Chapter 3
“That lady seems sad, Dad.”
At Isabel’s comment, Aaron angled sideways on the bench the two of them had claimed on the Hope Harbor wharf and followed the direction of her gaze.
Farther down, near Charley’s shuttered taco stand, a slender woman stood alone, long blond hair ruffling in the breeze, shoulders slumped, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. Though her face wasn’t visible, her posture communicated dejection—at the very least.
But he hadn’t brought Isabel here to dwell on depressing emotions. The whole purpose of this Thursday father-daughter early dinner date while Gramp met a friend for pizza was to perk her up.
It had worked too.
She’d chatted enthusiastically at the Myrtle Café, eaten every bite of her meatloaf entrée, and had remained animated while they strolled down to the wharf after dessert.
Until now.
“Maybe she’s just tired.” Aaron pointed overhead, above the long jetty on the left and the pair of rocky islands on the right that protected the marina. “Look at those two seagulls. They’re putting on an acrobatic show for us.”
After sparing the dipping and wheeling birds a fleeting glance, Isabel refocused on the woman, brow wrinkling as she swung her leg and scuffed the toe of her shoe on the pavement. “She doesn’t look tired to me. She looks lonesome—and kind of like she wants to cry.”
Aaron stared at his daughter.
Seriously?
How could she pick up on all that from this far away?
But rather than attempt to distract her, this could be an opportunity to draw her out about her own feelings, as the counselor had encouraged.
Even if he’d prefer to end this outing on a more upbeat note.
“Why do you think that?” He rested his arm on the back of the bench behind her, keeping his tone casual and conversational.
“I don’t know.” Isabel studied the woman. “Watching her makes my stomach feel empty, even though I just ate.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “That’s the same way it feels when I think about Mom.”
The heavy meal he’d ingested hardened into a rock in his own stomach. “I know you miss her, sweetie.” He moved his hand to her slight shoulder and gently tugged her closer beside him.
“I used to miss her before the accident too. She was gone a lot.”
That was true. And it had been a frequent source of conflict in their marriage.
But his suggestion that she take advantage of her IT firm’s openness to remote work and rely more on video conferencing for meetings and client interactions had always elicited the same response.
“Face-to-face contact is critical, especially for a business development manager. You may not have any ambition to climb the corporate ladder, but I do. Success is important to me.”
Their increasingly divergent definitions of success had also been a bone of contention—and another source of rancor.
“How come Mom had to travel all the time?” Isabel searched his face.
Aaron swallowed past the sour taste in his mouth. He may not have agreed with Olivia’s career-related choices, but sharing that opinion would serve no positive purpose with their daughter. “She had a busy job, honey.”
“I know. She always told me that.” Isabel dipped her chin and played with a loose button on her jacket.
“But sometimes I wonder if I . . . I didn’t love her enough.
Maybe if I’d loved her more, she wouldn’t have traveled as much.
And maybe she wouldn’t have been driving home from the airport the night of the accident. ”
His throat clogged.
Had Isabel been carrying around a boatload of undeserved guilt ever since Olivia died?
What kind of father was he to have been oblivious to her feelings of culpability?
“Honey, you loved her with all your heart, and she knew that.” He squeezed her shoulder, voice rasping. “What happened to your mom had nothing to do with you. All the trips she took were part of her job.”
“I guess.” She sniffed. “I missed her when she was gone for work, but it’s a different kind of missing when you know someone is never coming back.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Do you think she’s happy?”
“I’m sure she is. And I know she’d want you to be happy.”
Out on the jetty, the foghorn issued a protracted, sonorous bass wail as a tendril of fog swirled past.
The weather must be getting ready to change.
“Are you happy, Dad?”
That was a trickier question.
“I’m trying to be, but I’m still getting used to life without your mom.” Honest, even if the implication wasn’t. Devastating grief, like Gramp had experienced when Gram died, wasn’t the impediment to his happiness.
“Yeah.” She watched the two seagulls land on the pavement a few feet away and cuddle up close. “Do you ever forget what it was like when . . . when she was here?” She peeked over at him.
No. He could remember all too clearly.
But if Isabel was forgetting certain aspects of daily life with her mom, guilt over that could be mixed in with her grief too.
Some reassurance was in order.
“I’ve forgotten some details. That’s normal. But memories stay in your heart, and even if they aren’t always real clear, they can still make you feel warm and happy. Is that how you feel when you think of your mom?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him. “Does thinking about her make you feel happy too?”
Uh-oh.
Had she picked up on the problems he and Olivia had agreed to keep under wraps in her presence?
Maybe it had been a doomed effort from the beginning. Maybe their well-meaning intentions had been misguided. Maybe they’d done more harm than good by pretending.
His stomach clenched.
Being a parent was a minefield.
He took a slow breath and chose his words with care. “I have some very happy memories of your mom, honey. One of my favorites is how beautiful she looked the day we got married. But right now, I feel more sad than happy.” About so many things.
“Like that lady.” She pointed to the solitary woman again. “I wonder if someone she loved died too.”
If there was a subtle way to glean any more information about his daughter’s thoughts on his relationship with Olivia, it eluded him.
Besides, it was easier to speculate about a stranger’s mood.
“That’s possible.”
“I’ve never seen her before.” Isabel continued to watch the woman.
“Me, neither.” Which suggested she was a visitor, passing through.
There weren’t many locals he wouldn’t recognize after living in Hope Harbor most of his life.
“You want to make up a story about her, like we do sometimes at night?” Carrying on the tradition Olivia had started, which helped keep a bit of continuity in Isabel’s life, had been one of his smarter choices.
“No. I think her story is sad, and I don’t want to make up a sad story.” She turned away from the woman. “Could we go to the tidepools at Starfish Pier on Saturday? That would be fun.”
“Absolutely.” Anything that lifted her spirits was fine by him. “Gramp may want to come too. We could even take a picnic. How does that sound?”
Interest sparked in her eyes. “Good.”
“It’s a date, then. Ready to head home?”
“Uh-huh.”
He took her hand, giving the lone, willowy woman one final perusal.
Everything about her posture spelled discouragement.
But sorry as he was about whatever difficulty she was facing, he had too much going on in his own life to worry about anyone else’s troubles.
What a mess.
Devyn brushed back her wind-tossed hair and filled her lungs with the salty air as the breeze picked up on the wharf.
Dr. Sherman had warned her that patients going through post-traumatic amnesia could be agitated and act out of character, but the venom Lauren had spewed this afternoon as she’d begun to rouse from the coma . . .
Vision blurring, Devyn swiped a finger under her damp lashes.
Did her sister truly hate her so much that she wanted her to get out and stay out of her life forever?
The sad truth?
Maybe.
Despite the advice of the nurses and neurologist to discount her sister’s ranting, perhaps people said what they really meant when all their filters were disabled.
No matter what had compelled Lauren to lash out, however, her words had hurt.
A lot.
And once it had become clear that her presence was only exacerbating her sister’s agitation, she hadn’t needed much persuading from Dr. Sherman to call it a day much earlier than she’d planned.
After her seventy-two-hour vigil at Lauren’s bedside, her fatigue had escalated to the mind-numbing level.
And now that her sister was waking up, there should be no immediate danger.
Devyn burrowed deeper into her jacket as a wisp of fog coiled around her.
Life would look brighter after she went to the house, settled in, showered, and crashed for the night.
A hot meal would also be welcome, along with a side of empathy, but tacos and a Charley fix weren’t going to be on her menu tonight.
Eyeing the white food trailer with the owner’s name emblazoned in colorful letters over the closed serving window, she fought back a wave of disappointment.
But on the plus side, his stand was still here. She could come back another day for an order of tacos and wisdom.
Giving the quiet wharf a scan, she homed in on a tall man holding a young girl’s hand as they strolled away from the waterfront, toward crescent-shaped Dockside Drive.
Her lips curved up.
After her disheartening afternoon with Lauren, an uplifting reminder that life was pleasant and normal for some people, if not for her, provided a welcome boost.
She watched while the duo crossed the road that dead-ended at the river beyond the tiny park behind Charley’s stand.
When they started down the sidewalk and meandered past the quaint storefronts sporting bright awnings and flower boxes, she swiveled back toward the sea, ignoring the faint growl in her stomach.
Food was a priority, but a few quiet minutes here first would soothe her soul.
Summoning up her waning energy, she wandered over to the nearest bench and sank down.
Beyond the planters that provided a buffer between the sidewalk and the pile of boulders that sloped down to the harbor, boats rested in the placid water.
The distant horizon was becoming hazy as fog rolled in and obscured the line between sea and sky, but the vibrant flowers in the overflowing planters added a splash of vivid color to mitigate the gray turn this day had taken.
As the soothing ambiance seeped into her soul, the tension in her shoulders eased.
By tomorrow, Dr. Sherman should have a better handle on Lauren’s prognosis, but her return to consciousness and increasing responsiveness was promising. And perhaps Lauren would also be more receptive to her sister’s presence after the fog cleared from her brain.
One could hope, anyway.
In the meantime, Mom would be expecting an update.
After digging out her cell, Devyn scrolled through recents and tapped on her mother’s name. At this late hour in Paris, Mom would be fast asleep, her phone shut off for the night. And leaving a voicemail would be easier than—
“Devyn? Is Lauren all right?”
Expelling a resigned breath, Devyn slouched lower on the bench. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No. Philippe had a business dinner that ran ridiculously late, even by Paris standards. We just got home. Is there news on Lauren?”
“Yes. She’s waking up and talking. All the signs are encouraging, but we’ll know more in the next couple of days.”
“It’s fortunate your spring season is over and you can be there with her. I would have had to rearrange dozens of commitments to make a trip over. In any case, I expect she’d rather have you there than me.”
Not necessarily, based on Lauren’s earlier rant.
But no need to share the details of that incident with their mother.
“She hasn’t kept in close touch with me, either, Mom.”
“Closer than she has with me.” A hint of annoyance colored her words. “Of course I’ll come if necessary—and if Lauren wants me to—but why don’t we see where we are in forty-eight hours and go from there?”
“That works.”
“Can you stay awhile if necessary?”
“Yes. I didn’t book any guest-artist gigs this summer.”
“That’s fortunate.”
True. Her sister was likely going to require assistance, at least in the beginning. And given Mom’s rocky relationship with her oldest daughter and her aversion to all things medical, an offer to play Florence Nightingale would have been too much to hope for.
“I’ll keep you in the loop, Mom.”
“Thanks. If Lauren is willing to talk to me, please ask her to call. Every time I try to reach out, she shuts down.” A protracted sigh came over the line.
“I’m sure she thinks I abandoned her to be with you during your training, but I did the best I could.
After all, what choice was there? A talent like yours had to be nurtured, and you couldn’t go off alone to San Francisco or New York at such a young age. ”
Not quite accurate. While the company in San Francisco hadn’t had housing available for twelve-year-olds, in New York there’d been a residence hall for students fourteen and older.
But if she’d lived in the hall, Mom wouldn’t have had an excuse to leave Hope Harbor for life in the Big Apple. A choice that had taxed Dad’s limited income, despite the dance scholarships she’d won and the concierge jobs Mom had wrangled in both cities.
Devyn shifted on the bench as a familiar twinge of guilt nipped at her conscience for all the sacrifices Lauren and Dad had made to give her a career in the limelight far from Hope Harbor.
Another reason she felt compelled to offer Lauren whatever help she might require over the summer.
Not that Mom seemed to feel any such obligation.
“Devyn? Are you there?”
Stifling her negative thoughts, she stood as the farthest boats in the harbor began to disappear in the mist. “Yes. I’m at the wharf and it’s getting foggy. I want to stock up on groceries before I get socked in.”
“I hear you. I always hated that fog.”
“But there’s nowhere more beautiful than Hope Harbor on a sunny day.” She began walking toward her rental car.
Her mother gave a soft snort. “I’ll take the lights of Paris any day. You’ll stay in touch?”
“Yes.”
After they said their goodbyes, Devyn picked up her pace. Food first, then sleep.
And if her prayers were answered, by her next visit to the hospital tomorrow, Lauren would be fully alert—and in a far more welcoming mood.