Welcome to Moonlight Harbor Page 6

“I did.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  “I never thought to. Ancient history, dear. I mean, you don’t want to be defined by your past mistakes, do you?”

  “Good point. And I’ve got to admit, hearing about how she restarted her life gives me hope that I can, too.”

  “Of course you can,” said Mel. “That’s what we do when things take a turn for the worse. We move in a new direction.”

  “Is there any woman in our family who isn’t a superhero?”

  “We’re all made of pretty sturdy cloth,” Mel said. “Speaking of sturdy cloth, how does my darling granddaughter like Moonlight Harbor?”

  “Well, the ice cream parlor was a hit. Nora Singleton’s still there, dishing up the calories.”

  “Good old Nora, she’s a treasure.”

  “Yes, she is, and stopping there got me points. Plus, we saw a deer and its fawn, which Sabrina thought was really cool. But then we hit Aunt Edie’s. Oh, Mom, the place is a disaster. I don’t blame Sabrina for being mad. And let me tell you, she was. She let me have it. Naturally, Aunt Edie had to overhear.”

  “I’m sorry. But it’s only your first day. Things will get better,” Mel predicted.

  “I hope you’re right. By the way, there’s some old guy hanging around here who’s supposed to be her handyman. He’s about as useful as a tanning bed in a desert.”

  “Maybe there’s a shortage of handymen down there,” Mel said.

  “Maybe. He’s invited to dinner tonight.”

  “A regular dinner party.”

  Yes, wouldn’t that be fun? Her, Aunt Edie, the grumpy handyman and her discontented daughter. She could hardly wait.

  She ended the call and went inside, delivering the wine to the kitchen, where Aunt Edie was busy stirring a big pot of chowder. The aroma of garlic bread danced over from the oven to greet Jenna.

  “It sure smells good in here,” she told her aunt as she pulled the bottle from the bag.

  “Let’s hope everything will taste as good as it smells,” said Aunt Edie. She caught sight of the wine. “Oh, aren’t you a sweetie.”

  “You can’t show up to dinner without bringing something,” Jenna said.

  “You can when you’re family.” Aunt Edie smiled at her. “I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am that you’re here.”

  “It’s good to be with you again,” Jenna said. That much she could truthfully say. And she would have been ecstatic to be there in spite of the motel’s run-down condition if only her daughter wasn’t so unhappy.

  “I’m glad you had a chance to meet Pete,” Aunt Edie continued.

  Yes, Pete. “What exactly does he do around here?” Jenna asked.

  “Oh, he just helps keep things shipshape,” Aunt Edie replied vaguely.

  “But what specifically does he do?”

  Aunt Edie became very focused on stirring her clam chowder. “He repairs things.”

  “He hasn’t repaired your sign.”

  “He’ll get to it,” Aunt Edie said.

  Sometime this decade? “So, how’d you come to hire him?”

  “Well, we met quite by accident. I’d stepped over to the Seafood Shack for some popcorn shrimp and he was there drinking coffee. He was new in town and retired. It turned out he was looking for a room to rent and I told him since I had some rooms free at the motel he was welcome to stay in one. That was when he suggested we do some good, old-fashioned bartering.”

  Obviously, Pete had gotten the good end of that deal.

  “That seems like only yesterday. But then so do those days when you were a little girl. My, how the time does fly by after seventy,” Aunt Edie mused. She set down her spoon. “I think our dinner is just about ready. Why don’t you fetch Sabrina, and I’ll go find Pete?”

  Jenna almost suggested Aunt Edie fetch Sabrina and let her go find Pete. She didn’t much like the guy, but she’d rather deal with him than her angry daughter. But she went up to the blue bedroom, resigned to more unpleasantness.

  The door was now shut, a sure sign that she was still Poopy Mom. She steeled herself and knocked on it.

  “Go away,” came the muffled response.

  She opened the door and poked her head inside. “It’s time for dinner.”

  Sabrina was sitting on the bed, her knees pulled up, glaring out the window at the view. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You will be later if you don’t eat. And this isn’t a restaurant where you can get a meal whenever you want, so you need to come down.”

  Sabrina transferred the glare to her mom. “I don’t want to.”

  Decision time. What to do? Wimp out and let her daughter have her way or insist she be polite and come down and eat?

  Maybe letting her stay in her room and sulk wasn’t such a bad idea. Sabrina loved her food too much to maintain a hunger strike for long. Jenna should let her suffer the consequences of her decision.

  “Okay,” she said. “If you’re not hungry, you’re not hungry. But there will be no more opportunities to eat after this and it’s a long time until breakfast.”

  Sabrina shrugged and returned her attention to the view out the window.

  “And I brought home a movie,” Jenna added.

  “She probably doesn’t even have a DVD player,” Sabrina said in disgust.

  Maybe Aunt Edie didn’t. “Suit yourself,” Jenna said, and shut the door.

  She went back downstairs and stopped in the living room again. The TV looked fairly new, but it appeared that Sabrina was right. There was no DVD player. There was an old VCR, though. Wow. Special. So it looked like there would be no visits to Redbox anytime in the near future.

  Jenna went on into the kitchen to find that her aunt had emptied the grocery bag. The root beer was gone, along with the wine, probably both in the fridge, and the candy and movie were on the counter.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have one of those machines for playing that,” Aunt Edie said, nodding to it.

  “That’s okay,” Jenna said. “We can find plenty of other things to do.”

  “Well, I do have cable. And that’s a smart TV, so we can always stream something.”

  Aunt Edie even knew what streaming was?

  Jenna’s surprise must have showed on her face because her great-aunt chuckled, then said, “I’m eighty-two dear, not dead. I’ve got a smartphone and an e-reader and an iPod where I listen to Adele and Lady GooGoo.”

  Jenna smiled at that. “You mean Lady GaGa?”

  “Yes, her. I think she’s very talented, and I always appreciate creativity.”

  Pete opened the kitchen door, stamping his feet on the mat and then stepped into the kitchen and brushed the rain off his coat. “It’s coming down like crazy out there,” he announced in case no one had looked out the window or just been out in the squall. “Supposed to get some sixty-mile-an-hour winds tonight. Make sure you batten down the hatches.”

  Batten down the hatches? Had Pete been a sailor? Maybe he was just a sailor wannabe. Who knew?

  He removed his hat, showing wisps of hair over a shiny pink scalp, and walked over to the table, took off his wet coat and hung it over a chair, letting it drip on the floor. No, Pete couldn’t have been a sailor. He’d been born in a barn.

  Aunt Edie was now struggling to pour the contents of the pot into a soup tureen. “Let me do that,” Jenna said, and jumped to the rescue.

  “Oh, thank you, dear. I’m not used to having help.”

  “Well, you have help now,” Jenna told her.

  “You’ve had help all along,” Pete muttered.

  “Where’s Sabrina?” Aunt Edie asked, looking around the kitchen as if expecting her to pop out from under the table.

  “She’s not hungry,” Jenna said.

  “She has to eat,” protested Aunt Edie.

  “She
will. But not until breakfast.”

  “Hunger strike, huh?” Pete guessed. “In my day kids did what they were told. If you said come to supper they came to supper.”

  And who had asked him? “Oh, do you have kids, Pete?”

  “Nope. Never had any.”

  Jenna nodded. “Ah.” A real expert.

  Suddenly, to Jenna’s surprise, her daughter appeared in the doorway, looking sheepish. “I guess I’ll eat something,” she said.

  Jenna nodded.

  “I’m so glad,” said Aunt Edie. “I know you’ll love my clam chowder.”

  “I’ve never had clam chowder,” Sabrina said.

  Aunt Edie looked at her in shock. “Never had clam chowder? Oh, my, we definitely have to rectify that situation.” She pulled on an oven mitt and took out a loaf of foil-encased French bread. “Chowder and garlic bread, the perfect meal for a stormy day.”

  Once the food was on the table and everyone was seated, Aunt Edie smiled at Pete. “Pete, would you offer up the blessing?”

  Pete didn’t look all that happy to be put in charge of blessing the food, but he grunted and shut his eyes and Jenna followed suit. “Thanks, God. Keep us going.” And that was it. “Let’s eat,” he said, and rubbed his hands together.

  Conversation didn’t exactly flow at dinner. Roger, freed from his cage, sat on his kitchen perch and chattered, reminding everyone what a pretty bird he was. Aunt Edie chatted about the joys of digging clams and how the chowder was her own top-secret recipe. Then she volunteered Pete to take Sabrina clam digging.

  But since Sabrina had made a face with her first taste of chowder he didn’t appear too enthused at the prospect. “The kid doesn’t even like clams.”

  “No matter,” Aunt Edie said easily. “It’s still fun to dig them. And clams are an acquired taste,” she said to Sabrina. “Would you like something else? A grilled cheese sandwich, perhaps?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to go to all that trouble,” Jenna said, and earned a scowl from her daughter.

  “It’s no trouble,” Aunt Edie assured her. “Your mother always loved grilled cheese sandwiches when she was a girl,” she told Sabrina.

  No way was Jenna going to let her aunt wait on them hand and foot. “I’ll do it,” she said, getting up. “You stay where you are.”

  Roger put in an order, too. “Give me whiskey, give me whiskey.”

  He was more talkative than Sabrina, who concentrated on looking at her plate and eating her sandwich.

  “You don’t say much, do you?” Pete said to her.

  She bit her lip and shook her head. Then a moment later she asked to be excused.

  “Yes, you may,” Jenna said, resigned to letting her go back to her pout. Their first meal in their new home hadn’t exactly been a success.

  “Not a very friendly kid,” Pete observed.

  “She’s unhappy,” said Aunt Edie. “The poor child has been through a lot.”

  “Was she abused?” Pete asked.

  “No,” Jenna said, horrified.

  “Beat up at school?”

  “No.”

  “Has she got some disease?”

  “No,” Jenna said, exasperated.

  “Then what’s her problem?”

  You. “If you must know, her father and I are divorced. She didn’t want to move so far away from him. And she had to leave behind all her friends.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s nothing. My mom went through two husbands after my dad died and they both beat me. Had to fight in ’Nam and saw my best buddy die before my eyes. Life is tough.”

  “Well, thank you for those encouraging words,” Jenna said.

  Her sarcasm was lost on Pete. “She’ll be okay once she settles in,” he added. “Just don’t baby her.”

  This sage advice from the man who never had kids.

  “Well,” said Aunt Edie with forced cheer. “What would you like to do after dinner, dear? We could play some Anagrams.”

  Another game Jenna had loved as a kid. Aunt Edie had an old trunk in the dining room where she kept her collection of games, including an old Folgers coffee can filled with small cardboard squares each with a letter of the alphabet on it. They would draw letters from that can and take turns making words, adding letters to existing words to make them bigger and steal back and forth.

  But tonight Jenna was too pooped for that much brain work. “How about tomorrow night?” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just go flop on my bed and read for a while.”

  “Oh, of course. You must be exhausted,” said Aunt Edie. “What was I thinking?”

  “You were thinking of me,” Jenna said, and reached over and laid a hand on her arm. “Thank you.”

  After dinner, she left Aunt Edie and Pete to play Anagrams without her and went upstairs to her bedroom. She looked in on Sabrina, who was back to employing the silent treatment, kissed the top of her head and told her she loved her.

  Then she went to her own room, where the dolls were waiting, and unpacked the Muriel Sterling book Mom had given her. New Beginnings. Well, that was appropriate, for sure. She opened to the first page and read the chapter title—“Death in Winter, Growth in Spring.”

  A garden is God’s constant reminder to us that we live in a world of change, a world of birth, death and rebirth. What happens to us is often exactly like what happens in our gardens. Winter comes and the garden dies.

  Cheery. Jenna frowned but read on.

  But in reality it’s not dead. It’s merely dormant, waiting for the warmth of a new spring to bring back to life those perennials we so enjoyed the year before.

  It’s often the same with our lives. We plan for certain things and hope for positive outcomes, dream big dreams, only to see our plans crumble and our dreams die.

  Jenna couldn’t help but feel as though the woman had written this just for her. Was Muriel Sterling psychic?

  You may be mourning the death of a dream, but you don’t have to mourn without hope. Like a flower in winter experiencing a period of dormancy, use this time to heal and gather strength for spring when a new dream will crop up.

  Jenna hoped she could heal here at the ocean’s edge. She read on, the book growing heavy in her hands, and soon her eyelids had fallen shut.

  Next thing she knew, she was out in the ocean, paddling around desperately in the icy cold water, waves crashing over her and pushing her under. In the distance, she could see a fishing boat chugging away. There, in the stern, stood Damien and Sabrina. He had his arm around Sabrina’s shoulders and was waving goodbye to Jenna.

  “I told you I didn’t want to stay,” Sabrina called.

  “Come back!” Jenna cried. “Somebody help me.”

  Oh, hallelujah, here came rescue—Pete in a little dingy. He stood up, a life preserver in his hand, and threw it to her. She reached out and caught it only to discover it was made of cement.

  She awoke with a gurgle and a cough, her heart pounding as furiously as the waves on the beach. The rain was beating against her window. Great. Welcome to Moonlight Harbor.

  Chapter Five

  To Do:

  Attend church

  Check out town with Sabrina

  Assess what needs to be done to get Driftwood Inn up and running

  Take deep breaths

  Sunday morning brought blue skies and sunshine and Jenna decided to take that as a good sign. Church on Sunday was a habit her mother had cultivated in both her and her sister, and while Celeste had drifted off toward Sunday morning sleep-ins, Jenna had kept it up. Back home, she and Sabrina had attended a small church with a large kid population. It was where Sabrina had first met her friend Marigold. Jenna had high hopes that maybe another good friend would be waiting at a church here at their new home.

  She donned a sundress and sweater, then slipped into Sabrina’s bedroom
and woke her with a kiss. “Time to get up, sleepyhead.”

  Sabrina groaned and pulled the covers over her head.

  “I smell breakfast,” Jenna told her. “I bet Aunt Edie’s making cinnamon rolls.”

  No sound from under the covers.

  “Come on, baby girl. It’s Sunday. Church day.”

  “I don’t want to go to church,” said the muffled voice.

  “Staying home isn’t an option,” Jenna said firmly. She pulled the covers back and gave her daughter another kiss. “Come on. Breakfast and church and then we can check out the town and do some shopping.”

  Shopping. The magic word. Sabrina sat up and pushed the hair out of her eyes. She was frowning but at least she was upright.

  “See you downstairs in twenty minutes,” Jenna said, and exited before any whining could commence.

  As she went downstairs the aroma of freshly baked rolls, sausage and coffee greeted her. It was a treat to have someone cook breakfast for her but she hoped Aunt Edie wasn’t going to make a habit of it. She’d feel guilty having the old woman waiting on her all the time.

  Her aunt was up and ready for the day, wearing coral-colored slacks and a sweatshirt, pink slippers on her feet. Roger was out of his cage and on his kitchen perch, keeping her company. She smiled at Jenna as she walked into the kitchen. “There you are. How did you sleep?”

  Until her dream? “Great,” Jenna lied.

  “There’s nothing like the sound of the waves to lull you to sleep,” Aunt Edie said.

  And nothing like worry to wake you up.

  She studied Jenna. “You look tired, dear.”

  “I’m fine. And I’ll be great once I have one of your cinnamon rolls,” Jenna said, pointing to the plate in her aunt’s hand.

  “You always did love them,” Aunt Edie said, placing it on the table. “Sit down, eat. I’ve got sausage and scrambled eggs coming, too.”

  The table was set for two, with orange juice already poured. “Aren’t you eating?” Jenna asked as she slipped onto a seat.

  “Oh, no. I was up ages ago. But I will join you for a cup of coffee.” With Jenna’s breakfast dished up, her aunt sat down, too. “What would you like to do today?”