Welcome to Moonlight Harbor Page 5

  Jenna and her aunt visited a few more minutes, while Sabrina sat in her chair and brooded.

  “Maybe you’d like to see your rooms,” Aunt Edie suggested.

  “Good idea,” Jenna said. “Want to see your room?” she asked her daughter, keeping her voice gentle and coaxing.

  Sabrina bit her lip and nodded. She was close to tears. Now, so was Jenna.

  “I have you in the blue room and I thought Sabrina might enjoy being in the doll room,” Aunt Edie said, and started to get up.

  “Don’t bother to get up,” Jenna told her. “We can find our way.”

  Aunt Edie nodded and subsided back against the couch cushions.

  Jenna led the way upstairs, bracing herself for what would come once they were out of earshot.

  Sabrina didn’t wait until they were in her room. She started in as soon as they reached the landing. “I don’t see why we have to be here.”

  “We have to be here because right now we need to be here. Sweetie, Aunt Edie is letting us stay rent-free. That’s going to really help with the budget and right now I need help with the budget. I’m doing what I think is best for us.” Honestly, how many more times would they have to have this conversation?

  “Daddy’s paying child support. We can live on that.”

  Child support? With what? “Who told you that?”

  Sabrina blinked. “He is, isn’t he?”

  Of course he wasn’t. He was still just a child in a big body. Jenna wanted to scream, No, he’s not paying anything. I’m supporting him and his new girlfriend while he pretends to train for life in the real world. I’m carrying the load and he’s sitting around making statues out of old shoes. This was what happened when you didn’t listen to your mother and your grandmother. This was what happened when you fell stupidly, besottedly, in love with an illusion masquerading as a man. Now she had to foot the bill while he supposedly trained for a new job.

  She reined in her temper. Hard. “No, he’s not.” The words came out like chipped rock.

  “But he said—” Sabrina stopped midsentence, seeing the expression on Jenna’s face.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he gave up a lot for us.”

  Oh, yes, he’d have been famous by then if it hadn’t been for the burden of caring for a wife and child. Damien Petit, thwarted genius.

  “He did,” Jenna said. “And he loves you.” Not as much as he loved himself. There was no one he loved as much as he loved himself.

  No, wait. Maybe that wasn’t fair. He loved art. He lived it and breathed it. Damien hadn’t been cut out for a normal life. Maybe this mess was as much Jenna’s fault for not seeing that as it was Damien’s for being who he was.

  “You know your dad’s a great artist,” she said. “But he’s not famous yet. And he’s struggling.” How cliché, but it was the best she could do. “Right now, we’re all struggling. But things are going to get better.”

  She opened the door to the room that would be her daughter’s. Sabrina looked in and took a step back. “It’s creepy.”

  Maybe it was a little if you weren’t into dolls. They were everywhere, crowded into a curio cabinet, lolling on the bed, having a tea party in the window seat. Even the antique dresser hadn’t escaped. A clown doll was making himself at home there. The room housed every imaginable type of doll—baby dolls, porcelain costumed ones, Barbies, even a three-foot-high little girl from the fifties that had fascinated Jenna when she was young. That one was standing in the corner, ready to play.

  “Am I supposed to be able to sleep in here?” Sabrina asked, eyeing the collection as if they were all about to come to life. That was what happened when you watched too many horror movies.

  “I’ll take this room. You can have the blue room,” Jenna said, and led her to the next room.

  It was well named and sweet with its blue walls and the blue bedspread with a seashell pattern stitched into it covering an antique iron double bed that had been painted cream. White sheer curtains at the window framed a mesmerizing view of the Pacific Ocean, its giant swells frothing their way to the beach.

  Sabrina walked to the window and looked out silently. No comment on the room or the view.

  Jenna came and stood behind her and put her hands on her shoulders.

  Sabrina covered her face. “If you’d been nicer to Daddy he’d have stayed and we wouldn’t be here.”

  There it was again, the familiar chorus. “Sabrina, sometimes things don’t work out between people and it has nothing to do with anyone being nice.”

  “Go away!” Sabrina cried, and began to sob.

  Jenna sighed and obliged.

  Back in the living room Jolly Roger greeted her. “Give me whiskey, give me whiskey.”

  I could use one, too. Did Aunt Edie know how to make mojitos?

  This will work, Jenna told herself sternly. Aunt Edie needed her help. Sabrina needed her to be wise and carve out a secure future for her.

  And, darn it all, she was going to do both.

  Chapter Four

  To Do:

  Unpack

  Return trailer

  Go to bed early and recover

  Aunt Edie looked at Jenna with concern when she came back into the living room. “Your daughter’s not happy with our arrangement.”

  There was an understatement. “Right now my daughter’s not happy about anything,” Jenna said, and fell onto the couch.

  Aunt Edie twisted the large agate ring on her middle finger. “I’d hoped this would help you. I thought we’d all be so happy...” Her words fell away and she gave the ring another twist.

  Jenna reached out to hold her aunt’s hand. “We will be.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, Aunt Edie or herself. “It’s just going to take her a little time to adjust.”

  Aunt Edie nodded and made a brave attempt at a smile.

  “The divorce has been hard on her. Even though her dad’s never been much of a father, he’s all she’s got. Moving away, well, that just makes it easier for him to ignore her and for her to blame me.”

  “It’s never easy to admit when your father’s no better than seagull droppings.”

  Good old Aunt Edie, she always did have a way with words. “Everyone tried to warn me. I was just so...”

  “In love,” Aunt Edie finished. “Of course you were. And I remember when you brought him to visit. He was a handsome young man with all that straight, dark hair and that Roman nose, that perfect physique. He was a beautiful work of art.”

  “Only on the outside,” Jenna said, and helped herself to another cookie.

  “We all make mistakes, dear.”

  “You didn’t. Uncle Ralph was great.”

  Aunt Edie took a cookie and inspected it. “Well, your Uncle Ralph wasn’t the first.”

  Jenna stared at her in astonishment. “He wasn’t?”

  “No. My first love was a banker.”

  “A banker,” Jenna repeated, trying to process this new information. It was hard to think of her free-spirited aunt married to a staid businessman. “Nobody ever told me.”

  Aunt Edie nodded. “Oh, yes, he was quite the catch. He looked so handsome in a suit. And he could dance beautifully. He beat me, you know.”

  This time Jenna’s mouth dropped and she set aside her cookie. “Seriously?”

  “Back when I was young you didn’t talk about those things in polite society. Not in my circle, anyway. That sort of thing only happened on the other side of the tracks. Or so people said.”

  “So, you divorced him?”

  “Actually, he divorced me. There was a big scandal, of course. Everyone thought I was a horrible, ungrateful wife.”

  “Ungrateful to leave a man who beat you?” scoffed Jenna.

  “I hadn’t told anyone about that. I couldn’t. I was t
oo embarrassed.”

  “So, you let him get away with it?”

  Aunt Edie shrugged. “Things were different back then. Anyway, I just wanted to get out of the marriage and get away. He finally agreed to let me go, on one condition.”

  “That you not have him arrested,” Jenna guessed.

  “That I not tell our families why we were divorcing. Of course, this made things difficult because, when I was young, divorce wasn’t quite so easy. There was no such thing as no-fault divorce. It was costly, and you had to prove that there was a reason your marriage couldn’t work—adultery, cruelty, rape.”

  “Well, you had him on cruelty.”

  “I could have, but frankly I was too afraid of what he’d do if I told anyone, so I agreed to come out the bad one. He sent a friend over to deliver some flowers and then conveniently arrived to catch me ‘in flagrante’ with the man.”

  “Seriously? And it worked?”

  Aunt Edie shrugged. “Back then couples created a fiction that their lawyers could present to the judge. That was what he came up with and I could take it or leave it, so I took it. We both got what we wanted. I got free and he kept his good reputation.”

  “A fake reputation,” Jenna muttered. How could her aunt have let this man get away with that kind of dishonesty? “Aunt Edie, you left him to go on to abuse the next woman he married.”

  Aunt Edie dropped her gaze. “Yes, I suppose you could say I did, letting him go on record as the injured party. But once I was free of him I made sure word got out about his violent temper. I told a friend in the utmost confidence and, well, you know how that goes. Suddenly, he wasn’t so welcome at parties anymore. No woman in town would have anything to do with him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He moved away. He finally married again. I saw the announcement in the paper.” One corner of Aunt Edie’s mouth lifted. “He died only a few years into his second marriage. Food poisoning, so the story went. But we all knew the truth. His wife poisoned him. Sometimes I wish I’d had to nerve to do that. But in the end he got what he deserved. You know what they say. Every dog has his day.”

  Gram always said that, too. Jenna never had known exactly what it meant, but she’d gotten the gist of it. She hoped a certain dog up in Seattle had his day and soon.

  “Anyway, things worked out. Along came my Ralph. I can tell you, everyone wondered what I saw in a rough old fisherman. I told them I saw a kind man with a big smile and a big heart. I saw how he treated his mother and his sisters and I knew he’d never raise his fist to me. And he didn’t. He hardly ever even raised his voice, God bless him.” She reached out and patted Jenna’s arm. “That’s how I know that things are going to work out fine for you, too, dear. You’ve had your struggles, but remember, every storm brings a rainbow.”

  “You sound like my mom,” Jenna said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

  Aunt Edie grinned. “Who do you think she learned it from?”

  “Oh, Aunt Edie, you’re great,” Jenna said, and hugged the old woman.

  “No, I’m just a selfish old woman.”

  “No one would ever accuse you of being selfish,” Jenna told her.

  “I am, dragging you down here, uprooting your daughter...”

  “She needed to be uprooted.”

  “All so I could keep this place going.”

  “You should keep it going,” Jenna said firmly. Why give up on a dream that meant so much?

  “A lot of people have made wonderful memories here over the years,” said Aunt Edie. “Ralph and I built the place back in 1962. We made a good life in Moonlight Harbor. I thought you and your daughter could, too.”

  “We can,” Jenna said, and patted her hand.

  “I’m afraid the place needs a little work now.”

  A little? That was like saying the Titanic had a tiny leak. “We’ll make it work,” Jenna said. “It’s probably going to cost a bit.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I have a little of Ralph’s life insurance money left to live on and my social security. And I’ve got three thousand dollars in savings in a bank in Quinault that Sherwood Stern here at Harbor First National doesn’t know about,” Aunt Edie said with a firm nod of the head.

  And Jenna had eight hundred and one dollars and fifty-two cents—couldn’t forget that fifty-two cents—in the hidden account under her mom’s name. Oh, yeah. They were rich. “We may need a little more than that. Maybe you could get a business loan.”

  “I did take out a loan, oh, let me see, I think it was a couple of years ago. Or was it three? I used it to do a few repairs.”

  Where? Jenna wondered.

  “I’m afraid I’ve had a bit of a struggle paying it back.”

  With nothing but vacancies? What a surprise. “So, no chance of a loan from the bank?”

  Aunt Edie’s mouth drooped. “Probably not.”

  And here came the tic. Blink, blink.

  “Well,” Jenna said, determined not to spoil her first day by thinking about their lack of funds. “I’d better get the trailer unloaded and returned to the trailer rental place.”

  “And while you’re doing that I’ll put together some clam chowder for our dinner. If you need any help unloading, Pete can help you.”

  “Pete?” Had Aunt Edie hired someone?

  “Pete Long. He’s been here a couple of years now. He’s my handyman.”

  Jenna thought of the pathetic fence around the pool, the dangling sign and the slanting steps. What exactly was he handy with?

  “I let him stay in one of the rooms in exchange for working around the place.”

  “What kind of work does he do?” Jenna asked.

  Aunt Edie shrugged. “Oh, this and that.”

  In other words, he was a loafer. Well, once she was settled in, Jenna would make sure he moved on down the road and found a new place to loaf and a new little old lady to take advantage of.

  She hurried to her car under an assault of rain, opened the trailer and pulled out a box, trying not to look in the direction of the derelict pool. What had she gotten herself into?

  She turned, box in hand, and nearly ran into a grizzled old man with a chin full of gray stubble. Tall and thin, with a long face, he looked to be somewhere in his seventies. He wore an old navy peacoat over tattered jeans and a hat on his head that could have been stolen from the Gorton’s fisherman. Where had he come from? He looked like he’d popped out of a copy of The Old Man and the Sea.

  He put his hands on his hips and scowled at her. “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” she countered.

  “I’m Pete Long. I run this place.”

  “Ah. You’re the handyman.” Run this place indeed. “You work for my aunt.”

  The scowl got darker. “You’re the niece nobody’s seen in years.”

  Jenna pushed aside the guilt. “That’s right. I’ve come here to help Aunt Edie.” She shoved the box into his midsection, making him grunt. “She said you’d help me unload my things.”

  He took it grudgingly. “She doesn’t need any help here. She’s got me.”

  “And just by looking around I can see what a help you’ve been,” Jenna said sweetly.

  “We were doing all right,” he informed her. “But your aunt’s glad you’re here, so I guess it’s okay by me,” he said, and walked off toward the house.

  “So glad you gave your permission,” Jenna muttered, and pulled out another box.

  She followed Pete inside the house and set her box in the front hall. Aunt Edie was standing there now, along with Pete, who seemed in no hurry to make a trip back for more.

  “I see you two have met,” Aunt Edie said, smiling from one to the other.

  “We have,” Pete said, sounding like he’d just been forced to make nice with a cobra.

  “I know we’r
e all going to be a great team,” Aunt Edie gushed.

  Yes, as soon as Pete learned there was no “I” in Team. Jenna said nothing, just turned to go out for another box. As she went down the steps she heard Aunt Edie say to him, “You’ll have dinner with us, won’t you? I’m making clam chowder.”

  “You know I love your clam chowder, Edie,” he said, the gruffness gone from his voice.

  Oh, brother. What a suck-up. Not only was he getting a free room from her aunt, he was also getting free food. If this was how Aunt Edie ran things, no wonder she was in trouble.

  Jenna spent the next forty minutes hauling in boxes, stowing them in her room and Sabrina’s. Sabrina didn’t offer to help and Jenna didn’t ask. Better to let her daughter sit in the window seat like a sphinx until she calmed down, which would hopefully happen sometime in Jenna’s lifetime.

  She stowed her bike and massage table in Aunt Edie’s garage, next to yet another gas-guzzling car leftover from an era before she’d been born, then went to the trailer rental place next to the gas station and returned the trailer. The semisupermarket was right across the street, so she dropped in and picked up a bottle of white wine to contribute to dinner and a bottle of root beer for the unhappy one. And a giant chocolate bar for herself.

  “All the right food groups,” the checker said to her with a smile. “Enjoy.”

  The store might not have been huge but what it lacked in size it obviously made up for in friendliness.

  Since there was a Redbox right outside, Jenna also found a movie she thought Sabrina would enjoy. Ice cream, root beer, movies—what else could she bribe her daughter with? A promise to buy out every shop in town the following day? Right. Because she had money to burn. She was made of money. She was frowning when she walked back to her car.

  Her mother called as she was pulling into the motel parking lot. “I wanted to see if you made it there safely,” Mel said.

  “We did.” Jenna wished she had more to say, something positive. Nothing came to mind.

  “How’s Aunt Edie?”

  Now, there was something positive. “She’s as sweet as ever. But she’s got quite a past. Did you know about it?”