Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
It was hard to believe that once upon a time, she’d thought Hanson was special. In her silly, crush-filled seventeen-year-old brain, she’d thought he was the one.
But could Celia really find it in her to help Landon with his cause? So much had happened between her and Hanson. So much of it was better off forgotten. It felt like the past was trying to repeat itself.
Celia still stayed in the hotel she’d opted for that first night in Bluebell Cove and had created from the little space a homey feel: hanging her clothes and purchasing more and more snacks and toiletries so that she didn’t have to leave the room for small essentials.
She had a fun rapport with the woman who worked at the front desk most nights, a woman who’d moved to Bluebell Cove long after Celia had vacated it.
The night before Sophie planned to fly to Maine, Celia switched to a bigger room with two double beds and spent hours researching rental properties surrounding the Bluebell Cove Inn.
They would need somewhere more sensible for the summertime: a temporary place they could call home.
She was pretty sure that Ivy had a spare room, but she hadn’t spoken to Ivy at all since she’d agreed to take over the inn, and she wasn’t keen on asking her for help now.
Sometimes she saw her out the window of the inn, coming to and from the family house that was now hers, occasionally with her teenage kids by her side.
There was a boy and a girl, a niece and a nephew, whom Celia had never met.
She wondered how close they’d been to her father, their grandfather, before he’d died.
Maybe they knew him only as a kind-hearted, very sick older man.
And maybe James Harper had been peaceful and kind in old age. If she’d met him like that, would she have found a way to forgive him? She didn’t know.
Celia sent a few inquiries for rental houses, then answered Juliet and Wren’s text message questions regarding the work at the Bluebell Cove Inn.
She wrote a list of the current construction projects, a slated “open by” date, and Everything is going to plan so far.
As far as she knew, Juliet was back in New York City, living her elegant and fashionable life with “people who relied on her,” whatever that meant.
Celia was too busy to worry too much about what Juliet was hiding from them about her real life.
Wren was who-knew-where, as usual. The night after their cozy dinner in Juliet’s hotel, Wren had disappeared but sent text messages maintaining how okay she was and how grateful she was that Celia could take over. Celia didn’t know what to believe.
But Wren was thirty-four years old. She had to know how to take care of herself by now. Still, it stuck in Celia’s mind how frightening it had been when Wren had collapsed like that. Eat enough food, little Wren, she thought.
The following morning, Celia drove to the airport and stalled at arrivals until Sophie wheeled her massive suitcase onto the sidewalk out front and spotted Celia and her rental immediately.
Celia yelped and ran over to her daughter, throwing her arms around her.
Before she got a chance to say how happy she was, an airline worker yelled at them to “move their idling car!” Sophie and Celia hurried back, giggling.
For a moment, Celia felt like they were co-conspirators, back together after too many months apart, ready to wreak havoc.
But as she pulled away from the airport, she studied Sophie and saw how tired and withdrawn she looked, how run-down by the world.
Celia swallowed a lump in her throat and asked Sophie about her flight from Oregon and the last days of her finals.
Sophie raised her shoulders. Her chin wiggled with sorrow and shame. “Gigi and Max left for their internships yesterday,” she said. “I felt so pathetic.”
Celia reached for her daughter’s hand and squeezed it.
She searched back through her twenty-plus-year career in journalism for advice but realized the only real “advice” she could lend related to the current failure of her career—and she hated to admit that.
She didn’t want Sophie to worry more about Celia than her own future.
She didn’t want Sophie to think her mother was washed up.
As they entered the little town of Bluebell Cove, Sophie’s eyes widened, and she whipped her head back and forth to take in the sharp coastline, the frothing ocean, the harbor, and its numerous fishing boats.
The lighthouse towered over that same harbor and brought Bluebell residents back to shore.
“Mom,” she repeated three times. “I can’t believe you’re from here? Like, it’s insanely pretty?”
Celia laughed nervously and squeezed the steering wheel.
“You always told me that this place was a nothing place,” Sophie said. “You said it was the kind of town where people gave up.”
Celia stuttered, trying to remember having said that. She knew that Sophie had a brilliant memory. She’d taken everything Celia had said into her like a sponge.
“I think people give up everywhere,” Sophie said before Celia could answer. “I think they give up in the big city. I think they give up abroad. I think the world gets to them, and they give up like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I don’t want to. Not yet. But maybe I get it? I don’t know.”
Celia’s cheeks were inflamed. Sophie was too young to speak like this.
But all at once, they reached the turn-off for the Bluebell Cove Inn.
Celia held her breath as they approached.
When she cut the engine, she let her eyes drift over to Sophie, who looked captivated, with lips parted.
Finally, she burst with, “This is your family’s inn?
” Sophie tore from the rental car and hurried to the front porch.
The wood groaned beneath her feet like a warning, but still she hurried inside, exclaiming with wonder.
Celia followed her, catching sight of Ivy through Ivy’s kitchen window, watching her.
What does she do all day? Celia wondered.
Does she hate me so much that she can’t say hello?
Does she hate me so much that she doesn’t want to meet my daughter?
Sophie’s excitement about the inn could not be contained. She wanted to hear every detail about the repairs and refurbishment, what each room had looked like before its closure, and Celia’s dreams for the next iteration of the inn.
“Well, it doesn’t matter to me what it looks like,” Celia said. “We’re only going to operate it for a year before we sell it off. But you’re right. It needs to look good if we’re going to turn a profit.” She laughed, hearing her father’s voice in her own.
“This is crazy.” Sophie touched the mahogany front desk and watched the oaks dance out the window. “And you can see all of the cove from here!”
Celia and Sophie stood at the back window to take in the turquoise shine of Bluebell Cove itself.
This deep in May, the forest was especially lush and green, twisted up in its own mysteries.
With a stab of horror, Celia realized that many of the animals and insects would soon perish in Hanson Smith’s building project.
“Is that a crane?” Sophie furrowed her brow and pointed at a spot of yellow against the cliffside. It looked ominous and was prepared to destroy.
Celia didn’t want to get into it. “They’re always building stuff up and tearing things down around here,” she said. “The tourists are coming fast. We’re lucky we don’t have to deal with them at the inn this summer. It’s just us and all these big, empty rooms.”
Sophie shifted away from the window and crossed her arms. “I can’t believe Aunt Wren and Aunt Juliet already left.”
“They’ll be back,” Celia said, although she wasn’t entirely sure if that was true.
“But Mom, this is exactly what you always said,” Sophie reminded her. “You said everyone always relied on you. You said it was so much pressure.”
“But I left.” Celia’s voice cracked. “I went off and built my own life. I met your father. I had you.” The story was much more complicated than that, but it was nothing she could currently face.
Sophie’s eyes flickered to the ground. Unlike other children with missing parents, Sophie didn’t often like to talk about her father, a man who’d come and gone like a season.
Sophie had seen photographs of him and therefore knew that she had his forehead, sort of, but almost everything else belonged to Celia.
Celia was grateful for this. She couldn’t imagine seeing Steven’s face every time she looked at her beloved child.
“What’s the plan for today?” Sophie asked, putting on a brave face for Celia. “What can I clean? What can I throw away? What can I do to help you?”
Celia confessed that she wanted to go through the inn’s attic today. “It’s a big job,” she said. “My dad kept all kinds of stuff up there. I don’t think anyone’s gone through it since 1977.”
Sophie giggled. Celia wondered what 1977 sounded like to her daughter. Probably somewhere between 100 and 1000 years ago.
They went to the third floor, then pulled the string that lowered the trapdoor.
A set of stairs unfurled and dropped so that they could easily ascend.
Celia went first, praying that the wood would hold them.
They walked soundlessly into the attic. Up there, beneath layers of dust, were boxes upon boxes, unused furniture, old paintings that had previously hung in rooms of the inn, and an old rocking horse that Celia was pretty sure her father had used as a child.
She didn’t think she and her sisters ever had.
Sophie whistled with wonder and brushed some dust off the box nearest her to read the label: Bills 1967. “Uh-oh,” she said. “We’re in over our heads.”
Celia laughed. “You really don’t have to do this.”
“I want to,” Sophie said, pulling up her sleeves. “Let’s dig in.”
For a little while, it was fluid. Sophie and Celia went through old paperwork, threw what they could into trash bags, broke down old boxes, and discovered more and more of the floor beneath their feet.
Two hours in, Celia suggested they order Chinese food from a place down the road, and Sophie agreed.
“We’re going to need fuel for this.” Celia went downstairs to call them and was midway through detailing her order when Sophie cried out from upstairs.
Celia hung up the phone right away and raced to the attic, fearing the worst. Maybe Sophie’s legs had dropped through the floorboards. Perhaps she’d broken something.
But when Celia made her way upstairs again, she found Sophie bent over the wall in the far corner, where, it seemed, she’d discovered a little door, hidden behind a stack of boxes. “Mom!” she cried. “It’s a secret closet! In the attic!”
Celia remembered the old days when she and Sophie would read books in Sophie's or Celia’s bed, poring over secret societies, secret rooms, and fantastical stories that took them far away from their tiny apartment in Washington, DC.
Being a single mother and an only child, they’d desperately needed those stories.
But this was a closet in the Bluebell Cove Inn’s attic, which meant it contained nothing so marvelous.
If anything, it contained more dust and terrible memories.
But Sophie was already opening it. From the shadows, she removed what appeared to be a wooden box, a handmade, delicate object. She blew on the top, and dust flew across the wall. “It has a name on it,” Sophie said.
Celia’s palms felt clammy. “What is it?”
“Margaret Harper,” Sophie said, blinking at her. “Who is that?”
Celia’s mother’s first and last names rang out across the boxes. Celia’s legs shivered with adrenaline. Sophie recognized that Celia was excited and overwhelmed, and it pushed her to do exactly what Celia didn’t want her to.
“Let’s open it,” she said.
“I don’t know, Soph.” Celia tried to make her voice flat and easy. “I think we should keep working. I mean, look at this place. It’s still filthy.”
But Sophie had the wooden box on the ground and was using her fingers to pry the lid off.
Her eyes glinted in the soft light of the attic.
Celia felt a jolt of rage through her chest, one that she immediately tried to swallow down.
Sophie was her only lifeline in a terrifying world.
The last thing she wanted to do was show her how frightened and angry she was.
But the truth was, Celia had never found anything that belonged to her mother, not in all the years after she’d died.
It was as if her father had cleansed the house and the inn of all memory of her.
As if he’d painstakingly gone through every drawer, removing her bobby pins, forgotten notes, and photographs.
She remembered Landon’s photograph on the fridge, the one of his children's mother, and realized that was normal. You were supposed to uphold the memory of the woman you’d lost.
“They’re journals! Diaries.” Sophie’s voice was as thin as a string.
Celia bent down and sat beside her daughter on the dusty attic floor.
She felt her daughter’s eyes on her as she reached for the wooden top and set it back on the box.
Her heart pounded. All her life, she’d protected Sophie from the darkness of her Harper past. She hadn’t realized that she’d been protecting herself, too.
Her heart couldn’t handle it, couldn’t bear to read over her mother’s true thoughts. Not yet.