“Wait a minute.”Melody snapped her fudgy fingers at him.“I know you.I mean, I’ve met you before.A long time ago.”
Landon was caught off guard.He slipped the bill of sale and the plans back into the folder and eyed the exit, eager to flee.“It’s a tiny town,” he said.“I’m sure we’ve met.”
“No, but I didn’t just meet you.I met your girlfriend, too.Celia.Celia Harper.”Melody wore a ginormous smile that made Landon’s heart stop.“You were digging around the records’ office for some newspaper article.I had just started here.It’s why I remember so well.”
Landon agreed that that sounded right, but added, “She wasn’t really my girlfriend.”We only spent every day together for eighteen years, he didn’t say.
“But she’s back.Did you hear?”Melody widened her eyes.“Her father died, and all the Harper sisters came in to tend to things.Goodness, what a mess that was.James was ill for years and years, and that other one, what’s her name, was the only one who took care of him.Oh, but she’s never been my favorite person, either.”
“Ivy,” Landon supplied before he could stop himself.
Melody snapped her fingers again.“That’s right.But you know the story, don’t you?”
Landon couldn’t believe that Melody had decided to relinquish these secrets.He shook his head and let the folder dangle between his thumb and forefinger.“I don’t know.”
Melody looked pleased.“One of my best friends is friendly with Randall Hopkins’s wife.The lawyer?He oversaw the will and testament for James Harper.”
Landon knew that hearing this was unprofessional and more or less illegal, but he furrowed his brow, his expression urging her to go on.
“Apparently, the Harper girls have to refurbish and run the Bluebell Cove Inn for a full year before they can sell it and receive their inheritance,” Melody said, her eyes alight.“Have you ever heard anything so strange?It feels like it’s James Harper’s last joke.Maybe he wants to get back at the eldest for leaving him like that.She left you, too, didn’t she?”
Landon’s palms were sweaty.“I can’t imagine they’ll run the inn for a year,” he said.“I mean, Celia’s a successful journalist, and the rest of them have things to do, lives to lead.”He didn’t want to say how selfish he’d always found James Harper, as he knew his opinion was biased, taken straight from Celia’s stories.
But Melody gave him a look of mock surprise.“You’re in for a treat, Mr.Brooks,” she said.“Celia’s the one taking over for the summer.That’s what I hear, anyway.”
Immediately, all the blood rushed to Landon’s head.He took a step away from Melody and banged his back against the bookshelf.Celia?Back for the entire summer?It felt like a dream.They were forty-two years old.So much time had passed.They were strangers.
“You have to go by and see for yourself,” Melody said.“They’ve already started cleaning that old place up.Or Celia has.I don’t know who else is still around.The inn looked so haunted over the years.My own kids were frightened of it.They never wanted to walk by.Imagine the Bluebell Cove Inn back up and running again!Oh, but if that luxury resort is built, I can’t imagine little places like the Bluebell Cove Inn will survive.Can you?”
It was after he left the downstairs records’ office that Landon realized he’d missed several calls, all from the lab where he was expected later that morning.When he called back to tell his colleague Mark about the luxury, Mark was stunned into silence.
“You’re kidding,” he said, his voice deep and gritty.“After all the work we’ve done?After everything we’ve been through?”
Landon didn’t want to say what they were both thinking.It’s always a matter of money and who has the thickest pocketbook.It’s always been that way.
Instead, he told him he couldn’t come in today after all.“My kids are sick,” he said.“And I’m pretty disheartened.I can’t look at microbiome samples, not now that I know the entire microbiome as we know it is about to change.”
“We have to do something,” Mark grumbled.“I mean, can’t we sue or something?In the name of science?”
Landon laughed sadly.“If only, Mark.If only.”
After Landon hung up, he realized he was walking away from city hall and back toward the edge of the cove, where, from a bench, you could peer out across the rocky cliffside, the dark and never-ending ocean, and the sliver of beach.In any other year, the beach would soon be filled with Bluebell Cove locals, soaking up the Maine summer sun.He had countless memories, teaching Mallory and Isaac how to swim, teaching them about the mysteries and the wonders of the ocean, teaching them to care for an environment that was sadly fading before their eyes.It was down there that he and Celia had attended fun and slightly raucous high school parties, and he’d very nearly dared himself to kiss Celia.He’d chickened out.Always, he’d chickened out.
Mrs.Marsh texted to say she’d checked on his children.
MRS.MARSH: They’re fine.They started that movie again.The Mummy?They seem obsessed with it.
Landon laughed to himself, thanked Mrs.Marsh, and pocketed his phone.His heart pumped.Deep in the belly of his soul, he knew he shouldn’t do what he wanted to do.He knew he needed to turn back.But here, so close to the Bluebell Cove Inn, he could do nothing but put one foot in front of the other and go over there.
Like Melody’s children, Landon’s had been frightened of the old inn over the years.One Halloween, Mallory, Isaac, and Landon had walked past the inn, and Mallory had burst into tears, telling him that a ghost was poking its head out of the second-floor window and staring at her.Landon had had to carry Mallory all the way home.She’d cried all night.
That hadn’t been so long after their mother had died.Everything had set Mallory off back then.She’d been too young to deal with it.(Then again, who could ever deal with it?Celia and her sisters were a testament to that, having lost their mother so young.)
Landon Brooks stood in front of the Bluebell Cove Inn with his hands in the pockets of his spring jacket and his chin raised.The massive oaks out front were even larger than he remembered.They’d grown wild, their limbs reaching up and around the inn, as though threatening to reclaim it.The grass was a travesty, filled with weeds.The porch was crooked and cracked, its wood in dire need of a coat of stain.If Celia really wanted to fix up this old place, she would need at least four to six months.
The door to the inn was propped open with a large brick.Landon walked toward it, his heart in his throat, wondering what you were meant to say to your ex-best friend, the only woman he could say had “gotten away” from him in his life.Be cool, he told himself.And then, when he caught a glimpse of himself in a cracked window, he ached with fear that she wouldn’t recognize him.Maybe that was worse.Middle-aged and torn up by life, he had half a mind to turn around, to go back to his kids, to make them soup and assure them thatThe Mummyended the same every single time, no matter how many times you watched it.
He’d decided to go home, to abandon Celia and the Bluebell Cove Inn and their memories completely, bringing Celia onto the porch.In her arms, she carried a big trash bag, and her forehead glistened with sweat.Her eyes met his immediately.Shocked, she let the trash bag fall to the porch and let her arms hang beside her.
