Book 23 Blackout After Dark #2
Cooper gets injured on his first date with Gigi but isn’t talking about what happened!
Hello Piper Bennett!
Mallory and Quinn are married on their forty-first birthday!
Emma Linda and Evelyn Francine McCarthy are born on a helicopter!
Frank and Betsy are getting married in October!
Jessie leaves her baby with Lizzie!
Jace Carson meets with his sons!
Grant debuts Indefatigable at the Gansett Island theater!
David and Daisy get married!
Janey and her family stop by to tell her parents, Big Mac and Linda, that they’re returning to Ohio so she can finish veterinary school. “It’s harder to go this time around.”
“Because you have two little ones,” Linda says, tending to both kids as they make a disastrous mess with the half-size ice cream sandwiches she gave them.
“Who are deeply bonded to you, Carolina, Seamus, their aunts, uncles, cousins and friends,” Janey says. “Not to mention how bonded we are to everyone.” Despite her great desire to have this conversation without them, tears slide down her cheeks anyway. “It’s going to be really hard to leave.”
“It’ll be hard for us to see you go,” Linda says, “but don’t worry about the kids. They’ll be fine as long as they have you and Joe. Years from now, they won’t remember being away from here. They’ll only remember the love they always had from everyone around them.”
Janey wipes her face and holds her arms out to her son, who’s studying her with his little brows knitted with dismay. “You guys will come visit, right?”
“Try to stop us,” Big Mac says.
“Telling you our plan makes me feel better. It’s been so stressful trying to imagine doing this with two kids and the menagerie.” Their squad of special-needs pets would travel with them to Ohio.
“Joe will be right there with you to help with everything, and it’ll go by so fast,” Linda says. “You’ll be back for next summer before you know it.”
In Providence, Adam and Abby are seeing a specialist for her high-risk pregnancy. During the ultrasound, the tech excuses himself and returns with the radiologist to examine Abby. “Has anyone mentioned the possibility of multiples to you?”
“M-multiples?” Abby asks, gazing frantically at the doctor and then at Adam.
The doctor points to the screen. “We’re detecting four heartbeats.”
Adam’s knees nearly buckle under him. “Four?”
Still gesturing toward the screen, the doctor counts. “One, two, three, four.”
Four. Four babies. Quadruplets.
“I have PCOS. They…” Abby chokes on a sob. “They said I couldn’t have babies, and we… This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Well,” the doctor says with a cheerful smile, “there’s no question you’re carrying four babies, which is why you’re showing so early.
Sometimes people with PCOS will suddenly drop a bunch of mature eggs.
So it can happen. We’ll get the ultrasound to your OB so you can figure out a plan going forward.
Congratulations, Mom and Dad—times four. ”
In Los Angeles, Stephanie McCarthy is a mess. Tonight is the premiere of Grant’s new film, Indefatigable, which tells her story. Hers and Charlie’s, and from all accounts, Grant has done a masterful job of bringing their story to life on-screen.
But after having spent fourteen years desperately trying to free her beloved stepfather from prison, she and Charlie are now so far removed from that nightmare that it almost seems as if it happened to other people.
She isn’t sure she’s ready to watch it play out on screen.
She tells Grant she’s scared of what will happen after she sees the film.
“Let’s do this… I’ll go to the premiere by myself and send a car to pick you up for the after-party.
That way, you can achieve your most pressing goal, which is meeting Flynn Godfrey and Hayden Roth. ”
That night, Grant sits in the darkened theater with tears in his eyes as he watches Stephanie’s story play out on the screen, seeing the finished film for only the third time.
The actress had done such a wonderful job of capturing the desperation and frustration Steph had lived through for so many years as she fought an epic battle to free Charlie.
It had been vitally important to him that he and his lawyer friend, Dan Torrington, not come off as the heroes of her story.
Dan’s name had gotten them a new hearing that resulted in Charlie being set free.
But that wouldn’t have happened without Stephanie and her years-long effort to save the man who’d tried to save her and paid for that with fourteen years of his life spent behind bars.
Charlie is played to gruff perfection by a newcomer who captures all his rough edges as well as his massive soft spot for the stepdaughter who wages war to save him.
By the time the closing credits roll and the people in the theater go wild with applause and whistles, Grant is wiping actual tears off his face.
Dan and his wife, Kara, approach Grant, congratulating him on a job well done. Kara asks after Stephanie. “She’s great, but she wasn’t up for reliving it. Once was enough for her.”
“I can totally understand that.”
“She’s meeting us at the after-party.”
“Oh, good,” Kara says. “She can help us deal with him.” She uses her thumb to point at Dan. “Flynn Godfrey will be filing for a restraining order by the time Dan is through with him.”
“Oh, please,” Dan says, scoffing. “Who else could’ve played me so convincingly but him?”
“I heard they tried to get SpongeBob, but he was booked solid,” Grant says.
Kara howls with laughter and gives Grant a fist bump. “Good one.”
“Flynn’s the only actor in Hollywood good-looking enough to pull off Dan Torrington,” Dan says.
“Do you see what I’ve been dealing with?” Kara asks Grant. “He speaks of himself in the third person now, too. I can’t deal with him.”
“I feel your pain,” Grant says, laughing. “Let’s get to the party so I can see my best girl.”
Grant immediately finds Stephanie and shares the excitement of the moment. He shakes hands with two of Hollywood’s most successful men, partners at Quantum Productions, which had produced the film. “Flynn, Hayden, meet my wife, Stephanie Logan McCarthy.”
“Is it okay if I hug you?” Hayden asks. “I feel like I’ve known you much longer than one minute.”
“Of course,” Steph says, hugging the handsome Oscar-winning director.
“Your story moved and amazed us all,” Hayden says. “It was an honor to bring it to life on-screen. Thank you for trusting us with it.”
“Grant said you’re the best, and from what I hear, he was right.”
“We are the best,” Flynn says with a grin, “but your story blew us away from the first time we read the script.”
“That was all him,” Stephanie says, gesturing to her husband.
“No, babe,” Grant says, “it was all you. There’s no denying who’s the heart and soul of this story.”
On the way home from the after-party, Kara mentions to Dan that she might be pregnant. Dan goes to a pharmacy and buys twenty pregnancy tests. Kara told him she would confirm it when they returned to Gansett, but he wants to know now. “What’s the verdict?”
“I haven’t looked yet.” She takes his hand. “How about we look together?”
He gives her hand a squeeze. “Let’s do it.”
“We already did it. That’s how we ended up in this boat.”
“No one I’d rather be in any boat with, as I proved to you very early on by paying for many a ride on your boat before you were even nice to me.”
They approach the vanity with trepidation.
Kara looks down at the tests and sees three big plus signs.
“What’s that mean?”
“Plus means positive.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“So it would seem.”
Dan lets out a whoop, picks her up and swings her around, hugging her so tightly, she gasps. “Oh shit, what am I doing? You’re pregnant, and I’m acting like Tarzan.”
“If you start beating your chest, I might leave you.”
He sets her down gently, frames her face and gazes down at her. “You can’t ever leave me, because you’d wreck me and because you’re my whole world. You and our baby….”
She’s amazed to see tears in his eyes.
“You’ve made me so happy, Kara.”
Dara Watkins stands at the bow of the ferry and watches the island come into view as the sea spray brings back memories still so painful, she almost can’t bear them.
Lewis had loved the ocean and their annual trips to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where he’d chased the seagulls, dug holes in the sand and splashed in the surf.
The beach had been one of their happiest places, although everywhere had been happy with him.
Now…
Now she just doesn’t care.
Her husband, Oliver, applied for the lighthouse job, sharing their story with strangers, figuring it was such a long shot that he hadn’t even told her about it.
And when the Gansett Island Town Council had chosen them from all the applicants, he’d been excited about something for the first time in a year of dark despair.
So she’d gone along with his plan because it was something to do other than obsess about what used to be.
But she simply doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything or anyone, even Oliver.
Their three-year-old son, Lewis, had woken from a nap and let himself outside. He was hit by a car and killed while crossing the road. Their lives had been a nightmare ever since. Oliver hopes the change in location will be good for them, but again, she doesn’t care.
Big Mac and Linda McCarthy meet them at the ferry landing and take them to the lighthouse. Linda gives Dara a tour of the lighthouse. “It’s something, isn’t it?” Linda asks.
“Sure is,” Dara says. “The beach down there… Can we get to that?”
“There’s a set of stairs that takes you right to it.”
Dara nods and turns to face Linda.
“If there’s anything at all that you need, you only have to give us a call.” Linda hands her a slip of paper with several numbers on it. “We want you to feel at home here.”
“I’m not sure it’s possible to feel at home anywhere anymore.”
“It is,” Linda says. “It’ll take some time, but you’ll get there.”
In Linda’s eyes, she sees compassion and understanding. “Have you been where I am?”