Stranger on the Shore (Mirabelle Harbor, Book 4) (25 page)

“Should I be worried?”

She laughed. “Probably. But what I’m going to suggest is actually something fairly innocuous.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. What Ellen considered to be innocent or harmless was likely different from my definition. Then again, it was still so rare for the two of us to be in sync on anything. The fact that we’d had “a moment” of sisterly bonding yesterday remained surprising to me. For some reason, though, I sensed I could trust her on this one.

“I’m listening,” I told her.

“I want you and Kathryn and I to have lunch together tomorrow. Just the three of us. Here at my hotel.”

“Are you feeling up to—?”

“Oh, yes. I’m feeling great,” she insisted. And, in fact, she did
sound
great. But a voice on the phone could be deceiving.

“What about the guys?” I asked.

“They can bond. Jared was looking for an excuse to go out deep-sea fishing for a few hours. He was hoping Sid might like to come along with him. Today, Jared and I are spending the day together. He’d like to keep an eye on me himself. But tomorrow, if I’m here with you and Kathryn, I think he’d be all right leaving me for a few hours. He’s got to head back to New Haven the day after that, and I’ll probably go home myself later this week, so I want to make the most of these last few days in Sarasota, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk with Kathryn and Sid about it, but it sounds like a lovely plan.” I lowered my voice. “About Jared, how did your talk with him go last night?”

“So far, so good,” she said cryptically. “But he and I have more to discuss today, so I’ll give you a full update tomorrow. Pretty sure I finally nailed the panic attack trigger, though.”

“That’s good news, right?”

Ellen hesitated. “Right.” Then, “I gotta go. My husband is insisting that we take a ‘very relaxing stroll’ along the beach. So, I’m going to be relaxed today if it effing kills me.” She sort of laughed. “Tell your daughter and her guy that we won’t take no for an answer. I want your butts over here by eleven thirty tomorrow morning. The hotel has a fab restaurant downstairs. I’ll order us up a feast and we can eat on the balcony. Deal?”

What else could I say? “Deal,” I replied.

And, thankfully, neither Kathryn nor Sid objected to Ellen’s proposal, and Sid even professed an interest in fishing with Jared. To be honest, I was looking forward to being with my sister and having her offer an attractive distraction from the tense mother-daughter-fiancé dynamic we had going on here.

I used the day to catch up on messages and phone calls I’d gotten from Olivia, from Joy, Lorelei, and Abby, and from Gil.

Joy kept insisting that they were making progress with the bracelets and that she knew I’d help more later, whenever I could, but that I was needed by my family for now.

It was hard to disagree with her on that.

While Kathryn and Sid were technically legal adults and semi-formally engaged (she didn’t have a ring yet, and I was still holding out hope that I could talk her out of the whole blasted thing), it wasn’t a comfortable relationship for me. Plus, I wasn’t sure I should leave them stranded at the bungalow on their first full day in Sarasota, since I had a car but they didn’t, and neither of them were familiar with the area.

When I called Gil, he backed up my intuition.

“How well do you even know this Sid guy?” he asked. “No, Marianna. You’re right to be there with them today, if only to watch to see how Sid treats your daughter. There’s nothing like having a visual when it comes to all of those nonverbal signals. It’s harder for a man to hide his genuine nature face to face.”

“That’s true for women, too,” I said. “It’ll be good for me to watch Kathryn’s behavior with Sid as well. She says she loves him, but it’s been impossible to get a clear read on her emotions, especially with her being so frustrated with me—her overbearing and overprotective mother.”

He laughed. “I have no direct experience with raising kids, but it’s gotta be a damn hard job. Just do the best you can and, please, give me a call later and let me know how it’s going.”

I agreed and clicked off. What I’d neglected to mention to Gil, though, was just how much it helped to have him as a sounding board. It’d been too long since I’d had that kind of support from a man in my life. Even longer since it had been a man with good judgment.

And I appreciated, too, that Gil didn’t try to step in and parent. He recognized that I was the one who needed to make the decisions, but he shared his perspective candidly and, even through the phone lines, I could feel he had my back.

In short, I’d known from the day I met him that he was a man of character, but I hadn’t realized just how much I valued his honesty and trustworthiness. How reliant I’d become on his integrity over the few weeks we’d known each other, and the confidence I placed in the way he reasoned. How I, in fact, trusted myself more when I was with him.

This reminded me that I needed to be diligent about putting those qualities at the forefront in my own life. In my own interactions with those close to me. Like my sister. And my daughter. I wanted to be just as honest with them as Gil was with me.

Which was why, after a full day and night of watching my daughter with her significant other and studying his every reaction to her—his body language whenever she spoke or moved or laughed, his facial expressions whenever he glanced her way or vice versa—I couldn’t help but reach the conclusion that, yes, he truly loved her. It was obvious in everything he did.

And Kathryn, in her more unguarded and less angry moments, projected a similar degree of affection toward Sid. Perhaps without as much mature conviction as I would’ve liked, but certainly her emotions hovered in the general vicinity of “love.” For all of Sid’s slacker-boy façade and the Millennial Generation vibe he radiated to the world at large, he’d been setting a good example for Kathryn. And much as I was loath to admit it, I might have been wrong about them as a couple.

I’d be interested to hear Ellen’s impressions on the subject after our lunch date. My sister had always had a strong bullshit detector. I imagined if I’d missed some important signal between my daughter and her young fiancé, Ellen might well be able to pick up on it.

The following day, I drove the three of us over to the Gulf Shores Resort & Spa, where Jared and Ellen were staying, just a few miles down from where we were on Siesta Key. Lovely as the bungalow was, though, this hotel was a whole new world. Gorgeous balcony with decorative iron railings and an unobstructed view of the beach. A spacious and expensively furnished suite with every imaginable amenity. Close proximity to the hospital and dozens of other services, but the kind of place its residents would be reluctant to leave unless absolutely necessary. I felt like I was walking into a brochure that Abby and the Floriday Excursions staff would show to affluent tourists who wanted the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” vacation package.

Jared and Sid grabbed a few sandwiches to go from a platter on the mahogany table, along with a selection of beverages and easy-to-pack desserts, to sustain them for a few hours on the boat. Then the two of them headed off on their fishing expedition, while Ellen, Kathryn, and I relocated to the balcony for a delectable lunch of maple and pecan-encrusted salmon, mashed sweet potatoes, grilled asparagus spears, and slices of Key Lime pie.

Even my daughter was in good spirits after that.

For the most part, Ellen was the one who kept the conversation flowing, and she appeared to be at her energetic best. It was stunning how much of a transformation had occurred in just a day and a half. I was dying to ask her about these conversations she’d been having with her husband and what she’d discovered about her panic attacks, but I knew my sister well. She was adapt at strategy, and she was biding her time on the subject for some reason.

“I like this young man of yours,” Ellen said to Kathryn. “Can’t say he’s a trendsetter as far as metro fashion... ” she joked, and even my daughter laughed at that. “But just these couple of times that I’ve talked with Sid, he seems very respectful of you and goodhearted.”

“Thanks.” Kathryn shot an arch look at me. “Sid’s awesome. I think even Mom is starting to like him.”

I acknowledged this to be true. Because it was. But I was surprised by the next words my daughter said.

“Yeah, I know the whole engagement thing had to be kind of a shock,” she said. “Especially knowing your history with Dad.” She paused. “But Sid’s really been there for me this year. We were friends first. We met in a lit class my first semester and just kept running into each other around campus.” She glanced over at me. “I didn’t tell you, Mom, but I actually dated a few guys during the year before Sid and I started going out seriously. He’s the only one that seemed like a man, not a boy.”

I blinked back a little emotion at these words. It was exactly what I’d felt about Gil versus most other guys I’d met, including, of course, my ex-husband.

So, I nodded. “I know what you mean. And, yes, Sid definitely seems more mature than most college kids his age.”

This earned me a small smile. “He was especially great after you’d told me about what Dad really did with my gold locket. He helped me understand your point of view better and why you needed to draw the line with Dad’s behavior.”

“Wait. Are you talking about the locket Jared and I gave you for your twelfth birthday?” Ellen asked.

Kathryn nodded reluctantly. “It’s a long story, Aunt Ellen, and I’m sorry. I never told you about it because I felt so guilty. For years, I thought I’d lost it, but Mom explained a few weeks ago that this wasn’t exactly what happened.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What happened?”

So, between the two of us, Kathryn and I told her about how Donny had pawned it. Ellen already knew about dozens of incidents of Donny’s greed and his many attempts to badger me into giving him more money, but this story made her particularly livid.

To her credit, though, she didn’t go off on a rant about “that bastard” in front of Kathryn, the way she had with me so many times in the past. She did, however, regard us both with a deep sympathy, as if some of the pain and tension and fear that my daughter and I shared were, somehow, more understandable now.

“You two are stronger and more resilient than even I realized,” Ellen whispered to us. Then, to her niece, she added, “You’re an incredible young woman, Kathryn, and you’re sharpening your judgment and strengthening your perceptiveness all the time. I’m glad you have someone like Sid on your side. But you also have a tremendous gift in having a mother like yours. She really cares about you. She really listens to you. I know for a fact—because your mother and I grew up with the same parents—that we didn’t have that same gift. Our mother was... well, not exactly the support system either of us needed as teens.” She glanced over at me, reached across the table, and squeezed my hand. “Maybe you can understand now why your mom is a little more cautious sometimes than you might like. Why she tries so hard to have calm conversations with you, even when she’s worried about something you’re doing. She’s trying to offer you the perspective of her experience, which was hard-earned, and give you a gift she’d had to work to attain all by herself.”

“Not all by myself, Ellen,” I said. “You’ve always been there for me. Even when I didn’t think I needed your help.”

My daughter turned to face me—her eyes bright with a sheen of tears—and she grabbed my other hand and then reached for her aunt’s hand, too, so that all three of us were connected around the table. A live family circuit, joined by love.

“I
am
lucky,” Kathryn whispered. “And I love you both. Thank you.”

The three of us had dried our tears and were laughing again by the time Jared and Sid returned, slightly sunburned, exuberant, and in possession of a bunch of fish pictures on their iPhones, although, thankfully, they didn’t return with the actual fish—it was a catch-n-release experience. After they shared their favorite photos with us, my daughter joined her uncle and her fiancé (it was getting
slightly
easier to think of him that way) inside the hotel room, while Ellen and I remained on the balcony.

I observed Ellen watching my daughter as she walked away. It was a peculiar look. Something different. A fierce love, yes, but also an odd brittleness. I couldn’t figure out the reason for it, but it appeared to be some strange mixture of longing, adoration, and fear, and it had frozen on my sister’s face like the expression on a porcelain doll.

“What is it?” I asked her.

Ellen met my gaze, paused, and then started babbling on a tangent that seemed completely unrelated to her facial expression from the moment before. At least that was what I thought at first.

“You know Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s
Gift from the Sea
?” she asked me. “I have a copy of it on the shelf at the bungalow.”

I said I’d seen it. That I’d flipped through it and read several passages.

“Good, good. You should read it all. In fact, you should take that copy with you. It’s a beautiful book. So many apt analogies and reflections. Like the way different sea creatures inhabit different kinds of shells, much like we do with our homes. And how a shell covering, which might be perfect for certain creatures during one period in their lives, can grow too small and they need to relocate. Or how the sea itself can help us to find joy in the now. It can teach us patience, faith, simplicity, openness—”

“Where are you going with this, Ellen?”

She gulped down half a glass of water. “I’ve been struggling to be open to what life is trying to teach me, Sis. And I’ve been trying to find ‘joy in the now,’ which isn’t exactly my nature. But lately I’ve come to realize that I’d outgrown a mental house—one I’d lived in for a long, long time. A part of my body must’ve realized it before my mind did, which was why I think I was having panic attacks.”

I nodded at her, encouraging her to continue.

“I know for years you and I have lived very different lives. I know for a lot of that time you probably thought I had it easier. Maybe, in some ways, that was true. But the deeper truth, Marianna, was that I was jealous of you, too. You might’ve had a lousy first husband, but you also had a beautiful child, who’s grown into a remarkable young woman.” She inhaled, then exhaled. “And I know your relationship with Kathryn hasn’t always been smooth, but I’ve been scared out of my mind that I’ll never get to do what you’ve done. To be a mother.”