“This is a tragic situation for all concerned. Please, respect the privacy of our guests,” he’d pleaded, but the reporter carried on with the coverage anyway.
Albert had been so wan and weak that Lydia had stood beside him to prop him up. Caitlin could still picture their shellshocked expressions on the TV screen. In the background, the windmill’s broken arm and the fallen black locust tree added to the sense of devastation captured by the camera. Just thinking about it made Caitlin queasy and her forehead and the back of her neck broke out in a sweat, but Claire blithely continued rambling.
“Isn’t it amazing that all those details from twenty years ago are still so vivid in my mind?” she boasted. Then she made a pitying, tsk-ing sound. “I’ll never forget how worried I felt when I heard you’d locked yourself in your family’s windmill for three days because you were so freaked out about what happened to Nicole.”
“I never locked myself in the windmill,” Caitlin objected weakly. “I fell asleep in the loft for a couple hours, and no one knew I was up there.”
“A few days, a few hours, either way, it’s totally understandable why you hid. If I were you, I probably would’ve been a mess, too. I’m just glad everything apparently turned out okay for you.” Claire barely took a breath before asking, “So what are you doing here now?”
“Just browsing.” Caitlin looked at the clock on the wall. “But it’s almost lunchtime, so?—”
Claire cut her off. “I meant what are you doing here on Dune Island?”
“I-I…” Caitlin licked her lips. She needed fresh air, but her legs felt too wooden and heavy to carry her to the door. “I’m visiting.”
“You can’t mean you’re visiting your relatives? Because I heard that they went bankrupt and had to sell the cottagesafter the drowning because no one wanted to rent from them anymore.”
“That’s not what happened,” said Caitlin, refusing to dignify Claire’s gossip with an account of her uncle’s illness.
Lily suddenly appeared in the doorway. “I have those cranberries you wanted in the kitchen, if you’d like to follow me,” she said to Caitlin. Then Lily addressed Claire. “It’s really nice to see you but I’m afraid I’m closing shop for the lunch hour. After this customer collects her produce, I’ve got to run to the bank before it closes. So, unless you have your purchases ready for me to ring up, would you mind coming back another time?”
“I’m not buying anything from the shop,” said Claire. “I just popped in to place an order for a cranberry cheesecake for Thanksgiving.”
“Terrific, I’ll have it ready for you on the Wednesday before the holiday,” said Lily, ushering her to the door, which she then opened. “You can pick it up any time between nine a.m. and five p.m. Talk soon—bye-bye.”
“Bye, Lily. Bye, Caitlin. I hope to see you around town?—”
Lily closed the door before Claire could complete her sentence. She turned and smiled at Caitlin. “Now, let’s go get those berries.”
She led her to the instructional kitchen and pulled out a chair, saying, “Have a seat. You seem a little shaky. Can I get you a glass of juice? Or water?”
“That’s okay. I don’t want to make you late for your bank errand.”
Retrieving a pitcher of crimson juice from the fridge, Lily confessed, “You caught me in a fib. I only said that because I wanted to get rid of Claire. I was appalled when I overheard her interrogating you like that. She’s such a blabbermouth, even by Dune Island standards. She isn’t necessarily ill-intentioned, but she has absolutely no filter.”
“I was so caught off guard by her bluntness that I couldn’t think of a way to shut down the conversation,” Caitlin admitted, sinking into the chair and accepting the beverage Lily handed her. “Thanks for ending it for me. My name’s Caitlin, by the way.”
“You’re welcome, Caitlin.” Lily filled a second glass for herself and then sat down on the opposite side of the table. “I know what it feels like to be put on the spot by the local gossips.”
“You do?” Caitlin was surprised; from what Shane had said about Lily and her husband, they were the darlings of the island.
She nodded. “When I was in high school, one of my family members was burning debris in the yard and they accidentally started part of the conservation land on fire next door,” she said, and Caitlin recalled the rumors she’d heard when she was a teenager about an arsonist living at the farmhouse. “No one was hurt, and we made restitution for the property, but some of the islanders were understandably upset. A few of them even signed a petition to boycott our cranberry farm.”
Caitlin frowned. “That must have felt so demeaning.”
“Yes, in fact, it was one of the reasons I decided to leave Dune Island as soon as I graduated high school. I didn’t come back for almost twenty years—and the only reason I returned was because I inherited my family’s farm,” she said. “I intended to sell it, but obviously, I didn’t, and wild horses couldn’t drag me away from Hope Haven now.”
“May I ask why you changed your mind and decided to stay?”
“Love, mostly. My son adored Dune Island and the farm, and I fell in love with it again, too. I also fell hard for Jake, my husband, and vice versa.” A pretty smile creased Lily’s face with lines. “I’m not saying it was easy to get past… the past. Especially not when there were people here telling my son their distorted version of events. But they were in the minority and I’m glad I didn’t allow their gossip—or my shame and resentment—to keepme from enjoying living on Dune Island again. My only regret is that I stayed away so long.”
Caitlin slowly nodded, letting Lily’s words sink in. The two women sipped their juice in silence, and after a few minutes, Caitlin’s nausea subsided. She stood to leave. “Thank you for the juice,” she said. “And for what you told me. I feel much better now.”
“You’re very welcome. Don’t forget your cranberries.” Lily crossed the room to bring her the small sack. “No charge. Consider them a welcome-back-to-Hope-Haven gift from a kindred spirit.”
As Caitlin walked the short distance to the bus stop, she thought about how humiliating it must have been for Lily when the locals boycotted her family’s farm. Her courage to return to her hometown after twenty years away and reside there again was inspiring.
I wonder how she learned to let people’s criticism and ignorant comments roll off her back. It was a skill Caitlin sensed she’d soon need to practice, too. Because although she trusted Lily not to mention anything about her, she had a feeling Claire was already spreading the word that Caitlin had returned to Dune Island.
