Be My Love (A Walker Island Romance Book 1) (14 page)

“It’s better than not knowing,” Joel said.

“Well,” Justine said gently, “your great aunt passed away, and it was such a tragic loss. Who knows what she might have done if that hadn’t happened?”

She might have gone home,
Hanna thought. She couldn’t prove it, but something in her heart told her she was right. Poppy had left the island for a while to pursue her dreams, just the way Hanna had for filmmaking school, but she’d never planned on leaving forever.

Hanna reached into her bag for the envelopes and postcards Grams had given her. She’d already arranged them in date order, but now she began to set them out, getting out her phone and pulling up a map to look at the postmarks.

“What are you doing?” Joel asked.

“Plotting her route,” Hanna explained.

It was fairly easy now that she knew what had happened. The early ones worked their way down the coast, bit by bit, to San Francisco. Some headed east, probably pointing to adventures or trips away from the city. For the last few, though, there was a definite sequence. Sacramento, Redding, Roseburg…always heading north.

“She was coming back, Joel.” Her chest clenched at the sure knowledge that Poppy hadn’t meant to leave her family behind. “She was coming back to Walker Island.”

Joel stared at the map Hanna had made with the postcards for a long while before he finally nodded. “She was,” he agreed. “She was coming home.”

He closed his eyes, rubbing a hand over them in obvious exhaustion. In Seattle, he’d been so convinced that Poppy had just abandoned everyone. Even when Grams had told Hanna that she’d gone off to follow her dream, it had still seemed selfish the way Poppy had left and never looked back.

But she
had
looked back. She had even tried to come back. At least until simple chance—and bad luck—had robbed her of that last homecoming.

There was only one question left to ask. But Joel beat Hanna to it.

“Where is she buried?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Hanna had first walked into his office, Joel never thought that it would lead to him standing in front of his great aunt’s grave in Woodburn, Oregon. He’d been so certain that she’d deliberately died at sea, and that Hanna was wasting everyone’s time. But then, after their trip to Seattle, there had been some small part of him wondering if she might still be out there somewhere, still avoiding the family she had left all those years ago. Perhaps with another family, a new one that knew nothing of the family she’d left behind on Walker Island.

Now, though, he’d finally found her. And only because of Hanna.

Still, it was strange to stare at the tombstone and read the name Pansy Pendleton, rather than Poppy Peterson. She’d had such a short life, yet it seemed like the part where she’d really lived her dreams had been as someone else. Only to be struck down suddenly, just as she was finally reaching her goals.

Could he bring her home, he wondered? And even if he could find a way, should he bring her back to Walker Island and complete that journey for her? Would that be the right end to all of this? She’d been trying to get home to her family, but it wasn’t like there was really much of her family left for her there. Bringing her back might complete her last journey, but was it the right thing to do?

“Are you doing okay?”

Hanna had put a hand over his and Joel realized that for once, she didn’t have her camera out. Instead of looking through the camera’s lens at the world, every inch of her was focused on him.

“Why aren’t you filming? Don’t you want to finish your documentary?”

“This is too private.”

“But if you don’t include this part, then how is the world going to know who Pansy Pendleton really was? They deserve to know the truth, and Poppy…well, I’d like to think she’d want it too.”

“Are you sure?”

He looked into Hanna’s eyes and the warmth—and the love—he saw in the clear blue depths made it even easier to say, “I’m sure. Completely sure.”

As she started to set up her camera, Joel knew that when she finished editing her documentary, it was going to be spectacular. He had never met anyone so passionate about her art, who was so good, so natural, at what she did. There was no question whatsoever that Hanna would secure her place in the master’s program and soon be leaving the island for Seattle again.

But now, strangely, that thought didn’t bring with it the same deep sense of betrayal and dread it had back at the B&B. After all, although Poppy had left, Hanna and her postcards had proved to him that she’d been on her way back.

Did he really want to push Hanna away just because he was afraid that she might leave the island and never come back? Especially when even just one night without her had proved to him just how empty his life felt without her in it.

“Hanna,” he said. “About Seattle…”

Her video camera was already pointed at him as she told him, “We don’t have to talk about that now, Joel.”

“Yes, we do. I shouldn’t have done what I did, shouldn’t have said what I said. I was so caught up in what had happened in the past that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”

Hanna leaned away from her camera, her eyes widened in surprise. “I was too caught up with my story to stop to think how much it might hurt you. I’m sorry, Joel. You’re the last person I would ever want to hurt.”

“I know you never wanted to hurt me, Hanna. And you haven’t.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, so much he needed to say, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he realized there was nothing that he could say that would put right what had happened in the past. Nothing that could undo it all.

“It’s okay, Joel,” Hanna said again, “we don’t have to do this right now. If you want me to stop filming, I will.”

“No, don’t stop,” he told her. Because it wasn’t okay. And it hadn’t been okay for sixty years. “I never met Poppy, but she was always there like a ghost haunting my family, haunting me. When I was a kid, one of the first things I can remember my parents doing is telling me the story of how William Walker II hurt Poppy so much that she killed herself and that I should stay away from your family, no matter what. All those years at school, and I barely said a word to a Walker because of something that happened decades ago.”

It wasn’t just at the school, though, and it wasn’t just he and Hanna and her sisters who had been affected. How many people on the island had been pushed into taking one side or the other, with the people who worked on the Peterson boats being careful about just how friendly they became with the island’s ‘other’ family? And then, of course, there was the way he’d pushed Hanna away again and again because he thought he was supposed to uphold family loyalty.

“I’m sorry for all the years I ignored you and your sisters. This all started with a wedding that didn’t happen. Of the people involved, only one is still alive, and I’ve spent so much time blaming Ava for all of this when I shouldn’t have. All she did was fall in love with your grandfather and be a good enough friend to Poppy to keep her secrets. I need to apologize to her, too.”

“Something tells me that Grams doesn’t need you to do that. She knows none of this is anyone’s fault, especially yours,” Hanna said. “Honestly, I think just the fact that people know the truth now will be enough.”

Joel hadn’t thought he would feel this much at the grave of a woman he had never known, but he’d known the
idea
of Poppy all his life. And now it turned out that idea of her had been completely wrong.

It had taken Hanna to show him the reality behind all the stories he’d been told. She had such a gift for finding the truth. And for showing it to people. She had the ability to look at the world in new ways, and because she was doing it through her video camera, it made everyone else look at things differently too.

“When you started this, Hanna, I was convinced that you weren’t going to tell the whole story. I thought that you were going to tell a version of what had happened that was so far from what we all knew to be true that it would be unrecognizable. And the truth is, you did. But not for the reasons I thought. Not because you’re a Walker trying to make your family look better, but because it’s the truth, and the truth needed to finally be told. Your grandmother and grandfather endured decades of unpleasantness and malicious gossip just to help out my great aunt. I know there will be people on the island who won’t want to believe what we’ve found out together, but they should, because for the first time…” Joel paused and looked back at Poppy’s gravestone. “For the first time, I feel like this is finally settled.”

He tried visualizing Poppy’s face, and every time he did, it blended and blurred with Hanna’s in his mind.

They were so similar in so many ways. So artistic, and so driven. His great aunt had been willing to put aside all the advantages and security that her family name had given her on the island to reach for her dream, and she’d had the strength to stay away until she achieved it. It must have taken a lot of determination, and so much courage, for Poppy to leave the island to pursue her poetry writing. Just as it had taken determination and courage for Hanna to pursue her documentary about their families despite every roadblock in her way.

Yet, she’d known when to stop, too, when she’d offered not to film this part—the most important part of all—just because she didn’t want to hurt him.

“What are you thinking?” Hanna asked, moving to stand beside him, her camera off now.

“I was thinking that Poppy reminds me of you, that it must have been hard for her to do what she did, and that you’re both such strong, incredible women to have the courage to follow your dreams, no matter what.” He reached for her hand, letting her natural warmth heat up all the places inside of him that had been cold for so long.

“Before we left Justine’s house,” Hanna told him in a soft voice, “she said that they still get people visiting the grave. Pansy Pendleton might not have been famous, exactly, but she definitely inspired people.”

Pansy Pendleton. It wasn’t a name Joel could get used to, but it had been who Poppy was at the end. More importantly, it had been who she
wanted
to be. Poppy had been too tied down by the expectations of the Peterson family, but Pansy could be a poet.

What right did Joel really have to take her back to the island? This was where her dreams had led her. This was where people still remembered her for the things she wanted to be remembered for.

Finally, he did what he’d wanted to do every second since this morning, and drew Hanna into his arms. “What did you say on the video you emailed me? All day long, I’ve been dying to know.”

Hanna looked up at him, so lovely that she took his breath away. “You know what I said, Joel.”

And the truth was that he did.

“I love you too.” He leaned down to kiss her, but before he did, he had to say, “And that’s most definitely the first time a Peterson has
ever
said that to a Walker.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The B&B they stayed at that night had several rooms available, but they only needed the one this time. Still, even though they’d both confessed their love to each other, Hanna knew they’d have plenty to work out along the way. Now, however, she knew for sure that they’d find a way to be together. As for her family, well, hopefully they’d be able to accept that Hanna was in love with Joel, and that he was in love with her.

The next morning, Hanna left Joel in bed still sleeping. After everything he’d learned the past few days, she wasn’t surprised that he was exhausted. She took her camera and laptop downstairs to breakfast so that she could start editing together some of the footage while she could still remember all the feelings involved.

In the first shots she’d gotten of Joel back in his office, right at the start of all this, he looked good, of course, but she was struck by the way there seemed to be something different about him now.

Last night, he’d seemed more at peace. Had finding out about his great aunt’s past done that?

Or was it falling in love with her?

Systematically, she spliced together the footage she’d shot, but all the while, she couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t completely right.

Knowing she often hit on inspiration when she stepped away from her computer, she got up to clear her head for a few minutes. All around the B&B, there were framed pictures and pieces of writing on the wall, most of them from the poetry festival.

A few minutes later, Hanna stopped, shocked, in front of one of the poems. She had to read it twice before she grabbed her things, then ran back up the stairs to get Joel.

He was just coming out of their room when she reached him and took his hand. “There’s something you’ve got to see downstairs. Trust me, Joel, it’s amazing.”

“Of course I trust you.”

She’d been in such a hurry to take him downstairs, but now, she had to stop to press a kiss to his beautiful mouth. Having his trust meant the world to her.

When they finally pulled apart, Hanna led the way through to the dining room and pointed to the frame with one hand, holding on to his hand with the other.

“It’s one of Poppy’s poems.” Joel sounded as stunned as she’d felt when she saw it a few minutes earlier. “
The Way Home
by Pansy Pendleton,” he said, his voice warm and strong and full of emotion as he read the short, but beautiful poem about tides turning back to the familiar sands of home aloud.

A short while later he said, “It’s beautiful, but the writing style isn’t quite the same as her last poem from the island, is it?”

“Poppy had been working seriously at her craft for two years by the time she wrote this, so I suppose it isn’t surprising that the style is a bit different,” Hanna suggested. “But the images and the ideas about forging new paths and dreams…doesn’t it feel like this poem is almost a sequel to the one she wrote when she left the island?”

“You’re right. It’s like that one is the beginning and this one is the end.”

The inn’s owner, a man in his forties with slightly thinning hair who had an amazing knack of balancing half a dozen breakfast plates at once, stopped beside the two of them.