Page 17 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

CELIA’S FEELING PRETTY GOOD.

After Shane leaves that morning, she walks past the playpen. There’s a happy, “Ooh-ooh-ooh,” as Aria, on her back, brings a teething ring to her mouth.

Celia bends over and tickles the baby’s cheek. “Mommy’s starting her new job tonight,” Celia tells her. “I’ll be a home-staging instructor.”

When Aria smiles and sputters a raspberry, Celia laughs, too.

“And Nonna will babysit you later, sweetie. You’ll be a good girl for her, I know.

” As Aria lies there in her floral-and-pumpkin footed jumpsuit, Celia flutters her fingers across the baby’s tummy.

She heads to her bedroom then. In her closet, she hangs her slim black pants, a faded denim shirt and cropped khaki blazer together.

When Aria’s napping, she’ll give the teaching outfit a good ironing.

But for now? Back to the living room where she’s moved the staging items she’ll need for her class tonight .

Oh, and she’s back to chatting with Aria as Celia opens a large maple-brown canvas tote.

“See the mailbox I’m bringing to class?” she asks the baby, holding up the checkerboard-trimmed mailbox covered with a painted birdhouse and random painted wildflowers.

“It’s to make the outside of a house look pretty.

Chirp-chirp !” Celia softly says, tapping the birdhouse motif before tucking the mailbox into her tote.

Aria gurgles and reaches for her stuffed pink hippo on the playpen floor.

“And look at this!” Celia exclaims. She lowers a potted faux mum: the pot, glossy black; the blossoms, red. “It’s to make your front stoop look inviting.” The baby coos, Celia touches the petals to her face, and so go the next ten minutes. Until it’s time for Aria to have her bottle.

And time for some fresh October air.

So Celia first tucks Shane’s unread note into her jeans pocket.

Next, she bundles her daughter in a plush, silvery-gray hooded cardigan.

Little pom-pom bear ears top the hood. “Aren’t you so cute?

” Celia murmurs as she settles outside on one of her porch rockers and lifts that hood onto Aria’s head.

The minutes pass quietly then. Aria drinks from the bottle, and reaches to touch Celia’s hair.

Celia whispers little nothings, gently rocks and watches the world go by.

The sky is blue. The morning sunshine is golden.

So are the falling tree leaves. When Aria’s bottle is empty, Celia burps the baby before giving her the fuzzy autumn gnome off the porch table.

After propping the white-bearded gnome in Aria’s lap, Celia does something else, too.

Something she’s been putting off .

She takes Shane’s folded paper from her pocket. Finally opens the note and silently reads it.

1930–2000.

Yours,

Shane

“What?” Celia looks at the torn-out spiral page, flips it, then flips it back.

“What is this?” she asks herself. Some era she should cover in her home staging?

Or… someone’s age? Seventy years old? Or…

maybe a lock combination? “What do you think, Aria?” Celia asks the bundled-up baby sitting cozy on her lap.

Aria just presses the bearded gnome to her mouth—all while cooing.

“You’re right,” Celia agrees. “I should text Shane.”

And she does just that. She sets aside the jotted note and lifts her cell phone off that little porch table. Her fingers quickly pluck out a text message. You around? she types.

A minute later, his answer dings on her phone. At hardware store. What’s up?

Well, I read your note , Celia awkwardly plucks out while holding Aria in place. I give up, too. Clue? she types, and sends, then kisses the top of Aria’s hooded head.

And waits.

But not for long. Her phone quickly dings with Shane’s return text.

No clues. Keep thinking. And keep smiling.

And she does. She sits there, holds Aria closer on her lap and smiles. How many times has Shane Bradford accomplished that in these few months? Made her smile.

He did it with her mariner chain necklace.

He did it with their Golden Gate Park day in San Francisco—carousel ride and Hippie Hill picnic lunch and all.

And way back, he did it by inviting her in from the rain when they barely knew each other.

He did it by jamming with her on his harmonica in The Sand Bar.

By winning Aria her stuffed pink hippo in the claw machine there.

Even today, his little note holds some happy surprise.

Even today, he wants her to smile.

Even though Celia knows.

She knows that Shane’s own smiles are few and far between now.

Fading… as he extricates himself from Stony Point and returns to his authentic life up north.

***

In Maritime Market that morning, Maris first stops in the organic produce aisle. She chooses only the best fresh vegetables: the carrot bunch topped with the greenest fronds; the goldest Yukon Gold potatoes; the firmest yellow onions.

On to the meat department, where she rings the bell for the butcher on the other side of a large window.

He’s about forty, is lightly bearded and is working on a large ribbed slab of fresh meat.

But with a glance her way, he sets down his carving knife, peels off his vinyl gloves and comes out to the store aisle.

He’s wearing a full-length dark green apron over his white work coat and black tee beneath, black pants and well-worn boots.

His matching dark green baseball cap bears the Maritime Market logo.

“How can I help you?” he asks her.

“Well…” Maris falters, feeling a little hopeless behind her grocery carriage. “I want to make a pot roast today. So I’m wondering what the best cut of meat would be to cook the pot roast in a slow cooker.”

“The best?”

“Top-shelf.”

The butcher nods. “Chuck. A chuck roast. Nicely marbled.”

“Really? A chuck ?”

“Absolutely. The marbling will completely enhance the flavor. Just be sure to cook it low… and slow.”

“So don’t rush it?”

“That’s right. That pot roast will be so tender and delicious.” He gives a chef’s kiss then. “I’d be begging for more.”

So Maris orders the right-sized cut of chuck roast for her and Jason and leftovers for tomorrow. She also waits right there as the butcher heads back to his work area to cut and wrap her order.

He does something else, too.

He calls over his shoulder, “ Someone’s having a nice dinner tonight.”

***

The thing is? Out on the bluff earlier, Jason was pretty down.

And Maris knows that her nice dinner can never mend his broken heart.

Sometimes a heart’s broken forever. Oh, you’re not always aware of it.

The wound tucks itself away. Life nurses it as we go on.

As we forget about it in the busyness of our days.

But down deep? That wound, that break… sometimes it also wins out.

And this morning, Jason’s broken heart did just that. He sat on the bluff in a perfect storm of conditions—memories, longing, evocative scents, sounds, touches—that he couldn’t even fight.

Seeing him so alone, Maris did what she could. But Jason’s heart is forever compromised—with good reason. And since she can’t change that, she’ll at least feed his soul. They’ll have a home-cooked dinner together tonight. Comfort food with quiet talk, with the house in order.

An hour after she’s back home, October sunlight slants in through the kitchen slider.

Maddy lies sprawled beneath the warm rays.

And with the chuck roast browned and the veggies prepped, that dinner is simmering in the slow cooker.

That’s not all it’s doing, either. Its delicious aroma is also rising and filling the house.

Which is enough to get Maris to work on her Driftline manuscript right here today—instead of in her writing shack.

She sets up her laptop on the painted farm table in the dining room.

For atmosphere, she leaves the black lantern-chandelier off, opting for candlelight instead.

Half-burnt pillar candles on two silver-metallic pedestals do the trick.

Their flames flicker beside her computer now.

Green-and-yellow gourds lean around a white pumpkin centerpiece, too. All of it sits on a tweed table runner.

But gourds and pumpkins won’t transport her to a hurricane-rattled cottage on the beach.

So she moves the autumn décor to the antique sideboard.

Swaps them out, actually, for a vase of dried marsh grasses to set the coastal tone.

Then she opens one of the paned dining room windows to let in a breath of salt air.

Beside that window is a framed oil painting.

It captures the partial view of a weathered gabled cottage and the vista of the vast sea beyond it.

“Perfect,” Maris says, sitting on a wooden farm chair at the table. After cuffing back the sleeves of her camel sweater, she raises her hands to the laptop keyboard and begins to type.

***

Princess paces the cottage’s third-story cupola.

The soft glow of burning candles barely illuminates the space.

There are saltspray roses everywhere, too.

Their blossoms droop from jars and bottles atop tables—even up here.

The women had plucked the flowers from the beach dunes before the hurricane hit.

Now the scent of those wildflowers is heavy in the dank salt air.

Princess inhales that aroma, gently touches a few petals.

Their softness, sweetness, is so contrary to the raging storm’s battering winds and explosions of rain attempting to take down the old cottage.

Pacing again, Princess stops at different windows and tries to place what she’s actually facing outside.

Even though the dripping candles throw flickering light in this small space, it doesn’t help.

The moving flames and shadows on the walls are actually disorienting.