Chapter 31 Harper
The doorbell rang before Harper had taken her first sip of coffee. With the steaming mug in hand, she glanced through the peephole and saw Finn Sterling, way too awake before the breakfast hour.
She wanted to ignore him, but she wasn’t going to run again. Instead, she’d confront the opposition head-on.
At the clap of the door knocker, she jumped, sloshing dark roast onto her bare feet and the tile.
“Hang on,” she shouted, fumbling with the sticky bolt.
When she finally opened the door, he glanced at the puddle around her toes. “New foot spa?”
“I’m still waking up, Finn,” she practically growled. “Don’t mess with me.”
“So you’re the cheery morning type?” While she wore a Malibu T-shirt and pajama shorts, he was all suited up, but instead of something professional like a briefcase, he carried a tinfoil-covered pan.
“Very funny.” She eyed the red oven mitts on his hands, wondering why he was at her door. “Via Belle kept me up until much too late again.”
“Silver Summer?”
“Moonflower Lake.” She’d tried to distract herself from Kelsey’s news about Miles, but it hadn’t worked.
“Ah.” He stepped around the spilled brew and moved toward the kitchen like he was well-acquainted with the Sutton house.
She closed the door and followed him down the hall. “Now who’s trespassing?”
“Listen, Harper,” he said, setting the ceramic dish on the stovetop before tossing both mitts beside it. “I’m sorry that I was . . . well, I was planning to say insensitive, but Gram said I was an idiot. I apologize for being both.”
She took another sip of coffee. “What’s in that dish?”
“Baked oatmeal covered in fresh blueberries from the farm.”
“Did your grandmother make it?”
“I’m afraid not.” He peeled back the foil, and she could smell cinnamon and brown sugar. “This came straight from my oven.”
“So your mother then . . .”
He surprised her with a pleasant sort of laugh. “You’ll be surprised to learn that I can actually find my way around a kitchen.”
“Shocked, actually.”
“I thought you might be hungry.”
“You were right about that.” She practically drooled over the golden topping of coconut and butter, but she couldn’t quite reconcile this complicated man baking her oatmeal.
“Did Marcia and Gerald leave you any plates?”
She grabbed two from the cabinet while he dug out forks. “It’s nice of you to bring breakfast.”
“A peace offering?”
“Apology accepted.” She arranged their place settings on the kitchen island while he pulled over two stools. “You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve decided not to write Olivia’s story after all.”
She’d texted Sissie last night, and while the woman was disappointed, she understood. Sissie asked her to send along any other ideas later, but she was going to option another script for this film.
Finn dished up the oatmeal. “You’re giving up?”
“I was prying too much into your family’s business,” she said. “It’s clearly not my story to tell, but I’m still curious about what happened. You want a cup of coffee?”
“Please. With a little milk or cream if you have it.”
The cat sauntered into the room like he’d been summoned. “You’ve met Boss Man?”
He glanced down at the black-and-white cat. “We’ve met, but I can’t say we’re friends.”
“Too much alike?”
“Right,” he said. “Except I prefer milk in my coffee instead of a bowl.”
She held out the mug. “You know cats aren’t really supposed to drink milk, right?”
“Thank you for the coffee and the education.” He drank half the cup. “How did you land a copy of Moonflower Lake?”
“Betsy Keith found it.”
“She’s a book wizard.”
“The thing is . . .” Harper said slowly, still processing. “The ending’s all wrong.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I was hooked by the mystery. The money that had been stolen and the woman—”
“Laurel.”
“Yes, Laurel. She thought she found someone who loved her but then that awful man took advantage of her at every turn. There was no sweet romance at the end. No happy feels. Justice, I suppose, but hardly in Via Belle’s typical style.”
Endings were supposed to tie up the pieces, the best stories leaving the reader or viewer satisfied with their resolution, but there was no real conclusion in Olivia’s last novel.
Or her life, for that matter.
“That book sold at least a million copies around the world.”
“I guess not everyone wants the happily ever after,” she said. “It just seems that something was missing.”
“It’s fiction.”
“I don’t know how it became Olivia’s bestselling novel,” she continued. “It’s like someone else wrote the last chapters.”
“Not everything ties up with a pretty bow.”
“It does in Via Belle’s world.”
He pointed his fork at her plate. “You should eat.”
And so she did, the perfect blend of cream, oats, cinnamon, and butter with the sweetest of berries. “This is incredible!”
“I’m glad you like it,” he said before serving them seconds. “Maybe Via’s world changed before she wrote the book.”
Harper lowered her fork. “What happened to her, Finn?”
“I don’t know all the details.”
Boss Man hopped onto the counter, and she shooed him away. “You know more than I do.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“Really?” she asked, tilting her head.
“It’s just that some things are meant to stay in a family.”
“Are you related to Olivia?”
“Not exactly.” He refilled his coffee mug. “But she treated my grandfather like he was family. Left her entire estate and a trust in his name. That became the Via Belle Literary Foundation.”
She picked up their empty plates and stacked them in the sink. “When she passed away?”
He didn’t answer.
“I guess it’s none of my business why she left Catawba.”
“That’s true,” he said, “but my grandmother seems to think you and I need to reach a compromise.”
She leaned back against the counter. “What sort of compromise?”
“Gram wants me to show you Haven House, and I want to see what you found with Simon Farrow’s name. But only if—”
She sighed. “Here we go.”
“My grandmother trusts you, and I can’t think of a single reason to convince her otherwise.”
“Better be careful, Finn. That almost sounds like a compliment.”
“I manage the foundation, but Ingrid is in charge of Haven House.” He finished his coffee. “She’s asked me to let you in on our family secret, but you’ll have to sign a document for confidentiality.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “What are you doing up there?”
“You’ll see.”
With someone else, she might be concerned, but in spite of his annoying behavior, this man seemed to follow every letter of the law. “You have a good family, Finn. Don’t ever take that for granted.”
“They’re my rock,” he said. “The Lamb family adopted my grandfather, and then he collected family along the way. Called almost everyone a brother or sister.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
He covered the ceramic dish and put it in her refrigerator. “Anyone who cared about Via Belle was a friend to him.”
“Did he ever stay at the children’s home?” she asked, wondering if he’d still lived there at the same time as her mother.
“I don’t think so.”
“My mom would have been younger than him by about ten years, but they could have met in town.”
“He returned here to teach in the 1950s.”
She smiled. “When my mom and Aunt Marcia were in high school.”
“It’s a very small world around here.”
“And an even smaller one, perhaps.” Finn was trusting her, and just maybe, in this small world of Catawba, he might also have some answers for her family. “I’ll be right back.”
She retrieved her mom’s battered copy of Sparrow Island and held it out to him. “This was my mom’s prized possession. A first edition.”
He took it tentatively. “How did she get it?”
“I don’t know. She was carrying it in a pillowcase when the police found her in 1943, right around the time that Olivia vanished.”
“Where did they find her?”
“In a wooded area near Lititz. She was much too young to explain how she got there, and the orphanage didn’t record many details in her file.”
“Her family must have searched for her.”
“If they were still alive,” Harper said.
She’d never been able to reconcile the possibility that someone might have abandoned her.
“The newspaper in Lancaster ran an article about a lost girl, but no one responded. My mom kept asking for her papa, but without more info, no one could help her find her way home.” She tapped the book’s cover. “Read the inscription.”
“Izzy, May the light of your life continue to shine. Via Belle.” Finn looked up at her, surprised. “Did your mom go by Izzy?”
“The orphanage recorded her name as Angeline.” Harper hugged the book to her chest, remembering the many times she’d held it by her mom’s bed, reading the story one more time about a woman who’d been lost and then found. “She always wondered how Via’s book made it into her bag.”
“And that’s why you want to find out what happened to Olivia . . .”
“In part,” she said. “I know her story doesn’t belong to me, but it feels personal. My mom was found wandering alone around the same time Olivia disappeared. And then Sparrow Island changed her life.”
“What do you mean, changed her life?”
“She read the story when she was younger, and at the time, she thought the story was impossibly sweet.” She glanced at him. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Lots of people thought Olivia’s books were impossible to read. I’m glad your mom added sweet.”
“She dreamed of living in Hollywood and left for California the day after her high school graduation, thinking she’d find herself in LA but it’s a wretched place for a lost soul. Instead of finding herself, some pretty awful people found her.
“It wasn’t until she turned forty that she read Sparrow Island again,” Harper said.
“She was expecting me at the time—a surprise baby, as you can imagine—and she felt like the sparrow in the story, desperate for a place to land.
Instead of tossing the book away as frivolous, she began collecting and reading as many Via Belle books as she could find.
“And God used those stories, Finn. To give her answers to some of her tough questions. She embraced the redemption and stepped far away from those who’d used her.
Found a church with people who loved each other and helped her heal.
As I grew older, she taught me that stories are powerful.
A good story is strong enough to save a life. ”
“I want to show you Haven House,” he said as if separating this desire from his grandmother’s request.
“I would like to see it.”
He rinsed out his coffee mug and loaded it in the dishwasher. “Are you free tonight?”
“I think I can make time.”
He checked his watch. “How about we meet right after dinner?”
“I guess it depends what time you eat dinner.”
“Or—” He spooned the rest of the oatmeal into a clean bowl and picked up the pan. “I could give you a tour of the house and then we could eat in Catawba?”
She studied him for a moment. Was Finn Sterling asking her on a date? Seemed unlikely. It was only another meal. Nothing else.
But as he waited for her answer, his gaze flitting from her to the floor, it felt like something more.
“You brought me breakfast,” she said. “How about I make dinner after we tour?”
“It’s a—” He cleared his throat. “I could pick you up at six.”
She smiled. “You’ll whisk me past the gatekeeper?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll be ready.”
After closing the door, she tucked herself behind the front drape and watched him drive away.
Something had changed between them. She didn’t understand what exactly, but tonight she’d find out what Finn’s family was hiding at Haven House. And then have dinner with the man who’d threatened to have her arrested for trespassing.
She reached for her phone to text Kelsey.
I think I have a date tonight.
You think?!?
It’s a bit unclear.
Girl! How exactly did that happen?
He asked about dinner out, and I offered to make it here.
Does this Prince Charming have a name?
Finn.
Like a fish?
Ha! Finn Sterling is his name.
I like him already.
And, while she’d never admit it to anyone, including Kelsey, she’d begun to like him a little too.