Chapter Twenty-five
Victoria made her way down to the Lovelock Inn’s breakfast buffet for the last time this trip. She was sad to be leaving in the short term, but excited about the sweeping change her life was about to take in the long term.
Mari, Colleen, Evaline, Jessica and Jacklyn had already gone back to their respective homes, from Chicago to Philadelphia and points in between. They’d be making big changes to their lives as well, and Victoria looked forward to the path they were all on. The Lovelock sisters were getting ready to embark on a friendly competition.
Victoria couldn’t wait.
Over the next three months, the seven sisters would make their way down to Valentine Key for a semi-permanent stay, as per the request of their father to run the businesses he’d selected for them.
Victoria descended the grand staircase into the lobby and made her way to the dining room. She spotted Sunshine seated at a table and waved at her. Sunshine motioned for Victoria to join her. She nodded, pointing to the buffet. She needed some coffee and some food.
After she filled her plate and got a big cup of coffee, she headed over to Sunshine’s table. “Good morning.”
Sunshine grinned. “Good morning, Victoria. I’m glad I’m not the only one left in town.”
Victoria put her plate and coffee cup on the table and settled into a chair. “Well, I am leaving today.” She glanced at her watch, adding, “My flight doesn’t leave Miami until six o’clock tonight, so I have just about enough time left to take one last long walk on the beach. Then I’ll have to hop in my rental car and head for the airport.”
Sunshine perked up. “My flight leaves at six-thirty, too. I was about to call and arrange for a taxi.”
“Don’t do that. I’m delighted to have you ride with me to Miami. No problem. Then I won’t have to drive back up there all alone.”
“Thank you so much, Victoria. That would be amazing. I did not really care for the taxi cab that brought me here. He charged a lot and didn’t even say a word to me the whole trip. I mean, I wasn’t looking for a chatterbox or anything, but it is several hours from Miami to Valentine Key, you know what I mean?”
Victoria laughed. “Note to self: make conversation with passenger on the way to the Miami airport this afternoon.”
Sunshine giggled. “I’m so glad we’ll get a chance to chat, just the two of us.”
Victoria looked forward to having a nice scenic drive with Sunshine back to Miami,. While her trip down here had been enjoyable as she thought about all the memories of Valentine Key from her youth, it was a long drive when you weren’t in the mood to have your own thoughts rambling around in your head.
The two women parted after breakfast. Victoria took that last long walk on the beach she’d promised herself before returning to her room to get cleaned up and packed for her trip home to New York. She got her rental car loaded up with her luggage before she went to find Aunt Lily.
She always allowed herself at least an hour to say goodbye to Aunt Lily. She knew she would need that much time, even though they would be together again soon, because they always had a tearful goodbye that lasted quite a while. It was a long-held tradition between the two of them.
Sunshine came down into the lobby with her things as they were saying their final farewells. She joined in, crying along with the two of them as if they’d never see each other again.
“I know we’re going to see each other in a few months,” Sunshine said. “But I will miss you both until we meet again.”
“That’s exactly how we feel,” Victoria said.
“The truth is, I have a long, tearful goodbye with every single one of my nieces whenever they leave. It’s been a long, tearful few days as each of my girls has left, even though I know they’ll be back in no time. I will miss them all while they are gone, no matter what.”
Sunshine, with the help of Robbie the porter, got her luggage into the trunk of Victoria’s rental car for their trip to Miami.
Aunt Lily gave them a paper sack with some snacks, napkins and cold bottles of water for the trip—something else she’d done every summer when the girls had to go back to their lives after spending time on Valentine Key.
It wasn’t long before Victoria and Sunshine were cruising along the main strip of Valentine Key on their way to the Overseas Highway. As they pulled onto the highway, Sunshine got a phone call from Jessica and talked to her quietly. It sounded serious, though Sunshine simply listened for most of it.
As Sunshine spoke to her daughter, Victoria thought about Sunshine and her father and the last Christmas holiday she’d shared with them before they separated. Sunshine had been pregnant. She had been very nice to Victoria. She’d welcomed Victoria into her new home and spoken very excitedly, seemingly happy to have Victoria there.
Sunshine was what many in the Lovelock family called a “free spirit” and Victoria liked her immediately. She wanted to go shopping and have a fancy lunch with Victoria to “get to know her better” and she was very earnest.
Because they could, Sunshine arranged for the two of them to take a private jet to Philadelphia and shop for the day. It had been quite a grand adventure for them both.
Sunshine had been almost more wowed by the trip than Victoria had been.
They left early from the Chicago airport, had treats on the small private plane and then a private car whisked them both to a lovely shopping area in Philadelphia.
Spending the day with Sunshine had been amazing. They’d looked in every store window, they bought all kinds of things and best of all they had a fancy lunch in a famous French restaurant.
She remembered being sad that the day was ending when the private car took them back to the Philadelphia airport. They climbed back into the Lovelock family jet with all of their purchases loaded for them by the driver and one of the staff members on the private plane.
Victoria felt her sincere pleasure at having Horatio’s eldest daughter visit with them for the Christmas holidays. It was quite different from how she had been treated when she visited her father while he’d been married to Kelly.
Sunshine had tried to invite the other three Lovelock sisters for a meet and greet, so the sisters could be together for at least some of the Christmas holidays. She’d been quickly rebuffed by Kelly for any and all future familial visits from Colleen, Darby and Evaline.
The Christmas before that fateful dinner, Victoria had spent the holidays at her boarding school because Horatio was between wives after his bitter divorce from Kelly.
When Horatio married Sunshine, she was able to resume family visits at Christmas.
With those dreadful visits with Kelly as her only point of reference, Victoria hadn’t wanted to go. The moment she met Sunshine, she changed her mind. Sunshine was awesome. Sunshine took her on a wonderful day long shopping trip, using the private family jet she hadn’t known about, to Philadelphia.
Victoria spent an entire week with her father and Sunshine, although mostly with her new, awesome stepmother, before the night that everything changed. After the doctor’s visit.
It was three days before Christmas and Sunshine and her father had gone to what he considered a vital sonogram appointment. That was when they found out that Sunshine was carrying twin daughters and the whole holiday was ruined.
Victoria had not been allowed to go to the appointment. She had stayed back at the spacious apartment with some stuffy old babysitter she didn’t like.
Sunshine and Horatio were arguing from the moment they entered the apartment. They only suspended their argument long enough to pay off the babysitter and let her leave.
Sunshine, her tone one of appeasement, said, “What if the sonogram is mistaken? It’s not a hundred percent. Even the sonogram technician said there was only a ninety percent accuracy rate.”
Her father was in a sarcastic mood when he said, “Oh? Only ninety percent chance of two girls? You are ridiculous. I saw the sonogram myself, Sunshine,” he spat out. “No boy equipment found inside your belly at all. The scans were clear and you’re carrying girls. You’d think that with two babies in there, one of them could have been a boy. But no.”
With that declaration, he’d stormed out of the house, not even remembering that eight-and-a-half-year-old Victoria was still in residence for the Christmas holidays. Given a choice, Victoria would have preferred to stay with Sunshine, truth be told. She was so nice to Victoria, even after the big, loud argument with Horatio.
Sunshine had hugged her tight and Victoria remembered being pressed up against her slightly rounded belly. She told Victoria that she was welcome to stay if she wanted. Victoria could tell she was very sad. In the end, it wasn’t up to either of them.
A limo eventually showed up with a driver who’d been well paid to take Victoria back to her New England boarding school via the airport and a commercial flight this time instead of on the private family plane. Another driver took her from the Boston airport back to school.
Victoria had spent an even more uncomfortable Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the family that ran the boarding school.
She’d overheard the husband and wife arguing about Victoria’s presence ruining Christmas for their children because her father hadn’t bothered to send any gifts along, making it a very awkward Christmas morning with a strange couple and their four children opening up gift after gift, toy after toy.
She’d overheard the husband ask if the wife had something to wrap. She’d said no, and she wasn’t giving any of their children’s gifts up.
The husband had wrapped up a single gift for Victoria, a pair of socks, clearly forgotten after Halloween, if the jack-o-lantern design was any indication.
At the time, it had been nice to participate instead of just watch, although her appreciation for the man’s kindness hadn’t come until many years had gone by.
Victoria being Victoria, she mostly climbed inside herself and didn’t say much. That usually served her well. Being seen but not heard was her best option.
Later, a messenger arrived with gifts forwarded from Sunshine. Victoria then had spent an even more awkward gift-opening session while the four children looked on as she opened her gifts, the ones she wished she’d been able to open earlier.
It did teach her a valuable lesson: Timing is everything.
Victoria didn’t even remember what the gifts were, just that they were amazing and over-the-top, as Sunshine had finally enjoyed having extra money to spend after marrying Horatio. Sunshine had been cast out of her father’s concern before the New Year started, deemed as unworthy because she dared to carry twin girls.
Twins who hadn’t even been born yet.
Victoria did not have many details of what happened between Sunshine and Horatio at the end of their marriage. Now that she knew Horatio had been married to Sunshine all these years and had never gotten a final divorce decree, it made her wonder.
With the interesting information of Mari being born to another woman after the twins were born, Victoria suddenly wondered why Horatio had not kept trying with someone else.
Sunshine was probably the perfect person to ask, if Victoria didn’t think it was highly inappropriate. Another question circled her mind: When was Mari’s birthday? Was she nine months older than the twins?
Victoria pondered that as Sunshine ended her phone call with Jessica.
“You don’t have to tell me, but I hope Jessica is okay,” she said.
Sunshine shook her head, her mouth a thin line of unhappiness that was very much out of character for her. “She and her husband are not getting along and apparently he expected her to come into some big fortune. He had the gall to tell her when she got back that that was the only reason he’s stayed married to her. Now that he’s not going to get some big payoff, he presented her with divorce papers the minute she walked in the door.”
“That’s horrible!” After a few beats, Victoria added, “But honestly, she’s probably better off without him.”
“I agree. I never liked Darren. I never understood the attraction at all. She’s upset, but I hope she doesn’t try to talk him into staying. I know that’s terrible, but I really think she will do better if Darren is not clinging to her when she comes to Valentine Key.”
“I agree. If there’s anything that I can do to help with that situation, I would be delighted to.”
“Thank you, Victoria. I may take you up on that one day. But hopefully Darren will slink off into the darkness of night where he belongs.”
Victoria thought that was the most evil thing Sunshine had ever said about another person and it was not very mean at all.
They rode along in silence for almost a minute before Sunshine said, “Do you remember the first time we ever met?”
“Yes, I do. I was just thinking about it while you were talking to Jessica.”
Sunshine grinned. “I thought you were the sweetest girl I had ever met. I was so excited to be a stepmom, even though I was already pregnant with the girls.” She laughed lightly. “I thought, ‘Okay, a little sweetheart to practice on before my own are born. It will be awesome.’ And it was.”
Victoria said, “I had dreaded coming to stay with you, because I had not had a good experience with Kelly. She made me feel like a piece of furniture she’d like to stick in the attic. But the minute I stepped into your presence, you made me feel special and wanted and I never forgot it. I especially remembered the day long shopping trip in Philadelphia that we went on. I had so much fun that day.”
“That is so sweet. I remember I wanted to take you everywhere and do everything with you in Philadelphia, because I spent my adult life in Chicago and I grew up in a commune in Southern California. Philadelphia was so different. Especially since your father was so wealthy, to be honest. And taking you on the private family jet for our shopping trip was amazing for me too. I was able to do things I only dreamed of before. Still, I want you to know that I always loved him, even after we parted. There was no one else for me except for him. I wish we hadn’t been separated for so long, especially since we were married the whole time.”
“I think that’s pretty generous, since he ditched you when the twins were born.”
“Oh, no. He didn’t ditch me. He was there soon after they were born. He tried to get there while I was in labor, but I was at the wrong hospital.”
“What? I never knew that. I’ve been operating under the assumption that once he found out it was twin daughters, that was it. It was over.”
Sunshine confirmed that Horatio left that night after the fateful sonogram appointment and didn’t come back or call her for months. “Then, out of the blue, he did call and said he was terribly sorry to have acted the way he did.”
“When was that?” Victoria asked.
“I guess it was about a month before the twins were born. We talked for quite a long time and he told me that he wanted them to be born at a certain hospital. He was really very sweet about it, wanting his girls born in the best hospital in the city. But that hadn’t worked out because of a mean cab driver.”
Sunshine looked up, adding, “I really have terrible luck with taxi drivers. I should start using a ride-sharing app like my daughters do.”
“What happened that made you separate after the twins were born? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t mind. It’s not common knowledge.”
Sunshine then told her what had led to the twins being born at what Horatio considered a substandard hospital. How he had arranged for Sunshine and the babies to be transferred to a much better hospital in the city.
“Unfortunately, when he was on his way back to my room after visiting the nursery, he got turned around and ended up in a children’s ward that had been partitioned off because they all had mumps.”
“Mumps? Horatio got the mumps?”
Sunshine nodded. She looked miserable, and it had happened over forty years ago. “So now you know. It was my fault that Horatio was never able to have a son. He had to quarantine at the hospital where the twins were born and the mumps … Well, he couldn’t father children after that.”
Victoria realized that was why there were not twenty Lovelock sisters instead of just seven. That also meant Mari had to have been conceived before the twins were born. That must’ve been where Horatio was in the months leading up to the twins’ birth, spending time with Mari’s mother.
Did Sunshine understand that as well? She had to, didn’t she?
Victoria remained silent for the rest of the trip to the airport. Sunshine did as well.
The previous topic of discussion was not brought up, not even a hint, when they said their tearful goodbyes and parted ways at the Miami airport.