“In high school,” Landon said.“But yeah.Sure.Can you forward me the email?”
Back in his office, Landon read the brief and professional email from Sophie Harper, the twenty-year-old journalism student from East Oregon.Based on her LinkedIn profile, she had grown up in Washington, D.C.and was the same young woman he’d seen in Celia Harper’s social media picture.It felt telling that Sophie wore Celia’s maiden name.Who was the father?But he wondered if Celia had clued Sophie in on the luxury resort on the cove and she was the engine behind this interaction.But if she had, why had Sophie reached out to Mark rather than Landon?
Via email, Landon suggested meeting Sophie later that afternoon to discuss the luxury resort.Mallory had choir practice till seven, and Isaac was going over to Addison’s house.Landon wished Isaac and Addison would find a reason to break up, that they’d realize how different their backgrounds were and agree to part.But they were just kids.Maybe the problems from Landon’s own childhood shouldn’t infect their lives too much.
Sophie suggested they meet at a coffee shop not far from the Bluebell Cove Inn.Landon’s heart pumped, and he typed: Yes.See you there.For the rest of the afternoon, he tried and failed to shove thoughts of Celia out of his mind.
What was Celia saying about him?What had she told her daughter about their past?
At four thirty sharp, Landon walked through the door of the coffee shop and, in a sense, into the past.The young woman at the table in the corner was the spitting image of the Celia Harper he’d known back in high school, so much so that he had to look down at his hands to see them veiny and vaguely wrinkled to remember who he was and what had happened.When Sophie saw him, she stood, smiled, and shook his hand.“Sophie Harper,” she said.
“Landon Brooks.”It was bizarre to introduce himself to Sophie, who seemed not to know who he was at all.His heart sank.
“Let me get you a coffee,” she said.
“No.It’s on me,” Landon said.“I insist.”
Sophie requested “just a black coffee,” and Landon bought two and brought them over to her table.She had a simple notepad, a blue pen, and her phone out on the table between them.She told him she was going to record what he said, and he okayed it.He couldn’t help but tell her that he’d written for his high school newspaper.
“Then you know the drill,” she said.
For a little while, Landon spoke about the specific harrowing ways in which a dramatic new luxury hotel like this would alter the ecosystem and negatively affect both land- and water-based animals.He mentioned pH balances, dying animals, and stories that had happened elsewhere, places that had never returned from their own devastation.Sophie had obviously researched extensively and asked intelligent, probing questions that he knew would create a dynamic, easily accessible article for the inhabitants of Bluebell Cove and the surrounding counties.Her goal, she told him, was to make the article go viral.
“I told Bethany that I want to make social media accounts for the paper,” Sophie said as they wrapped up the interview.“Do you know Bethany?”Her eyes were in slits.
“We worked on the newspaper together back in high school,” Landon said.A blush crawled up his neck and into his cheeks.
Sophie snapped her fingers.“Then you knew my mother.Celia Harper?”
Landon felt his face fall.It felt like a moment of reckoning.“I did.”
“You knew her when she was the editor?”
Landon nodded.It was as though they’d entered into a different portion of the interview—the portion he would have loved to avoid.
But unless she was a very good liar, it was clear that her mother hadn’t told Sophie anything about him.
Sophie’s eyes turned icy.“Can I ask you a question?What kinds of articles did she write back then?”
“She was a spitfire of a journalist,” Landon said, pride edging into his voice.“She saw journalism as a powerful tool to stand up to the wealthy.Even when we were really young, she had her eyes on Georgetown, where she planned to do even more damage to the upper echelon of society.I imagined that she’d make her way into the political sphere one day, that she’d have a hand in changing laws that would help save our environment.”
Sophie chewed the edge of her pen, the way Mallory sometimes did when she struggled with a math problem.“She did,” she said finally.“She was instrumental in getting a bill about toxic chemicals amended.I remember when it happened.It wasn’t long after my parents’ divorce, and a babysitter was always at our apartment.The babysitter was an intern at a paper my mother freelanced for.She spoke endlessly about how much of a genius my mother was.”Sophie stopped short, breathing hard.“Even my professors at East Oregon have heard my mother’s name.They remember all she did and all she stood for.Which makes this super difficult to understand.”
Landon leaned back in his chair, surprised at the onslaught of information.
“She knows about the luxury resort,” Sophie stammered.“She knows what this will do to Bluebell Cove and to the inn and to every person and animal who lives here and in the ocean.But it’s like she doesn’t care, or doesn’t want to care.She’s thrown herself completely into fixing up the inn, which is fine, but there’s a deadness in her eyes.She’s never told me about why she left Bluebell Cove and why she doesn’t speak to her sisters.But now?I can’t help but think that she’s always been frightened.That she runs away from her problems when they get too hard.”
Sophie gasped for breath and let her chin fall.Landon felt a fatherly urge to get up and pour her a glass of water.But he held himself back, sensing that Sophie was tired of being coddled.
“Listen,” Landon said, flattening his hands on the table.“Your mother has always been a wonderful mystery to me.She keeps private things close to her chest.Maybe they frighten her.But don’t very personal, emotional things frighten you, too?They certainly frighten me.”
“I don’t know,” Sophie shot back.“Maybe I don’t have many private, emotional things?She never let me have a relationship with any of my family members.And my dad never called after the divorce.I don’t know if she chased him away, or…”
Landon raised his finger, interrupting her.“Whatever happened between your mother and your father is private, absolutely.Maybe it got messy.But that doesn’t mean it was your mother’s fault that your father never called.It was on him to maintain a relationship with you, and he didn’t.”Landon was surprised at how passionate he felt.But as a single father of two, he saw men who abandoned their children as the weakest of the weak.
He couldn’t believe that Celia had fallen for and had a child with the sort of man who would do that.But he knew that the world outside Bluebell Cove could be sinister and tumultuous.It was why he ached to think that Mallory and Isaac were just a few years away from college.
Sophie groaned and fell forward, becoming the twenty-year-old she really was rather than the up-and-coming journalist she wanted to be.
