Beside a Dreamswept Sea Page 3

  “Does Miss Hattie see you too, then?”

  His heart plunged to his stomach like a hollow rock. “No. I’m afraid that would just make us both sad.”

  “You loved her.”

  Gazing at Suzie’s fuzzy pink slippers beside the bed, Tony looked up.

  “My daddy is sad.” Suzie shrugged. “He loved Meriam and she died.”

  Meriam. Not Mom, or Mother. Meriam. Was Suzie still that angry at her mother for dying? It would explain the nightmare—if it were a nightmare and not a premonition.

  Tony picked up Suzie’s brush then moved it to the dresser. Its hard bristles grating against his thumb felt good. He’d loved Hattie Stillman heart and soul for sixty years. “You’re very observant.”

  “I’m nine.”

  Despite feeling depressed to his toenails, he grinned, then turned to face Suzie. “Only you can see me—at least for a while.”

  She mulled that over, then cocked her head. “Why?”

  He leaned back against the dresser, crossed his legs at his ankles, then rubbed at his temple with his forefinger. “That’s kind of hard to answer.”

  “My friend Selena says difficult stuff is always hard to answer—she’s a grown-up—but I don’t think it is. I think you just have to say the truth. If you lie, stuff’s hard, but the truth is easy.”

  Out of the mouths of babes. “I agree. But sometimes people have the devil’s own time accepting the truth, especially if they don’t understand it.”

  Weak winter moonlight slanted in through the window and over Suzie’s face. Her lips weren’t blue and her teeth weren’t chattering anymore. He was glad to see it. He straightened up, walked over, then tucked the quilts up under her chin. “And on that fine note, I think it’s time for you to go to sleep.”

  Fear slammed through her, made her pale cheeks pasty white. “I—I don’t want to sleep.”

  When she slept, she dreamed. A tender knot hitched in his chest. Being alone in the dreams frightened her. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Suzie. I’m here to help you now, and you won’t be alone in any more nightmares—not at Seascape.”

  She frowned up at him. “I was.”

  “But you won’t be anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’m going to be with you. I didn’t know enough about your dream before, but now I do.” He debated, then went on. “Seascape is a healing house. That’s why you’re here. Your dad and Jeremy and Lyssie, too.”

  “Seascape is magic,” Suzie said with the authority only a nine-year-old can muster. “Aunt Maggie said so, and Jimmy told me, too. But I didn’t think they meant it really was magic, but now I think it must be.”

  She wanted to believe, yet, as with the promises, she feared being disappointed. “Who’s Jimmy?”

  She reached down for a little yellow flowered quilt. One not quite big enough for a bed, but perfect for dragging on the floor behind tiny feet and cuddling, one clearly made by Hattie. Tony recognized her stitching, and the yellow carnation she’d appliquéd on its corner.

  Suzie tugged it close. “Jimmy Goodson. Don’t you know him? Miss Hattie says Jimmy’s the bestest mechanic in the whole world, and Daddy says Jimmy’s kind of like Miss Hattie’s son. I helped him plant a yellow tea rose bush in the garden today. He showed me how to not cut my foot with the shovel.”

  “Ah, I see. I wasn’t sure if you meant a Jimmy from home or from here.” Tony smiled. So the bulletin board bets on Seascape Inn’s special guests continued down at the Blue Moon Cafe, Jimmy continued to win them, and he had indeed bought Hattie the yellow tea rose bush with his winnings on the John and Bess Mystic bet, just as he’d planned. “Well, a girl nine, I would say, surely does need to know how to use a shovel.”

  “Uh-huh.” More relaxed now, Suzie’s eyelids grew heavy. “Do you think Seascape is magic?”

  “In a way, I suppose it is.”

  “Daddy took me and Jeremy and Lyssie to the Blue Moon Cafe for ice cream and I asked Miss Lucy, the lady who works there, and she said Seascape is magic, too. She said it’s a place where people come to heal broken hearts or spirits or dreams because the lady who built it loved everybody so much, and love fixes broken stuff.”

  Tony’s mother, Cecelia Freeport. A healer, she had loved well. And, yes, far stronger than death, love lingers. His very presence here proved that. “Lucy told you all this?” Tony rubbed at his neck. A born romantic, Lucy usually just went on and on about the legend, or tried to draw others into her family debate on whether angels were spiritual beings or humans passed on. Likely she’d spared Suzie both because of her tender age.

  Suzie nodded.

  “If Lucy Baker said so, then I guess it must be true.”

  “That’s what Mr. Baker said. He said Miss Lucy can’t abide lying.” Suzie blinked slowly as if puzzling something out. “I’m not sure what ‘abide’ means but I guess it’s that she doesn’t like lying. No grown-ups do. Do you know Mr. Baker? He’s got a gold ring that looks like a lump. I asked what it was and he said a nugget. I’m not sure what that means, either, but it’s pretty.”

  A scrape on the floor out in the hallway claimed Tony’s attention. Bryce had awakened. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. You need to rest.” Tony drifted his hand down over her face. “Sleep, little one.”

  She clenched her jaw to resist, but by the time his fingertips touched her chin, her expression had gone lax and she slept peacefully.

  Tony slipped into the hallway with a lengthy list of questions and too few answers, then tapped into Bryce’s mind. Generally men weren’t as sensitive as women to the intrusion. More often than not, they thought Tony’s comments or suggestions were their own consciences. But this time Tony’s invasion wasn’t to guide, it was to explore. Why was Suzie having this dream? Why was it always the same—her falling out of the boat, then drowning? And Bryce had been coping, so why now was he seemingly at wit’s end?

  Wading through Bryce’s thoughts, Tony sensed intense frustration. Futility. Feelings of failure ran rampant through the man. He loved his children—that emotion burned deeper and stronger than all the others combined—and he wanted the best for them.

  Tony opened himself further to the man’s pain, to his longings and desires. And, staggering from the intensity of Bryce’s inner conflicts and feelings, Tony concluded one simple truth: Bryce Richards believed heart and soul what he most needed was a mother for his children.

  Tony agreed.

  And disagreed.

  Suzie, Jeremy, and Alyssa did need a mother—a special one who’d love them unconditionally. But, immersed in focusing on his children, Bryce didn’t realize he was also in dire need. Nor did he seem likely to realize it anytime soon. Meriam had been dead for two years, yet he still loved her as if she were alive—or thought he did.

  Tony sighed. The man had yet to face some hard truths about their relationship. And those realizations, Tony well knew, wouldn’t come easily. Learning life’s lessons rarely did. But he and Hattie would do all they could to make the challenge easier.

  A woman began crying.

  Deep inside his own mind, Tony heard her clearly. Yet all the leaf-peepers had gone home. Bryce, his children, and Mrs. Wiggins were the only guests at the inn. Perplexed, Tony let his thoughts drift from Bryce toward the distant sound.

  The vision hazy at first, he focused on a woman driving a rental car, a white Chevrolet Caprice. She was pretty, petite and blond, and crying. Not deep, racking sobs. Silent tears. Ones that sprang from a wound so deep inside her, just looking at her was painful. She was on a highway—Tony scanned the area—near Bangor. The map on the seat beside her had a snaky pink-highlighted path drawn to Nova Scotia—from New Orleans.

  Bryce and the children were from New Orleans.

  Tony tapped into her thoughts. Though scattered enough to make him dizzy, he soon pieced together that she was recently divorced and mourning someone. Not her ex-husband. Someone important to her, though. A yellow carnation was pinned to
a floppy hat that lay on the passenger’s seat beside her and, for some inexplicable reason, a phrase ran through her mind time and again: She was the sunshine of our home.

  It seemed associated to someone named Mary Beth. So close to the name of Tony’s own deceased sister, Mary Elizabeth. Was this Mary Beth the woman’s mother? The woman mourned?

  Mary Beth.

  The carnation.

  She was the sunshine of our home.

  The divorce . . .

  Criminy, this was Bryce’s mysterious Mrs. Tate! And she was here in Maine.

  To meet Bryce? Was that why Tony had heard her crying?

  As she drove, Tony checked the street signs. Sea Haven Highway. The road to Sea Haven Village from Bangor. Well, that clinched it. Where it’d lead, he hadn’t a clue—never before had he been lured like this to a potential special guest—but already he’d been warned these special guests were different, so he’d follow through and see to it that the mysterious Mrs. Tate would have the opportunity at least to come to the inn and meet Bryce Richards.

  Concentrating hard, Tony urged her to turn, mentally luring her to the inn as he had so many others—and he met with surprisingly strong resistance.

  Wonderful. Just wonderful. Not only mourning. Not only wounded from the divorce. Caline Tate faced even more challenges. Thanks to that ex-husband of hers—Bryce’s client, no less—the woman was sure to be reluctant if not in downright refusal mode. With Bryce’s realizations about his marriage to Meriam yet to come, and Cally’s own emotional demons to be confronted, this was going to be a doozy of a case. But, by gum, Tony and Hattie had faced challenges before, and Suzie was worth the extra effort. Bryce and Caline, and Jeremy and Lyssie, too. Tony just prayed his and Hattie’s guidance would be enough. Though they always tried their best to aid special guests, unfortunately, they weren’t always successful. And he couldn’t shake that image of himself from Suzie’s dream. The one of him as powerless.

  “Tony?” Suzie called out. “Tony, are you here?”

  The Doubting Thomasette had awakened. He paused a second longer, and glimpsed Caline Tate taking the turn to exit onto Sea Haven Highway. Ah, she had chosen to come to the inn. Good. Good. He could lure, encourage, but the special guests had to make their own decisions, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Tony?”

  Smiling, he returned to Suzie. “I’m here.”

  “I know Seascape has magic.” Sober-eyed, she nodded against her crisp white pillowslip.

  Just this moment, he was happy to agree. “Why is that, little one?”

  “Because I called and you came—and because I smell your carnation even though I see right through you.”

  His smile fell to a frown and his skin knitted between his brows. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know that.” She clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth and rolled her gaze ceilingward. “You came to help me.”

  Acceptance. Sweet acceptance. He savored it for a long moment and, when he answered her, his voice sounded unusually gruff. “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, then, what I want to know is if you can get us a new mom. Selena says . . .”

  Joy bubbled in his chest. God, but he loved children. A pang of longing, of wishing he and Hattie had had the chance to have their own, slid through him. He shunned it. Their situation wasn’t perfect, but at least he was here with his beloved—more or less. “Who’s Selena?” Suzie had mentioned her earlier.

  “My grown-up friend. Uncle John’s little sister. Do you know John Mystic and my aunt, Bess?”

  “Yes, I do.” Boy, had those special guests given Tony a run for his money. They’d narrowly escaped divorce. He and Hattie had been thrilled with the outcome of that case.

  “Selena’s old. At least twenty-five—maybe more.”

  Tony repressed a smile by the skin of his teeth. “Twenty-five. Well, that’s old, all right. So what does Selena say?”

  “My dad says time makes things better. My doctor does, too. We talk and talk every week but I still keep having the dreams, anyway. That’s how I know time won’t work. They’re not lying though, just wrong.” Suzie fidgeted. The covers under and over her crinkled. “But Selena says the only way to get better is to get and keep both oars in the water. I think she’s right. If I can get Jeremy and Lyssie a new mom who’ll love them, then maybe that’ll fix things. Lucy Baker said love fixes broken stuff, and not having a mom is kind of being broken, don’t you think?”

  Tony wanted to hug the child. To wash the hurt away. But he couldn’t. Yet he could help her to learn to live more constructively with the hurt. “I’d say it can be.”

  “It is,” Suzie said. “I’m hoping Miss Lucy is right. I don’t know if she is or isn’t. But Jeremy’s four and Lyssie—Alyssa—is two. They’re little. Other people can love little kids easier than big kids, and they don’t even remember Meriam. She was kind of our mom but she didn’t like us calling her that so we called her Meriam. Well, me and Jeremy did. Lyssie was too little to talk when Meriam went to heaven.”

  Suzie paused for breath, giving Tony time to mentally catch up, then pulled her quilt closer and rubbed her thumb over the appliquéd carnation’s petals. “Jeremy and Lyssie are little so they really need a mom. I don’t ‘cuz I’ve never really had a mom and I’m nine now, so it doesn’t matter to me—as long as she loves them.” With a telling shrug, Suzie stared at the ceiling, clearly seeing far beyond the swirls of white plaster. “But if she bakes peanut butter cookies like my friend Missy’s mom does, then I wouldn’t mind having one, though. Mrs. Wiggins won’t let us have cookies. Meriam told her not to—sugar rots your teeth—but Daddy does, sometimes. Mostly when Mrs. Wiggins isn’t home. She fusses, and he’s too tired to listen to it.”

  A knot squared in Tony’s throat. Suzie wanted a mom more than anything in the world. He hadn’t missed that she’d been hurt at having to call her mother by name. Nor had he missed the tremor in her voice on admitting she’d never really had a mom, or her obvious distaste for Mrs. Wiggins, the old battleaxe of a nanny who’d arrived at the inn three days ago with Bryce and the children. Every morning over coffee Bryce read Wiggins’s list of Jeremy’s previous day’s infractions. He was just four, for pity’s sake.

  Tony bent down beside Suzie’s bed then clasped her little hand in his big one. “We’ll have to wish really hard for a mom, then—for Jeremy and Lyssie.”

  Suzie nodded. “How come your fingers are cold?”

  He stared at them. What could he say? I have no life. And the absence of life renders the absence of warmth? Would she accept that?

  “Tony? You promised never to lie.”

  He tried, but he couldn’t make himself meet her eyes and maybe see her condemnation of him reflected there. “Being alive makes you warm, Suzie.”

  “Outside.” She touched his jacket over his heart. “But you’re warm in here. That’s where it’s important—Selena said.”

  To Suzie, Selena obviously was the ultimate authority. “She’s a wise woman.” And with the gift Suzie’d just given him, if he’d ever doubted it, Tony now had seen it proven true: Seascape was a magical place. And how he prayed he had the skills to bring Suzie a gift she’d treasure as much as he did her acknowledgment that he had heart: a new mom.

  He and Hattie certainly would do everything possible, and they’d pray hard—more than hard, if he knew his beloved, and he certainly did—that the special guests did their part.

  “Tony.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I lied to you.” Suzie blinked furiously then forced her gaze up to his. Guilt radiated from her in pulsing waves. “I really do want a mom.”

  “I know.” Understanding what that admission had cost her, he swallowed down a hard lump from his throat and stroked her sleep-tangled hair. “Sometimes when something’s really important to us, well, we all tell ourselves it isn’t important so it won’t hurt so much if we don’t get it.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me.�
� He met her big brown eyes, thinking of Hattie. “But I’ll share a secret with you. If we wish really hard, you might just get a new mom.”

  Remorse slithered through him. He shouldn’t have told Suzie that. He hadn’t meant to, but the longing in her had struck a chord in him, the same chord that reminded him of all those nevers between him and Hattie, and it had just slipped out.

  Suzie’s eyes sparkled and her mouth dropped open into a big O. “Honest? You’re not just telling me that? Grown-ups do that sometimes. I don’t like it.”

  How could he recant after that? “No, I’m not just saying it. It could happen, Suzie, but it could not happen, too. That’s why we have to wish hard. It all depends on your dad and, er, the lady who’s coming.”

  “She’s coming here?” When he nodded, Suzie’s eyes stretched even wider. “But what if we don’t know it’s her? She could go away, and Jeremy and Lyssie—”

  “You’ll know her. I promise.” Tony touched a finger to the flower at his lapel. “She’ll be wearing a yellow carnation, just like this one.”

  “But—”

  “Shh, it’s time to sleep now. And, remember. No nightmares, not at Seascape.” He tucked the thick quilt up under her chin then tapped a fingertip to her nose. “Miss Hattie would pitch a fit.”

  “Miss Hattie doesn’t do that.” Suzie giggled, then sobered. “Mrs. Wiggins might, though.”

  Tony grunted. The battleaxe surely might. “I want you to listen carefully, Suzie. This is very important, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We can’t interfere with your dad and the lady who’s coming here.” He dropped his voice to a soft whisper and spoke straight to the child’s soul. “But—and this is a promise—if only one has the courage to believe, miracles can happen beside a dreamswept sea.”

  Suzie looked awestruck, then frowned, clearly worried. “But I don’t believe in miracles anymore. I even told Missy and Selena.”

  The child had grasped the significance of his words to her; no doubt about it. “Then you’ve got to try to believe in them again. So you’ll heal.”