Page 29 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

IN ELSA’S DINING ROOM, SOFT jazz plays on the portable speaker.

Midafternoon sunshine streams in through floor-to-ceiling windows.

The view outside is of Long Island Sound beyond wild dune grasses.

Celia and Elsa’s voices speak quietly as Aria naps in the inn’s nursery.

A salted caramel biscotti drizzled in dark chocolate rests on Celia’s china plate.

Standing there in her straight-leg jeans, a half-tucked flannel and her moccasins, she lifts that biscotti and dips it into her decaf coffee.

Swirls it around. Takes a delicious coffee-softened bite of the sweet snack.

“Oh, Elsa ,” Celia says around the food. “This is heaven .”

Elsa, lifting a shallow silver-mesh bowl with a low pedestal base, nods. “My favorite, too,” she says, setting the bowl on her long, wood-planked dining room table.

Celia… she does it then. She sits on one of the distressed-navy French country chairs at the table.

Sits there and savors every last bite of that coffee-dunked biscotti.

Life is good, you’d think. This afternoon?

Anyone would say it’s sublime. Everyone is well.

The baby’s sleeping soundly. Elsa’s psychedelic San Francisco tapestry hangs above the dining room server.

Shades of blues, greens and golds reminiscent of the sun-dappled sea swirl in the tapestry’s woven threads.

Celia and Elsa are following their new itinerary and fall-decorating the inn as a practice run.

There’s music and light conversation and sunshine and salt air drifting in one of the partially opened windows.

All easy. All good.

While Celia sits there, Elsa sets a battery-operated candle in that silver-mesh bowl. Then she surrounds the fat candle with pinecones. Lots of pinecones.

“I think we should strive for simplicity in our autumn décor,” Elsa is saying.

“But dramatic simplicity.” Now she arranges small faux pumpkins around the bowl’s tarnished-silver pedestal.

“I bought several battery-operated pillar candles. To replace the real ones we cluster together. More babyproofing—with Aria soon into things.”

“Oh, good idea!” Celia admits, sipping her coffee, then fussing with a rust-colored berry garland laid out on the table.

“I’ll get the rest of the new candles from the kitchen,” Elsa says. “Then we can swap them out before hanging that garland.”

Celia nods, then touches the delicate berries on the twig garland.

Yes, all good, all fine—anyone would assume.

But it’s damn well not. And , Celia thinks just as her cell phone vibrates with an incoming text, here’s why . The message is from Shane. She quickly scans his words. He’s asking her to briefly meet up with him—now, if she can. Then he tells her where he is.

It’s pretty safe from anyone’s eyes here, he also texts—just as Elsa sweeps back into the dining room. She’s got a carton of candles and gourds in her arms.

All good, like hell.

Because right now? With Celia’s heart already breaking? She’s good for nothing.

“You know something, Elsa?” she says, standing and pocketing her cell phone.

“I just remembered a stack of bills on my kitchen counter.” While not meeting Elsa’s eye, and while lying, Celia pushes in that French country chair.

“And I meant to mail them all earlier. Do you mind if I sneak out now?” Celia asks.

Elsa looks over from where she’s putting the box on the table. “Now’s actually good—while Aria’s sleeping.”

“Okay.” Celia glances around the grand, partially decorated dining room. “I’ll be fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. A quick run to the post office to buy stamps and get my bills mailed.”

Elsa’s watching her. There’s a pause before she answers; Celia notices that.

“I’ll swap the candles and start stringing that berry garland on the top of the cupboard,” Elsa finally says—after her pronounced pause.

She pulls the battery-operated candles from the box.

“When you come back,” she calls after Celia already heading toward the inn’s side door, “you can help me adjust the swag.”

“No problem, Elsa,” Celia calls back as she pushes the door open. “I won’t be long.”

** *

It’s imminent—the one goodbye Shane can’t face.

At the laundromat, he piles his last load of clothes into a washing machine.

Around him, other washers slosh; commercial washers hum on their spin cycles; clothes tumble in dryers.

Dusty grime covers the machine lids. The air in here is stuffy.

Pulling out his wallet then, he walks to a change machine mounted on the wall and inserts a few dollar bills.

Buys a packet of detergent from a vending machine, too, before heading back to his waiting washer.

The whole time, he’s still uncertain how to say goodbye to Celia.

How to talk to her.

While inserting quarters into his washing machine, he notices her walking in. Her hair is in a topknot; her flannel shirt is half-tucked into faded jeans; moccasin slippers are on her feet. She gives a sad smile as she pulls up a crappy old wooden stool, sits and just watches him at his washer.

“You got away?” he asks, setting the machine’s controls.

“I did.” Other than the attendant sorting clothes at a long counter, no one else is in the laundromat this Friday afternoon. Still Celia keeps her voice quiet. “Supposedly I’m buying stamps and mailing some bills at the post office.”

And Shane knows.

The post office is right across the parking lot—next to Scoop Shop.

So that’s Celia’s cover if anyone spots her out and about.

His machine starts filling with water. And he walks to Celia. Hell, ever since she walked in here? It’s all on her face that she knows—that this is goodbye.

That this time? They have no plans to see each other anytime soon .

It’s like he doesn’t even have to say the words he softly does now.

Because her face tells him she already knows all this, too.

But he says them, anyway. Words about how he would make plans to see her—but he can’t.

That it’s too complicated now. That he’ll be on the water. And his cottage rental’s up.

“And you can’t stay at my place,” Celia practically whispers.

“No.” Shane pulls up another rickety little stool and sits facing her. Their knees touch. He takes her hands in his. “It’s funny… how sometimes you don’t know that you had a lucky break… or a really fortunate turn in life.” He pauses and fights his own emotion. “Until it’s come to an end.”

“This feels like an end, Shane.”

“To me, too.”

Celia looks at him. For these two or three minutes, oh the God damn world spins without them. It’s just him and her sitting knee to knee in a dingy laundromat.

Him and her and sloshing washing machines and spinning dryers.

No one else.

Not the attendant.

Not a middle-aged man dropping off a sack of clothes to be cleaned and picked up later.

It’s just them.

Sitting stool to stool near the back of the laundromat.

Practically whispering.

Their words, fewer and fewer.

Their eyes not looking away from the other’s.

“It is an end, Celia. That’s why this is so hard.

It’s an end to something we had. Some beautiful bubble.

But—” Shane suddenly stops when she presses her hand to her mouth; when her eyes struggle against burning tears.

“Hey, hey, baby,” he murmurs. “Look at me.” He cradles her gorgeous face.

“It’s not the end of us . I need you in my life. ”

She nods while tears escape from her eyes. “So do I. But it’s hard,” she says as he leans in to kiss her. “So hard,” she manages in their kiss.

He kisses her briefly, but deeply, then pulls away.

Strokes wisps of her silky auburn hair fallen from her topknot.

“You’re right. It is hard. Walking away might actually be easier, right here, right now.

” He kisses her again, then whispers into her ear as he hugs her. “But I don’t do the easy things.”

***

Celia’s devastated.

Ten minutes later, when she’s standing outside the Ocean Star Inn’s side door, she’s wrecked. After Shane held her close, quelled her tears with a few quiet words, kissed her once more—she left.

Left him alone in the laundromat.

Left him to wait for his clothes to rinse and spin.

Left him to toss them into a dryer.

Left him with a thousand thoughts in his mind.

With a boatload of emotion, too.

And now? In the afternoon sunlight, standing right outside the inn’s side door?

Celia does it.

She pulls herself together.

Swallows.

Tucks strands of hair back into her topknot .

Presses a finger beneath her eyes.

Takes a quick, quick breath.

Erases her emotion. Her sadness.

Shakes it off.

Leaves it outside the door.

Well, now. Here’s a twist. Celia supposes that’s one thing she got from her mother—the ability to switch.

To turn off the pain and go on. Heather did it in a fraught moment in August Dove when a customer—when Shane—witnessed the morning.

Witnessed the mother-daughter reunion gone south.

Without missing one damn beat afterward, Heather shut off her emotion and was ready to assist her waiting customer.

Celia does the same.

Now.

Without missing a beat of her own, she puts on a different face. A different persona.

Opens that inn door and breezes into the dining room.

“Okay, Elsa. I’m back,” she easily says, looking at Elsa across the room at the built-in cupboard. Then Celia scrutinizes the berry garland draped from hooks across the top of it. “Looks good from here. But tug that loop there,” she adds, pointing. “Over on the left.”

***

Time marches on—and so does reality.

An hour or so later, here it is.

Shane drops his bag of cleaned and folded clothes on his bed in his rented cottage. His life here for the past two months? It was all temporary. Fleeting .

He always knew that it was, but it still bites just the same.

Reality.

There’s actually no reason for him to be here.

Yes, Celia’s here. But she’s not ready for marriage and a house and commitment and upheaval.

Not to mention, he has no work identity here, no career—hell, nothing to even offer her, really.

So for the time being, she and Aria belong in their safe, comfortable guest house a stone’s throw from Elsa.

Which is why Shane did attempt to end things with Celia on the stairs only three weeks ago. But after she then threw Jason’s good hammer into Long Island Sound and wouldn’t stand for breaking up, they worked through things.

They stayed together.

Funny, but in the laundromat this afternoon? It felt like that breakup did finally happen. That things quietly ended between them, and they both just let the other go.

No more words necessary.

So boxing up Aria’s crib feels especially sad now. Is he putting it away for good? It feels final this time.

He packs everything else. Folds her jersey sheets. Wraps Aria’s plush animal mobile. The nightlight. He’d bought it all almost two months ago with some scrap of hope.

So he’s saying goodbye to more than Celia. He’s saying goodbye to a little family he had for a couple of months.

He ultimately might not ever be a part of Aria’s life.

“Ach,” he grumbles—not liking any of this one damn bit.

He silently hauls the crib box to the living room then. Sets it near the door. And just like three weeks ago on the stairs with Celia, his same lousy doubts roll in again .

He has no job here.

No home here.

No prospects here.

No marriage.

None of that’s changed.

Finally, he goes to his own bedroom. With a knot in his throat, he packs up his last duffel for Maine.

He leaves out only a clean change of clothes for the morning.

Everything else—jeans, T-shirts, underwear, socks, a few sweaters—gets neatly folded and packed.

All that’s left atop his antique wooden dresser is what was here when he arrived: a candlestick lamp with a faded rattan shade and an old painted box filled with dusty seashells.

Time passes.

There are only his quiet noises in the cottage.

His opening and closing sticking dresser drawers.

His sliding aside empty hangers in the closet.

His fingers brushing through the salty seashells on his dresser.

It’s late afternoon and the sun’s sinking lower.

He can tell by the shadows growing longer in this musty cottage bedroom.

Unlacing his combat boots now, he leaves them on the bedside rag rug. Lies down on the bed, too. Closes his eyes for some time. Dozes.

When he wakes up, it’s darker outside the old paned windows. It’s getting late; almost time to head out for dinner. So he gets up, washes his face in the bathroom, changes his shirt, grabs his keys and waits in the living room for his ride.

Except for one more goodbye, his time’s up.