Be My Love (A Walker Island Romance Book 1) (11 page)

Downstairs, Mandy was already serving up breakfast to several other guests. Thanks to Hanna and her friendly questions, Joel soon found out that the gray haired couple had been to the festival every year for a couple of decades now, the group of college students had come from Vancouver to enjoy the big event for the first time, and the two women sitting together had come all the way from New York.

“What do you do when you’re not traveling to festivals?” she asked one of the women.

“I work in pyrotechnics.”

“Like firework displays?”

“Mostly movies and TV shows, actually.”

“Wow, so maybe the next time my sister Morgan does the makeup for a movie action sequence, there’s a chance you’ll be there, too?”

“Your sister works in movies?”

Soon everyone was chatting together, the conversation moving easily from movie sets to artists’ studios in Seattle to everyone’s stories about the festival. Joel could have joined in. Instead, he sat back, watching Hanna at work. This side of her, the side that went out and tried to learn all about people’s lives, was just as beautiful as all the others. She got answers from people because she genuinely seemed to want to know about them. She genuinely cared.

“Are all of you studying anthropology?” Hanna said to the group of college students who had come in from Vancouver for the festival. “I know I might be biased, but I think that you would find a trip to Walker Island really amazing for your studies. And just to have fun, too.”

Always the island. Joel couldn’t blame Hanna for how everything came back around to it—not when his own life revolved around it, too. And not when he loved Walker Island just as much as she did.

Yet that was the problem right there. It was
Walker
Island. Every mention of it inevitably came with a reminder that they weren’t just two people who were falling for each other. On the contrary, they each came with deep family histories full of heartache and betrayal. But for a little while, at least, he’d been able to forget the past, and concentrate, instead, on the way that Hanna seemed to give other people’s lives more meaning just by paying attention to them.

Just the way she has with mine.

Hanna reached over to touch his hand. “We should probably find Mandy. I want to see if she can tell us anything before we go.”

When they found the B&B’s manager in the kitchen, she asked, “How was your evening?”

“The room was lovely and the bed was very comfortable.”

Joel thought Hanna was blushing a little as she said it, but not enough that anyone who didn’t know her well would notice.

“We were hoping that you might know someone who remembers this place from the fifties that we could speak to?”

“My grandmother used to run the hotel, but now it’s just me. But I know pretty much everything there is to know about the history of the place.”

Hanna took out the photograph of Poppy and Ava, pointing at Poppy. “I’m trying to find out more about this woman. We were wondering, if you have any old account books or journals, perhaps we could find out if she was a guest here.”

“Why are you looking for her?” Mandy asked. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Poppy.” Hanna looked across to Joel, a question in her eyes. When he nodded that it was okay to say more, she said, “Poppy Peterson. She was Joel’s great aunt and the woman in the picture with her is my grandmother. We think this picture probably dates back to the late forties or early fifties. She’s been, well, missing for a very long time, and we’re trying to figure out what really happened to her.”

Now Mandy looked sympathetic. “I’m happy to help if I can. Just give me a minute.”

She went off into the back room and when she came back, she said, “These are the working ledgers from around that time. They’re like a big diary of the old place.”

The stack of ledgers was huge and Joel had to admit that, all along, he’d known there was only a limited chance of finding any reference to his Great Aunt Poppy here. And yet, he’d still taken two days off from Peterson Shipping during the busiest season of the year to dash across to Seattle with Hanna.

It was madness, looked at that way...madness that only worked if he didn’t allow himself to look too hard at it.

“I think I have something!” Hanna declared after only a few minutes of reading. “Joel, you’ll be able to tell better than I can.”

Surprised that she could have found anything so quickly, he read through a couple of housekeeping notes on the need for more towels and a request for an afternoon off that didn’t seem like anything special, even though it was signed ‘P.’

But then, he took a closer look at the handwriting.

“Do you see how similar her handwriting looks to the poem?”

Joel could see it easily enough, but he was too shocked to believe it was true.

The date was 1952. A year after Poppy was supposed to have passed away.

“Do you know who could have written this note?” Hanna asked Mandy.

“If I’m remembering what my grandmother told me correctly, that would be one of the chamber maids. Penny, I think she was called when they noted her wages.” Mandy flicked through the book, and sure enough, there was a wage sheet showing half a dozen people, one of them listed simply as Penny P. “Let’s see, she worked here for about a year before leaving.”

Hanna asked Mandy for more details, but Joel needed some air, so he slipped out of the room and went to stand on the front porch. As much as he wanted to deny it, the handwriting was definitely the same.

Which meant that his great aunt hadn’t died when everyone thought she had.

Instead…she’d run off to become a chambermaid in a bed and breakfast in Seattle.

“Joel?” Hanna stepped out on the porch beside him. “Are you okay? Aren’t you happy that we know for sure now that Poppy didn’t commit suicide?”

“It means she left, Hanna.” His voice sounded hollow even to his own ears. “It means she abandoned her family.”

Poppy had abandoned everyone around her. Just left. The way everyone in his family seemed to.

Joel’s parents and grandparents had died years ago. His aunt, uncle and cousins who lived off the island had disappeared as soon as they were able, leaving him with the company to run, regardless of whether it was what he wanted, and only very rarely visited.

And now he’d just found out that his family’s most tragic figure had been just as selfish as the rest of them?

“Even so—” Hanna began, reaching out for him, but Joel stepped away from her.

He could see the hurt register on her face as he did so, but he hurt too much himself right then to stop himself from pulling away.

Pulling away completely.

“This was a mistake. All of it. Allowing you into the archives. Looking into Poppy’s past. Coming here to Seattle to hunt down a house in an old picture.”

“What about last night? Do you think that was a mistake, too?”

Joel had wanted to allow the beauty of being with Hanna to override common sense. But now he knew for sure that if Poppy could just leave the way she did, without giving so much as a thought to the people who loved her, then
anyone
could leave.

“Yes, it was a mistake. One I tried so hard not to make with you.”

He knew how much his words had to hurt her, but she didn’t cry. Didn’t run.

She did the exact opposite in fact, saying, “I know it wasn’t a mistake. Nothing that beautiful could be.”

Her absolute certainty that they were good together regardless of what anyone thought shook him to his very core. “When you told me you were going to make this documentary,” he reminded her, “you told me flat out that it was so that you could get into the graduate program. And when you do, you’re going to leave.”

The way everyone left. The way his parents had. The way his aunts and uncles and cousins had.

The way Poppy had.

“But I lo—”

Joel cut Hanna off before she could finish. “And even if you did stay...if you stayed because of me...that would be just as bad, because then I’d be the guy forcing you to give up your dream. It wouldn’t be right. Not for either of us.”

He knew the right thing to do now. Had known it all along, actually, but had been so tempted by Hanna’s smiles, by her laughter, by her beautiful blue eyes that so captivated him, by her intelligence and passion, that he’d ignored common sense.

“You should get going if you aren’t going to miss the ferry back to the island, Hanna. I’ll get a ride back on one of the mussel boats.”

He let himself look at her one last time, let himself remember how good it had been to be with her, before he made sure he was the one walking away this time.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hanna wasn’t entirely sure how she got home. She could barely remember making her way back through Seattle, the festival still going on all around her. It had seemed so wrong that the rest of the world could still be enjoying itself when Joel had just broken her heart. Shattered it into a million pieces, actually. And she barely remembered the ferry ride, either, wondering the whole time how Joel could walk away from her without a second glance.

Finally back at the Walker house, she stumbled in through the door. When Charlotte hollered, “Aunt Hanna is back home!” she gave her niece a quick hug before quickly heading upstairs so that Charlotte wouldn’t see the tears she was only just starting to let fall.

A short while later, Emily opened up her bedroom door, and as she sat beside Hanna, her oldest sister put an arm around her. “We got your message,” Emily said gently. “What happened?”

“Joel and I…”

Hanna shook her head. She could easily imagine everything Emily was going to say about her sleeping with Joel.
How could she be so stupid, starting something with a Peterson? And, couldn’t she see that he was completely wrong for her?

But that was the problem. Hanna couldn’t see that. She loved him. She loved him, and he’d walked away as if what they’d shared together had been nothing.

As if
she
was nothing.

“We guessed that part,” Emily said softly, but instead of lecturing her or saying
I told you so,
Emily simply drew Hanna closer. “I thought being with Joel would make you happy, Hanna.”

“I was happy. So happy, Emily. Until he walked away.”

“Then you deserve better than him.”

But that was just the problem, Hanna thought as she wiped away her tears, there
wasn’t
better than Joel, and now he was gone. He was gone, and the simple fact of that felt like a black hole opening up inside her, devouring everything else.

But Hanna knew Emily wouldn’t understand, especially not when all she could see was that Joel Peterson had made her youngest sister cry. A part of her wanted so badly to confide all of her hopes, her fears, her dreams to her sister, but another part just wanted to be alone.

Eventually when she stayed quiet, Emily left, saying something about going downstairs to fix something for Hanna to eat. Was it lunch or dinner? Hanna wasn’t sure. She didn’t even know how long she’d been there anymore. She wasn’t hungry, in any case.

A few minutes after Emily left, Rachel came in. Her second eldest sister took her hand. “I know it hurts when a guy just walks out on you,” she said, obviously having already spoken with Emily.

Hanna could see the pain still there in her sister’s eyes from when Charlotte’s father had walked out on Rachel. Not only did she have to cope on her own as a single mother every day, but she’d also shut herself away from other romantic relationships so that she wouldn’t be hurt again.

“Joel didn’t just walk out on me, at least not right away. We found out some things about Poppy in Seattle first. Important things.”

“But after you did, he didn’t want you messing with his family anymore, did he?” Rachel guessed.

“No, he wasn’t angry with me for pursuing my documentary anymore, not when he’d agreed to join me in the search for information. It was what he found out about Poppy that made him angry. She didn’t end her life after her engagement fell apart; she moved on to a new life in Seattle instead, without telling anyone in her family.” Hanna was still trying to make sense of it all. “He was angry, so angry, when he found out that she’d walked away from her family without a second thought. And then
he
walked out on
me
the same way.”

Rachel squeezed her hand. “I’m pretty sure that if men made sense, the whole world would be a simpler place. But you have us, and we’ll make sure you don’t need to worry about him anymore.”

It wasn’t that simple though. Hanna couldn’t just put Joel behind her and move on with her life.

Not when she still loved him.

And not when she could still remember the pain in Joel’s voice as he’d told her that he couldn’t see her anymore. He’d seemed so certain that she was going to leave him, just like Poppy had left her family behind all those years ago.

“One day,” Rachel promised, “it will hurt less and everything will pretty much go back to normal.”

But Hanna didn’t want her old normal. She wanted Joel, wanted the fantasy of a life with him that she could so easily see, and feel deep inside her heart, to be her
new
normal.

“Charlotte painted you a picture. Well, it’s more of a handprint, really.”

“That’s so sweet of her.” Hanna tried to force a smile, but she couldn’t. She also didn’t want her little niece seeing her like this, or to grow up believing that falling in love meant getting hurt. “I’m not sure—”

“I know. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll let her come up to say hello. Now, I should probably go check on her before she decides to repaint the walls with crayons.”

A few minutes later, Paige popped her head in the door. “I guess you must be pretty sick of all of us coming to check that you’re okay by now.”

Hanna shook her head. “No, I would never get sick of any of you.”

“I got a few details downstairs,” Paige said as she sat down on the bed with her usual grace, “enough to guess that Emily played the big-sister-knowing-best card and Rachel probably told you all men are unpredictable pigs.” Paige hugged her. “Which is why I thought I’d just sit here with you until you felt like kicking me out.”