Instead of the odor of damp wallpaper and mold that hung on the musty air, she breathed in the imagined scent of lemon oil and pictured how the scarred heart-of-pine floor would gleam once it had been sanded and stained.
“I hope the fireplace works.”
She ran her fingers over stones that didn’t appear to be crumbling too badly. A crackling blaze would certainly warm rainy winter evenings. She’d recently seen a pair of andirons in Granny’s Attic, an antique shop on Harbor Street across from the ferry terminal, that would prove the crowning touch.
“It really is perfect,” she assured herself as she tried to decide between a seascape or a mirror over the hand-carved cedar mantel.
She crossed the floor and looked up the spiral staircase leading to the lantern room.
“Are you there, Lucy?” she called out. She didn’t really expect an answer, and if Henry Hyatt’s mother’s ghost
was
actually haunting the lighthouse, she was keeping silent. “You’re not going to be alone anymore, because I’m going to buy your home and clean it up.”
Her words echoed around her. “It’s going to be lovely again,” she promised, undaunted by the lack of ghostly response. “A place you—and I—can be proud of.”
Outside, the sun was sinking ever lower in the late summer sky; inside, dust motes danced in the slanting sunbeams like ballerinas wearing gilt tutus. Giddy with anticipation, Savannah began dancing herself, spinning across the scuffed and scarred floor in time to the swelling music playing inside her head as the shadows darkened and draped the Far Harbor lighthouse in a deep purple veil.
“S
o, what do you think, Uncle Dan?”
“I think you’re terrific.” Daniel O’Halloran reached over and ruffled his nephew’s hair.
“That’s what you always say.” John Martin grinned and ducked his head. “I meant about the flowers.”
“Hey, you’re the designer. I’m just the manual labor guy.” He turned the Tahoe onto the gravel road that led up to the Far Harbor lighthouse. “But I think using these branch berries as a groundcover is a great idea.”
“They’re bunchberry.”
“Right. Yet another reason why you’re the gardener.” Dan paused, deciding that the time had come to break the news he’d been withholding for the past week since the lighthouse had gone on the market. “There’s something we need to talk about, Sport.”
“What?”
Since subtlety had never been John’s strong suit, Dan decided to just dive straight into the dangerous conversational waters. “Henry Hyatt’s put the lighthouse up for sale.”
“The lighthouse?” The color drained from John’s face. “
My
lighthouse?”
“Technically it’s Mr. Hyatt’s,” Dan reminded him carefully.
“But he doesn’t care about it. He let it get all run down so that kids would write on it and throw rocks. If it wasn’t for me, it’d be really ugly.”
“I know.” Dan sighed, thinking of all John had overcome in his life already and wishing he could spare him this. “But to be perfectly fair to Mr. Hyatt, he hasn’t exactly been in the best of health the past few years.”
“He moved out before that. And never came back.”
“He moved out because the place was too much for him to handle after he fell and broke his hip. And we really don’t know for certain that he never came back.” Dan decided to try a different tack. “Besides, I have the feeling that after his wife died, it got to be a little hard emotionally on him to live there alone.”
“Because of his mother. Because she drowned.”
“That’d be my guess.”
“But he was just a little boy when that happened. Now he’s old. He should have gotten over that hurting by now.”
“I’m not sure anyone can ever get over the loss of a loved one,” Dan said quietly. “Not completely.”
There was a moment’s silence. Dan could practically hear the gears cranking away in John’s head. “Now you’re talking about my mom and dad.”
“You, of all people, should understand that sometimes people feel a lot of stuff deep down inside that they’re not real comfortable sharing with strangers.”
“Yeah. Sometimes, when I think about the accident, I feel like crying. But I don’t, at least not when anybody can see me, because I don’t want them to think I’m a dummy.”
“No one could ever think that.”
“Sometimes people do,” John said matter-of-factly. “But Mom always said that I just need to work harder to change their minds.”
“Your mom was a wise woman.”
“I know.” John sighed. “Sometimes I miss her a lot.”
“Me, too, Sport.” It had been more than a year, and the loss of his older sister still hurt. Dan figured it always would.
After having made the decision to buy the Far Harbor lighthouse, Savannah was back on the grounds, the inspection report in hand. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The roofs would need replacing, there was a little dry rot in the basement of the larger of the two houses, and the wiring would have to be brought up to code in all three buildings, but at least they remained structurally sound.
Mostly all that was needed was a lot of hard work and elbow grease. After these past months of feeling like a ship adrift at sea without a rudder, Savannah found herself looking forward to having her sights set on a new goal.
When she’d caught her husband having sex with the relentlessly ambitious, take-no-prisoners attorney from the resort’s legal department, right in his office, on the glove-soft Italian leather couch she’d bought Kevin for an anniversary present, Savannah had discovered that the old saying was true—fury really did cause you to see red.
As a scarlet flame blazed before her eyes, she’d been sorely tempted to commit castration with her new filet knife. Fortunately, common sense kicked in, and after deciding that the unfaithful, lying, narcissistic husband she’d once adored wasn’t worth going to prison for, she moved into the Beverly Wilshire hotel, arranged to have all her calls—except those from her adulterous spouse—forwarded, ordered a ridiculously expensive bottle of champagne from room service, and then proceeded, for the first time in her life, to get rip-roaring drunk.
The following morning the phone had jarred through her skull like a Klaxon. It had been Raine, calling with the news that their grandmother had been taken to the hospital after a fall and now the courts were demanding that an adult other than Lilith take over the care of Ida’s pregnant teenage foster child.
Nursing the mother of all hangovers, bolstered with a Thermos of strong coffee and a large bottle of extra-strength pain reliever, Savannah had left California that day. As soon as she’d arrived back in Coldwater Cove, she’d immediately been swept up into a series of family emergencies. Once those crises had been taken care of, her own problems had belatedly come crashing down on her like a blow from behind.
She still wasn’t certain exactly how long she’d spent curled in a fetal position beneath her covers, wrapped in an aimless lassitude. Finally, when she’d just about decided that she was destined to spend the rest of her life in bed, she’d awakened one sunny August morning feeling as if she’d survived a coma. Thinking back on those weeks, Savannah realized that she’d been behaving much the same way she had during childhood when, terrified by the violent thunderstorms that rumbled and crashed over the mountaintops, she’d cower in the closet beneath the stairs. The only difference was that this time she’d been hiding from life.
Determined to create a new identity, she’d called her mother, who’d recently gotten her Realtor’s license, and began searching for the perfect property to turn a lifelong dream into reality. And now she’d found it.
Immersed in chipping away at the paint that was flaking off the window shutters like cheap fingernail polish, Savannah wasn’t aware of the truck coming up the hill. It was only when she heard first one, then a second metal door close, that she realized she was not alone. A moment later a teenager in a T-shirt that read He Who Plants a Garden, Plants Hope appeared from behind the lighthouse carrying a black plastic flat of bedding plants.
“Hello.” She gave him her friendliest smile. “I’m Savannah Townsend. And you must be John Martin.”
“That’s my name, all right.” His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Are you the lady who’s going to buy the lighthouse?”
“I’m thinking about it. But to be perfectly honest, the only thing going for it is your garden.”
“How did you know I planted the flowers?” His cautious expression turned panicky.
“Well, the fact that you’re carrying a flat of plants was my first clue. Also, my mother told me when we were here a few days ago. It’s absolutely stunning. You’re definitely an artist.”
“People say that a lot,” he agreed guilelessly. “They say, John Martin, you were born with the greenest thumb in the entire Pacific Northwest.”
“They’re probably right. So, does Mr. Hyatt pay you to do his gardening?” Savannah couldn’t understand why, if Henry Hyatt cared so much about the grounds, he’d let the rest of the lighthouse fall into disrepair.
“No.” The strange, edgy panic was back. He reminded her vaguely of a wild rabbit about to bolt. “Nobody’s ever paid me. It was all my idea. But I didn’t mean to do anything bad.”
“Oh, I wasn’t implying you did,” Savannah said quickly. “I mean, I wasn’t suggesting—”
“He understands the word
imply
,” Dan, who’d appeared carrying a second flat of plants, offered.
“I do understand
imply
,” John seconded his uncle. “I have a disability,” he explained. “But I’m not stupid.”
“Of course you’re not,” she agreed.
“How do you know that? Since you don’t know me?” John asked.
She exchanged a brief look with Dan, who seemed to be watching her carefully. “You just told me.”
“Oh.” He appeared to accept that. “This is my uncle Dan. He’s my best friend.”
“Isn’t that nice?” She turned her smile toward Dan. “Hello.”
“Savannah.” Little lines crinkled outward from morning glory blue eyes when he smiled, reminding her of a bittersweet secret crush she’d had on him the summer she’d turned twelve. “You’re looking well—as always.”
“She looks beautiful,” John corrected. “Like a movie star. And the sun makes her long hair look like it’s on fire.”
Savannah laughed. “I can tell you’ve got O’Halloran genes, John.” During their high school days, Dan and his cousin Jack had certainly charmed more than their share of Coldwater Cove’s female population. “You must have kissed the Blarney stone.”
The boy’s freckled forehead furrowed. “I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well, perhaps I’m mistaken.”
“Or I was too young to remember,” he said helpfully.
“That could be.”
“But usually I have a real good memory. Better than people without a disability, even. Huh, Uncle Dan?”
“Absolutely.”
“Like I said, I’m just slow. When I was a little kid, my mom read me the story of the tortoise and the hare. About how the hare did things a lot faster, but in the end the tortoise finally won the race. I’m like the tortoise. Slow and steady.”
“That certainly makes sense to me.” Savannah exchanged another brief look with Dan. “So, if you don’t work for Mr. Hyatt, how did you come to plant this garden?”
“Sometimes other kids take advantage of me. One Halloween, right after I got mainstreamed into public middle school, some boys talked me into throwing rocks to try to break the lantern room glass. I threw a lot, but only a couple hit.
“The sheriff caught us. After he explained that what we did was vandalism, I felt real bad. I thought and thought how I could make things better, but I didn’t know how to fix the broken glass. And that’s when I decided that I could plant some flowers and make it look prettier. So I did. And it really did look prettier, didn’t it, Uncle Dan?”
“You bet.” His grin was quick and warm and obviously genuine.
“The next spring I planted some more. Then some more after that. And pretty soon everyone started calling me the flower kid. I’m saving my money so some day I can start my own landscaping business. My mom used to say that everyone should have a dream. I figure a garden is about as nice a thing to dream about as anything else.”
“You’re right. I’ve always had a fantasy of starting my own inn, where people could come and relax and forget all about the outside world.”
“And dream?”
“Definitely dream, and I can’t think of a better place to do that than right here. But since I’ve been known to kill plants as easily as look at them, I hope I can hire you to keep up this magical garden.”
“It’s not magic. But I will keep it up, if you want.”
“Then it’s a deal.” She held out her hand. “Partners?”
His grin was as wide as a Cheshire cat’s. “Partners.”
“Hey, John,” Dan said after Savannah and John had shaken hands, “why don’t you go get started planting and I’ll be right along.”
“Okay.”
When he was out of earshot, Dan put the flat down on the bench. “So, you’re really going to stay?”
“Absolutely.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, he skimmed a look over her, from the top of her head to her feet, clad in expensive designer sneakers that were one of the few reminders of her past life. Savannah had the impression that after the years she’d spent in Paris, Atlantic City, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, he didn’t think she’d still fit into Coldwater Cove.
“It isn’t going to be easy.”
“That’s okay.” She lifted her chin and did her best to pull off at least a bit of her sister Raine’s Xena-the-warrior-princess impression. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“You’re going to have to be, if you’re planning to tackle this place. Because it’s definitely a wreck.”
“A challenge,” she corrected.
He chuckled. “You and John should get together and open a Coldwater Cove chapter of Optimists Anonymous.”
His words rubbed at some still-raw wounds and had her feeling perversely annoyed. Savannah seriously doubted that he would have questioned Raine taking on such a challenge. Then again, Raine had always had the reputation of being the “smart, sassy” sister, while Savannah was known throughout Coldwater Cove as the “sweet, pretty one.”
Well, she was going to change that. There was nothing she could do about pretty since she’d been gifted—or cursed, she sometimes thought—with the best of her parents’ looks. Her mother might be fifty, her rock-star father five years older, yet both had remained stunningly attractive individuals. Nevertheless, when Savannah had finally quit hiding beneath the covers, she’d vowed to abandon her lifelong habit of avoiding unwanted conflict by abandoning her own wishes. No longer would she be so damn accommodating, especially when such knee-jerk submission wasn’t in her best interests.
“Do you have something against optimism, counselor?” Her back stiffened along with her resolve even as she secretly wondered which of them she was trying to convince, Dan or herself.