Читать книгу Brambleberry House: His Second-Chance Family - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 12

CHAPTER FIVE

SAYING THE WORDS aloud always left her feeling vaguely queasy, as if she were the one who had endured months of painful treatments, shots, blood draws, the works.

She found it quite a lowering realization that Maddie had faced her cancer ordeal with far more courage than Julia had been able to muster as her mother.

“Oh, Julia.” Sage stepped forward and wrapped her into a spontaneous hug. “I’m so sorry you’ve all had to go through this.”

“It’s been a pretty bumpy road,” she admitted. “But as I said, she’s in remission and she’s doing well. Much better since the bone marrow transplant. Simon was the donor. We were blessed that they were a perfect match.”

“You’ve had to go through this all on your own?” Anna’s dark eyes looked huge and sad.

She knew Anna was referring to Kevin’s death and the timing of it. She decided she wasn’t quite ready to delve into those explanations just yet so she chose to evade the question.

“I had a strong support network in Boise,” she said instead. “Good friends, my brother and his wife, my co-workers at the elementary school there. They all think I’m crazy to move away.”

“Why did you?” Anna asked.

“We were all ready for a change. A new start. Three months ago, Maddie’s oncologist took a new job at the children’s hospital in Portland. Dr. Lee had been such a support and comfort to us and when she moved, it seemed like the perfect time for us to venture back out in the world.”

She sometimes felt as if their lives had been on hold for three years. Between Maddie’s diagnosis, then Kevin’s death, she and her children had endured far too much.

They needed laughter and joy and the peace she had always found by the ocean.

She smiled at the two other women. “I have to tell you both, I was still wondering if I had made a terrible mistake leaving behind our friends and the safe cushion of support we had in Boise, until we saw the for-rent sign out front of Brambleberry House. It seemed like a miracle that we might have the chance to live in the very house I had always loved so much when I was a little girl, the house where I had always found peace. I took that sign as an omen that everything would be okay.”

“We’re so glad you found us,” Anna said.

“You belong here,” Sage added. She squeezed Julia’s fingers with one hand and reached for Anna’s hand with the other, linking them all together and Julia had to fight back tears, overwhelmed by their easy acceptance of her.

She realized she felt happier standing in this warm kitchen with these women than she could remember being in a long, long time.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you both.”

“You smell that?” Sage demanded after a moment.

Anna rolled her eyes. “Cut it out, Sage.”

“Smell what?” Julia asked.

“Freesia,” Sage answered. “You smelled it, too, didn’t you?”

“I thought it was coming from the open window.”

Sage shook her head. “Nope. As much as she loved it, Abigail could never get any freesia bulbs to survive in her garden. Our microclimate is just not conducive to them.”

“I hope you’re not squeamish about ghosts,” Anna said after a long sigh. “Sage insists Abigail is still here at Brambleberry House, that she flits through the house leaving behind the freesia perfume she always wore.”

Julia blinked, astonished. It seemed preposterous—until she remembered Maddie’s words that the lady was nice, and that soft brush against her skin when she had been standing in Maddie’s room looking over her daughter almost as if someone had touched her tenderly.

She fought back a shiver.

“You don’t buy it?” she said to Anna.

Anna laughed. “I don’t know. I usually tend to fall on the side of logic and reason. My intellect tells me it’s a complete impossibility. But then, I can’t put anything past Abigail. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she decided to defy the rules of metaphysics and stick around in this house she loved. If it’s at all within the realm of possibility, Abigail would find a way.”

“And Conan is her familiar,” Sage added. “You probably ought to know that up front, too. I think the two of them are a team. If Abigail is the brains of the outfit, he’s the muscle.”

“Okay, now you’re obviously putting me on.”

Sage shook her head.

“Conan. The dog.”

Sage grinned. “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. Just watch and see. The dog is spooky.”

“On that, at least, we can agree,” Anna said, setting the last majolica teacup in the cupboard. “He’s far smarter than your average dog.”

“I’ve seen that much already,” Julia admitted. “I’m sorry, but it’s a bit of a stretch for me to go from thinking he’s an uncommonly smart dog to buying the theory that he’s some kind of conduit from the netherworld.”

Sage laughed. “Put like that, it does sound rather ridiculous, doesn’t it? Just keep your eyes open. You can judge for yourself after you’ve been here awhile. I wanted to put a disclosure in the rental agreement about Abigail but Anna wouldn’t let me.”

Anna made a face. “It’s a little tough to find an attorney who will add a clause that we might have a ghost in the house.”

“There’s no might about it. You wait and see, Julia.”

A ghost and a dog/medium. She supposed there were worst things she could be dealing with in an apartment. “I hope she is still here. I can’t imagine Abigail would be anything but a benevolent spirit.”

Sage grinned at her. Anna shook her head, but she was smiling as well. “I see I’m outnumbered in the sanity department.”

“You’re just better at being a grown-up,” Sage answered. Her teasing slid away quickly, though, replaced with concern. “And on that note, is there anything special we need to worry about with Maddie? Environmental things she shouldn’t be exposed to or anything?”

Julia sighed. She would much rather ponder lighthearted theories of the supernatural than bump up against the harsh reality of her daughter’s illness and recovery.

“It’s a tough line I walk between wrapping her up in cotton wool to protect her and encouraging as normal a life as possible. Most of the time she’s fine, if a little more subdued than she once was. You probably wouldn’t know it but she used to be the spitfire of the twins. When they were toddlers, she was always the one leading Simon into trouble.”

She gave a wobbly smile and was warmed when Anna reached out and squeezed her hand.

A moment passed before she could trust her voice to continue. “Right now we need to work on trying to regain the strength she lost through the month she spent in the hospital with the bone marrow transplant. I hope by Christmas things will be better.”

Sage smiled. “Well, now you’ve got two more of us—four, counting Abigail and Conan—on your side.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, immeasurably touched at their effortless acceptance of her and her children.

* * *

AFTER SIMON WAS finally settled in bed, Julia stood in her darkened bedroom gazing out at the ripples of the sea gleaming in the moonlight. Though she had a million things to do—finding bowls they could use for cereal in the morning hovered near the top of her list—she decided she needed this moment to herself to think, without rushing to take care of detail after detail.

Offshore some distance, she could see the moving lights of a sea vessel cutting through the night. She watched it for a moment, then her gaze inexorably shifted to the houses along the shore.

There was the cottage where her family had always stayed, sitting silent and dark. Beyond that was Will Garrett’s house. A light burned inside a square cedar building set away from the house. His father’s workshop, she remembered. Now it would be Will’s.

She glanced at her watch and saw it was nearly midnight. What was he working on so late? And did he spend his time out in his workshop to avoid the emptiness inside his house?

She pressed a hand to her chest at the ache there. How did he bear the pain of losing his wife and his child? She remembered the vast sorrow in his gaze when he had looked at Maddie and she wanted so much to be able to offer some kind of comfort to him.

She sensed he wouldn’t want her to try. Despite his friendship with Sage and Anna, Will seemed to hold himself apart, as if he had used his carpentry skills to carefully hammer out a wall between himself and the rest of the world.

She ached for him, but she knew there was likely very little she could do to breach those walls.

She could try.

The thought whispered through her head with soft subtlety. She shook her head at her own subconscious. No. She had enough on her plate right now, moving to a new place, taking on a new job, dealing with twins on her own, one of whom still struggled with illness.

She didn’t have the emotional reserves to take on anyone else’s pain. She knew it, but as the peace of the house settled around her, she had the quiet conviction that she could at least offer him her friendship.

As if in confirmation, the sweet, summery scent of freesia drifted through the room. She smiled.

“Abigail, if you are still here,” she whispered, “thank you. For this place, for Anna and Sage. For everything.”

For just an instant, she thought she felt again the gentle brush of fingers against her cheek.

* * *

WILL MANAGED TO avoid his new neighbors for several days, mostly because he was swamped with work. He was contracted to do the carpentry work on a rehab project in Manzanita. The job was behind schedule because of other subcontractors’ delays and the developer wanted the carpentry work done yesterday.

Will was pouring every waking moment into it, leaving his house before the sun was up and returning close to midnight every night.

He didn’t mind working hard. Having too much work to do was a damn sight better than having too little. Building something with his hands helped fill the yawning chasm of his life.

But his luck where his neighbors were concerned ran out a week after he had helped carry boxes up to the second-floor apartment of Brambleberry House.

By Friday, most of the basic work on the construction job was done and the only thing left was for him to install the custom floor and ceiling moldings the developer had ordered from a mill in Washington State. They hadn’t been delivered yet and until they arrived, he had nothing to do.

Finally he returned to Cannon Beach, to his empty house and his empty life.

After showering off the sawdust and sweat from a hard day’s work, he was grilling a steak on the deck—his nightly beer in hand—watching tourists fly kites and play in the sand in the pleasant early evening breeze when he suddenly heard excited barking.

A moment later, a big red mutt bounded into view, trailing the handle of his retractable leash.

As soon as he spied Will, he switched directions and bounded up the deck steps, his tongue lolling as he panted heavily.

“You look like a dog on the lam.”

Conan did that weird grin thing of his and Will glanced down the beach to see who might have been on the other end of the leash. He couldn’t see anyone—not really surprising. Though he seemed pondeorus most of the time, Conan could pour on the juice when he wanted to escape his dreaded leash and be several hundred yards down the beach before you could blink.

When he turned back to the dog, he found him sniffing with enthusiasm around the barbecue.

“No way,” Will muttered. “Get your own steak. I’m not sharing.”

Conan whined and plopped down at his feet with such an obviously feigned morose expression that Will had to smile. “You’re quite the actor, aren’t you? No steak for you tonight but I will get you a drink. You look like you could use it.”

He found the bowl he usually used for Conan and filled it from the sink. When he walked back through the sliding doors, he heard a chorus of voices calling the dog’s name.

Somehow, he supposed he wasn’t really surprised a moment later when Julia Blair and her twins came into view from the direction of Brambleberry House.

Conan barked a greeting, his head hanging over the deck railing. Three heads swiveled in their direction and even from here, he could see the relief in Julia’s green eyes when she spotted the dog.

“There you are, you rascal,” she exclaimed.

With her hair held back from her face in a ponytail, she looked young and lovely in the slanted early evening light. Though he knew it was unwise, part of him wanted to just sit and savor the sight of her, a little guilty reward for putting in a hard day’s work.

Shocked at the impulse, he set down Conan’s bowl so hard some water slopped over the side.

“I’m so sorry,” Julia called up. Though he wanted to keep them off the steps like he was some kind of medieval knight defending his castle from assault, he stood mutely by as she and her twins walked up the stairs to the deck.

“We were taking him for a walk on the beach,” Julia went on, “but we apparently weren’t moving quickly enough for him.”

“It’s my fault,” the boy—Simon—said, his voice morose. “Mom said I had to hold his leash tight and I tried, I really did, but I guess I wasn’t strong enough.”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Will said through a throat that suddenly felt tight. “Conan can be pretty determined when he sets his mind to something.”

Simon grinned at him with a new warmth. “I guess he had his mind set on running away.”

“We were going to get an ice cream,” the girl said in her whispery voice. He had no choice but to look at her, with her dark curls and blue eyes. A sense of frailty clung to her, as if the slightest breeze would pick her up and carry her out to sea.

He didn’t know how to talk to her—didn’t know if he could. But he had made a pledge not to hurt others simply because he was in pain. He supposed that included little dark-haired sea sprites.

“That sounds like fun. A great thing to do on a pretty summer night like tonight.”

“My favorite ice cream is strawberry cheesecake,” she announced. “I really hope they have some.”

“Not me,” Simon announced. “I like bubblegum. Especially when it’s blue bubblegum.”

To his dismay, Julia’s daughter crossed the deck until she was only a few feet away. She looked up at him out of serious eyes. “What about you, Mr. Garrett?” Maddie asked. “Do you like ice cream?”

Surface similarities aside, she was not at all like his roly-poly little Cara, he reminded himself. “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“What kind is your favorite?”

“Hmmm. Good question. I hate to be boring but I really like plain old vanilla.”

Simon hooted. “That’s what my mom’s favorite flavor is, too. With all the good flavors out there—licorice or coconut or chocolate chunk—why would you ever want plain vanilla? That’s just weird.”

“Simon!” Julia’s cheeks flushed and he thought again how extraordinarily lovely she was—not much different from the girl he’d been so crazy about nearly two decades ago.

“Well, it is,” Simon insisted.

“You don’t tell someone they’re weird,” Julia said.

“I didn’t say he was weird. Just that eating only vanilla ice cream is weird.”

Will found himself fighting a smile, which startled him all over again. “Okay, I’ll admit I also like praline ice cream and sometimes even chocolate chip on occasion. Is that better?”

Simon snickered. “I guess so.”

He felt the slightest brush of air and realized it was Maddie touching his arm with her small, pale hand. Suddenly he couldn’t seem to catch his breath, aching inside.

“Would you like to come with us to get an ice-cream cone, Mr. Garrett?” she asked in her breathy voice. “I bet if you were holding Conan’s leash, he couldn’t get away.”

He glanced at her sweet little features then at Julia. The color had climbed even higher on her cheekbones and she gave him an apologetic look before turning back to her daughter.

“Honey, I’m sure Mr. Garrett is busy. It smells like he’s cooking a steak for his dinner.”

“Which I’d better check on. Hang on.”

He lifted the grill and found his porterhouse a little on the well-done side, but still edible. He shut off the flame, using the time to consider how to answer the girl.

He shouldn’t be so tempted to go with them. It was an impulse that shocked the hell out of him.

He had spent two years avoiding social situations except with his close friends. But suddenly the idea of sitting here alone eating his dinner and watching others enjoy life seemed unbearable.

How could he possibly go with them, though? He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to be decent for an hour or so, the time it would take to walk to the ice-cream place, enjoy their cones, then walk home.

What if something set him off and brought back that bleak darkness that always seemed to hover around the edges of his psyche? The last thing he wanted to do was hurt these innocent kids.

“Thanks for the invitation,” he said, “but I’d better stay here and finish my dinner.”

Conan whined and butted his head against Will’s leg, almost as if urging Will to reconsider.

“We can wait for you to eat,” Simon said promptly. “We don’t mind, do we, Mom?”

“Simon, Mr. Garrett is busy. We don’t want to badger him.” She met his gaze, her green eyes soft with an expression he couldn’t identify. “Though we would love to have you come along. All of us.”

“I don’t want you to have to wait for me to eat when you’ve got strawberry cheesecake and bubblegum ice-cream cones calling your name.”

Julia nodded rather sadly, as if she had expected his answer. “Come on, kids. We’d better be on our way.”

Conan whined again. Will gazed from the dog to Julia and her family, then he shook his head. “Then again, I guess there’s no reason I can’t warm my steak up again when we get back from the ice-cream parlor. I’m not that hungry right now anyway.”

His statement was met with a variety of reactions. Conan barked sharply, Julia’s eyes opened wide with surprise, Simon gave a happy shout and Maddie clapped her hands with delight.

It had been a long time since anyone had seemed so thrilled about his company, he thought as he carried his steak inside to cover it with foil and slide it in the refrigerator.

He didn’t know what impulse had prompted him to agree to go along with them. He only knew it had been a long while since he had allowed himself to enjoy the quiet peace of an August evening on the shore.

Maybe it was time.