Page 47 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Chris

O nce again I drive without really knowing where I’m going until I arrive. It’s New Year’s Eve, and everyone’s got their own plans. But there’s one place I remember. A place I’ve never been.

When I pull off the winding road onto a long driveway at the address texted to me half a year ago, I almost cry.

The cottage is probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, even in the still low-level drizzle.

Actually, maybe it’s because of the bad weather.

Woodsmoke puffs out of the brick chimney, into the nearby trees.

The porch that wraps around the cozy red farmhouse is enclosed in glass, and I can just see the tops of an overstuffed couch layered in blankets next to the front door.

I park in the gravel driveway, next to a small field with a barn at the opposite end. As I get out, a donkey watches me balefully with its big brown doe eyes.

Just as I’m wondering if I made a mistake in coming here without notice, the front door opens.

“Chris!” Dolly exclaims, looking genuinely delighted to see me. She’s wearing an oversized sweater and leggings rather than her usual fifties-inspired wardrobe. More surprisingly, there’s a baby on her hip. A baby I know and love—Mac and Shelby’s one-year-old, Jess.

“Hey!” I say, trying to look bright and cheery as I head up the walkway, when really, I’m on the verge of an absolute meltdown.

“I didn’t know you babysat for Mac and Shelby.”

“Oh, I don’t. But when Shelby told me they’d been invited to a party in the city and that Nate was doing his own thing so couldn’t help out, I offered.

” Nate is Mac’s son, who, at twenty, has just recently moved out.

According to Mac and Shelby, he still comes back all the time, saying he’s just there to hang out with his baby sister.

I nod, my eyes brimming.

“Oh, honey,” she says, wrapping me in a hug with baby Jess.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice wobbly. “I didn’t know where else to go. I remember you saying you’d be home for New Year’s, but I should have known you’d be busy.”

“Busy? Are you kidding me? This is such a welcome surprise!”

When she lets me go, Jess flaps her arms, babbling excitedly. But Dolly’s expression is soft and compassionate, and it’s no match for my emotional state. So even though I’m not the baby in this little threesome, I’m the one who bursts into tears .

An hour later, after helping put dinner together in the kitchen, Jess is fed, babbling, and clapping her hands in bubbly water as the two of us sit in Dolly’s cozy bathroom.

It’s such an old house that the tub is in a separate room from the toilet.

But that means there’s space in here for a chair, which Dolly insisted I sit in while she perches on the stool next to the tub.

“Ba-bows!” Jess exclaims.

“Yes, sweetheart. Bubbles!” Dolly laughs. “My goodness, she is so sweet,” she says to me.

My eyes grow wet for the thousandth time since I got here. “She has so many words now. I haven’t seen much of her these past couple of months. Or her parents.”

“You’ve been busy,” Dolly says as I make the rubber ducky swim for Jess.

Jess takes the toy from me, and I sit back in my chair.

“So,” Dolly says softly. “You want to talk about it?”

Tears blur my vision. Jess moves the duck around, making vrooming sounds.

“I fell in love with him, Dolly,” I whisper. “Even though I knew this was going to happen. I went and did it anyway.”

Dolly smiles, her expression understanding. And filled with sadness too. “Funny how love works. Never seems to wait for a convenient time.”

She looks so kind, so caring, that I burst into tears again.

Then, through slobbering sobs, I tell her the whole thing.

From the beginning, when I hated Hopper, or told myself I did, right through to now.

I leave nothing out. By the time I’m done, Dolly’s warmed up the water more than once, and Jess is starting to get cranky. It’s her bedtime.

“Do you believe him?” Dolly asks, reaching for a towel.

“Who, Hopper?”

“No, his father. About what he claims his son did. Hiring thugs and all that.”

I shake my head. “No. I mean, I don’t know.” Then I shake my head. Because I do know. “No. Hopper wouldn’t do that.” I’m sure of it, in my bones. “I’m sure he has an explanation that makes more sense than that. I just wish he’d told it to me directly.”

Dolly’s lips turn up in a sad smile as she shakes the towel out, reaching for Jess. “You know, I could always tell when Michael wasn’t telling me something.”

Michael was Dolly’s husband; Miles’s younger brother.

The brothers were from Redbeard, and I know Miles well enough from the coffee shop now.

But his younger brother Michael was still a good eight years older than me.

He was an adult even before I left town with my dad, and he died in the states, so I never knew him.

From the pictures around the house I’ve been looking at, Michael looks like a younger, leaner, smilier version of his older brother.

One who was head-over-heels in love with his wife.

I grab the mesh bag to put away the bath toys, needing to hear more, desperate for some Dolly wisdom.

Dolly laughs now, remembering. “When Michael was keeping something from me, he’d get this look on his face that was just blank. Like a little kid trying so hard to look casual. It was ridiculous. ”

Jess giggles as Dolly rubs her head with the towel.

“It used to bother me so much,” she says.

“I’d always grill him until he told me whatever it was, but it would turn into this big fight.

Then, one time, I could tell he was holding back, and I just didn’t have the energy to try to break him open like I usually did.

That’s when I realized what I was doing.

I was actually breaking him. Like trying to force a flower to bloom too early.

” She’s not laughing anymore, just holding Jess, wrapped in a towel, on her lap.

“The thing is, that time, he told me in the end. After that, I waited. Or I asked. And he always told me, either then or later. I think now that he just needed to tell me in his own time, in his own way.”

I think of Hopper and our deal. No bullshit.

He always said he’d give me a straight answer.

And I know that’s not an excuse for him not volunteering the information his dad lashed out with, but I didn’t ask him directly what was going on, did I?

I knew he was hanging on to something, that there was a weight on his shoulders, but I didn’t feel like it was my place.

“I’d give anything to have Michael try to protect me like that now,” Dolly says. “In fact, I’d give anything for him to be here lying his face off. Just to have him here at all.”

She laughs wetly.

“Sorry. Not about me.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Dolly. I never reached out to you. I thought you were happier out here on your own, that you didn’t need a friend. But I see how wrong I was now.”

Dolly smiles, kissing Jess on the cheek.

“It’s all right. I really am happy as I can be, all things considered.

I’ve got my girls—the chickens, I mean.” She laughs.

“And Lulu the donkey. I love my little house and doing my crafts and my homemade everything. I’m a little lonely sometimes, but that’s no one’s problem but mine. ”

It’s then I realize Dolly, unlike Hopper and me, really is alone.

Her family’s a thousand miles away, in a different country.

And being more of a homebody, everyone assumes she’d rather be alone, just like I did.

I may not have any blood relatives, but my friends are my family.

Hopper’s got his team. And I know he could make friends easily if he let people in, which, since I’ve known him, I think he’s been doing more of.

Maybe some small part of that was my doing—showing him he’s not the asshole everyone makes him out to be. But mostly it’s him doing the work.

If I let him, he’d have me too. We could make our own family.

I shove that thought away for the moment. It’s too huge.

Dolly gets up, and we head to her room to get Jess ready for bed. I ask Dolly to tell me a story about Michael, and she happily does. She tells me about how they met, when he fell off a horse at her family’s farm.

I don’t know how Michael died. Just that Dolly was so heartbroken she said she couldn’t stand to stay where they’d lived together.

She moved up here to open the business he’d just bought with his older brother.

It had been his dream, and he’d just started putting the wheels in motion for them to move back and launch it when he passed .

“It feels good seeing Michael’s dream play out in real life,” Dolly says. “He always thought his brother hung the moon.”

“I’m sorry Miles isn’t easy to be around.”

Her eyes slant. “He’s just sad too. Anyway, I’m touched you came to me, honey. I do love the way the coffee shop allows me to see my regulars. And I already considered you a friend.”

I’m so touched I don’t say anything, worried I’m going to cry yet again.

“All right, my little fishy,” Dolly says to Jess. “You ready for bed?”

When Jess hugs her, Dolly’s face is so happy, I feel my heart tug hard.

I say good night to baby Jess, squeezing her so hard she laughs uproariously.

When Dolly assures me yet again that I can’t help with bedtime, I settle in the living room to wait for her.

When she comes down a while later with the baby monitor, I’ve got a fire going and the champagne I picked up on ice.

“Okay,” I say. “When Lana’s back from her trip, we’re going to make it happen. Mac or Nate can watch Jessica, and we’ll have a girls’ night not at the coffee shop so we can be far away from Miles’s grouchy ass.”

Dolly looks genuinely happy. “I’d love that. Although it’d be fun to do it at the Bean Scene, on my shift. Make Miles even grouchier.”

We both laugh at that.