Once in a Blue Moon (37 page)

Randall.

What was he doing here?

Her heart took flight, and she wanted nothing more than to go racing toward him, as her shameless old Labrador was now doing. She came to a halt instead, watching Randall stoop to retrieve a piece of driftwood, which he pitched into a long throw, sending Chester chasing after it down the beach, before he continued on, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his chinos. He was barefoot, and his hair, the same silvery-buff color as the sand, stood up in windblown tufts.

“Let me guess. Miss Honi told you where to find me?” she said as he approached.

He shrugged, breaking into a grin. “She thought you could use the company.”

“I see.” Lindsay arched a brow, grateful for the effect of the chill air on her burning cheeks.

“I thought so, too. That’s why I came.”

“So you’re not here to convince me to give you another chance?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She sighed. “Look, we’ve been over this already. What’s the point of hashing it all out again?”

“Things have changed.”

“What? I’m still at your father’s mercy, and you’re still his son. Nothing’s ever going to change that.” She spied a piece of sea glass gleaming amid a tangled skein of kelp and bent to pick it up, rubbing its grainy surface between her thumb and forefinger as she fought to rein in her emotions. Damn him. Why was he making this so much harder?

Even the sight of him was making it difficult as he stood smiling at her, his thick fair hair luffing in the breeze. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I have something that might change how you feel.”

He withdrew a folded piece of paper from his back pocket—a Xeroxed copy of a computer printout. She quickly scanned it. It was an exchange of e-mails between Lloyd Heywood and a man whose name she recalled from her lunch with Dwight—Curtis Brooks, the new head of the Lands Commission. It appeared innocent enough on the surface—Brooks merely thanking Lloyd for the all-expenses-paid vacation he and his wife had enjoyed at the Heywood resort on Maui and Lloyd promising in return to beat him the next time they played golf—but Lindsay was quick to grasp the significance of it. She jerked her head up to meet Randall’s gaze.

“How on earth did you get this?”

“My father’s wife. She did some snooping.”

“Why would she want to help you?”

“At the moment she isn’t too happy with him, either. It seems she caught him cheating on her.”

Lindsay grimaced in sympathy. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Victoria’s using it as leverage,” he went on. “If it should get out that he bribed a public official, he’d lose everything, and he knows it. This way she’ll get a decent settlement out of the divorce.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

“That remains to be seen.” His eyes searched her face as if the answer lay there. “I had a little talk with my father, too. I told him I’d keep quiet if he ditched his plans for the resort.” Lindsay’s breath caught in her throat. “He let loose with some pretty choice words but in the end realized I had him over a barrel. He had no choice but to agree to it. Which means you get to keep your property, and I’m no longer welcome in his house.”

Lindsay couldn’t believe it. This was the miracle she’d prayed for. She tried to keep from grinning, but it proved impossible. The most she could manage was to keep from letting out a victorious whoop. “Will he ever forgive you, do you think?”

Randall appeared nonplussed. “No. And to quote Rhett Butler, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

“Still, he’s your father. . .”

He shrugged. “Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not bulletproof.”

Lindsay shook her head slowly. “Does this really mean I get to stay? I won’t have to find another place to live?”

Randall nodded. “With one catch.”

“What’s that?”

He grinned. “That you have an open-door policy when it comes to me.”

Lindsay didn’t trust herself to speak; she was too choked up. Instead she wordlessly stepped into the arms he held open to her. As she sank into Randall’s embrace, a snippet from the Blake poem surfaced in her mind:
To see the world in a grain of sand
. . .

She was that grain of sand now, an entire universe unto herself on this vast beach, as she stood locked in the arms of the man she loved.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

Seven months later

O
NE OF THE BIGGEST SURPRISES
of the past year had been Kerrie Ann’s discovery that she liked to read. Since coming to work at the book café, she’d devoured all of the Judy Blume books (her favorite was
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
) and worked her way through the Anne of Green Gables and Boston Jane series, the Narnia chronicles, and the works of Elizabeth George Speare, Scott O’Dell, and Madeleine L’Engle before graduating to the likes of John Grisham, Stephen King, and her current favorite, Anne Rice. It was as though she were living her life in reverse through books, discovering worlds she’d bypassed growing up. In each book was a valuable lesson to be learned and usually a heroine with whom she could identify. Like Kit Tyler in
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
who is accused of being a witch in the days of the Salem trials. Kit stands to lose everything, including her life, but she’s brave and eventually triumphs over adversity. Kerrie Ann had read the book three times, until the copy on sale at the Blue Moon Book Café finally grew so dog-eared that she felt compelled to purchase it.

As the date for her custody hearing drew near, Kerrie Ann thought more and more about Kit Tyler. Like Kit, she had been branded, though in her case not altogether unfairly. She’d also fallen prey to some unfortunate mishaps, like the one with Jeremiah. And she stood to lose what was most important to her: her child. But she knew she had to be brave and stay the course.

Over the past year, Kerrie Ann had gradually come to see that happiness was possible, if far from guaranteed. That good people
did
exist—like her sister and Randall, Miss Honi, Ollie, and her new friends from the program. And that every once in a while, through a combination of hard work and luck, you got what you wanted.

She had never wanted anything more than this.

This was her last chance. If the judge failed to take into account the strides she’d made, she’d lose custody of Bella for good. And she didn’t know how she would cope with that. It was one thing for them to be apart for a period of time, another for her to be forever robbed of the joy of waking up each morning to her daughter’s sweet, smiling face.

Whenever she thought back to the Kerrie Ann who’d arrived in Blue Moon Bay nearly a year ago, packing not much more than a major attitude, that woman seemed like a whole other person, someone Kerrie Ann had no wish to become reacquainted with.

So much had changed since then. For one thing, she now had a real paying job at the Stitch and Sticks yarn shop down the street, one that had started out part-time but, as she proved increasingly indispensable, quickly became full-time. She’d even taken up knitting. It had been rough going at first, but she’d graduated from lumpy neck scarves to the afghan she was knitting as a wedding present for Lindsay and Randall, who were getting married in a few months. What she loved about knitting was that it soothed her mind while keeping her hands busy, and at the end she had something to show for it. She’d gotten others in her twelve-step program hooked, which had brought in a steady trickle of business from characters who must initially have seemed sketchy to the shop’s owner, Ginny Beal: scary-looking bikers and excons, recovering heroin addicts with old track marks on their arms. All of them people like her who were fighting to reclaim what they’d lost, day by day, stitch by stitch. Kerrie Ann jokingly referred to knitting as the thirteenth step.

In spite of her busy schedule, she still managed to put in some time each week at the book café, lending a hand at author events or during peak hours. It was small repayment for all her sister had done for her, she insisted whenever Lindsay protested that she felt like she was taking advantage. Kerrie Ann had noticed, though, that the protests were growing less frequent. The truth was, her sister needed all the help she could get. Business was better than ever now that she was able to devote all her energies to work. Also, word had spread among publishers, thanks in part to Randall, about her creative promotions and great turnouts, and more high-profile authors were going out of their way to make it a stop on their tours.

The publicity generated by the article in the
Chronicle
hadn’t hurt, either. That had led to a segment on
60 Minutes
, which ironically had achieved what the planned and since scrapped Heywood resort had failed to: It had put their town on the map. Tourism was on the rise, and two new bed-and-breakfasts had opened in the past six months. It was small, steady growth as opposed to an overnight boom, but enough to allow for a general sprucing up of the shops and eateries downtown.

And in June Lindsay Margaret McAllister Bishop was to become Mrs. Randall Craig. Lindsay had asked Miss Honi to give her away, which tickled the old woman to no end—she loved the idea of walking one of her girls down the aisle and was already planning her ensemble, which would no doubt include sequins and a pair of stiletto heels. Kerrie Ann was to be the maid of honor. “As long as I don’t have to walk down the aisle in some butt-ugly old-lady dress. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, you know?” Kerrie Ann cracked, though secretly she too was delighted to be asked.

“Don’t worry,” Lindsay teased. “It won’t be anything
I
wouldn’t wear.”

But if a large share of the credit for the new and improved Kerrie Ann went to her family and fellow twelve-steppers, a good part was owed to Ollie as well. First and foremost, if it hadn’t been for him, that awful, endless night when her daughter had gone missing might have turned out very differently. And if she had the program and her own hard work to thank for her newfound sense of self-worth, she credited Ollie with opening her eyes to who she was as a woman. She now knew that she had something to offer besides her body. That she was someone a man wouldn’t be embarrassed to introduce to his parents.

Which hadn’t prevented her from balking the first time Ollie had brought her home to meet his. It was back in October, shortly after Lindsay had announced her engagement, and Ollie had insisted it was high time he properly introduce his parents to
his
girl. Kerrie Ann had done no more than shake hands with his dad the day he’d testified in court on Lindsay’s behalf and knew his mom only to say hello to from the times she’d stopped in at the book café.

“What if they don’t like me?” she fretted aloud on the way over.

“We’ll just have to elope,” Ollie teased.

“Be serious.”

“I am serious.” As they jounced along the dirt road in his Willys, Kerrie Ann knew just how a pioneer mail-order bride would have felt pulling into town in a covered wagon, not knowing what awaited her. Ollie took his hand off the wheel to give her a reassuring pat on the knee. “Just be yourself.”

She groaned. “That’s what I’m worried about. Being myself is usually what gets me into trouble.”

“Don’t.” He spoke sternly.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t put yourself down. Why do you always assume people won’t like you?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some bad experiences.” She thought of all the times, coming to a new foster home, that she’d had high hopes, only to find herself damned before she could prove she was more than just what was in her case file. After a while, she’d stopped trying to make a good impression and had become the hostile kid they all expected her to be.

“Well, that’s all in the past. You can be pretty likable when you want to be, you know that?” He smiled at her as they pulled up in front of his parents’ modest shingled house.

“So could Typhoid Mary,” she muttered.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t subject either of us to the third degree if I thought that’s what this was going to be. Relax, it’s just lunch. And as far as I know, you aren’t on the menu.”

The thought did nothing to ease her anxiety.

She found his father, a big, top-heavy man with wind-scoured cheeks and a shock of black hair going gray, to be a man of few words. Over lunch she struggled to make conversation with him. She was beginning to wonder if she’d made any impact at all when, as she was prying at a crab leg in the delicious if somewhat complicated fish stew Ollie’s mother had prepared, she looked up to find him eyeing her in amusement. “Here, let me show you,” he said, demonstrating how to crack the shell, then extract the meat. “It just takes practice. You’ll get the hang of it.”

In her nervousness, she blurted, “That’s what my teachers were always telling me in school, but somehow I never did get the hang of it.”

At his parents’ raised brows, Ollie was quick to inform them, “Kerrie Ann just got her GED.”

“Congratulations. What’s next?” Ollie’s dad spoke in a mild, conversational tone, but she sensed she was being put to the test and took care with her answer.

“I’d like to go to college. I thought about a career in nursing but decided I’d rather work with people in recovery, so now I’m looking to get a degree in social work.” She felt her cheeks warm. Had she revealed too much? Or would they think it was just a lot of big talk from someone who wasn’t cut out for a career? Kerrie Ann had her own doubts—a college degree seemed almost like wishing for the moon.

But Ollie’s dad only smiled and said, “That’s good, honest work.”

Kerrie Ann found Ollie’s mother easier to talk to but more intimidating in a way. Freddie Oliveira, a tall, angular woman with a freckled face and once-copper hair the color of an old penny, was the opposite of her taciturn husband. She was affable like Ollie, but without his goofy sensibility. Yet her keen gaze missed nothing, and throughout the meal Kerrie Ann felt those sharp blue eyes on her more than once, sizing her up while she did her best to make small talk.

It wasn’t until they were alone in the kitchen, Kerrie Ann helping her wash up, that Freddie remarked, “So Ollie tells me you two are thinking of moving in together.” She paused in the midst of scrubbing a pan to direct her pleasant, eagle-eyed gaze at Kerrie Ann.

Kerrie Ann dropped her eyes, busying herself with the drying. “We’ve talked about it,” she replied guardedly. After Lindsay and Randall were married, Randall was going to move in with her and Miss Honi, which meant Kerrie Ann would need to find another place to live, something she’d been planning to do anyway. Nevertheless, she wasn’t sure she was ready to take that leap with Ollie. She cared about him deeply, she might even love him, but shacking up with him was a whole other level of commitment. A lot, too, depended on whether or not her daughter would be living with her.

“He’s worried about leaving you guys in the lurch,” she told Freddie, which was true as well. “He wants to find a place nearby so he can still help out around here.” At the sharp look Freddie shot her, she hastened to add, “But I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“No, and I don’t need Ollie planning his life around us, either,” Freddie replied crisply. “We’re far from ready for the old folks’ home, whatever my son might have told you. We’ll manage.”

“I’m sure you will, but he kind of feels responsible. You know?” She added, “I don’t have parents of my own, but I like to think if I did, I’d feel the same way Ollie does.” Kerrie Ann blushed once more, wondering if she’d overstepped her bounds.

Freddie’s direct blue eyes remained pinned on her. “I understand you have a little girl,” she said.

Kerrie Ann felt her heart sink, certain her fears were being realized: that this meet-and-greet would turn into a tribunal, not unlike the one in
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
.

“Yes,” she said, with some of her old defiance as she met Freddie’s gaze. “And the main thing right now is making a life for me and my daughter. I’m sure you heard what happened, so I don’t have to tell you why she’s not with me. But I’m working to change that. I’m hoping to have her back before too long.” Whatever Ollie’s mother had been told, Kerrie Ann wanted her to know how important this was to her.

Freddie nodded. “How’s that going?”

Kerrie Ann wasn’t normally superstitious, but she hesitated before replying, not wanting to jinx it. “With any luck, she’ll be home in time for the wedding.” Randall and Lindsay were getting married the third Sunday in June, and the date for the final custody hearing was set for the first week in May. Still a long way off, but Kerrie Ann’s lawyer had assured her it was for the best, that it would allow enough time for the dust to settle and for her to show that she’d turned over a new leaf.

Kerrie Ann braced herself for a blast of contempt—how could an honest, hardworking mother of six begin to understand what it had been like for
her
?—and was surprised when Ollie’s mother replied, “I’ll say a prayer, in that case.” As if musing aloud, she added, “The only thing I’m wondering is whether Ollie’s ready to be a stepdad.”

Kerrie Ann was so stunned that she almost dropped the saucepan she was drying. “Um, I. . . I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. I mean, I really care about him, but. . .” she stammered.