Seaview Inn (22 page)

“Jeff!” she protested.

His smile spread. “Waiting’s hell, isn’t it? Just giving you a taste of your own medicine.”

“You’re a rat.”

“That’s not what you were saying five minutes ago.”

“Five minutes ago I loved you.”

He stood up, scooped her into his arms, then settled back down on the wicker love seat with her on his lap. “Trust me, you’ll love me even more if I do this up right.”

“I don’t need an elaborate production.”

“No, just tradition,” he said. “I get it.”

“Now would be better than later,” she said.

“This will be worth waiting for,” he promised. “You were.”

Kelsey sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “Just keep in mind that the baby’s due in seven months. I’d like to still be able to waddle down the aisle.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She yawned and let her eyes drift shut. Today had been one of the most perfect days of her life, even without the proposal she’d been counting on. And the best thing was, she still had that to look forward to.

Several days after the inn’s reopening, Luke sat on a stool at The Fish Tale sipping a beer and waiting for Doc. It was time to figure out if he really could take over the clinic, as several people had urged him to do. Though plenty of people thought Doc was ready to retire, Luke hadn’t heard him express any desire to do that in the immediate future.

“Those stools are hell on my back,” Doc announced when he joined Luke. “Let’s get a booth.”

“Fine with me.”

When they were settled in a secluded corner with their drinks and fish platters, Doc gazed at him speculatively. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t invite me here just for the company, so what’s this about?”

“I keep hearing a rumor that you might be thinking about retiring or at least cutting back,” Luke said. “Is that true?”

“I’m seventy-four and have a lot of fishing I’d like to do. What do
you
think?”

“What’s stopping you then?”

“No one’s come along I thought would fit in here. Seaview Key’s not a big town, but you know that. I’ve spoken to a couple of young doctors who are fresh out of their residencies, but they’re so wet behind the ears I wouldn’t trust my patients with ’em.”

“There’s a lot to be said for someone young and eager to establish a practice,” Luke suggested. “For one thing, they’re up on all the latest treatment options and medicines. For another, they’re energetic.”

“They also have a mile-high stack of bills from medical school,” Doc said. “They’re not going to make the kind of money here they’d make in a big city. Trust me, none of them would stick around more than a year or two. Then where would this town be?”

“Good point,” Luke said. “What about me? How would you feel about me taking over for you at some point down the road?”

Doc’s expression brightened. “You serious? This is the first you’ve brought it up.”

Luke nodded slowly. “I had a lot of thinking to do when I first got here, but I think I’m ready for this. I like being back here. And my orthopedic practice was too limiting. I think I’d like to expand my knowledge, brush up on family medicine and get recertified.”

“Working with me would give you a crash course in what you need to know in no time,” Doc said.

“You willing to stay on while I go through the recertification process, show me the ropes and maybe phase into full retirement a couple of years down the road?”

“That would suit me fine. I’ve done this for so long that I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself if I made a clean break from the clinic. I’d like keeping my hand in, so to speak, for as long as you’d have me. Maybe hang around a few hours a day or a day or two a week eventually, until even that gets to be too much for me. You sure having me underfoot wouldn’t cramp your style?”

Luke laughed. “I’m not sure I have a style. I do think I could benefit tremendously from your wisdom and experience.”

“You don’t have to flatter me to win me over. I’m already sold. I’ve had a dozen people or more ask me why I wasn’t begging you to do this. Seems to me you’re an answer to a prayer, for me and for Seaview.”

For the first time in years, Luke was starting to feel excited about medicine again. He shook his head. “No, Doc. I think it’s the other way around.”

“How do you want to do this? Should we call Tim
Morrow and ask him to draw up some paperwork to make it official?”

“Why don’t we sit down again in a few days and hammer out the agreement we want, then we can get Tim to make it all nice and legal?” Luke suggested. “I need to get an attorney in Atlanta to dissolve the partnership I’m in there and I have to look into all the certification I’ll need down here. That could take a few weeks, maybe even months if I need to take some classes.”

“That’s no problem. You do what you need to do. Call me when you settle things in Atlanta and want to schedule that meeting to work out our arrangement.” He hesitated, then asked, “How does Hannah fit into this plan of yours to make Seaview your home again? You two seemed pretty close the day we went fishing and you have been staying at the inn for a while now. Rumor has it that there’s something going on between you two.”

“The rumor mill in Seaview is not known for its reliability, but in this case there might be some truth there,” Luke admitted. “Only problem is that Hannah still has some issues about coming back here.”

“Because of her mom, I imagine. That wasn’t an easy time for any of them. And those two always did have their differences. I’m not sure they ever got past Hannah’s dad leaving. She blamed her mom for that, irrationally, as it happens. I know why Clayton left. He got tangled up with a waitress on the mainland and she wound up pregnant. She was threatening to go after him and the inn.”

“Blackmail?” Luke asked, stunned.

“That’s exactly what it was,” Doc confirmed. “Clayton divorced Hannah’s mom and married the little tramp to shut her up in a totally misguided attempt to save the inn. There was more to it, of course. There always is in a situa
tion like that. He made a pact with the devil, in my opinion, but he told me it was the only thing he could think of to do. The inn would have folded or they’d have had to sell it to pay the bills if there had been a costly legal battle. Add in his concern about the child the woman was expecting and he felt he had no choice. I think he realized too late that the woman wasn’t all that stable, and he feared what would happen to the baby if he weren’t around to protect it.”

“Did Grandma Jenny or Hannah’s mom know that?” Luke asked. “Certainly no one’s ever said anything about Hannah having a half brother or sister somewhere.”

“Well, Jenny may have put two and two together, especially after a few locals spread rumors that they’d seen Clayton around Clearwater or St. Petersburg with another woman and a child. But Hannah’s mom, she knew, because she started staying close to home. Maggie said something to me once about how humiliating it was to have people talking about her husband that way. Said she couldn’t bear it, so she hardly left the inn.”

“I don’t remember that,” Luke said. “She was always great with any of us who were hanging around there.”

“Probably because you’d all been too young to hear the stories or to understand them if you had,” Doc said. “I think Hannah was protected from all that talk. She was young, for one thing, and folks tend to want to leave kids with their innocence as long as possible. And everyone knew how she’d idolized Clayton. They weren’t going to say a bad word about her daddy right in front of her.”

“Hannah should know about this,” Luke said. “For one thing, the man she adored may be living no more than an hour or two away from here. Aside from that and the fact that she has a half brother or sister, it might also
change her view that the inn was this huge albatross that drove her dad away. He obviously loved it and her mother enough to do what he thought he had to in order to protect her and the inn that had been in her family for so long.”

Doc looked skeptical. “Luke, I don’t know that this is something you should share with Hannah. It all happened a long time ago.”

“And it changed everything for her. Knowing the truth could give her peace.”

“And change the way she views Seaview and the inn,” Doc concluded. “Is that what you’re hoping?”

“Probably,” Luke conceded.

“It’s your decision, and you know Hannah better than I do these days. In the end, I know you’ll do what you think is right,” Doc said with confidence. “Just think it through first, that’s all I ask. Maybe talk it over with Jenny. She might have an opinion about the truth coming out after all these years. There could be a reason she and Maggie kept Hannah in the dark.”

“I’ll do that,” Luke promised.

And maybe he’d do a little investigating on the mainland before he went up to Atlanta at the end of the week for another visit with the kids. Perhaps he could locate Clayton and see how his life had turned out and whether or not he was someone Hannah would want back in her life after all these years.

H
annah stood outside the door to her mother’s suite of rooms and tried to work up the courage to go inside. Now, while Luke was in Atlanta, was the perfect time to confront one of her biggest demons. She needed to go in there and face the fact that her mom was dead. She had to face all those awful memories of her final days and somehow make herself believe that she wasn’t going to share the same fate.

It was also time to put to rest the years of pent-up resentment she’d felt toward her mom, first for the breakup of her marriage that had sent Hannah’s father away and then for settling for life here in Seaview. Though she’d been here during her mother’s final illness, it had been out of duty and obligation. They’d never fully reconciled, because Hannah could hold a grudge with the best of them, even when she understood that it was time to let it all go and move on.

As she stood there immobilized, her hand on the doorknob, she felt Kelsey slip up beside her.

“Mom, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “I can clean out Grandma’s room. I just haven’t had time to get to it yet.”

Hannah shook her head. This was about more than throwing away some old clothes or going through her mother’s personal papers. “No, sweetie, I need to do this myself. I think that’s why Gran hasn’t done it. She knew I needed to make peace with the past.”

“At least let me help,” Kelsey pleaded.

“No, I really do think this is something I have to do alone,” Hannah insisted. She gave Kelsey a hug. “Thanks for offering, though.”

“You’ll call me if you need me, though, promise?”

“I will,” she assured her daughter. “Don’t you have things you need to be doing? Now that there are guests on the premises, there’s almost always a crisis of one kind or another. I remember that much from living here. Our time was never our own.”

“Everything’s under control,” Kelsey assured her, ignoring the bitterness Hannah hadn’t been able to keep out of her voice. “Jeff’s been handling a lot of it. And he’s the only one who seems to be able to persuade Grandma Jenny to sit down and rest.” She grinned. “He’s really sneaky about it, too. Right now he has her studying this huge pile of motel brochures he got from a travel agent. He says he needs her input before he can design our brochure. Next he swears he’s going to get her online to look at Web sites.”

“Your great-grandmother in front of a computer,” Hannah said in amazement. “Now, that’s a sight I can’t wait to see.”

“Me, too,” Kelsey said. “But Jeff will pull it off. Not even Gran seems to be able to resist his charm.” Once again, she regarded Hannah worriedly. “You’re sure you’re okay? This can wait.”

“I’m fine. Now, go and do whatever you need to do.”

After Kelsey had run down the stairs, Hannah grasped the doorknob once again and forced herself to turn it. Expecting to find the suite musty from being closed up, she was surprised to find the curtains billowing and a sea breeze filling the rooms with fresh air. Grandma Jenny’s work, no doubt. She should have known her grandmother wouldn’t avoid the suite as Hannah had, even if she had left everything in place for the day Hannah would be ready to face her demons.

Stepping inside the sitting room with its cozy, chintz-covered chairs, she quietly shut the door behind her, then closed her eyes against the tide of memories flooding her. Some of them went back to childhood, when she’d run in here to share her sorrows or to get a hug. She tried to cling to those, the good memories of sitting on the edge of the bed in the attached bedroom watching her mother brush her long hair, of jumping onto the bed between her parents on a lazy Sunday morning, while her grandparents were downstairs dealing with the guests.

But those memories faded too quickly and all that was left behind were the recent memories of her mother lying propped up against pillows, her face gaunt, her hair thin and limp, her skin so pale and dry that Hannah had feared it would crumble at a touch like dried leaves. That image was seared in her mind.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Even as she murmured the apology, she wasn’t entirely sure what it was for. Was it for being so judgmental? For not making amends? Or simply because now they would never have the chance to recapture the warmth and closeness that had once existed between them?

Overwhelmed when she finally stepped into the bed
room, Hannah moved quickly to the overstuffed chair by the window and breathed in the room’s lavender-and-sea-breeze scent. For one fleeting moment she was able to imagine that her mother was still in the room and think of all the things that should have been said. Why hadn’t she realized in time just how much she was losing by holding on to so much bitterness and anger?

“Mama, I am so sorry I judged the choices you made,” Hannah whispered. “I’m sorry for holding you accountable for a decision that Dad made. I wish I’d been a better daughter to you, the kind of daughter that Kelsey’s been to me. We had that relationship once and I let it slip away.” No, the truth was, she had carelessly thrown it away.

For just an instant, the scent of lavender seemed to be stronger and a breeze fanned her cheeks, drying her tears. Then the scent faded and the breeze stilled, leaving her feeling more peaceful than she’d felt in years. It was impossible to explain the sensation that she’d been forgiven. Perhaps, in reality, she’d simply forgiven herself.

Either way, she felt comforted. Brushing the last of the tears from her cheeks, she stood up and began emptying drawers, creating piles of clothes to be discarded and another of things that could be donated to the church thrift shop. From time to time, she lingered over a remembered sweater or a favorite scarf, setting some of those things aside for herself or for Gran or Kelsey.

When she found the drawer filled with papers, she almost closed it again to leave that chore for another day. Something, though, kept her from doing that. She took the neatly bundled papers and spread them on the bed, trying to determine if there was any rhyme or reason to them.

Some were related to the inn, papers that should have
been in files. Hannah set those aside to take to the office downstairs. Some, amazingly, were her old school papers—essays and tests on which she’d gotten an A, report cards all the way back to elementary school, even a few drawings she’d done in crayon.

Next she came across an envelope marked “Hannah’s stories.” Puzzled, she opened it to find half a dozen amateurish attempts at writing children’s stories, along with accompanying sketches. As she read through them, she winced at the awkward writing, but to her amazement, the stories themselves weren’t bad. She recognized that they were stories she’d made up for Kelsey, then written down at her daughter’s urging. How they’d gotten here was beyond her. Had Kelsey brought them with her and left them behind? And why had her mother saved them? Why had she saved any of these mementoes after the way Hannah had abandoned her with hardly a backward glance?

As she sat there fingering the old pages, she thought she understood. After all, she herself was a mother, and no matter what happened between Kelsey and her in the future, there were a thousand and one things she would treasure. In fact, she had papers just like this back home in New York. She still had a framed childhood drawing of Kelsey’s on the wall in the hallway leading back to their bedrooms, right alongside signed and numbered prints from rising stars in the New York art world. Saving things like that was just something mothers did, and it made her feel a fresh connection to her own mom.

Reaching into the drawer for the final packet of papers, she saw at once that these were letters—
unopened
letters. And they were all addressed to her. Shaking, she studied the handwriting and knew at once who they were from: her dad.

Two seconds ago, she’d let everything from the past go
and now this. This was fresh evidence that her mother had withheld letters meant for her, letters that might have made everything right. She felt queasy just looking at the small bundle tied with a pink ribbon. Ironically, she remembered that exact ribbon from a dress her mom had made for her for her sixth birthday, a day her dad had brought a pony home for all her friends to ride. It had been the most memorable birthday she’d ever had. Somehow seeing
that
ribbon around
these
letters made it even worse.

Unable to stay in the room another moment, she bolted for the door, the letters clutched in her hand. She ran down the stairs and out onto the porch, pausing at the top of the steps to catch her breath.

“Hannah, what is it?” Gran asked, starting to rise from her rocker. “Hannah, are you okay?”

“Not now, Gran. Not now.” She forced herself to keep walking, crossing the street to the beach, then plodding through the deep dunes until she reached the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. She kicked off her shoes and, still clutching the letters, kept going. The cold water was a shock on her bare feet, but at least it told her she was still alive. That was better than the dead-inside feeling that had come over her when she’d realized what the letters meant—that her dad had tried to stay in touch, but her mother had prevented it.

The worst thing about making the discovery now was that there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t scream at her mom over the betrayal. For all she knew it was even too late to find her father and make things right with him.

After she’d been walking for nearly an hour, she finally began to feel calmer. She turned slowly and headed back toward home, but when she was about to
pass a bench in the park at the end of Main Street not far from Lila’s, she decided what she needed most was a few more minutes alone to really think about her discovery. She had just enough money stuffed in her pocket for a cherry snow cone from Lila’s. She bought one, and with that refreshing treat in hand, she sat on the bench and set the letters next to her, eyeing them with a mix of curiosity and dismay.

Eventually, she tossed the snow cone wrapper in the trash, then picked up the letters and untied the ribbon. It was a long time, though, before she could bring herself to open the first one, after making sure that she would be reading them in chronological order.

“Hi, Hannah Banana,” she read, and found herself tearing up again at the nickname only her dad had ever used. “I don’t know if or when you’ll read this, but I just want you to know that I love you and miss you. Someday, when you’re old enough to understand, I hope your mom will explain why I had to go away. I hope when you know the whole story, you’ll forgive me. Love you. Dad.”

There were only five letters in all, the first two written months apart right after he’d gone. The rest had been sent over a span of years. She’d been eighteen when the last one had been sent. The theme was always the same, that he loved her and hoped she’d forgive him.

Though there were no return addresses on any of them, Hannah studied the postmarks. She was stunned when she realized that most had been mailed from nearby cities on the mainland, cities she’d been in hundreds of times as a child and even a few times recently.

Tying the letters back together, she practically ran back to the inn, ignoring Gran for a second time as she raced inside shouting for Jeff.

“Mom, what on earth?” Kelsey said, coming out of the office with Jeff on her heels. “What’s happened?”

“Can you find someone online?” she asked Jeff. “I mean, I know it’s possible, but can
you
do it? I’d do it myself, but my hands are shaking and I can’t even think straight.”

“I can try,” he said at once.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Kelsey asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“In a way, that’s exactly what’s happened,” she said, holding out the letters. “These are from your grandfather. Today’s the first time I’ve ever seen them.”

She heard a gasp then and turned to see Grandma Jenny grab onto a chair, her complexion ashen. Hannah stared at her in shock. “You knew about the letters?”

Kelsey went to her great-grandmother and helped her to a chair, scowling at Hannah. “Mom, not now!”

“When, if not now?” Hannah said, beyond being reasonable. “For years I thought my dad left and forgot all about me. Now I discover that there are letters that have been stuffed into a drawer for years.”

Gran brushed off Kelsey’s attempt to help her. “Did those letters tell you one single thing that your mother and I hadn’t told you?” Gran demanded. “We told you over and over that your dad loved you, that his leaving had nothing to do with you.”

“How can you say that? He was my father and he was gone. That had
everything
to do with me.”

“Would it have helped to see a piece of paper with a few words on it?”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “Yes!”

Gran sighed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It would have raised more questions than it answered. Next you would have wanted to know where
he was, when he’d be back, why you couldn’t see him or talk to him.”

“Of course I would have wanted to know all that,” she said.

Gran’s jaw set stubbornly. “You were too young to understand any of the answers.”

“What about later?” Hannah demanded heatedly. “Would I have been old enough at sixteen? Or when I graduated from high school? After college? When I got married? Last week?”

“Mom, stop it,” Kelsey said. “None of this is Grandma Jenny’s fault.”

“She knew about the letters and she went along with keeping them from me.”

“Your mother and I thought we were doing the right thing,” Gran said, the lines in her face deepening with anguish. “We really did. After a while, when you stopped asking about your father, we were even more convinced that it had been the wise decision. You’d moved on with your life.”

Jeff had listened to most of this in silence, but then he turned to Hannah. “What was your father’s name? Not Matthews, right, because your mother took back her maiden name after she’d divorced your dad and she changed your name, as well?”

“His name was Clayton Dixon,” Hannah said. “Do you think you can find him if he still lives in the area?”

“I already have,” Jeff told her.