Sea Glass Sunrise (32 page)

Epilogue

“I’ve got five dollars that says she’ll chicken out as soon as that thing goes faster than a slow limp.”

“That thing is a Tennessee Walker. Who will be quite beautiful again one day. Calder’s doing a good job with her,” Alex said.

Kerry climbed up and sat on the paddock fence next to Alex, and looked at where Fiona stood next to them, elbows resting on the top of the fence, her feet propped up on the bottom rail. “I’ll take that five and see you twenty.”

Fiona eyed Kerry, then looked at their eldest sister, who was presently taking a very slow stroll around the edge of the paddock on said Tennessee Walker. “Really? Why? She looks okay now,” she said, well aware she’d just been the one doubting that very thing. “Maybe she’ll be awesome.”

Kerry snorted. “Do you see the way she’s holding those reins? And she cannot sit a saddle. Her tight ass will not ever let that happen. She is just not made for this. Poor Calder.”

“I don’t know,” Alex MacFarland McCrae said. “A month ago she was scared to even walk through the barn when the horses were safely in their stalls. And look at her now.” She grinned at Kerry. “I give her even money.”

Kerry hooted and looked triumphantly at Fiona. “Ha!”

Fiona scowled and kept her attention on Hannah, feeling a rush of pride that their sister was out there, conquering one of her fears. Fiona needed to find a better way to tap into that conquering spirit. “Shouldn’t you be on a plane, train, or slow mule to China or something by now?” she groused to Kerry. How was it that Kerry was still in the Cove and it was almost August? It was a mystery to everyone except Kerry, who, for the time being, was helping Fergus run the Rusty Puffin and seemingly not in any big hurry to depart on her next worldly adventure.

Privately, Fiona thought that was a good thing. Lord knew Uncle Gus was loving it, and even she had to admit it was nice having her sister back where they at least knew she wasn’t in danger of being eaten by cannibals or anything.

The news that Hannah was staying in the Cove for good had been met with happy cheers by everyone, although, technically, she was really staying in Calais. But she was back in Maine, and that’s what mattered. Fiona felt like her family was coming full circle, back to where they were meant to be.

That said, the news that Fiona was going to shut down her business in Manhattan and return to the nest as well? Yeah, well, only Hannah knew about that. For now. In fact, she’d only come back home this weekend to scope out a place to launch the new business idea she’d been working on since returning to New York after the wedding.

Her gaze went back to Hannah, and a smile curved her lips as her eyes dropped to the sun glinting off the rock her oldest sister was sporting on her engagement ring finger. There was going to be another McCrae wedding.

“Yeah,” she murmured under her breath, trying not to let herself feel overwhelmed by everything that was going to have to happen between now and then to make that a reality. “Good luck with that.”

Kerry’s gasp made Fiona look back into the ring. Under the close tutelage of Calder, who was riding behind her on his own mare, Vixen, Hannah had increased her speed to a slow trot.

Alex put her fingers in her mouth and whistled, then frowned when Kerry ripped her fingers out of her mouth. “What?”

“You’ll spook the horse.”

“Oh!” She looked immediately worried. “Sorry!” she called out. “What do I know?” she said to Kerry. “I fix lighthouses.”

“So I guess that means you’re next,” Kerry said, nodding to the ring.

When Alex, who routinely hung off the side of said lighthouses, blanched at the idea of being on horseback, Kerry hooted.

“You’re so doomed right now,” Fiona said, then sighed happily and rested her chin on her folded arms. “Have I mentioned how glad I am to have another sister?”

It was all going to be okay. Coming home for good was the best decision she’d ever made.

Here goes nothing!
She smiled.
And here comes everything.

 

I’m a big fan of the untraditional wedding cake (mine was red velvet, which was scandalous back in the day!) and in this story, Logan and Alex celebrate their nuptials with a Boston cream pie cake. I might have been projecting my own wedding-cake rebelliousness when I decided on Alex’s cake, but I know I would love to find a stunning stacked and glazed Boston cream pie sitting on the table at a wedding reception, wouldn’t you? Mmm, I want a slice right now!

Boston cream pie first showed up at the Parker House Hotel in 1856, the creation of Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian. It has since been declared the state cake of Massachusetts, and has long been a New England favorite. It’s called a pie because pie pans were used in its original creation—those were more plentiful in those days than single-layer cake pans—but it’s actually a luscious, rich layered cake, sliced in the manner of a traditional pie.

Below is my version of Boston cream pie—the measurements listed make a regular-sized cake—which is a recipe cobbled together from my grandmother’s yellow cake recipe, a family-favorite custard cream filling recipe, and my own chocolate ganache glaze recipe. Yes, it’s a triple-threat cake and that means three times the yum! (See final notes on wedding cake tips!)

Warning! A little advance planning is in order, as the cake has to cool completely before it’s sliced and filled with custard, and topped with that warm, rich ganache glaze. But the real warning should be to keep a fork handy! Rich, delicious, sinful . . . enjoy!

NOTE:
Boston cream pie is often made by slicing a single nine-inch round cake in half horizontally to make two, thinner cake layers, with the custard then spread in between. The easier version is to bake two full nine-inch cakes and layer them as you would a regular layer cake, with the custard filling in between the cake layers. This is the recipe you will find below. Mostly I love it because, more cake!

 

 

 

 

If you’re interested in making this a wedding cake, you have several alternatives, depending on the number of guests who will be indulging. For a small wedding, if you want something a little more impressive, you can make four nine-inch cakes and stack the cake taller, creating a four layer, with cream between three layers, then serve chilled, so the cake can be sliced into thinner sliver portions. For a larger gathering, you can tier the cake using plastic bases and posts/columns available at most craft stores to stack the cake recipe above into multiple sections (with columns in between). Or you can go the fun route and make individual-serving-sized Boston cream cupcakes and create your own tiered cupcake wedding cake display. (I’ve done this for a variety of occasions and it’s always a big hit!) You can also bring this recipe to your wedding planner/baker, who would have industrial-size round pans for an even wider range of possibilities!

Happy baking! Enjoy!

Don’t miss the next heartwarming story
in Donna Kauffman’s
Brides of Blueberry Cove series,

 

Snowflake Bay
,

 

coming this October!

 

 

 

Interior designer Fiona McCrae has left fast-paced Manhattan to move back home to peaceful Blueberry Cove. But she’s barely arrived before she’s hooked into planning her big sister Hannah’s Christmas wedding—in
less than seven weeks
. The last thing she needs is for her first love, Ben Campbell, to return to neighboring Snowflake Bay . . .

 

As kids, Fiona was the bratty little sister Ben mercilessly teased—while pining after Hannah. But Fi never once thought of Ben like a brother. And that hasn’t changed. Except Fi is all grown up. Will Ben notice her now? More importantly, with her life in a jumble, should he? Or might the romance of the occasion, the spirit of the season, and the gifts of time ignite a long-held flame for many Christmases to come . . .

 

 

 

 

There should be a rulebook, she decided. Or at the very least, a tastefully done pamphlet.
The Bridesmaid Rules
. Fiona McCrae zipped along the Cove road, too distracted to even glance across Pelican Bay at the lighthouse perched majestically out on the tip of Pelican Point.
Too much to do. Too much to plan.
What on earth had she been thinking, taking this on?

“A list of basic, common-sense rules,” she said, warming to the subject as she made the turn toward the Point. She’d have been quite happy to draw up a list, if anyone asked. She could think of a half dozen without even trying.

Bridesmaid Rule No. 1: No one should have to be a bridesmaid twice in one year.
“Especially if said bridesmaid has yet to become a bride herself.” She smiled wryly. “And the single ladies crowd goes wild.” She made the universal hordes-cheering sound, and held on to her amused smile as she wove her way ever closer to home base.
Hmm. Bridesmaid Rule No. 2 . . .
“No bridesmaid should ever be expected, asked, or guilted into also filling the role of wedding planner.” Actually, that should probably be Rule No. 1.

If there were such a rulebook, being a bridesmaid twice in six months
and
the planner for both weddings would be in serious breach of the bridesmaid code. On top of that, this time she was also the maid of honor. And she
had
been honored when her older sister had asked her to play that most special role in her big day. She’d done the big, sloppy cry, in fact. They both had. And there hadn’t even been adult beverages involved.

At the time, Fiona had blamed still being joy-buzzed from watching her big brother tie the knot barely three months earlier. And now, suddenly—too suddenly to her mind—it was Hannah’s turn to walk down the aisle.

Weddings were a happy thing. A thing she should be thrilled about. Downright joyful. So what if her family was falling in love all around her while her own life was falling apart?

Okay, so maybe
falling apart
was being a bit melodramatic. Except selling off her award-winning interior design business in Manhattan to move, lock, stock, and fabric sample binders, back to her hometown of Blueberry Cove, Maine—all without exactly firming up her new business model—pretty much felt exactly like that. She still couldn’t believe she’d really made the leap, taken the plunge. “Jumped off the cliff,” she added as she pulled in between her sister-in-law Alex’s ancient truck and the shiny red pickup parked in the small lot outside her childhood home.

Fiona gasped as she cracked the car door open and the icy coastal breeze snatched her breath away. She wedged her booted foot out first to keep the door propped open, trying not to bang it into the truck as she climbed out, lugging the heavy satchel behind her. It was filled with an assortment of samples, swatches, wedding books, and magazines she’d carefully selected, along with a stack of planners she’d already begun assembling, the combined weight of which felt as if she’d packed up the proverbial kitchen sink.

She edged her way out between the vehicles, but didn’t give the truck much notice otherwise, assuming it belonged to yet another of Alex’s long list of subcontractors. The renovation work on the old lightkeeper’s cottage was the last piece of the Pelican Point restoration project that Alex had been working on for close to two years now. Fiona did glance out at the Point then and took a moment to admire the beautifully restored stack of two-hundred-year-old stone and steel that was the McCrae family lighthouse. But only a moment.

No time for dawdling! There’s a wedding to plan!
“In seven freaking weeks,” she muttered under her breath.
Seriously. There should be rules
. Fiona hauled the oversized canvas tote up higher onto her shoulder and dipped her chin down, tucking it into the scarf she’d wrapped repeatedly around her neck. It was a vain attempt to keep the wind that clipped relentlessly over the rocky promontory from whipping her cheeks to an even more chapped pink than they already were. In all of her daydreaming about moving back home to the Cove, how was it she’d managed to so utterly forget what the cold weather did to her fair skin?

She needed to get a tube of rehydrating cream to keep in her purse. And one for her car. And every other bag she carried. If she applied it a dozen times a day, she might have a slim chance of not resembling a cherry-cheeked elf at her sister’s December wedding. And that was another thing.
Who gets married at Christmas? Who wants to have their wedding anniversary compete with Santa?

“More to the point, who makes the big decision to get married at Christmas, when it’s already only two freaking weeks to Thanksgiving?” She’d tucked her chin so far down behind the heavily wrapped scarf that speaking out loud caused the wool fibers to laminate themselves to her heavily balmed lips.
Lovely. Just lovely. Bridesmaid Rule No. 3: It has to be at least above freezing to have a wedding.
And while she was at it,
No. 4: There should be at least a six-month minimum wedding planning window. Better yet, nine. Hell, make it a year.
“But seven weeks from saying yes to saying I do? Insanity.” She spluttered at the wool fibers now sticking to her teeth and tongue, too, as she clambered up the wide, stone steps.

It wasn’t sour grapes, either. These were salient, perfectly rational points, all of which Fiona planned to put forth to her sister. And she would. Just as soon as she divested herself of the luggage-sized satchel she was grappling with, and scraped the scarf off her face. She’d be completely nonconfrontational, of course. She’d merely explain, in a calm, rational, don’t-piss-off-the-starry-eyed-bride manner, that it would make so much more sense to have a lovely spring wedding. Coastal Maine was beautiful in spring. Well, if you overlooked the mud that resulted from all the snow melting. Followed by all the heavy seasonal rains. Not to mention the occasional crippling late snowstorm. Okay, so maybe she’d go with the nine-month minimum wedding planning rule after all. All the better, really. A summer wedding would be perfect. Just as it had been for Logan and Alex.

Plotting how she’d open the delicate-but-has-to-happen conversation, she banged her way to the side door off the wraparound porch hugging the gabled, shake-shingled house that had been home to generations of McCraes. Surely she could make Hannah see reason. “Knock, knock!” she called out as she let herself in. She shoved her body and the tote into the small mudroom, then heard a loud
thump
overhead, mixed with muffled voices, followed by laughter.

“Alex?” she shouted through the scarf, which was still half draped over the lower part of her face as she tried to maneuver herself around to reach for the door that led to the kitchen. There was another
thump
overhead and more laughter. Good. She’d recruit Alex into change-the-date mission. Strength in numbers.

“You better not be upstairs having crazy, naked newlywed sex with my brother,” she called out as she finally managed to nudge the kitchen door open. Grunting, she pushed harder when she and her bag got wedged in the narrower kitchen doorway. “Because that is an image I do not need to have burned into my corneas today.”

She should have put her satchel down and taken off her scarf and coat in the mudroom before trying to jam herself inside.
Me? Plan ahead? Why start now?
She made one last determined push, sucking in air, as if it would somehow make even the satchel thinner, and finally popped through the door like a parka-clad spitball. She made a loud
oof
sound as the center work island broke her staggering trajectory. “Hannah?” she half shouted, half wheezed, as she slumped over the canvas tote she’d slung onto the new marble countertop before it slung her back onto her ass.

She needed to start working out again. All right, ever. And she would. That was part of why she’d come home after all. Okay, so perhaps not specifically to get into shape, but at the slower pace of life that was Blueberry Cove, surely she would have time for things like jogging and yoga.

Things she also had sworn she’d do when she’d moved to the big city, she reminded herself, recalling her gilded visions of getting all lithe and lean on her daily runs through Central Park, topped only by the fabulous friendships she’d surely make with her newfound fellow artist gal pals in her thrice-weekly yoga classes in the Village. Yeah, somehow those items had never made their way onto her daily agenda.

Of course, she was older now, wiser, with her priorities clearly straight, which was proven by her recent exit from a stressed-out city piled high with even more toxic clientele, returning to her healthy, serene, simple-life roots. She tried to feel cheery at the thought of shopping for a yoga mat and cute running shoes.

Then again, she thought, it was winter. And in Maine that meant it was dark. A lot. And pretty damn cold. Jogging in the cold and dark seemed unwise. In fact, it seemed wrong, really, to have to work out like that at all in the winter. Ask any Mainer and they’d tell you that surviving a New England winter was pretty much the equivalent of participating in a full-contact sport in and of itself.
Yeah.
So, technically, she was already working out. She would be like a—a boxer, punching her way through a tough coastal winter, while simultaneously focusing her creative mind and spirit on plotting out the best way to apply her well-honed design skills to suit the needs of the sure-to-be sweeter, kinder, gentler clientele she’d find in the Cove.

Come spring, she’d be all bulletproof from winterizing herself, her new business model would be successfully created and implemented, and she would happily jog herself skinny, all while feeding her inner creative soul in a local yoga class. When you looked at it that way, it was all simply part of a bigger training regimen, really.

Feeling somewhat better about herself now, if not technically athletic, she disentangled herself from the satchel strap, then began mentally rehearsing a summer-weddings-are-so-beautiful speech while she looked around for something to scrape the wool scarf out of her mouth. Deciding to get herself unwrapped first, she fished out the end of the scarf. She could already feel her fair skin chapping even as she stood there with the warmth of the kitchen creating something of a sting in her thawing cheeks. The struggle with the scarf started almost immediately. It was as if her curls had begun actively weaving themselves into the knitting, becoming one with every loop and knot.

So, she was more wrestling with the scarf than unwrapping it, really, swearing somewhat creatively, possibly a wee bit passionately even, by the time a deep male voice that was quite decidedly not her big brother’s baritone spoke from far too close behind her.

“I’ve got bolt cutters in my truck. We could just cut you out.”

Fiona froze. Stock still. And not because of anything having to do with the coastal winter weather or being out of shape. She wasn’t breathing hard. In fact, she might never draw breath again. It had been, what, ten years? Longer. She’d lost track.
Or, more truthfully, you’ve blocked it from your memory banks.
Blocked it back when the owner of that voice left Blueberry Cove for college in Boston, excited to get started on fulfilling his dreams—none of which included coming back to his hometown. At the time, that had seemed the only way she’d ever survive not having him in her daily orbit.

She felt his big, broad palms cup her shoulders, turning her slowly around to face him, and stupidly squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would change this sudden new reality. All it did was delay the inevitable.

“Fireplug?” he said, as the top half of her face became visible when he pushed the curls from her forehead and the scarf from where it was now haphazardly draped diagonally across her face. There was sincere surprise in his voice. “Is that you inside all that sheep’s clothing?”

Fireplug.
All of the air came back into her lungs in one big, sucking gasp. Emphasis on the sucking. Her cheeks burned again, only the sting of remembered humiliation, coupled with the memories of her pathetic, unrequited crush on her older sister’s first serious boyfriend, far, far outstripped anything a Maine winter could do to her fair skin.

They were both many years older now, she reminded herself, and that meant wiser as well. Although she didn’t feel wiser at the moment. At the moment, she felt instantly thirteen again, pining after a guy who’d barely noticed her, and when he did, saw her as nothing more than the nuisance kid sister of the girl he was trying to impress.