Chapter Four
Sunshine Lovelock rode in the back of the taxi and watched out the window to see how much Valentine Key had changed since the last time she’d been here. It had been quite a while. Jessica and Jacklyn had come to visit their aunt for a couple of weeks in the summer.
Sunshine had appreciated the love and warmth Lily bestowed on her twin daughters without reservation.
Valentine Key had always been a quaint little town in the Florida Keys, but she’d occasionally wondered if it had become more modernized as time had gone by. She saw a familiar ice cream shop that was still in business. She had a vivid memory of visiting it with her young daughters long ago on a hot summer day.
She saw Heart’s Desire, the convenience store. Hadn’t she heard that one of her twins’ half-sisters worked there or owned the place? She’d have to ask Lily.
She saw new businesses mixed in with others she recognized. All in all, it seemed like while there was definitely more housing and quite a few more storefronts along the main thoroughfare, Valentine Key had not lost its charming small-town feel.
She was on her way to the Lovelock Inn, the place her sister-in-law Lily Lovelock had been running since well before she’d ever met Horatio Lovelock. Just saying his name in her mind made a flood of memories and emotions, heartbreaks as well as joys, register in her head.
Sunshine closed her eyes and indulged her joyful memories. Meeting Horatio. Marrying him. The birth of her twins. All joys for her even after all these years.
By the time she opened them again, she was almost at her destination. Good. She’d looked forward to this get-together. Yes, it was sad that it was Horatio’s last will and testament being read that had brought them here, but it would be good to see all of Horatio’s daughters together. It had been a very long time.
In the normal course of things, they might have had this reunion shortly after her ex-husband died. Since Horatio had been explicitly clear that he did not want a formal funeral, one hadn’t been conducted and there was no gathering of the girls. It tickled her to think of it like that—a gathering of the girls.
This week would be the first time Horatio’s daughters would be in the same place at the same time. She knew this, because her daughters would have told her if all six of them had ever been together. Her twins had seen Victoria several times as they were growing up. She didn’t know if Victoria had much contact with the daughters Horatio had with his second wife, Kelly.
She tried to remember if she’d seen all the girls together at one time when they’d been little and couldn’t come up with a single occasion. It was a terrible shame and long past due for them all. She’d have to make sure they posed for a picture together while they were here.
Sunshine’s twin daughters, Jessica and Jacklyn, wouldn’t be arriving on Valentine Key until sometime tomorrow.
She knew Jessica was going through a difficult time with her husband, Darren, and hoped she wouldn’t be too sad during the reading of Horatio’s will.
Jacklyn, meanwhile, was a quiet soul. She hoped her youngest twin’s plan to drive across the country in her classic car would be the fun trip she told her mother it would be.
Sunshine couldn’t think of anything worse than a long drive across the country. She preferred flying to get to whatever her destination was. And preferred to get there as fast as possible.
She always flew First Class, even if she shouldn’t waste money on such an extravagance. It was one of the very few indulgences she allowed herself in her quiet life.
That wasn’t to say that she was unhappy in that life. She wasn’t. Sure, she wished some things had gone differently, but overall, Sunshine had a good life. Her daughters were both healthy and happy—as reasonably happy as women who’d recently turned forty could be.
Sunshine had hosted a big party to celebrate her daughters’ big day with the typical “over the hill” theme. The twins had indulged her and pretended to enjoy it for the evening.
Forty years was a long time. In retrospect, it had certainly gone by quickly. She’d snapped her fingers and, lo and behold, here she was.
Sunshine remembered the day she had met Horatio Lovelock. It had been in Las Vegas, but certainly not in the way many people initially thought.
The prevailing story that made the rounds among the small-minded folks who had been friends and family in Horatio’s life had been certain she was a down-on-her-luck stripper with a sad story who had roped “poor” Horatio into marrying her once she got pregnant.
That scenario was so far from the truth it was laughable, even all these years later.
Even when she knew for a fact that Horatio had told them the truth, they still maliciously spread that false rumor every chance they had at every event she’d attended.
She could still see the looks of disdain, disgust and salacious interest from those fake friends Horatio had surrounded himself with.
The truth was that Sunshine had been on vacation in Las Vegas just as Horatio had been. She had spent a long weekend there with some girlfriends from college and was stranded at the airport because of bad weather in Chicago.
Horatio had been stranded at the airport because of the same poor weather in Chicago, where he was supposed to catch his connecting flight to Philadelphia, his home.
They commiserated over drinks at one of the airport bars about their extended stay until it became clear they were not going to be flying out that night.
She had to call and take a few extra days off from the accounting firm where she had worked for five years. She’d landed that premium job right out of college.
Horatio didn’t seem too worried about calling anyone to let them know he wasn’t able to make his flight back home to Philadelphia. He told her he was on a celebratory weekend because he’d recently gotten divorced.
He had been very upfront about the fact that he had been married twice. Widowed the first time, divorced in a bitter battle fought over the last year the second time. He was also upfront about the fact he was anxious to marry again.
Sunshine thought that was rather interesting, but she hadn’t known his singular objective for getting quickly remarried.
No. She found out the hard way that being married to Horatio Lovelock meant you needed to produce a son or else have no meaning in his life.
Sunshine had not been able to help falling in love with him practically at first sight in that Las Vegas airport bar. He’d walked into the bar and a smile came over his face as soon as he saw her. He’d asked if he could sit with her, as the bar was crowded, and she’d nodded. She never regretted that decision, even after things had gotten bitter between them. After all, he gave Sunshine her daughters.
Horatio had been charming and full of life and proud of the business he ran and that his family had owned for generations.
Sunshine, meanwhile, had grown up on a hippie commune in Southern California because her parents had enjoyed that lifestyle. Sunshine had not.
She left as soon as she possibly could, at age eighteen to go to college. While her parents would never be angry with her, they sincerely could not understand why she wanted to live in a world that didn’t share everything and sit around the campfire singing each night.
Sunshine, who had to overcome all the foolish jokes about her name every single day of her life, loved her parents dearly. They had done the best they could and didn’t begrudge her any of the decisions she made for the life she wanted to live.
While they didn’t understand her wanting to go into a world where “the man” ruled, they loved her. And she loved them.
Her parents had been born and raised in Chicago and that was where Sunshine had spent time as a child, visiting both sets of grandparents. They also did not understand her hippie parents and their commune-loving lifestyle. It was possible spending time with them had given her a different perspective on how she wanted to live. Either way, she had certainly seen both sides of those wholly different existences.
It was natural for Sunshine to choose Chicago when she was deciding where to go to college. When she left the open fellowship of the world she’d been raised in, all four of her grandparents had been proud of her. Their support had certainly been very helpful in getting her through those early lean years, but none of them were wealthy.
At best, they were comfortable. They lived as good a life as they could, given the middle-class jobs they had retired from. They were happy and so Sunshine was happy. Well, maybe content was a better word.
Horatio Lovelock came from a completely different world than any Sunshine had ever known. While she’d felt some trepidation at the start of their relationship, she’d fallen in love with him and never looked back.
Problematic, since she hadn’t given him the son he wanted so desperately. To make things worse, he blamed her for what happened directly after the twins had been born, two more girls keeping him from his dream of having a son.
Sunshine refused to allow the blame to be put on her and told him so. He’d been understandably hurt and lashed out at her, ending their marriage and breaking her heart.
Luckily, she’d forgiven him well before his death last year. She’d made it a point to go see him. She was grateful not to have the burden of their decades-long dispute between them. And she was certainly going to miss him, as she had done since they’d parted.
While Sunshine was in Valentine Key for the reading of the will, she hoped to see a piece of the Horatio she loved in the children he fathered: her twins, Kelly’s three girls and his beloved Isabella’s daughter.