Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Memorial Day
At nine months pregnant and a few days’ change, Ivy strained to stand upright at the front desk of the Bluebell Cove Inn.
Sweat bubbled on the back of her neck and all along her spine, and she felt swampy and strange in a big, loose dress she hoped hid how monstrous she felt.
Still, every single guest who wheeled their bags into the Bluebell Cove immediately fixated on how pregnant she was and asked question after question, usually finishing with, “You shouldn’t be working any longer! You’re about to pop!”
Each time she said the same, “Ha ha! Can’t stop till the baby comes! It’s a family business. You know how it goes. We’ll put the baby to work when she gets here!”
Ivy’s smile made her cheeks ache. But when her father, James, came in from the back porch to see how things were going, she made sure to put on her bravest face and act the part of the charming front desk hostess he needed her to be.
Back in the old days, back before Celia had taken off for her new life in Washington, DC, James had always thought Celia was better at working the front desk; he’d thought she was better with people and knew exactly what to say.
Ivy struggled with it. But after four years of working at the inn post-high school, she felt she was on the verge of making sense of it, of socializing, of saying the right thing. She hoped.
When James Harper wasn’t cozying up with guests and telling fantastical stories from his long and brilliant life on the coast of Maine, he glowered at both Ivy and whatever paperwork awaited him in his office.
Things at the Bluebell Cove Inn had been patchy at best the past year, especially after a storm over the ocean had destroyed three of their top-selling rooms. Now that construction was underway, they hoped to reopen the rooms by midsummer.
There was a creak on the staircase. Ivy flinched as the carpenter, Elliot Rhodes, hustled down, a toolbox heavy in his right hand.
Sweat was glossy on his forehead, and his shoulders were broad and muscular in his plaid shirt.
He gave her a crooked smile, a nod, then asked, “Can I keep my toolbox behind the desk? I need to get a glass of water.”
Ivy said he could. “There’s lemonade in the fridge,” she offered. “It’s freshly squeezed. Want some?”
Elliot laughed. “I can’t imagine anything better.”
Ivy waddled into the kitchen to pour them both glasses of lemonade and returned to find Elliot talking to one of the guests, directing him on the best hiking paths that would take him down to the Cove.
Ivy leaned in the doorway, grateful to give her responsibilities to someone else for a change.
When the guest left, Elliot turned to smile at her.
“This is fun,” he said. “I have to spend all day in my head.”
“I’d love to spend more time in my head.” Ivy blushed and handed him the glass of lemonade. She wasn’t accustomed to sharing her opinions.
“Maybe we can trade.” Elliot sipped the lemonade, then gasped, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Man, this is great. Wow.” His eyes widened. “You said fresh squeezed?”
Ivy felt a shiver of happiness down her spine. “It’s been one of my biggest cravings,” she confessed. “I think the baby likes sour things.”
Elliot laughed again. “It’s crazy how early our personalities start, isn’t it? My mom always said she craved pickles like crazy when she was pregnant with me. I’m still crazy for pickles to this day.”
Ivy cupped her elbows and allowed herself a moment of reflection. I could listen to Elliot Rhodes’s laughter all day, every day. She felt a smile creep over her face.
For a few minutes, Elliot explained how close he was to the redesign of the rooms upstairs that had been destroyed.
He spoke in colloquial terms that brought Ivy closer to the world of construction than she’d ever been.
She wanted to gush with thanks. But more than that, she wanted to ask him why he was back already.
She knew he’d left Bluebell Cove to live with and eventually marry Shelly Triplet, his high school girlfriend.
But he’d returned to Bluebell Cove without a wedding ring and without a story.
What had happened between them? Had Shelly asked him to leave, or had he left Shelly on his own?
She spun her wedding ring around her fourth finger and wondered why the gossip channels hadn’t filled in the gaps yet. Maybe Elliot was keeping everything under wraps.
Ivy offered Elliot more lemonade, but Elliot took both glasses into the kitchen himself and instructed Ivy to sit down for a little while. “It can’t be comfortable to stand all the time,” he hollered through the kitchen doorway, the fridge open around his muscular frame.
It was then that Jefferson Marlow stormed into the lobby of the Bluebell Cove Inn.
He brought with him a smell that Ivy was accustomed to: the fishiness typical of fishermen who spent long mornings at sea, reeling in ropes and casting lines.
Ivy had gone to sleep next to that same smell for the better part of two years, since she’d married Daniel the fisherman.
Jefferson looked down at Ivy with regret in his eyes. Ivy guessed what he was going to say before he said it. Her heart churned.
“It’s Daniel,” Jefferson said. “His boat is missing.”
After that, chaos ensued. Ivy nearly collapsed from her chair but was hauled back onto it by the capable hands of Elliot, who’d returned to the lobby to see what was going on.
The glasses of lemonade had been abandoned on the counter.
Ivy heard Jefferson’s story as though it were echoing from across Bluebell Cove.
“Daniel went out this morning but didn’t come back when he said he would.
His boat’s not accounted for. There was a storm south of here. We’re worried he got caught up in it.”
Elliott was a strong-willed man who clearly stayed cool under pressure. Ivy listened as he asked the relevant questions: “What happens now?” and “How long till the Coast Guard gives us a sense of what’s going on?”
All the while, Ivy’s world spun around her.
And then, the worst happened: panic and pain enveloped her lower stomach and ratcheted up her back. She knew before Elliot and Jefferson glanced back down at her to see what was going on. She threw back her head and gasped. The baby was coming.
Ivy knew better than to go to the hospital at the first sign of contractions.
But Jefferson and Elliot were so panicked about both Daniel going missing and the idea of childbirth that they helped her to Elliot’s truck almost immediately.
Ivy felt too woozy to fight back. She watched as Elliot tried very gently to buckle her in before he gave up, realizing that her pregnant stomach was too big.
He looked panicked, like a kid who hadn’t studied for a test but was being forced to take it anyway.
“It’s going to be okay,” she tried to assure both him and herself, but her tongue felt as though it was glued to the bottom of her mouth.
Elliot looked as though he didn’t know what speed to go.
At some points, he went eighty-five, speeding down the highway, until he remembered that he had a very pregnant woman on board and cut the speed down to fifty-five.
Other drivers sped past, blaring their horns.
Elliot kept glancing over at her, his hands stiff on the steering wheel.
“You’re good?” he asked over and over again. “You feel okay?”
But Ivy’s contractions were coming in faster than she’d planned for. It was as though Daniel’s disappearance (and potential death? Was that really possible?) had put a fire in her stomach. It was as though her baby had decided that Ivy couldn’t live in this world alone.
Thank you, baby, Ivy thought. Thank you for recognizing what I need. Thank you for helping me through this.
When they got to the hospital, Elliot parked in the ambulance drive-through and hurried around to help her out of the truck.
A nurse came out to yell at Elliot to move his truck, but Elliot stayed at Ivy’s side until she was safely in a wheelchair.
He said he’d be right back, that he would park his truck and hurry in.
After Ivy had dressed in a hospital gown and was taken to a room she shared with another woman in labor, she sat quietly and willed herself not to cry.
The hospital had run out rooms making no choice but share.
At every roll of pain that nearly overwhelmed her, she bit her tongue and focused on her prayers.
Daniel had to be all right. Wherever he was, this was all a misunderstanding.
Maybe he’d taken his fishing boat too far down the coast and gotten trapped in a bay somewhere.
Perhaps he’d gone for a beer with another of the fishermen and forgotten to say where he was.
He could be “missing” for countless reasons.
Ivy certainly didn’t always know where he was.
“Are you a single mom, too?” the woman in the other bed asked, scrunching her tear-lined face.
Ivy raised her chin. “My husband is…” She wondered what she was meant to say. Missing? On his way?
But at that moment, Elliot Rhodes stormed into the room and sat in the chair beside her bed. “That took ages,” he said, ripping off his hat and fluffing his sweaty hair.
Ivy felt a wave of nausea and fear. She knew without looking that the woman in the other bed was watching her and Elliot, jealous of what she thought they had.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she told him.
“It’s not a big deal,” Elliot said. “I just hope your dad doesn’t kill me for taking too long of a break.”
Ivy laughed despite herself. She knew her father could be single-minded and cruel at times.
“I mean, this is the birth of his grandchild,” Elliot said. “Hopefully, he’ll be lenient.”
“Who knows with James Harper?” Ivy said.
They shared a moment of silence, one that allowed Ivy to reckon with how pathetic she probably looked in Elliot’s eyes.
“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Elliot said finally, speaking of Daniel. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“I’m sure.”
But at that moment, another contraction overwhelmed Ivy and swept her into a world of pain. When she returned to their shared reality, she realized she’d gripped Elliot’s hand throughout. When they released their hands, his was bright red and pinched-looking.
“You’ve got the grip of a monkey wrench,” he joked.
Ivy didn’t have the strength to be as mortified as she might have been otherwise.
She wondered if she should ask Elliot to go call her father at the inn or call Daniel’s work to tell them where she was.
But she reasoned that Jefferson had been there when Elliot had taken her away.
Whatever happened, he carried this gossip.
He would direct Daniel to the hospital—if and when Daniel was found.
The “if” hung in the air, threatening to destroy everything Ivy had built.
After another wave of contractions, Ivy lay back, exhausted, and asked Elliot to fetch some water. He hurried off, leaving her alone with the other woman in the hospital bed.
“My sister’s on her way,” she explained.
Ivy smiled weakly. “Good. Good.”
“I’m scared,” the woman said.
Ivy admitted she was scared, too.
“Your husband is handsome,” the woman said sheepishly.
Ivy’s heart twisted. She knew she should say that Elliot wasn’t her husband, that her husband was maybe at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean right now.
But the thought of saying that all aloud overwhelmed her so much that it cast her into another violent contraction.
She hissed with pain and barely heard the woman in the next bed trying to coach her through it.
When it was over, the nurse came in to check on her and told her the baby was coming faster than they’d expected. Elliot still hadn’t returned, and it made Ivy feel insane, as though she’d imagined Elliot being there in the first place.
As she lay there alone, waiting for the next contraction that would bring her daughter into the world, Ivy allowed herself to completely engage with her fears.
If Daniel were really dead, it meant that her baby would never know her father.
One-half of their income would immediately disappear, and Ivy would start her life as a single mother, broken and frightened and emotionally weak.
It meant that her baby’s memories of her father would exist, mostly, at a gravesite—setting down flowers and listening to Ivy’s memories.
Ivy shuddered. Tears fell down her cheeks.
But she couldn’t stop the panicked thoughts. They circled.
If Daniel were really dead, it meant that, if Ivy ever wanted to have another child, she would have to grieve her loss, make peace with that loss, and find a way to love again.
It meant she would have to love someone enough to actually marry them.
More than that, it meant that someone else would have to love Ivy enough to ask her to marry him!
Ivy hadn’t thought anyone could love her, not until Daniel came around and convinced her otherwise.
(And even that had felt strange and rocky at times, so much so that on their wedding day, she’d thought he was going to get cold feet and abandon her.)
Oh, it was miserable to be a woman alone in the world. Ivy didn’t know if she could handle it.
Footsteps shuffled down the hall. Ivy’s eyes were only half-open. She felt she was peering into her future, and it was dull and lifeless, lonely.
“Ivy!”
A familiar voice pulled her back to life.
She turned to find Daniel, staggering toward her from the doorway, panic written all over his dirty face.
He brought with him that familiar fishy smell, the same smell that she tried and failed to wash out of every jacket, pair of jeans, and single sock he owned.
This was her husband, the man who’d decided to marry her, the man who’d decided to have a baby with her.
She’d thought he was dead.
Daniel kissed her forehead and murmured, “I’m here, now, honey. I’m here.”
Ivy didn’t have the strength to ask where he’d been or what had happened. She was suddenly cast forward into the world of childbirth, a world of life-altering pain and terrifying questions from which she wasn’t released for another six hours.
Their daughter, Lily, was born at one o’clock in the morning.
She was seven pounds and nine ounces of beautiful, with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes and little dark curls all over her head.
Ivy held her baby as tears fell down her cheeks.
In her heart of hearts, she thought, You’re here, my baby, and now I’ll never be alone again.