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In my soul, I know somewhere inside is the man I’ve loved. And somehow, I know you’ll come back to me.
Heartbreakingly,
Dove
Sarah closed the book and sighed.
These snippets were driving her to distraction. Each one revealed another layer to the story, but not enough for her to put the whole thing together. Her grandmother had loved him, he went away to war…but he’d come back and they’d never reunited because he’d ignored her?
That didn’t make sense. If they’d been in love, if Jack’s love for her grandmother was even a fraction as strong as Dove’s love for him, how could anything—even war—have come between that?
She really was starting to sound like Jessica. Real life probably got in the way, the same way it always did. Her own conflicted heart was evidence of that.
But she’d met the man, and he’d obviously kept in touch with her grandmother over the years. He’d done the landscaping, and he’d been on the beach the day they’d spread her ashes.
She was desperate to hear the full story, but she couldn’t exactly ask Jack—the only other person still alive who knew the truth.
Washe the only one?
She’d assumed she was the first one reading her grandmother’s journal, but maybe she wasn’t.
She closed the journal and picked up the landline on the bedside table to dial her mother’s long-distance number in Phoenix. Three rings later, she heard her mother’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, darling, you still on the coast? That looks like Dove’s Nest’s number on call display.”
“Yeah, Mom, I’m still here.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to do with the B&B? I assume you’ve met with an appraiser?”
That would probably have been the best course of action. “Um…no. Actually, I had an inspection done and…” She paused, shutting her eyes. “Just about finished renovating it.”
“Really? Is the market strong enough to make back what you spent on fixing it up?”
Her mother didn’t even entertain the thought that Sarah might be keeping the inn. And why would she? Sarah had never expressed any interest in owning or running it. The family assumed that Dove’s Nest would disappear along with her grandmother’s ashes and become just a memory. Sarah had thought that letting it go would be easy as well, until she’d spent time there.
“I’m planning to keep it for a while to host an event, kinda a reopening thing to show the community how great it is again.”
“You’re running the B&B?”
Shocked or disappointed, Sarah couldn’t decide. “No. I’m holding an event here, then putting it on the market.” There it was—that gut wrench that kept happening whenever she said that. As if her grandmother’s ghost was kicking her in the stomach. “Whitney says that Blue Moon Bay’s tourism is going up, and part of that is due to visitors planning retreats and events here, so I thought it would be a good idea to show potential buyers that the inn was perfect for those things.”
“You’re planning an event? Like a real one? Not an online virtual reality thingy?”
Her stomach fell. Why should her mother have confidence in her that she could pull this off? She’d never been outgoing or sociable. She liked her privacy and the anonymity that the internet world provided. Her parents had always called her shy, reserved…withdrawn. They’d never gotten her, so this had to come as a shock.
“What’s she doing?” Sarah heard her father ask in the background.
“Is that Dad?”
“Just a sec, darling. She renovated the B&B and she’s hosting an event,” Sarah heard her mother whisper to her father.
“What the hell would she do that for? That place is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
So much for family support. Though she couldn’t blame them. Her father was right—before the renovations, the B&B had been just that.
But if they could see it now…
“Shhhh,” her mother said. “Okay, I’m back, sweetheart. Your dad says hello.”
