Welcome to Moonlight Harbor Read online

  “Hello, birthday girl,” Mel greeted her. “Did you have fun last night?”

  As the night wore on Jenna had been distracted from her misery. That probably counted as fun, so she said, “Yes.”

  “Looks like you could use some coffee,” Mel said, and led her into the kitchen.

  “How’s my baby?” Jenna asked.

  “She’s good. She just got in the shower. We stayed up late last night.”

  Jenna settled at the kitchen table. “What did she think of your taste in movies?”

  “She was impressed, naturally. Every girl should have to watch Pretty in Pink and Jane Eyre.”

  “And?” Jenna prompted.

  “Okay, so I showed her Grease. It’s a classic.”

  “About hoods and hoes.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that about an iconic movie,” Mom said. “Anyway, I explained a few things to her, so it came with a moral.”

  “What? You, too, can look like Olivia Newton-John?”

  Mel shrugged. “Something like that. Now, tell me. What all did you girls do?”

  “Not much. We just went out for dinner.”

  “Dinner is nice,” Mel said, and set a cup of coffee in front of Jenna. She pulled a bottle of Jenna’s favorite caramel-flavored creamer from the fridge and set it on the table, watching while Jenna poured in a generous slosh. “I know this is going to be the beginning of a wonderful new year for you.”

  “I have no way to go but up.”

  “That’s right. And you know...”

  “Every storm brings a rainbow,” Jenna finished with her.

  “I firmly believe that.”

  “And you should know.” She’d had her share of storms. “I don’t know how you did it,” Jenna said. “Surviving losing Dad when we were so young, raising us single-handedly.”

  “Hardly single-handedly. I had Gram and Gramps and Grandma and Grandpa Jones, as well. Yes, we each have to fight our own fight, but God always puts someone in our corner to help us.”

  “I’m glad you’re in my corner,” Jenna said. “You’re my hero.”

  Jenna had been almost five and Celeste a baby when their father had been killed in a car accident. It had been sudden, no chance for her mom to say goodbye. There was little that Jenna remembered about her father beyond sitting on his shoulders when they milled with the crowd at the Puyallup Fair or stood watching the Seafair parade in downtown Seattle, that and the scrape of his five-o’clock shadow when he kissed her good-night.

  What stuck in her mind most was her mom, holding her on her lap, sitting at this very kitchen table and saying to Gram, “He was my everything.”

  That read well in books, but maybe in real life it wasn’t good to make a man your everything. Even the good ones left you.

  At least her dad hadn’t left voluntarily. Her mom had chosen a good man. So had Gram, whose husband was also gone now. Both women had picked wisely and knew what good looked like.

  Too bad Jenna hadn’t listened to them when they tried to warn her about Damien. “Honey, there’s no hurry,” her mom had said.

  Yes, there was. She’d wanted to be with him now.

  “Are you sure he’s what you really want?” Gram had asked. “He seems a little...”

  “What?” Jenna had prompted.

  “Egotistical,” Gram had ventured.

  “He’s confident,” Jenna had replied. “There’s a difference.”

  “Yes, there is,” Gram had said. “Are you sure you know what it is?” she’d added, making Jenna scowl.

  “I’m just not sure he’s the right man for you,” Mel had worried.

  “Of course he is,” Jenna had insisted, because at twenty-three she knew it all. And Damien had been so glamorous, so exciting. Look how well their names went together—Damien and Jenna, Jenna and Damien. Oh, yes, perfect.

  And so it was for a time...until she began to see the flaws. Gram had been right: he was egotistical. Narcissistic. Irresponsible. Those flaws she could live with. Those she did live with. But then came the one flaw she couldn’t accept. Unfaithful.

  Not that he’d asked her to accept it. Not that he’d asked her to keep him. Or even to forgive him. “I can’t help how I feel,” he’d said.

  That was it. Harsh reality came in like a strong wind and blew away the last of the fantasy.

  But here was Melody Jones, living proof that a woman could survive the loss of her love, could climb out of the rubble after all her dreams collapsed and rebuild her life. She’d worked hard at a job that kept her on her feet all day and had still managed to make PTA meetings. She’d hosted tea parties when her girls were little and sleepovers when they became teenagers. And, in between all that, she’d managed to make time for herself, starting a book club with some of the neighbors. That book club still met every month. And her mom still found time for sleepovers, now with her granddaughter.

  Surely, if she could overcome the loss of her man, Jenna could overcome the loss of what she’d thought her man was.

  Mel smiled at her and slid a card-size envelope across the table. “Happy birthday.”

  “You already gave me my birthday present,” Jenna said. Her mother had given her a motivational book about new beginnings by Muriel Sterling with a fifty-dollar bill tucked inside. Jenna would read the book (once she was ready to face the fact that she did, indeed, have to make a new beginning) and she planned to hoard the fifty like a miser. You could buy a lot of lentils and beans with fifty bucks.

  “This isn’t from me. It’s from your aunt Edie.”

  “Aunt Edie?”

  She hadn’t seen her great-aunt in years, but she had fond memories of those childhood summer visits with her at Moonlight Harbor—beachcombing for agates, baking cookies with Aunt Edie while her parrot, Jolly Roger, squawked all the silly things Uncle Ralph had taught him, listening to the waves crash as she lay in the old antique bed in the guest room at night with her sister. She remembered digging clams with Uncle Ralph, sitting next to her mother in front of a roaring beach fire, using her arm to shield her face from the heat of the flame as she roasted a hot dog. Those visits had been as golden as the sunsets.

  But after getting together with Damien, life had filled with drama and responsibilities, and after one quick visit, the beach town on the Washington coast had faded into a memory. Maybe she’d say to heck with the lentils and beans, spend that birthday money Mom had given her and go see Aunt Edie.

  She pulled the card out of the envelope. All pastel flowers and birds, the outside read For a Lovely Niece. The inside had a sappy poem telling her she was special and wishing her joy in everything she did, and was signed, Love, Aunt Edie. No Uncle Ralph. He’d been gone for several years.

  Aunt Edie had stuffed a letter inside the card. The writing was small but firm.

  Dear Jenna,

  I know you’ve gone through some very hard times, but I also know that like all the women in our family, you are strong and you’ll come through just fine.

  Your grandmother told me you could use a new start and I would like to give it to you. I want you to come to Moonlight Harbor and help me revamp and run the Driftwood Inn. Like me, it’s getting old and it needs some help. I plan to bequeath it to you on my death. The will is already drawn up, signed and witnessed, so I hope you won’t refuse my offer.

  Of course, I know your cousin Winston would love to get his grubby mitts on it, but he won’t. The boy is useless. And besides, you know I’ve always had a soft spot for you in my heart. You’re a good girl who’s always been kind enough to send Christmas cards and homemade fudge for my birthday. Uncle Ralph loved you like a daughter. So do I, and since we never had children of our own you’re the closest thing I have to one. I know your mother and grandmother won’t mind sharing.

  Please say you’ll come.

  Love, Aunt Edie


  Jenna hardly knew what to say. “She wants to leave me the motel.” She had to be misreading.

  She checked again. No, there it was, in Aunt Edie’s tight little scrawl.

  Her mom smiled. “I think this could be your rainbow.”

  Not just the rainbow, the pot of gold, as well!

  Chapter Two

  To Do:

  Give notice to landlord

  Put furniture on craigslist

  Contact school re: taking Sabrina out early

  Start packing up office and call clients

  Tell skunkball ex we’re moving (like he’ll even care)

  What an unexpected and amazing gift. Jenna and her daughter would have a home. On the beach! No more rent. No, better than that, they would own something that could produce income for them, a good income, certainly more than she made now. She handed over the letter for her mother to read.

  “I knew she was going to do this. It’s just what you need,” Mom said when she’d finished. “And the best news is you won’t get it right away. By the time you inherit, hopefully your three-year spousal support sentence will be up and a certain someone won’t have any claim to it.”

  “Unless Aunt Edie dies,” Jenna said, reality splashing cold water on her euphoria. Then Damien would be right there with his hand out, demanding half of everything she’d inherit. “I mean, obviously I wouldn’t want her to, anyway,” she added, realizing how she’d sounded. She loved Aunt Edie and hoped the sweet, old woman lived to be a hundred. There weren’t enough Aunt Edies in the world.

  Mom handed back the letter. “I wouldn’t worry about that. All the women in our line are long-lived. She’s eighty-two but she’s in good health. No, this is a blessing, no doubt about it.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Jenna said. It all seemed too good to be true.

  “Can’t believe what?”

  Jenna looked up to see her daughter had entered the room. Sabrina was wearing a pink T-shirt and denim shorts, which showed off long, coltish legs. She’d gotten Jenna’s blue eyes and round face and her nose, which, if Jenna did say so herself, wasn’t a bad nose at all, and she had a pretty, full mouth under it—a mouth which was turned down a lot lately. Her reddish blond shoulder-length hair was freshly washed and blown-out, and she’d covered the few scattered zits on her face with concealer. She was a cute fourteen-year-old. Down the road, she’d be a beautiful woman.

  If she lived that long. There were times when Jenna wanted to throttle her. Teenage girls could be stinkers (Jenna knew—she’d been one), but teenage girls whose parents were splitting could be minimonsters.

  Who could blame them, though? When the grown-ups in their lives screwed up and the toxic spill splashed on them, they were bound to react. Jenna tried to be patient with the pouting, the tantrums and the accusations, but sometimes it was hard, especially when her daughter pointed out that if she’d been nicer to Daddy he’d have never left.

  In those moments, Jenna bit her tongue until it bled. She’d have liked nothing better than to inform her daughter that she had been nice to Daddy until he started being nice to another woman. If Sabrina wanted to make someone the villain she should cast her father in the role.

  But Jenna also knew that father-daughter relationships were important. In spite of all the love her mother had lavished on her, she’d yearned for her own daddy so many times growing up. What Sabrina had with her father wasn’t stellar—she was hardly a top priority for him, coming in somewhere after his art, his new woman and basically all things Damien—but it was better than nothing, and Jenna wanted to try and keep it intact. Sabrina had often volunteered to be his helper when he went in search of his unrecyclable detritus (junk), and they shared a fondness for horror movies, something Jenna had never really approved of him letting her watch. But at least it was something they did together. Okay, he did it and let Sabrina join him. Still, it put them side by side on the couch on a Friday night.

  There’d been no horror movie marathons allowed since he moved out—another thing her daughter held against her. But Jenna had remained firm. Their life had been enough of a horror movie the past year as it was, and she preferred to fill her daughter’s mind with more beautiful and positive images than terrified teens and spurting blood.

  When Jenna wasn’t worrying about money she was worrying about Sabrina. She’d gone from being a straight-A student to getting Cs and Ds. She was barely speaking to Jenna these days and she had discovered the definition of surly. So far, the changes had been limited to an overall bad attitude and nothing more dramatic or dangerous. But Jenna knew that teenage angst could easily spiral into something much darker and more serious, so she walked around holding her breath, her shoulders tight, fearful that things could take a turn for the worse at any moment. She and Sabrina had tried going to a counselor but Sabrina had refused to open up. Sometimes Jenna wished she could clone herself because she sure needed a massage therapist.

  Other moms who’d been through this assured her that her listing ship would right itself eventually. Meanwhile, though, she was captaining it alone. There’d been no custody battle and very few visits with Daddy. The blame for this was also laid on Jenna’s doorstep, and again Jenna had kept her mouth shut.

  “You’ve got the house,” Damien had pointed out. “I’m in no position to take her.”

  Of course not. There was only room for two in the basement love nest. Damien couldn’t be bothered obviously, and Aurora the muse probably didn’t want the competition.

  So both mother and daughter had been rejected, by a man who didn’t deserve either of them. But now all that misery was about to get shoved into the past. Now they had a bright future looming, a new start.

  “I have some amazing news,” Jenna said to her daughter. “We get to live at a beach motel in Moonlight Harbor.” Her voice was quivering with excitement. Heck, her whole body was quivering.

  Eagerness transformed Sabrina from sulky to adorable. “For the whole summer? Wow! Can Marigold come visit?”

  “Of course she can. But...we’re not going just for the summer.”

  The eagerness paused. “What do you mean?”

  “We get to move there. My great-aunt, your great-great-aunt—”

  “Live there?” Sabrina interrupted.

  “Yes. Your great-great-aunt—”

  “Live there?” Sabrina stared at Jenna as if she’d announced they were going to prison.

  “Now you sound like Aunt Edie’s parrot,” Jenna teased, trying to cushion what was shaping up to be a bumpy ride. “She has this parrot named Jolly Roger...”

  Sabrina’s brows dipped right along with the edges of her mouth. “I don’t want to move.”

  “Oh, darling, it’s so much fun down at the beach,” put in Mel, trying to help. “You’ll love it.”

  “No, I won’t,” Sabrina corrected her, her voice tinged with panic. “All my friends are here.”

  “You’ll make new friends,” Jenna said. Like that was assuring to a fourteen-year-old?

  Blink. Blink, blink. Oh, no, there it was, the nervous tic that had plagued her during her messy marriage, returning with a vengeance. She thought she’d gotten rid of it when Damien left.

  Sabrina’s hands fisted. “I don’t want to make new friends! I don’t want to leave Marigold.”

  Asking Sabrina to leave behind the girl who had been her bff since they were in the fourth grade was the equivalent of asking her to cut off her arm, especially in light of the fact that her father had stepped out of the picture. How could Jenna have forgotten so quickly the passion of those young years, the desperate need to keep your friends and your footing on an ever-shifting social ladder? Best friends were a young girl’s emotional anchor. Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

  “I won’t go!” Sabrina cried. “I’ll stay with Daddy.”

  Jenna’s right eye twitche
d. “Baby, you can’t stay with Daddy. He can’t take you right now. We’ve already talked about that.”

  “But you said we’d always be close by, that I could see him whenever I want.”

  Big-mouth her. “You’ll still be able to see him.”

  “No, I won’t. Not if we move away.”

  “It’s not that far.” Well, not compared to someplace like Texas.

  “I won’t go. You can’t make me!”

  Sabrina turned and fled and Jenna’s excitement crumbled faster than a sand castle under assault from an incoming tide. She heaved a sigh. “I guess I’ll call Aunt Edie.”

  “Don’t you dare,” her mother said. “This is an opportunity for you to make a better life for yourself and your daughter.”

  “Some new life if she ends up hating me even more than she already does.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “No, she adores me. Anyone can see that.”

  “She’s angry that her father’s gone. You make a good scapegoat.”

  Jenna frowned. “He’s the one who screwed up and I’m the one being punished.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Mom said.

  “I should stay here. Maybe once Jenna’s done with school...”

  “The opportunity might not be there. Aunt Edie needs help now. And, frankly, so do you. Not having to pay rent would make all the difference.”

  “I’m not doing that bad,” Jenna protested.

  “You’re not exactly making a fortune. And once Damien starts taking a bite out of your paycheck you’ll have even less.”

  “We could move in with you,” Jenna suggested hopefully. Her mom didn’t live that far away. Sabrina wouldn’t even have to change schools.

  “Of course you could,” Mel agreed. “And you know I’d be glad to have you. But how long do you think your daughter would put up with sharing that second bedroom with you?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid none of us can be any help in this. You have one set of grandparents in an over-fifty community in Olympia and a grandmother in a one-bedroom condo in Bremerton. Sabrina wouldn’t be allowed in one place and she wouldn’t be happy in the other any more than she would be here. And the truth is, she’s not going to be happy anywhere for a while. You know that.”