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“Well, first of all, I’m going to find a church.”

  Aunt Edie nodded. “There are plenty here. I don’t go anymore. Too much trouble and too many hypocrites.”

  Jenna wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Or maybe just people trying to get their act together.”

  “Maybe,” Aunt Edie said with a shrug. “Anyway, the music’s too loud. All those drums and guitars. In my day you had an organist.”

  “I guess times have changed,” Jenna said.

  “And not for the better.” Aunt Edie pursed her lips in disapproval. Then changing times were forgotten as she returned to the subject of Jenna’s itinerary. “And after church?”

  “I thought it would be good to show Sabrina around.”

  Aunt Edie nodded her approval. “Excellent idea. Be sure to take her to the kite store. You loved to fly kites when you were a girl.”

  Sabrina chose that moment to make her entrance, wearing her favorite white cold shoulder dress and sandals.

  “Don’t you look adorable,” gushed Aunt Edie. “My, oh, my. Fashions for girls are so cute. Makes me wish I was young again.”

  “My, oh, my,” echoed Roger. “My, oh, my. Wish I was young.”

  Aunt Edie proceeded to fuss over Sabrina, making sure she not only had sausage and eggs but seconds on cinnamon rolls, and Jenna was pleased to see a smile finally surface on her daughter’s face. She was even more pleased when Sabrina complimented Aunt Edie on her cinnamon rolls.

  “They’re one of my specialties,” Aunt Edie said. “If you like, I’ll teach you how to make them. And oatmeal muffins.”

  “That sounds good,” Sabrina said, and Jenna took hope that maybe this would all turn out.

  Until they got to Moonlight Harbor Evangelical Church. Not that she didn’t get a friendly greeting from several people, and not that the pastor’s sermon was boring. At least not to most of the single women in the congregation. He was a cutie, maybe midthirties, with sun-bleached hair and blue eyes and the face of an angel. No wedding ring, which made her wonder whether the women were giving their rapt attention to the sermon or the man.

  The kids were another story. A boy came up and said hi to Sabrina almost as soon as they walked in the door, but the same two girls from the ice cream parlor were hanging around in the church foyer and they both glared in Sabrina’s direction, which left her frowning through the entire service.

  Afterward the older woman who’d been sitting in the row in back of them tapped Jenna on the shoulder and asked her if she was new in town. She was a beautiful woman, probably somewhere in her seventies, with snow-white hair and delicate features. She wore white slacks and a matching jacket over a mint-green top and had accented her outfit with a printed scarf in shades of pastel orange and green.

  “I am,” Jenna said. “I’ve come to live with my aunt.”

  “With Edie Patterson? You must be Jenna.”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Patricia Whiteside. I own the Oyster Inn.”

  “The Oyster Inn. I can’t tell you how special it was to eat in your dining room when I was a girl.” Jenna introduced Sabrina, who was fidgeting and anxious to escape. “I’ve told my daughter about how I had my first ever crab cocktail in your dining room.”

  “You bring her to see us and I’ll give you both a crab cocktail on the house,” Patricia said.

  “All right. A crab cocktail on the house,” Jenna said to Sabrina as soon as Patricia had turned to talk to someone else.

  “Cool. Can we go now?”

  It looked like they were leaving now. They started for the door, but two more people waylaid Jenna on the way. Sabrina didn’t stick around to meet anyone else.

  Jenna was about to chase her when a fortysomething black woman with dreadlocks, gorgeous big eyes and an impressive bustline stopped her. The woman wore a long top and flowing crocheted sweater over white leggings and sandals.

  “Are you Jenna?” she asked. Jenna nodded and the woman said, “We’ve all been looking forward to meeting you. You’re all Edie has talked about for the last three weeks. I’m Tyrella Lamb. I own Beach Lumber and Hardware here in town. I suspect I’ll be seeing a lot of you.”

  “I suspect you will,” Jenna agreed.

  “I hope you’re not too discouraged after seeing the place. Edie was afraid you’d take one look at it and turn tail and run.”

  At this point, Jenna wasn’t sure where she’d run. “I’m here to stay,” she said as much to herself as to Tyrella.

  “Good. Because your aunt really needs you. And that place of hers may look like a wreck now, but the bones are good and it’s still got life left in it. You know, my husband, Leroy, and I stayed there when we first came to town to check into buying the hardware store. It was awfully cute back then and Edie was so welcoming.”

  “No surprise there,” Jenna said. “My aunt definitely has the gift of hospitality.”

  “Yes, she does. She always baked cookies for her guests and had them available in the lobby. Staying at the Driftwood Inn gave us a very good first impression of the town. Twenty years ago, there were only two choices for where to stay, the Driftwood or the Oyster Inn. Both did a very good business.”

  “I hope we can do a good business again,” Jenna said.

  “You will,” Tyrella assured her. “I’ll help you when you’re ready. And if you need a listening ear, I’m pretty good at that, too.”

  Jenna thanked her, then made her way through the crowd of chatting people and back to the car where Sabrina sat scowling out the window. “I hate that church,” she said, not mincing words.

  “I thought the music was really good,” Jenna offered.

  “The kids are mean.”

  “Honey, this was only our first visit. You have to give it a chance.”

  “That’s what you said about coming here!”

  Sabrina was close to tears. This was not the time to continue a conversation about the church or life at the beach. “Come on. I’ll buy you lunch at the Seafood Shack and then we’ll go shopping.”

  “Okay.”

  It was said grudgingly, but Jenna wisely decided to ignore that.

  The Seafood Shack was doing a brisk business, with young families and a smattering of seniors ordering fish and chips and fried clams and all manner of shakes. A couple in shorts and T-shirts lounged at one of the tables outside, digging into baskets of popcorn shrimp. The place smelled of fish and grease.

  They ordered fish and chips and chocolate shakes and went outside to sit in the sun. The day was balmy with only a light breeze, and the food was...greasy. Sabrina licked up every little bit.

  “Okay, what next?” she asked, sounding almost enthusiastic.

  “How about checking out Something Fishy? We’ll take your picture standing in the giant shark’s mouth and you can send it to Daddy and the grandmas. How’s that sound?”

  It sounded good, and after the requisite photo op and buying T-shirts that said Moonstruck at Moonlight Harbor they moved on to Cindy’s Candies, a little shop with giant suckers painted on the window, where they stocked up on saltwater taffy, licorice and jawbreakers. Sabrina’s smile was getting bigger.

  And Jenna’s wallet was shrinking. She told herself this was an investment in the future. If her daughter had fun and fell in love with the town, life would be so much easier.

  After that they hit Sunken Treasures Consignments where Jenna found a new top and Sabrina fell in love with a ceramic kitten. Then it was on to the cabana shops where Sabrina got bored looking at home decor, scented candles and gift items in the Beachcomber.

  “Hey, look at this,” Jenna said, picking up a cloth-bound journal decorated with a starfish.

  Sabrina shrugged but reached for it.

  “You can write all your great thoughts and poems in here,” Jenna said. The only class Sabrina had enjoyed the past few months had bee
n her English class, and she loved to write.

  Sabrina looked it over with a frown. “I guess,” she said, and let Jenna buy it for her.

  She went from frowning to sneering when they entered Beach Babes. “They’re all old lady clothes,” she complained.

  Jenna had to admit most of the clothes weren’t exactly trendy, even the sweatshirts were nothing a fourteen-year-old would want to be caught wearing, and the saleswoman there, a striking thirtysomething who obviously wasn’t wearing anything off the store racks, looked almost apologetic as they left. But the kite store was a winner and they came out with a single line kite decorated with a red octopus. Goodbye another thirty dollars. But now Sabrina was smiling again, and squeezing Jenna’s arm and thanking her. Ah, yes, her daughter’s moods matched the weather. Stick around a few minutes and it was bound to change.

  Speaking of changing, the wind was picking up and Jenna could see gray clouds gathering out over the water.

  “Can we fly the kite when we get back?” Sabrina asked.

  “We can try,” Jenna said, and hoped the rain held off.

  They did a quick drive around town, Jenna pointing out the little bowling alley, the park and tennis courts and community pool hidden away on a side street. At least there’d be a pool somewhere for Sabrina to enjoy. Beans and Books, a combination coffee shop and bookstore, she knew would appeal to her daughter. “You can ride your bike there, get a smoothie, write in your journal.” As Sabrina nodded agreement Jenna had a quick vision of dollar signs flying away. Hopping into the coffee shop for a treat on a regular basis could get expensive. “Or you can hang out at the beach,” she added.

  They ended their tour of the town’s possible teen temptations checking out the arcade where there were kids Sabrina’s age. All of them were with friends, though, and too engrossed in what they were doing to pay any attention to a new kid in town, even if she was cute. They didn’t stay long.

  By the time they came out it was raining. Once they reached the motel it was pouring.

  “I’m not flying a kite in this,” Sabrina said in disgust. “What else can we do?”

  “Well, I actually have to check out the motel with Aunt Edie. You could read or watch something on TV.”

  “I guess,” Sabrina said in a bored voice. Then added, “There’s no one to hang out with here.”

  “There will be,” Jenna assured her. Please let that be true.

  Aunt Edie was ready for them with cookies and the promise of hot chocolate. “Did you girls have fun?” she asked.

  Sabrina was now wet and her hair was dripping and she wasn’t in quite such a happy mood. Jenna hurried to speak for her. “Oh, yes. And we have the stuff to prove it.” She held up the Something Fishy bag that held her new T-shirt.

  “Isn’t that store fun?” Aunt Edie gushed.

  “Fun, fun,” echoed Roger, who was perched on her shoulder.

  “They have baby sharks in a jar,” Sabrina said in disgust.

  “Boys like ’em,” said Aunt Edie. She pointed to Sabrina’s bag. “What did you get?”

  “A T-shirt,” Sabrina said, her voice lackluster.

  “We have matching Moonlight Harbor T-shirts,” said Jenna.

  “Well, now you’re truly one of us,” Aunt Edie said with a smile. “What else did you girls find?”

  “What didn’t we?” Jenna said heartily, hoping to remind her daughter of the fun parts of the day. “We got candy from Cindy’s.”

  “Saltwater taffy?” Aunt Edie guessed. “That’s a must when you come to the beach.”

  “Sabrina’s never had it,” said Jenna.

  “Oh, you’ll love it.”

  Sabrina nodded politely.

  “And we got a journal for Sabrina to write in,” Jenna continued. “And a kite.”

  “Which we can’t fly because it’s raining,” Sabrina grumped.

  “Don’t worry,” Aunt Edie told her. “The weatherman’s predicting nice weather for tomorrow.”

  “The weatherman, the weatherman,” echoed Roger. “The weatherman’s an idiot.”

  That made Jenna smile. She knew who’d taught Roger that—Uncle Ralph.

  “Now, that’s enough out of you,” Aunt Edie said, and put the bird back in his cage.

  Sabrina wasn’t amused. “I’m going to my room,” she announced, and disappeared up the stairs.

  “I need hot chocolate,” Jenna said, and went to the kitchen.

  “It’s a shame the weather’s not cooperating,” Aunt Edie said as she poured out a mug of her homemade hot chocolate for Jenna.

  Even if the weather had cooperated, Jenna doubted her daughter would. She reminded herself that Sabrina had been slammed with a lot of change, none of which she’d asked for. Thank you, Damien, for making our lives miserable.

  Except she’d chosen him, so who was really to blame? “Sometimes I wish I could restart my life as a grown-up,” she said with a sigh.

  “What part would you do differently?” asked her aunt.

  “I’d choose someone other than my lame-o ex.”

  “Ah, but then you wouldn’t have your sweet daughter.”

  “True.” And, difficult as Sabrina was being at the moment, Jenna loved her with all her wounded heart. “She is sweet, really.”

  “Of course she is. She’s just unhappy. That’s allowed.”

  Jenna smiled at her aunt. “Thanks for being so understanding.”

  “Believe it or not, I was young once, too. I remember being unhappy with the grown-ups in my life. Then I grew up and realized it wasn’t all that easy being an adult, either.”

  “You can say that again,” Jenna said, and took a comforting sip of her hot chocolate.

  “Things will work out. You’ll see. Everyone loves the beach.”

  “I know Sabrina would. If only we were still a family.”

  “You are still a family,” Aunt Edie reminded her. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  Of course they were. Just like she and her mom and sister had been a family. “You’re right.”

  Aunt Edie smiled. “I’m always right. That’s what Ralph used to say.”

  The wind had picked up and the rain was beating on the kitchen window. Jenna felt like going to her room, too, and crawling under the covers. She took another fortifying drink of her cocoa, then said, “Well, let’s go see what needs to be done at the Driftwood Inn.”

  They donned rain slickers and made the short walk from the house to the motel. Amazing how nippy the wind could be at the beach in June.

  “It’s going to be beautiful tomorrow,” Aunt Edie predicted.

  “I always liked it at the beach when it was stormy,” Jenna said.

  No lie. She’d had a friend who lived at the far end of town where the jetty was and had loved sitting warm and cozy inside the house and watching the waves crash into the rocks, sending a twenty-foot spray racing the length of them. She’d also enjoyed having what Aunt Edie called an at-home day, playing games at the kitchen table with her mom and sister and Aunt Edie and Uncle Ralph, or burrowing under a blanket on the couch, reading a Nancy Drew mystery. As she got older Carolyn Keene—who she’d been shocked to finally learn wasn’t a woman but an entire team of hirelings—gave way to Debbie Macomber and Nora Roberts.

  Oh, how she’d believed in happy endings back then. Did she still?

  She wasn’t so sure when they walked into the first room. It smelled musty and looked terrible. The bedspreads were ratty and tufted, the carpets worn and stained. And speaking of stains, one of the walls looked like it had some water damage. How many other walls in how many other rooms had similar stains?

  “We’ve had a few leaks,” Aunt Edie confessed when Jenna pointed it out.

  Great. A leaking roof. She wasn’t surprised though, considering what it looked like.

  The other rooms were i
n just as bad a state as the first. Even the vinyl in the bathrooms would have to be replaced. Oh, boy. Fixing the motel was going to cost a fortune.

  “Well,” Jenna said as they walked back to the house, “we’re not going to get any customers with the place looking this way. We’ll have to repaint, replace the carpet and the bedspreads as well as fix the broken window. We’ll need to get the pool up and running.” That had been scary—half-drained with a crack on the bottom, it looked like an oversize petri dish growing heaven knew what. She had no idea what all that would cost, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. “It’s not going to be cheap.”

  “I did figure we’d have to get new bedspreads and carpet,” Aunt Edie admitted.

  “And we should replace the flooring in the bathrooms. We’ve got water damage on the walls, which means we’re going to have to have the roof checked out. That’s all going to cost money,” she added. How much did it cost to replace the roof on a twenty-room motel? More than they had, for sure.

  Aunt Edie gnawed on her lower lip. “We do have a challenge.”

  There was an understatement of tsunami proportions. They were in deep doo-doo.

  “I guess we’ll have to get some estimates and figure out where to go from here,” Jenna said. And that was about as positive a spin as she could put on things.

  Aunt Edie wasn’t exactly looking positive. In fact, she looked close to tears.

  “The good news is, now that Sabrina and I are here we can contribute a lot of sweat equity. I’m sure I can find a bargain on carpet somewhere.” That coaxed a smile out of her aunt.

  But no one was smiling at dinner when she talked up the joys of manual labor.

  “We’re going to work all summer?” Sabrina asked, horrified.

  “Well, not twenty-four hours a day,” Jenna said.

  “I’ve got a bad back, you know,” Pete informed her, and helped himself to a second hamburger.

  “Look, everyone, we all need to pitch in if we’re going to make this place ready to turn a profit.” No one was saying, “Rah, rah,” yet, so she continued. “We can make the Driftwood Inn really cute again. Just picture it with a fresh coat of blue paint, some netting on one corner with a couple of buoys, some driftwood outside the office. Sabrina, you’ve got a good artistic eye. You could find just the right piece of driftwood to put there.”