Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (29 page)

CHAPTER 27

No one knew where to look first. Everyone was in Rosa’s Cantina or around it, having all participated in the fire containment, but it was hard to find anyone in particular. Gabe was missing, too. It didn’t make sense that they’d have gone anywhere but Rosa’s. Paige scrambled to think if she had his phone number. She’d already texted Amanda about eight times, but the teen wasn’t replying. And Adam didn’t have his phone any longer—he confessed he may have dropped it when he ran across the meadow to get her mom.

“I’m going to find Bob,” Adam said.

Paige nodded. That was smart. And she would search for Gabe.

She pushed through the crowd and asked if anyone had Gabe’s number. When no one said yes, she wondered if Amanda might have asked Gabe to take her down to Garrett.

Adam found her again. “Bob went back home to keep an eye on Gert. I’m going over there,” he said.

He looked exhausted, spent, with rivulets of soot coming out of his hair. She felt terrible for him, but she also felt awful about what had happened between them. She was desperate to apologize, but now was not the time.

“Will you wait here for her?” His eyes were tired, pleading.

“Of course,” she said. “I wanted to stay here and try to find Gabe. I also wonder if she might be with Garrett.”

“Why would she be with him right now?”

Paige stalled. She probably should have told Adam about this, too.

“Paige?” he asked again. “What do you know about Garrett?”

“Did you ask her about him like I told you to?”

“No. What do you know?”

“She had a crush on him,” Paige admitted in a whoosh. “That’s who she was seeing when she was going down to the sea-lion center.”

He looked stunned. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I just . . . I didn’t want to betray her confidence.”

“So you betrayed mine?”

“It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t that easy, Adam. I wanted her to tell you herself.”

He looked as if someone had just stabbed him in the back. He actually winced and moved away from her.

“Adam—”

“I need to go.” He backed toward the door. “We need to find Amanda right now. I’m going to Bob’s.”

Adam raced to his truck, willing his brain to stay in the present and focus on the task at hand: he had to find Amanda. He tried not to think about how betrayed he felt by Paige, and her not telling him about being the one to seal his fate when he was eighteen. That moment had changed everything in his life—she must have known that. And the fact that she didn’t say anything until now—while they’d been growing closer and closer—felt like a huge chasm he couldn’t quite bridge in his mind. Here, he’d thought for a brief crazy second that he might have a relationship, maybe even something leaning toward
marriage
—did that word seriously enter his head? But he’d lost his mind when he’d thought that. That was insane. He clearly didn’t know her. And she clearly didn’t trust him. This latest, smaller secret about Garrett just made him wonder what other kinds of secrets she was keeping from him. He’d thought that maybe he’d been different, special to her somehow, someone she could trust with anything, but now he realized he wasn’t.

“Adam, wait!”

He turned to see Paige running toward him.

“Let me come with you!”

She didn’t wait for an answer but instead piled into his passenger seat.

He was glad she didn’t wait. Because right now, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be near her or as far from her as possible.

He climbed in the truck himself and roared down the street—Bob’s house wasn’t far, but Adam wanted his truck so he could tear down the mountain if necessary to turn up every rock and stone to find Amanda.

Once he screeched into the driveway, both he and Paige ran to the door.

When Bob opened it, he looked similarly alarmed. No, he hadn’t seen her. No, he hadn’t heard from her. He tried to remember if he’d seen Gabe.

Gert came into the living room in her robe and slippers, her hair piled on her head. She tapped her fingernails against her cheek in a nervous gesture while she listened to everyone trying to put together clues. She finally shouted, “Wait!”

They all turned toward her. “What about that thing Amanda did on our phone, Bobby? The GSS?”

“GPS?” Adam asked.

“Oh! Yes!” Bob got out his phone and started tapping buttons. “That’s right! Gert, do you remember how she did that?”

“Let me get my notes.” Gert came bustling back with a stenographer’s notepad filled with her scrolling handwriting and flipped the pages around. “Wait. Here. Okay, Bobby, go to ‘Contacts.’” She looked over Bob’s shoulder. “Then ‘Details.’” He did as she said. “Then hit ‘Location.’”

“Got it!” Bob said joyfully. “It says she’s down at the harbor! By the ferry. Or wait. No. It says she was there forty minutes ago.”

“Oh dear,” Gert said, flipping her notes another page forward. “Remember, that means her phone might have died then, and that’s the last location it has for her?”

“It’s a good place to start.” Bob looked up at Adam.

“Thanks, Bob. And I’m friggin’ impressed with both of you.” Adam tore back out of the house with Paige right behind him. They flung themselves back into the cab.

As they barreled down the mountain, Adam leaning forward with worry, Paige glanced at him and thought about how similar they probably looked to George and Ginger coming down the mountain for
them
during the fires sixteen years ago. Suddenly she could understand the worry and frustration their parents had gone through—and all the protection involved afterward.

“She’ll be okay,” Paige said.

Adam nodded and didn’t look at her.

Although cars weren’t allowed in the town, emergency vehicles were, and Adam drove as though his truck was one right now—running red lights, flying through empty intersections, and screeching into the harbor.

Hardly anyone was out moving around yet, and they still had a half hour until the first ferry left at dawn. As they squealed into the passenger disembarking area and skidded across empty pavement, they could see Amanda’s lone figure sitting on a low harbor pylon in the distance. Adam let out a relieved breath and slowed the car. He cut the headlights and jumped out.

“Amanda! What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

She twisted toward them, her face streaked with tears that glistened under the streetlight.

Adam stopped in his tracks. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Of course I’m mad at you! You had us worried to death!”

“No, I mean . . .” She looked over Adam’s shoulder and saw Paige. “Paige? What are you doing here?”

“I was worried, too.”

“But didn’t you guys break up?”

“Break up?” Adam looked as if he were going to tear his hair out. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought I was breaking you guys up. I saw you out the window. I thought you’d be mad at me.”

“How would you be breaking us up? And what are you doing down here? And where’s Gabe, or Garrett, or whoever was driving you?”

“Gabe and Garrett have nothing to do with this. I walked down the hill. I was going to leave the island. On the first ferry. I”—a sob racked her—“I thought you’d hate me once you found out.”

“Once I found out
what
?”

“About the fires.”

Adam froze. Even under a lone streetlight still aglow in the rising dawn, Paige could see the color drain from his face. “What are you talking about, Amanda?”

“The ones from a long time ago. I thought I heard you talking about them when you left the yard, and I thought you’d both break up, and then you’d”—another sob shook her shoulders—“you’d hate me, and especially when you figured out that . . .” She pressed her hands into her face.

“Figured out
what
?”

“That my mom started them,” she said from under her palms. “It wasn’t Paige. It wasn’t you. It was my mom.”

Adam recoiled in the rising daylight. Paige’s mouth dropped open.

They both stood in silence, Paige’s mind whirling back to the events of that summer so long ago. Her memory waded through the first fire, on the hill, by the boathouse, and the second one, and then . . . she glanced up and could see Adam staring into the pavement, too, his own memories probably flooding back.

“But . . .” Paige tried to remember the details.
It couldn’t have been possible, could it?
“Samantha was with
you
during the first fire,” Paige said to Adam, her voice nearly a whisper. “In the boathouse.”

“No,” Adam said, turning back toward her. “She wasn’t. She’d lit some candles. She said she had to check on something, and she went out, back down the hill, and told me she’d be back. Once I smelled smoke, I busted out the door and tried to find her. She was running up toward me when I came out, and I grabbed her hand and got her out of there.”

Paige’s eyes widened.
Could it be?

“But she wasn’t near the stables during the second fire,” he said. “You were, right? She said she’d been in town.”

“No. She was there,” Paige whispered. “I saw her. I thought she was waiting for you. You were there, weren’t you? Your horse was saddled.”

“No. I was on a ride that day. I’d saddled Bartlett for her.”

They both looked back at Amanda as the realization dawned slowly on both of them that this was probably the truth. The stories had been passed down to the next generation as half-truths and half-understandings, as rumors always were. And Adam and Paige had each had only half the story.

As Adam stared harder at Amanda, her face crumpled again.

“Amanda,” he said.

She sobbed harder.

“Amanda, it’s not your fault,” he said.

Her shoulders shook as the tears came in earnest, and she wiped at her face.

“Amanda? Look at me.”

She finally did.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I”—the crying racked her shoulders—“I thought you knew. I thought everyone in town knew. And I thought you, and they, would hate me when I got here. But then I realized you
didn’t
know. And they didn’t. And Paige didn’t. She was wearing disguises for another reason. And I felt like maybe you accepted me because you didn’t know. But when I heard you and Paige arguing about it, I thought you’d break up over it, and then
that
would be my fault, too, and then you’d know, and you’d hate me anyway, and—”

“Amanda, no.” Adam reached out for her and drew her toward him. “No. I will never hate you. And none of this is your fault. You are not breaking me and Paige up. We might need to talk, and we might have some arguments, but that’s between her and me. You never have to worry about that. And your mother’s mistakes are certainly not your fault. Got that? Just like my father’s mistakes are not my fault, and Paige’s mother’s mistakes are not her fault.” He glanced up at Paige over the top of Amanda’s head. “Okay?” He seemed to be asking Amanda, but he was looking right at Paige.

Paige nodded back to him.

“Okay, then. Now that we all understand this, I think we need to get a few hours of sleep and start making plans. Because we’ve all got a lot of work ahead of us.” Another glance up at Paige. “And a lot of ashes to clean up. And a huge wedding to throw in two days, which is going to take a miracle. But we can do it. Right?”

Amanda nodded in his embrace.

“Let’s go.” He leaned down and kissed Amanda’s forehead. “I love you.”

Paige’s chest constricted when she heard him say those words, although she knew they weren’t meant for her. They sounded amazing. And she wished he would say them to her. But he never would. Her worst fears were realized—she’d lost him by telling him the truth. But she’d had no choice. It was the right thing to do.

His “I love you,” though, seemed to go straight to the heart of the girl who might need it even more right now.

“Thank you, Dad,” Amanda whispered into his shirt.

And Adam’s eyes teared up.

CHAPTER 28

When they got back to Nowhere Ranch, dawn was breaking over the tips of the pine trees. Adam parked the truck and encouraged Amanda to go in the house and get into bed. Paige slid out of the truck door and moved, slowly, toward the meadow cast now in gold, with an orange haze hanging in the air.

It was charred.

The gazebo was gone.

The woods along the perimeter were blackened and smoking, and the orchard was half-gone, smoke rising off the ground. The house, luckily, was still standing but covered in gray ashes that extended throughout the acreage, clinging to the ground, casting the entire property in a ghostly, deathly pall. The edge of the meadow was lined with police cars, their lights still flickering into the orange-tinged morning.

Paige’s eyes watered, and she brought her hand her mouth. What was she going to do?

“It might not be so bad.” Adam’s deep voice came from behind her.

She couldn’t even turn around. Of course it was. Everything was ruined. Especially everything between her and Adam. Their relationship was now as damaged as this charred meadow before her.

“Adam, I’m so sorry,” she said.

“We can talk later.” His voice was a monotone. It didn’t sound like forgiveness.

“But I’d like to talk now. I’ve ruined everything. I’m so sorry.”

“The meadow will be okay. You’ll bounce back from this. Just like you always do.”

She didn’t mean she was sorry for the meadow. But as she started to open her mouth to say so, he stopped her.

“Here’s what I’m talking about”—he looked up and pointed behind her—“that.”

She followed his gaze. Across the meadow, coming down from the road, were scores of townspeople piling out of cars. They held hammers and toolboxes, wood panels and lumber pieces, paint cans and ladders, sawhorses and tarps. They brought weeders and mowers and whackers and hoses. Mr. Clark’s staff walked down with wagons of flowers and flatbeds of soil. Mr. Fieldstone wheeled down four grocery carts full of water and snacks. Doris and Marie were there, holding skeins of white fabric and taffeta. And Natalie and Olivia followed, with Elliott and Jon behind them, each carrying brooms and tubs of soap.

“Where do you want us?” Natalie asked.

Paige began laughing and crying at the same time, her hand over her mouth.

As the army came around her, Olivia dropped her broom and threw her arms around Paige. Nat followed suit.

“You didn’t think we’d abandon you, did you?” Olivia asked into Paige’s hair.

“I can’t believe you guys came. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you I was here.”

“Mom told us everything,” Natalie said. “I can’t believe you didn’t call us for help.”

“I thought you guys would be mad that Mom and I weren’t listening to you.”

“Paige, you and Mom
never
listen to us,” Olivia said. “Why should this be any different?”

“But I ruined everything.” Paige looked around. “I lost the wedding. Mom’s business is going to be devastated by this.”
And I lost the love of my life.

“Not when we’re all done helping you,” Natalie said. “Now tell everyone where you want us. We’ve got to get going if we’re going to have this looking right in two days.”

Paige turned to scan her new army with tears in her eyes, then looked for Adam, but he’d wandered away, disappearing behind the crowd.

Then she got everyone to work.

For the next two days, Lavender Island hardly slept. It felt as if the entire town was at Nowhere Ranch. Mr. Clark and his shop provided the lumber, paint, manpower, and tools to resurrect the gazebo. Gordon, Gabe, Garrett, Luke, Olivia’s Jon, and John-O from town all managed to reconstruct the entire thing by working for forty-eight hours straight.

Adam coordinated the orchard after the fire investigators left. They’d determined the fire had started by accident through an electrical short in the film crew’s wires that had led out to the orchard. After the investigation, Adam and Pedro cleaned up the charred remains; then Antonio and the ranch hands joined Joseph, Little, Gil, Keith, and others to cut down the burned trees and nurse the remaining ones, babying the soil with fertilizer and water and neatening up the rows.

A forestry crew came in to chop down the dead pine trees on the edge of the forest, which made the land look as if it had been opened up another few acres and ended up being a blessing in disguise by opening the ocean view.

Olivia, Natalie, Doris, Marie, Bob, Gert, Kelly, Amanda, and a host of others from town worked on the yard around the house, sweeping the ash off the roof and out of the lawn and bushes, and reworking the lawn and acreage to revitalize the soil and ground. They sprayed with a green fertilizer designed to rejuvenate growth and, in the meantime, made the property look almost verdant. Mr. Clark’s crew kept a constant supply of fresh soil and fertilizer and flowers coming from town, and Kelly and Amanda worked together to organize the new plantings around the house and the new forty-eight-hour gazebo.

By the time the catering and decorating crews started to arrive with the wedding chairs, tables, runways, flowers, taffeta, and bows, the yard looked almost as good as new.

And the gazebo was once again a centerpiece.

Paige ran into Adam again and again during the shuffle, and she wanted to stop and talk—at least further apologize—but there was so much to do in so little time that they both kept moving.

The next thing she knew, she was peeking through the crack in her curtains on the big wedding day—the sun was shining, crisp and clear. It was a perfect day to have a wedding. It was a perfect way to start a life.

But her life felt as if it were ending today. Whatever life she thought she might forge forward with Adam—realizing, now, that’s what she longed for—was done. There would be no life for the two of them.

She wondered at the feeling of loneliness that had hollowed her bones. Despite being surrounded by so much love the last few hours, so much help, and so much goodwill from her sisters and the town and Nowhere Ranch, she had the feeling of being an empty shell. Every time she saw Amanda or Adam working on the new meadow, all she could think of was loss. Their glorious summer together already felt light-years away as Adam avoided her eyes and Amanda gave her sad smiles. At the end of the nights, watching Adam walk back to his house with his arm around Amanda, all Paige could feel was despair. She’d made a terrible mistake by not being forthright and open with him.

The dress she’d reserved for the wedding slithered over her hips. She’d have to say good-bye today. She’d say good-bye to Adam. She’d say good-bye to Amanda. She’d say good-bye to the townspeople.

She didn’t know if she had it in her, though. Maybe if she just slipped away and got on that private ferry quietly, they’d forget about her. Maybe she’d forget about them. Maybe all of this would seem like a dream in a few months. Maybe Adam would forget about this summer, too.

Outside her bedroom window, activity was bustling. She stood and watched for a few minutes as the florists put the last touches on the gazebo, which was strewn with ribbons and bows. Rows of white chairs were aligned to await the guests, with Doris and Marie securing pink and yellow flowers at the ends. Kelly followed behind them and added long white ribbons. The three of them giggled and went to talk to the instrumental trio that had been gathering to one side of the gazebo—a harpist, a flautist, and a violinist—all women. They chatted and seemed to make friends in no time.

Paige dropped her gaze and left the window. She was going to miss Lavender Island. And all its residents. Especially certain ones. But she couldn’t think about love right now.

Instead, she went downstairs to make some coffee.

“So what’s the story with Adam Mason?” Olivia said from the coffeemaker.

Paige froze in the kitchen doorway. She hadn’t even realized her sister had arrived.

And . . . her
other
sister?

“Good morning, Paige,” Natalie said from the dining table, where she was sitting in workout clothes and reading the
Lavender Island Gazette
.

Paige wandered in beside them and took a seat at the table. “What are you two doing here so early? How’s Mom?”

“Mom’s fine. She’s resting up at the Castle in her fit-for-a-queen room. She’ll be here at ten. But we came to learn about Adam,” Natalie said, turning a page. “We sensed some weirdness.”

“Weirdness?” Paige asked.

“Weirdness,” Natalie verified. “Furtive glances. Avoiding eyes. Mumblings as you passed each other in the meadow. Longing double takes. You know—weirdness.”

Paige sighed. She’d have to tell her sisters about her summer with Adam sometime. And, frankly, it was sort of a relief to have them here to tell. She didn’t realize how much she’d missed them.

“Would you like some marmalade and toast, Paige?” Olivia was snapping open marmalade jars. It had been their tradition to share toast and coffee together with their mother whenever they helped her with event mornings. Husbands always stayed home, and it was just girls.

“Sure.”

“So this weirdness . . .” Natalie put the paper down and pushed her own plate aside. “It appears to us like falling-in-love weirdness.”

“Does it now?”

“It does. Yet we both have a hard time believing you fell in love with Adam Mason, who you have oh-so-affectionately been calling the ‘Weird Hermit on the Hill’ for about as long as we can remember. So spill it, Paige. We want to know everything.”

Paige took a deep breath and dove in. She told them everything: the butt in the window, the intruder, the hot tub, Amanda, staying at Adam’s house, seeing Olivia and Lily at the hardware store,
everything
. She even told them about the hayloft sex. And the hangar sex. And the seaplane-property sex. And the new-bed sex. And . . .

“I just can’t believe this is the same Adam Mason you’ve been making fun of for years,” Natalie said, smiling. “Although I don’t know what was wrong with you—he
is
gorgeous.”

“I told you a long time ago he might surprise you,” Olivia told Paige, finishing her last bite of toast and pushing her plate aside. “I used to see him at the market from time to time, and I always thought he was hot.”

“Olivia!” Natalie said.

“What?”

“First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word
hot
. And second, didn’t we say that commenting on the sexiness of future brothers-in-law was off-limits? Though Paige was always the biggest culprit.”

“Oh jeez, he’s not going to be your brother-in-law!” Paige rolled her eyes.

“What went wrong, sweetie?” Natalie turned to Paige.

“Once I told him the truth, I lost him.” Paige could feel a hot cry burning her nose right as she said it. “I’m still glad I told him. But he won’t be able to forgive me. We’re over.”

“It sort of sounds to me like you didn’t tell him the
whole
truth,” Natalie said.

“Of course I told him the whole truth! What more was there to say?”

“It sounds like you left out a key element.”

“
What are you talking about?
I told him everything. I laid myself raw.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Paige resisted the urge to yank on Natalie’s long hair like she had when they were kids and she was mad. Instead, she fumed into her coffee.

“I told him
everything
,” she mumbled.

“Did you tell him you loved him?” Natalie shot back.

Paige frowned. “No. I mean about the past. The part I was withholding.”

“Aren’t you withholding the fact that you’re in love with him? And always were?”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“But it does, Paige.” Olivia reached across the table and cupped Paige’s hand. “Like Nat said, it’s a key element. You need to tell him that part, too. It’s part of you. It’s part of the truth. And he deserves to know. At the very least, it’ll change the way he feels about you. But at the most, it’ll change the way he feels about himself. And that’s a wonderful gift to give. Even if your relationship has ended.”

Paige stared into her coffee and thought that over. Not that it would change his level of forgiveness, but Paige could at least let him know he was always loved. That she did everything out of love. And a little infatuation, too, but definitely love. She’d truly always loved him. She was definitely not one to admit such a thing to a man—especially a man who was angry at her—but she should be. As her mom had said, she had to be brave enough to start being, and showing, her true self. Always.