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“Wait,” Kelli said. “You’re not rebuilding Friendship Inn?”
All eyes came to Clara, and she didn’t like the weight of them. “No,” she said somewhat harshly. “It was too much. A pipe dream.” She couldn’t believe she ever thought she could renovate something as huge as Friendship Inn. “We couldn’t do it. We decided to list it for sale, and our realtor is doing word-of-mouth advertising right now before listing it publicly.” Sam knew so many people in the commercial industry, and he had three people interested in the inn already.
AJ stood too. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because Clara is better than us,” Robin said sarcastically.
“No,” Clara said, and she wasn’t the only voice. Eloise had spoken too.
“Robin, that’s not fair.” She gave Robin a look that Clara appreciated. It told her Eloise was on her side, though still curious as to why Clara couldn’t open up.
“Why is she on our group text if she’s not going to share?” Robin demanded.
Clara’s pulse hammered through her whole body. “I wanted to make sure everyone had adjusted okay,” she said. Her voice came out much smaller than it had previously.
“Not everyone is as comfortable as you are with sharing,” Alice said.
Robin glared at her. “So I’m wrong here, in wanting to know what’s going on with one of our friends. Someone wetrustto share all of our news with.” She looked around at everyone.
“You’resharing with her, and she’snotreciprocating. That doesn’t bother anyone but me?” She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t believe that.” She turned and faced Clara. “That’s not how to get and keep friends. I have to feel like I trust every single person on the group text thread, and I don’t trust you.”
Clara swallowed. “Robin,” she said as everyone looked at her again. They likely felt the same way, and Clara realized that she needed to do better.
“It took Laurel a while to contribute too,” Alice said. “We’re all different.”
“Does she even care about us?” Robin asked. “Doesn’t she want us to celebrate with her, or to support her when she has a hard day?” She looked over to Kristen. “She probably texts Kristen and Jean, which is great. She can have a group thread with them.”
Everyone hovered in the wake of all Robin had said. Clara met her mother’s eyes, and Mom practically begged her to say something. Clara didn’t know what, and she supposed the next step on her journey of rebuilding herself would be to speak before she was ready. Just say what was in her heart, whether she’d had time to weigh it all out, test it on her tongue, or consider how it would sound.
“I don’t want to be on a group text with my mom and Jean,” she said. “I don’t.” She looked at Robin. “I’m sorry, really. I’m…” She took a deep breath for Clara’s heart beat at her to admit a weakness.
She never did that. She concealed those from everyone and everything until she didn’t have to think about them anymore or until she was alone.
“I’m bad at letting people in on the bad things,” she said. “I only want to share good news.”
“Selling the inn is good news,” Eloise said. “I’ve been telling you that for a couple of weeks now.”
“I think so too,” Clara said. “But I wasn’t sure anyone else would think so. I thought they might judge me for giving up.”
More silence, and Clara couldn’t decipher all of the expressions fast enough. Finally, AJ said, “Honey, if they were going to do that, they’d do it to me. Lord knows I’m the screw-up in the group.”
“You are not,” Kelli said.
AJ only gave her a one-shouldered shrug. Robin’s expression softened, but it went nowhere near a smile. Alice offered Clara a small one and said, “We’ve all made mistakes. We’re all uncertain about things. That’s why we tell each other.”
“Then we can reason through confusing things with different minds,” Jean said.
Clara heard them, reallyheardthem, and her regrets doubled. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ve been trying to hide my inadequacies for so long…I don’t know how to simply admit that I’m struggling, that I don’t know what the right thing is, or that I need help.”
“We’ll help you with that,” Eloise said. She too smiled, but in Clara’s book, Eloise was the nicest person in the world.
All of these women were. They knew her story. They knew why she and Scott had moved to the cove. Theyknew, and there Robin stood, angry because Clara hadn’t been sharing.
Somehow, she knew it was more than that, and she focused on the woman again. “I’m sorry, Robin. Maybe if I’d opened up sooner, I could’ve talked to you about your mother.”
She hardened again, the transformation almost instant. She didn’t have to repeat her question for it to be shouted into the room.
“Your mom called me one day,” she said. “A few months ago. Beginning of July, maybe. She said she might want to invest in the inn.”
