she kidding?

  She wasn’t even dating anyone anymore. Her heart tumbled in her chest and tears sprang to her eyes.

  “You are beautiful,” Moira said. “It’s okay to get a little teary.”

  Janey sniffled and shook her head. “It’s not that.”

  “Oh.” Moira busied herself with hanging the size six dress on another hanger.

  “Are you married?” Janey asked.

  Surprised crossed Moira’s perfectly made up face, and a small, placating smile appeared. “Yes, I am.”

  “For how long?”

  “Seven years now.” The smile grew, then faltered. “I heard about you and Chief Herrin.”

  Janey’s defenses immediately flew into place, though Moira had obviously put two and two together and arrived at the cause of Janey’s tears.

  “I’m just so confused by it all,” Janey said, smoothing her hands down her waist and hips.

  “What are you confused by?” Moira asked.

  Knocking interrupted them. “Let me see, Janey,” Gretchen called.

  Janey met Moira’s eyes and quickly made to wipe hers. She nodded when she was satisfied she didn’t look like she’d been a bit teary. Moira opened the door and Janey walked a couple of steps forward before cocking her hip and putting her hand on it.

  “How do I look?”

  Gretchen gasped and covered her mouth. “So beautiful.”

  “How are the other women doing?” Janey asked.

  “We’re mostly done. Betty is getting a different size.”

  Moira slipped out of the dressing room with the two dresses that weren’t the right size. “Just leave those in the room, Janey,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

  “Isn’t this place great?” Gretchen asked as she entered the dressing room to help Janey get the dress off.

  “So great,” Janey said.

  Gretchen’s fingers stuttered along the zipper. “You’re having fun, right?”

  She met her friend’s eyes in the mirror and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I can’t stop thinking about Adam. That maybe, one day, this would be me, shopping with my bridesmaids.”

  Even as she spoke, she realized it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t do what Gretchen was doing for her second wedding. She’d want a simple affair, with just her family there, and his family, and him in his best uniform and her in a pearly dress that wasn’t quite white and wasn’t quite pink, but somewhere in between.

  There would be roses everywhere, and Jess would be wearing a tux and she’d dance with him first before dancing with Adam. She sighed, and Gretchen slid the dress off her shoulders and hung it on the hanger.

  “You know what that sigh just told me?”

  “What?”

  “That you’re in love with him.”

  Janey slithered out of the body shaper and reached for her jeans, silent.

  “I know you are. You know you are. What are you so afraid of?”

  Janey pulled her sweater over her head and faced Gretchen. “I had perfect once, and it shattered. I can’t go through that again. So...I think maybe I’m better off if things just stay the way they were. Jess and I are fine.” A laugh came out with the last word. She’d barely spoken to her son since Adam had broken up with her.

  “Things aren’t perfect, but we’ve always been happy.”

  Why didn’t she feel happy then? Why didn’t she and Jess talk over dinner the way they used to? Why couldn’t she sleep, even when she’d read for hours and eaten herself into a chocolate-chip-pretzel stupor?

  Gretchen smoothed her hair off her face. “Oh, honey. A
blind man could see you’re not happy.” She flashed a sympathetic smile and stepped out of the dressing room with the pink dress.

  “I miss him,” Janey whispered to herself. “I miss him so much.”

  And she didn’t mean Matt.

  * * *

  The Monday before Gretchen and Drew’s wedding, Janey kept Jess home from school. It had been almost six weeks since her last encounter with Adam where they were still dating, and Jess was starting to thaw slightly. Very slightly.

  This whole time, she’d been worrying about what he would think of her dating again, and he’d gone and fallen for the man before she had.

  “I need your full attention during the fitting,” she said as she drove across town to the men’s wear shop on Wedding Row.

  “Didn’t I already do the fitting?”

  “Right, yes. The suit should be ready. You just try it on one last time to make sure all the alterations are correct.” She glanced at him, but his focus was on his phone. “And then we’ll go get lunch.”

  “Can we take some to Adam?” Jess glanced up and out of the corner of his eye.

  Janey sighed. He’d been doing that a lot more lately. Sneaking in a question about Adam, or trying to get her and Adam in the same room together.

  “Jess,” she said, unsure of how to continue.

  “Why can’t you just get back together with him? He’s miserable without you, Mom.”

  Janey looked out her window, her heart ricocheting around inside her chest. Jess had not said one single word about Adam. Not one. In all these weeks.

  “His birthday is coming up,” Jess said. “I’ll do extra chores to earn more money. I want to get him something.”

  Janey looked at her son, at the determined lift of his chin. “That’s fine.”

  “And I want to spend the day with him. He shouldn’t be alone on his birthday.”

  “Jess—”

  “You could come too. I know! Let’s make him his favorite dinner and a birthday cake.”

  “Oh, bud, I don’t even know what his favorite dinner is.”