Chapter 28 #2
“Money we need,” Dani said quietly. “Without it, we lose the inn. Pop goes to a state facility instead of the nice place he’s at now. We all go back to our failed lives.”
The truth of it sat heavy between them. They were trapped by Lillian's money just as their parents had been trapped by the lack of it.
Kate's phone rang. The facility.
“Miss Perkins? Your father's having a difficult day. I thought you might stop by?”
“I'll be right there.”
She stood to leave, but Tom stopped her. “We're coming with you.”
“All of us?”
Tom grabbed his keys. “We're family. If there’s bad news to be had, the four of us need to deal with it. I’ll drive.”
The drive to Wells was quiet, Tom's BMW moved slowly through the late morning traffic. At the facility, they found Pop in the garden, sitting on a bench, fully dressed but wearing two different shoes. A nurse tried to calm him with little success.
He looked up when they approached, his face cycling through confusion before settling on vague recognition.
“I know you,” he said to the group.
“We're your children, Pop,” James said gently.
“I don't have children. I have boats.” He looked pleased with himself, as if he'd solved a difficult puzzle. “Three boats. The Sarah Elizabeth, the Katie Girl, and... and...” His face crumbled. “I can't remember the third one.”
“The Tommy Boy,” Tom supplied, his voice thick. “You named it after me.”
Pop studied Tom with interest. “Are you Tommy?”
“Yes, Pop.”
“You got tall.”
They sat with him in the garden while he talked about boats that had been sold decades ago, and about fishing grounds that probably didn't exist. He was happy in his confusion, freed from the weight of trying to remember, trying to be who they needed him to be.
“Is Elizabeth coming today?” he asked eventually.
“Not today, Pop,” Kate said.
“She must be busy. Always busy, that one. Beautiful though. Most beautiful woman I ever saw.” He patted Kate's hand. “You look like someone. Can't place it.”
They stayed with him for another hour before a nurse came for him.
“I think it’s time for lunch. We’re having lobster today. You love lobster.”
Pop rose from his chair and happily went off to the dining room, never looking back on his children.
On the drive back, Kate found herself thinking about connections, how Lillian had severed them with surgical precision, how they were all still dealing with the aftermath.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Ben: “Can we talk?”
Something about his request made her stomach turn. If they were going to have a serious talk, she’d rather it be away from the inn.
“Sure. Can I come by your place around seven?”
“Great. See you then.”
She found him at his workshop that evening, after dinner, after another family discussion that went nowhere. He was working on something, sanding wood with the kind of focus that suggested he was avoiding thinking about something else.
“Hey, thanks for stopping by. I know you’ve got a lot going on but I wanted to run something by you.”
Kate nodded. “It’s fine. What’s going on?”
“Melissa wants to get back together,” he said.
Kate's stomach dropped, but she kept her voice steady. “What do you want?”
“I want to be up front with you. After everything with your family, secrets and lies, I wanted you to know.”
“We're not together, Ben. You don't owe me explanations.”
He set down the sandpaper, turned to face her fully. “Don't I? We've been dancing around this for months, Kate. I've been patient, waiting for you to be ready, but maybe I've been fooling myself. Maybe you're never going to be ready.”
“That's not fair.”
“Isn't it? After all these months you’re still here talking to me like we're casual acquaintances. Like I haven't been falling in love with you since March, like you haven't been feeling the same thing.”
The words hung between them, too big for the workshop, too real for Kate's carefully maintained distance.
“I don't know how to do this,” she admitted. “Every time I start to think maybe I can see a light at the end of a very long tunnel, another shoe drops.”
“Everything's always falling apart. That's life. But sometimes, in the middle of the chaos, you have to choose happiness. You have to choose love.”
“Like my mother did? Look how that turned out.”
“She got years with someone who adored her. She got four children who loved her. She got a life that was hers, not her mother's. That's not nothing, Kate.”
Melissa appeared in the doorway then, because of course she did. She took in the scene, Kate and Ben standing too close, the emotion thick between them, and her pretty face hardened slightly.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Yes,” Ben said, not looking away from Kate.
“We were just talking,” Kate said, stepping back, rebuilding distance.
“About the inn renovations, I'm sure,” Melissa said. “Ben's always been dedicated to his projects.”
The way she said projects made Kate feel like one of them, something to be fixed and finished.
Ben stared at Kate, seemingly waiting for an answer to a question he never asked.
“I think we’re done here. I’ll catch you later,” she said. She excused herself, left Ben and his ex-wife in the workshop, and drove back to the inn through the May evening that felt too beautiful for the ugliness of family secrets and romantic complications.
At the inn, she found Lillian's Mercedes in the parking lot. Her grandmother sat in one of the porch chairs, looking out at the harbor, seeming smaller than she had even three days ago.
“The doctors want to start hospice care.”
They sat in silence, watching the harbor lights begin to twinkle in the growing dusk.
“I don't expect forgiveness,” Lillian said.
“I destroyed your parents' life out of pride and spite.
But I need you to know that I've thought about it every day.
Every success I had was poisoned by knowing what I'd done. Every lonely holiday, every empty achievement, every night in that big house alone, I thought about the family I threw away. Including your grandfather. It was my own fault. I focused on the wrong things.”
“Good,” Kate said, surprising herself with the vehemence.
“Yes,” Lillian agreed. “Good. I deserved every moment of that suffering.”
“And yet, Mom forgave you.”
“Your mother was always better than me. Better than all of us.” Lillian shifted carefully, pain evident in every movement.
“What I don’t understand is why neither my mother nor Pop ever said a thing about their financial ruin at your hands. How could you keep so much hatred a secret? It’s near impossible to hide anything in this town. Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
“It’s simple. I threatened everyone who would try to take me down. Your parents were loved in this town. I was hated.”
“Apparently, you still are. That article certainly didn’t paint a lovely picture of Lillian Whitfield.”
“That’s true, your parents knew nothing of the extent of my cruelty. They’ve never known. What your mother forgave me for was making her choose between your father and me. That’s all. You and your siblings now have the truth.”
Stunned, Kate shook her head. “I can’t believe this. Surely someone told them. These are the kind of secrets that are hard to keep hidden, especially in a small town.”
“Kate, I’m a very powerful women with enough money to control the narrative. There were plenty in my employ who handled things discreetly.”
For a few minutes, neither woman said a word.
Finally, Lillian continued. “With a trust structure I’ve created, you and your siblings will work together going forward.
That means it requires all four of you to agree on major decisions.
You'll have to work together, to be the family I prevented you from being.”
“You can't force us to be a family with legal documents.”
“No, but I can make it profitable for you to try.” Lillian stood slowly.
“I'll start hospice at the cottage. If you want to visit, you can.
If you don't, I understand. But know that your mother would want you to at least consider forgiveness, not for me, but for yourselves. Carrying hatred is exhausting. I should know.”
Lillian pushed herself up with her cane.
“I need to rest. I realize there is a lot for you to absorb. If I can give you any advice it would be this, accept what has been done and move on. You can’t do anything about the past. I’m a testament to that.
It’s the future you must hold on to. Focus on the future. It’s all you have.”
Lillian walked to her car, leaving Kate struggling to understand her grandmother’s actions.
After Lillian left, Kate sat alone on the porch, thinking about forgiveness, about love, about the way damage cascaded through generations.
Her phone buzzed with another text from Ben: “Melissa's leaving tomorrow. My answer was no. It's always been no. You're not a project, Kate. You're the love of my life. When you're ready to believe that, I'll be here.”
She wanted to respond, to drive back to his workshop, to choose happiness in the middle of chaos like her mother had. But the weight of Lillian's betrayal, of Pop's deterioration, of the inn's endless needs, held her in the chair.
Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she'd be brave.
But tomorrow felt as far away as forgiveness, as impossible as letting go of the anger that had become almost comfortable in its familiarity.
The inn creaked around her, settling into night, holding another generation's worth of secrets and broken promises and the possibility, always the possibility, of something better.