Chapter 6
Present Day
It was three days after Sophie spotted her ex-boyfriend Ethan with the other woman outside the bar.
Still semi-coated in bandages, she pulled on her sweatshirt, dragged her hood over her ears, and hauled two suitcases out of her house, ducking into a taxi in the early morning hours.
The taxi driver played old Euro dance tracks that, Sophie thought, might make her ears bleed.
She wanted to tell him to turn it off, but she felt she couldn’t speak. What was she doing?
She didn’t fully understand her decision until she was on the plane, heading east. It was nearly the end of April, which meant there were many more classes to attend, papers to write, and tests to take.
But in the wake of the fire, which continued to rage through the forests and mountains, Sophie hadn’t been able to email her professors back.
She hadn’t been able to face any of it. She’d emailed the dean to say she needed to take a leave of absence and booked the flight.
On the plane, sipping a diet soda, Sophie eyed the other passengers, none of whom had any interest in her.
She wondered what they would say if they learned she’d been at the campsite where the fire had begun.
Would they turn on her? Would they call her a fraud?
Her pulse quickened, and she closed her eyes and told herself to sleep. But relief never came.
The plane landed in Bangor at five in the afternoon.
After that, she took a bus all the way to Bluebell, feeling the air grow chillier and damper as they headed north and east, toward the Atlantic.
At the bus stop, she hauled her suitcases out of the bottom of the bus and blinked around at the downtown Bluebell bus station, a place she’d never been to since her mother normally picked her up from the airport.
But she hadn’t wanted to explain herself over the phone.
The walk to the Eco-Lodge was fifteen minutes east, and the walk to Landon and Celia’s place was ten minutes northeast. Sophie struggled to know where to go and where she belonged.
It stood to reason that she’d spend the summer with her mother at the house she now shared with her new husband and Landon’s two children, Mallory and Isaac.
But the thought of launching herself into their brand-new family exhausted her.
Feeling unmoored, Sophie staggered off toward the Eco-Lodge, hoping she could speak to her mother in person before she had to fall into Mallory and Isaac’s teenage chaos.
First sight of the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge filled Sophie with a nostalgia she hadn’t expected.
It had been nearly three years since Celia and the other Harpers came to Bluebell to pick up the missing pieces of not only the inn but also their father’s life.
That was the summer Sophie had helped her mother write that environmental science article, relaunching Celia’s career after a difficult backstory in Washington, DC. Sophie’s arms hung at her sides.
But the Eco-Lodge still seemed mostly empty.
When she clomped up the steps and entered, nobody was at the front desk, and only one iron key was missing from the key wall.
Sophie knew it was early in the year, but it was still strange that nobody was around.
The big Victorian house felt vacuous and haunted.
Abandoning her suitcases, Sophie traipsed to the Harper House next door, knocking until a man’s voice called out, “Yeah, come in.”
Sophie assumed the voice belonged to Ivy’s boyfriend, Elliott, until she entered and realized it was Tyler’s.
He’d been launched so deeply into puberty that he no longer seemed like the same person.
Sprawled across the sofa, he ate an entire frozen pizza by himself and gave her a half smile. “Soph! What’s up?”
Sophie laughed at the sight of her teenage cousin. “What’s up with you?”
Tyler reached for a napkin and scrubbed his hands, then lowered the volume on what looked like a reality television show about racing cars. Sophie felt as though she’d crash-landed on a different planet.
“Um, what are you doing here?” Tyler asked, propping himself up and putting the pizza on the coffee table.
“Semester’s finished,” Sophie said easily. “Where is everyone?”
“They’re at that spring festival thing,” Tyler said.
“Oh! That.” Sophie forgot that her mother had mentioned it over the phone—food stalls and carnival rides and baked goods and so on, all near the waterfront. “We should go.”
“I don’t know.” Tyler looked at his pizza and television show sadly. “I sort of had a hard day.”
Sophie wanted to laugh at the idea of Tyler having a hard day. What could that mean to a high schooler? Had someone looked at him wrong in PE? Had he forgotten his homework?
“Come on. I just got back,” Sophie pestered him.
Finally, Tyler agreed to walk her to the waterfront.
Before they left, he dug through the front closet to find Sophie a warmer coat, as it was going to get down to forty-five tonight.
These temperatures were nothing for a seasoned Maine kid, but Sophie hadn’t grown up in Maine.
She shivered, zipping her coat to her chin. “Thanks.”
Out on the road, Tyler perked up a little.
Sophie asked for more details about his crummy day, and he explained that he’d asked a girl to prom, and she'd said she’d think about it, then announced she was going with someone else.
“But everyone knows that guy is a terrible person,” Tyler said of her date. “She’s going to get hurt.”
Sophie grimaced. “I guess you have to let people make their own mistakes.”
“Why?” Tyler blinked at her. “I mean, I could help her.”
“What makes you think you know her better than she knows herself?” Sophie asked.
This stumped Tyler, although he didn’t seem angry or upset. Sophie thought he seemed more receptive to this kind of conversation than most of the men she’d encountered at East Oregon State.
Three blocks from the waterline, they could hear the whirling of carnival rides and the twinkling music of carnival games. When they were two blocks away, the band kicked off, playing an oldies song that brought tears to Sophie’s eyes. What was wrong with her?
Tyler spotted the Harper sisters before Sophie did. “Over there. By the wine tent,” he said, laughing.
Sophie led the charge toward her mother, who was talking enthusiastically to someone Sophie didn’t recognize.
On either side of Celia stood Wren with baby Nelly, Ivy, and Juliet, all shifting their weight and smiling at whatever Celia spoke about.
Juliet spotted Sophie first and raised a hand, trying to interrupt Celia.
“But that’s the thing about Bluebell,” Celia was saying, mostly to the forty-something woman that Sophie didn’t know.
“We tried so desperately to get away. But there’s an enormous amount of love here.
Maybe there’s something sinister. Certainly, there are wealthy elites on the edges of this town who we have nothing to do with. But…”
“Celia!” Ivy cried. “Turn around!”
Celia balked, then spun around to find Sophie, all bundled up to hide her burns and keep warm.
Celia gasped and nearly spilled her wine as she reached out to hug Sophie.
Immediately, Sophie turned to mush in her mother’s arms. This was the reason she’d traveled across the continent this morning.
She hadn’t known what to do with herself.
She was a failure at grad school and in relationships.
She hadn’t even managed to save the forests, mountains, and animals therein.
But here, in her mother's embrace, she was just Sophie again.
Could she turn back the clocks? Could she make amends?
“But Sophie,” Celia cried, drawing back. “What are you doing here?”
Sophie laughed. “Oh. I mean…”
“You said your semester was over early,” Tyler reminded her.
“Yeah! I have two more papers to write, but I can turn them in from here,” Sophie said.
Celia’s eyes searched hers. “But I thought you were going to stay in East Oregon for the summer? You said something about a conservation effort…”
This had completely slipped Sophie’s mind, of course.
She’d planned to spend all summer volunteering in the mountains and surrounding forests, learning more about Oregon's climate, environment, and animal species, all to improve the thesis she’d planned to write next year.
All of that had crumbled to ash in the fire, metaphorically speaking.
“Actually, I’m going to change my thesis to something more to do with Maine,” Sophie lied. “But it means I need to live somewhere in Bluebell for the summer.”
Celia’s eyes widened. “Oh! This is great news.”
“But I guess you’ll have to ask Landon?” Sophie winced, realizing how little she’d really considered not only her mother’s summer but also her new husband’s.
“He’ll be overjoyed. He loves you,” Celia said. “Oh, this will be brilliant! We’ll be a family of five, all together.”
Just behind Celia, the woman Sophie didn’t recognize sipped her wine and seemed to try to make herself look as small as possible. But Celia soon introduced her as “Ruth Landers, a travel journalist spending time at the Eco-Lodge.”
Sophie shook Ruth’s hand, surprised and intrigued at how difficult it was for Ruth to look Sophie in the eye. “Pleased to meet you,” Sophie said, her voice wobbly.
“Congratulations on the end of your semester,” Ruth said. “Your mother speaks so highly of you. I look forward to talking to you more about your studies.”
Sophie grimaced. Because the woman was a stranger—and a writer with good instincts, probably—Sophie had the strange impression that Ruth could see right through her lies. But even if she could, Sophie reasoned, Ruth had no reason to ask Celia if Sophie was lying.
“What do you think of Bluebell Cove?” Sophie asked Ruth. Celia had drifted away to buy Sophie a glass of wine.
“I think it’s lovely,” Ruth said, but the hesitation in her voice confused Sophie.
“I can’t wait to read your article,” Sophie said.
Ruth’s smile faded, but she thanked Sophie, then glanced at Ivy, as though praying someone else would speak instead.
Soon enough, the Harper women were in full celebration mode. Tyler spotted some high school friends near one of the rides and headed off, shoulders forward, heavy, like the man he was becoming. Sophie pointed this out to Ivy, who shook her head.
“Tyler’s in the midst of a thousand changes right now,” she said.
“Elliott told me it’s all to be expected.
On paper, I know that. But it’s still difficult to watch it all happen in front of me.
I hope he’s okay.” Ivy sipped her wine. “Did he mention anything to you? About his life? About what’s going on? ”
Sophie knew better than to share Tyler’s secrets about his failed prom date, so she said, “It’s a difficult time, but he’ll pull through. Summer’s around the corner, and from what I know, there’s no better place in the world than Bluebell Cove in the summertime.”
Ivy gave her an appreciative smile.
And for this first night, at least, Sophie was allowed to fall into the nourishing embrace of the Harper sisters—a family who’d once been torn apart, a family who’d fought tooth and nail to come together again, in empathy, conversation, and good humor.
Sometimes Sophie felt the darkness of the previous few weeks creeping up on her, threatening to yank the smile from her face.
But usually, she could distract herself with a conversation with Juliet, or a big fluff of cotton candy, or simply peeping at the beautiful view of the Atlantic just beyond the carnival.
It was inky black and spectacular. It seemed to go on and on.