Chapter Three
Victoria arrived on Valentine Key without any trouble. She hadn’t been back for several years, but driving through town on the way to Aunt Lily’s place brought back a host of memories from her childhood, her teen years and beyond.
She was glad to see that things hadn’t changed too much in downtown Valentine Key. While there were a few new businesses here and there, the mainstays of the quaint town remained. It had definitely held onto that small-town feel.
Valentine Key was located in what was known as the lower keys of the Florida Keys. It was an hour or so north of Key West and nestled among several other keys, some not even named or big enough to be inhabited.
The key was like a squat heart a bit off-center—hence the name—and was larger than most folks imagined. The downtown area was a nice size for the island and there was a historical area on the west side of the island. It was rumored pirates had either lived in the old settlement or hidden out there after their maritime raids.
There was also a well-established artists’ colony on Valentine Key, where several artists did brisk business, selling tourists works with their take on the beach, the sunsets and the ocean.
A marina on the northeast side of the island was conveniently close to the Lovelock Inn. Lots of rich folks made Valentine Key their home, but most of the people who didn’t live on the island full-time were snowbirds who resided here during the harsh winter months in the northern part of the U.S.
Victoria had flown from New York to Miami. She’d rented a car at the airport for the three-hour drive south on U.S. Route 1, also known as the Overseas Highway. She enjoyed the drive and the scenery on the way to Valentine Key. She felt a jump in her pulse as she exited off the highway onto Heart Island Road, which had been named before Valentine Key had been recognized as an actual key. Home. No matter that she hadn’t actually lived on the key for any length of time. Part of her would always think of it as that.
As the miles from Miami to Valentine Key rolled by, Victoria had thought a lot about her life and how she’d ended up where she was.
She’d bounced around boarding schools as a child, mostly in Europe, not because she didn’t get along with her fellow students or do well in her classes, but because her father seemed to never want her to settle down in one place for very long.
The reasons for that established practice, he kept to himself. Perhaps he thought it would make her a stronger person. Maybe it had made her stronger, to a degree. She didn’t know.
She spent her school years always unpacking or packing up her scant belongings, feeling like she was forever on the way from one place to another. Before she could get too attached to anyone or any location, she’d be summarily yanked out of that peaceful, familiar place and sent to the next.
The schools were all nice, but for a long time, Victoria dreamed of simply staying put. Since she had no control over that when she was a child, she’d vowed that was what she’d do once she was on her own and could make decisions for herself. And she had.
Victoria spent her final two years of high school in the United States, graduating with honors from a very good private boarding school in Connecticut. Her father wanted her to immediately attend college, but Victoria was eighteen by then and decided she would choose her own fate.
With money she’d saved for years from her very limited allowance, Victoria went back to Europe and backpacked for six months, much to Horatio’s displeasure. It had been invigorating, fun. And because she knew her father was unhappy about it, her trek across Europe was that much more satisfying.
In Portugal, Victoria met Travis Alder, a fellow American who was taking a break from the rigors of school. Although he’d been a few years older than Victoria, they both had the same vagabond spirit and quite a lot of other things in common.
Her father had not approved of Travis, either, but Victoria had known he would never like anyone she chose, so she married someone she loved.
And Victoria had loved Travis with all her heart. Even better, Travis had loved her. He’d also not minded at all that she’d wanted to keep her maiden name when they married.
She’d had the idea way back then that women shouldn’t have to give up who they were for a man, no matter how much they were loved. The more mature Victoria could only shake her head at that youthful notion. It might be an important point for some women, but she knew now she’d make a different choice.
Victoria and Travis had been married for three years when along came Angelica, their sweet daughter, their pride and their true joy.
She’d sent a letter to Aunt Lily telling her about Angelica’s birth, and asked her not to tell Horatio. Victoria was convinced that if he’d known another girl had been born into the family, it would just make him angry.
She didn’t need that tone in her wonderful life with Travis and their baby girl. Because Angelica was sweet and lovable and perfect without a grumpy grandpa in the mix.
They lost Travis to a freak accident when Angelica was five. The office building where he worked in their small Colorado town was hit by a malfunctioning crane.
The operator of the crane, doing construction work on the building next door, had lost control when some mechanism shorted out. The crane arm struck Travis’s office and an adjacent office. Three people died and eleven were injured. Travis was one of those fatalities.
Without warning, Victoria’s eyes watered at the memory.
The investigation determined that the cause of the accident was a cheap replacement hose that had split, releasing fluid that leaked out and disabled the crane operator’s ability to control the machine.
The ultimate cause didn’t matter to Victoria. Nothing would bring back her husband, her little girl’s father.
She and Angelica received a modest sum from his life insurance and a bit more money years later when the construction company’s long and endlessly drawn-out litigation finally ended.
By then, Angelica was nearly ready to graduate from high school. Victoria had been grateful that her job as a written-word translator and occasional interpreter afforded her the ability to work from home.
All those years in boarding schools overseas had not only given Victoria her vagabond spirit, but a love of the romance languages to go with it. Beyond English, Victoria spoke French, Italian and Spanish fluently and Portuguese and Romanian well enough to do translations. She also knew Russian and German well enough to communicate and do simple translations.
Once Angelica had moved out of her place and was on her own, Victoria had gotten a better job in the translation industry, doing more interpretations live and on-site. Part of the program for the new employment meant she traveled quite a lot more than she had before.
It had been a good life for a while, but the older she got, the less she liked to travel. She was always happy to come back to her tiny New York apartment. Unfortunately, it seemed to get tinier and tinier as each year passed.
With Angelica now twenty-five and living in Oregon with her boyfriend, Victoria certainly wasn’t bound to stay in her teeny tiny apartment in New York. She had never wanted to live in the Northwest part of the country like her adventurous daughter. She wasn’t a fan of the cold, and even less a fan of cold rain.
Victoria had thought about leaving the Big Apple to relocate somewhere a little more tropical, where the winters were not so hard on her bones and mobility. She wasn’t getting any younger.
However, she’d never really had a pushing need to move. One day slid into the next day, which slid into the one after that and so on. Before she knew it, she was staring at fifty and living in increasingly solitary life in New York City.
That was about to change. Victoria was going to have to put herself in the right frame of mind to spend time with her five sisters. The three sisters that had come from her father’s second wife, Kelly, were Colleen, Darby and Evaline. Even though they were the three sisters closest in age to her, she had seen them the least.
She’d spent some time with Jessica and Jacklyn—the twins Sunshine had given birth to in a hospital all alone—in her youth. Sunshine was the reason for that. She was the one who always reached out and made the effort to connect Victoria with her daughters whenever Victoria was in the States.
The last time Victoria had seen either of the twins had been before she graduated from high school. As she was nine years older than they were, it wasn’t like they had a lot in common, but Victoria did appreciate that Sunshine made an effort.
The twins, as opposite in nature as they could be, were good kids. Jessica, the adventurer who always had something to say, and Jacklyn, shy and quiet and reserved, always hung back from any situation.
Kelly and her three daughters were virtual strangers to Victoria. That was due to Kelly, though Victoria found it difficult to blame her.
Evaline wasn’t even a month old when Victoria’s father said he wanted to try for a fourth baby. He wanted a son. It was no secret.
Kelly had barely made it through the third pregnancy, which her doctors had warned her would be dangerous. They’d been right. Victoria gathered it had been quite a trial for her.
When Kelly told Horatio that she was not going to kill herself trying to give birth to yet another child he didn’t want, he spent a year trying to change her mind. It all came to a head one night when Victoria was visiting during the Christmas holidays. Kelly blew up and told him it would never happen.
Since Horatio had an agenda and Kelly wasn’t willing to carry on and have more children until a son was born, he was ready, willing and certainly able to move on to another woman who would fulfill his desire for a son.
That had not been a fun Christmas visit for Victoria.
It was a month after Evaline’s first birthday. It had only been the second or third time Victoria, who was seven by then, had even been at her father’s house with his second wife.
It was not that Kelly was mean to Victoria. She simply didn’t have time for another child because she was focused on her own very young children.
To be fair, she also likely did not want to be reminded that Horatio’s first wife, Isabella, had been the love of his life.
Apparently, some of the less kind aunts and uncles in the family had been quick to point out that Kelly was merely a means to an end after Isabella died. Victoria had heard it said herself on more than one occasion.
It was that fight between Kelly and Horatio that truly opened Victoria’s eyes to what her father’s desperation for a son meant to her, personally.
Though she’d been in another room and trying not to listen to the adults argue, it was impossible not to hear Kelly when she screamed, “I’m not going to be the second wife that you put into the ground trying to have a son!”
Meaning that Victoria’s mother, Isabella, had died trying to give her father a son. That was how she’d learned about it. Victoria hadn’t been able to discuss it with anybody until she got to her aunt’s place on Valentine Key.
Aunt Lily had done her best to explain to a very young Victoria what had happened to her mother. It was the fifth miscarriage that killed her. While Horatio had been broken-hearted at every miscarriage, it hadn’t stopped him when the doctors told him Isabella shouldn’t try a fifth time.
She’d loved him too much not to try to give him what he wanted. And, Aunt Lily said, Isabella loved being a mother and wanted another baby to dote on along with her daughter.
After that big blow-up at Christmas, Horatio and Kelly managed to hold their marriage together for another few months before ending things.
Kelly had been naturally bitter about their divorce, frustratingly bitter about the prenuptial agreement she’d signed and over-the-top bitter about having to move back to her wealthy parents’ Philadelphia home post-Horatio with three small children in tow.
She could have gotten her own place. It wasn’t like Horatio hadn’t provided for his daughters. He had ensured, as far as Victoria knew, that Kelly’s girls had everything they needed while they were young. None of her little sisters had been forced to live on the streets. Neither had they been forced to go to boarding schools in the States or overseas.
The realization of why hit her hard. None of her little sisters had to go to boarding school because they had mothers to take care of them.
Victoria had been alone. Another tear threatened to fall on her cheek, but she sniffed it away.
Old news. Move on.
Horatio had a singular goal. Everyone knew what it was. It had shaped his life. A deathbed promise to his own father—a male Lovelock heir to take over Lovelock Enterprises—that Horatio had tried to realize over and over, but failed.
Instead of a prized son take over the family business, he’d ended up with half a dozen daughters.
Lovelock Enterprises had been passed from father to son for generations. As far as Victoria knew, there had only been one time in the distant past when a male heir came down to the line. Four daughters were born before a son was finally produced to carry on the family name and lead Lovelock Enterprises into the future.
She’d heard through her Aunt Lily that one of Kelly’s daughters, Darby, had moved to Valentine Key, gotten married and had some kids. She hadn’t made an effort to see Darby when she visited Aunt Lily over the years. She’d been mainly focused on spending as much time with her beloved aunt as she could, and her visits tended to be short ones.
Since Victoria hadn’t heard that Darby had left Valentine Key, she must still be around somewhere. She had a foolish urge to try to make friends with her younger sisters. She hoped they would like her. Her natural wariness told her she probably shouldn’t expect any fond feelings from them.
Not after all this time. Not after what their father had put them all through.
All she knew about her younger sisters was courtesy of Aunt Lily. That meant Victoria knew only the good things about them, because her aunt would never say a mean word about anyone, not even her enemies.
Victoria wasn’t even certain her aunt had any enemies. That would be quite out of character for the older woman.
So, at this late date in her life, Victoria looked forward to seeing her younger half-sisters again to determine for herself if what she had always pictured when she thought of them as adults had come true.
Colleen would be forty-four. She had always seemed serious and stalwart. As the eldest of Kelly’s three girls, she likely had to be.
Darby, the middle child, would be forty-three. She had been a livelier child, happy, and she liked to chatter about anything and everything. She’d been about two and a half the last time Victoria had laid eyes on her, and she had only understood every third word the little girl said.
At forty-two, Evaline was the youngest. Evaline was a very cute baby. She had been quiet, especially for a one-year-old, the last time Victoria had seen her.
It was as if she’d known she was supposed to be a boy. Just like her two sisters before her and Victoria before them. Victoria wondered if even at that young age, if Evaline somehow knew she had disappointed her father and didn’t want to call attention to herself.
Victoria understood all too well that being a female Lovelock meant disappointment.