Bluebell Promises (The Bluebell Cove #4)

Chapter 1

Wren was in a taxi, snaking along the road at the edge of the coastline.

It was late August, and it seemed that every beach they passed was overcrowded with tourists, trying to squeeze the last bit of summer fun into their lives before the crush of autumn and school and “real life.” For Wren, it was bizarre to see so many people celebrating as though they knew only joy and believed in the future. She had no idea what awaited her next.

“Here we are,” the taxi driver called from the front, pointing at the sign off the road for Bluebell Cove, which fluttered gently in the wind off the Atlantic. “You’re from here?”

“Yes,” Wren offered meekly.

“I can hear it in your accent. Sort of,” the driver said. “But it sounds like you’ve spent some time away?”

Wren had no interest in getting into the specifics of her life with this man.

The fact of it was, she hadn’t been back in Bluebell Cove for more than a year, and she’d hardly spoken to her sisters in six months.

She checked her wallet, praying she had enough cash to pay the driver and get him out of her hair. Just barely.

When the taxi pulled up in front of her sister Ivy’s place—the same glorious Victorian home where Wren had been raised with her older sisters, directly next to the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge, Wren’s heart thudded with dread.

This didn’t seem to be a typical day at the Eco-Lodge.

Rather, every single parking spot along the street and the surrounding area was clogged with cars, and there was the muffled sound of music, as though a band was playing out back.

In front of the Eco-Lodge was a banner that read: Celebrating Eco-Savings with the Eco-Lodge!

In fine print beneath it, Wren’s sister Celia had made sure to say: Over the nearly two years since the reopening of the Eco-Lodge, we’ve managed to cut down on 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and save 2000 liters of water all because of our savvy environmental practices and our belief in a better world. We’re celebrating!

Wren adjusted her backpack over her shoulders and considered what to do next.

The last thing she wanted was to enter an Eco-Lodge party.

Chances were she wouldn’t just know her sisters at such a party.

Most of the town would probably be in attendance, pestering her with questions about where she’d been and why she was back.

“There’s our little traveler!” they’d cry. “There’s our beautiful dreamer!”

Wren didn’t want anything to do with that.

Instead, Wren turned left and walked up the steps of Ivy’s place.

It wasn’t so long ago that Wren herself had lived here again, gaining strength after a horrific Graves’ disease diagnosis.

For a little while, she’d found herself again in tune with her sisters and their families.

She’d found herself grieving the sudden death of their father, a man none of them had really understood.

But just as soon as Wren had felt strong and fortified again, she’d bought a plane ticket and taken off.

She’d been all over the world since then.

She’d fully embraced the free-wielding life she’d built for herself until it all crashed down around her. And now, she was here.

It felt pathetic to try the door to Ivy’s place, as though she still lived here.

Of course, it was locked anyway, as were the two side entrances and the back door.

From the back porch, she could make out the tops of the heads of the crowd next door.

She could see wines and beers being poured from a long bar, and a band moving in time to the music they played.

She was pretty sure this particular song was from a band her father had liked from the seventies—something soulful and rooted in guitar.

And just beyond the backyard of the Eco-Lodge, she could see that turquoise and beautiful Bluebell Cove, the place their town was named for, a place she felt was more beautiful than most of the hundreds of “beautiful” sites she’d seen through her years of professional photography.

None of the doors to Ivy’s place were open. Frustrated, Wren searched under the welcome mats for spare keys, but she knew that Ivy was paranoid. Ivy would never allow hidden spare keys to be a thing, not while raising her family in this house.

Wren was getting dizzy. She’d been traveling for the better part of twelve hours, having begun her journey from Athens that morning, Athens time.

She was discombobulated. The plane food had looked unappetizing, to put it kindly, and she hadn’t had much to eat besides a protein bar and a piece of banana bread.

Maybe Wren could leave her backpack on the porch, walk to town, grab a cheap bite, and wait for the Eco-Lodge party to finish up?

Alternatively, she could throw on her backpack and hitchhike out of town—to anywhere in the world that would have her.

Of course, once she got wherever that was, she’d have to pay for food and lodging and whatever other practicalities she needed, and that was just for starters.

Wren was nervous. She couldn’t remember ever being this nervous before.

She both needed her sisters terribly and never wanted to see them again.

And then, suddenly, a familiar face popped out of the front door of the Eco-Lodge.

It was Celia’s daughter, Sophie. She looked vibrant and so beautiful, older than Wren had last seen her, and at the brink of discovering what life was all about.

If Wren remembered correctly, Sophie went to college out West, somewhere in Washington State.

She was probably about to go back—unless she’d already graduated and was moving back to Maine permanently?

Oh, Wren had missed so much. She should have asked more questions. She should have texted.

But it had all gotten so complicated.

“Aunt Wren?” Sophie stopped short at the edge of the Eco-Lodge porch, gazing at Ivy’s, where Wren stood with her backpack.

“Hi,” Wren offered nervously. She’d been caught.

Sophie scampered over, then threw her arms around Wren. Wren hadn’t been looked at like that—as though she really belonged somewhere—in a very long time. She shivered in her niece’s embrace and wondered, Am I a fraud? Why does she care about me so much?

“My mom is going to be so excited!” Sophie cried, reaching for Wren’s backpack and putting it on, taking on Wren’s heavy load without a second thought.

“Do you have a key to get into the house?” Wren asked, gesturing toward Ivy’s place.

“I don’t,” Sophie said sadly.

“Where’s your mom’s place?” Wren asked. “Maybe I can keep my stuff there?”

But Sophie was already bounding toward the Eco-Lodge, beckoning for Wren to follow.

“You have to come to the party for a bit. Mom and I have been working so hard on everything. It’s really awesome.

So many people came out! And there’s really good cake from that bakery in town.

Oh, and Aunt Ivy supplied the flowers, obviously! And Theo made all the food.”

“Who is Theo again?” Wren asked in a small voice. She wasn’t sure if she’d met a Theo last time she was here.

But they were inside the Eco-Lodge now. Nobody was at the front desk, since everyone was celebrating out back.

Wren wondered if there were any guests right now, or if they’d set aside work for the day in honor of the celebration.

That wasn’t the sort of thing their father, James Harper, would have done, but she knew that things were handled differently now.

Celia was the one at the reins. She’d wanted to carry nothing dark from the past into the present.

Wren abandoned her backpack in her sister’s office, then continued toward the back porch, her heartbeat fluttering in her neck.

Sophie was still talking a mile a minute about the party, but Wren couldn’t focus on what she was saying.

When they stepped out, Wren blinked at what had to be three hundred people, all drinking wine and dancing to the band and grinning madly at what seemed to them to be a huge accomplishment.

The Eco-Lodge was working. At the center were Celia and her boyfriend, Landon Brooks, laughing with a man slightly younger than Landon.

He looked so similar to him that Wren assumed he had to be Landon’s younger brother.

But what was his name? Wren remembered he’d been a few years older than her in high school.

He still had those soft, soulful puppy dog eyes.

Her eyes slid to the right, where she caught Juliet dancing with another very handsome man.

The way they looked at each other told Wren everything she needed to know.

After Juliet had come home last summer—broke and divorced and with an angry daughter who hated Bluebell Cove—she’d fallen in love.

But wait. Wasn’t that man Theo? Theo Maddox?

Theo had been Juliet’s best friend back in middle school and high school, maybe even before that.

They’d always been at home, watching DVDs, and Wren had always begged to hang out with them.

Their other best friend, Cassie, had died when she was eighteen, the night of prom.

Wren shivered. The onslaught of memories felt violent.

But maybe because Juliet was the closest to her in age, or maybe because it felt like, prior to her return to Bluebell, Juliet had traveled the farthest and “made it,” sort of, as an actress and later a fashion designer of sorts, Wren felt that Juliet would understand her plight.

Wren didn’t want to be seen by absolutely everyone.

She barely wanted to explain herself. She wanted to get into Ivy’s place, collapse on the bed that had been her bed back in high school, and sleep for twelve, maybe thirteen days.

After that, maybe she’d know what to do.

But already, Sophie had made it over to Celia, and she was waving her arms and pointing over at Wren.

Wren stood stock-still on the back porch, her ears buzzing with the rock music.

She remembered how, earlier, when she’d been sick on the plane, a flight attendant had asked her if she needed anything, and Wren had burst into tears.

The flight attendant hadn’t known what to do, so she’d come back with a seltzer water and told Wren to “take care.”

Celia whipped her head around, following Sophie’s pointer finger to where Wren stood, overseeing the party.

Her mouth formed a round O. And just as she called out, just as she waved her arm and said, “Wren, you’re here!

Come on! Join the party!” Wren felt her knees buckle.

She felt the weight of her jet lag and all those miles she’d traveled to get home.

And before she could make up her mind about running toward or away from her three sisters, her heart ricocheted in her chest, and Wren collapsed on the porch.

She fell like a rag doll, clipping the edge of her forehead against one of the pillars that supported the Eco-Lodge.

All Wren knew was darkness. Maybe it was a relief.