Seeking Carolina (3 page)

“Hey, Gunner. I didn’t know you were still here.”

“I went to bed early so you ladies could have some time alone.” He stood up and pulled Johanna into an embrace, kissed both cheeks. “Good to see you, Jo.”

She tried to laugh. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“Almost a year.”

“No it hasn’t. Nina and I just…oh…” She pressed cool fingers to her burning cheeks. “I guess it has been a while. New Year’s right?”

His smile crinkled in the corners of his blue eyes. “Right. Nina said you had a hard time getting here.”

“It was insane. But I’m here now.” She slipped one arm around his waist, the other around Emma’s. “We all are. Gram would love it.”

“Yes, she would have. At Thanksgiving.” Emma slipped out of her embrace but kissed her cheek. “You’re here now, and Christmas is in less than a week. You will stay, won’t you?”

“I sup—”

“Good. Eat. I have to go. Snow day. Got to get home to the boys so Mike can go to work.”

Johanna let her arm slip from Gunner’s waist. Emma had every right to be upset, despite their tearful reunion. To go unchastised indefinitely was too much too hope for. She pulled out a vinyl chair and plucked a slice of bacon from the plate. Julietta dropped onto the chair beside her. “Emma’s been cranky lately,” she exaggerated a whisper. “I think she’s prego.”

“I am not cranky,” Emma said, putting on her coat. “And I am definitely not pregnant.”

“You and Mike not having sex again?”

Emma froze. Johanna cringed but Julietta sat poker-straight, head cocked and her expression concerned.

“Sex isn’t the issue,” Emma said, resuming her struggle with the zipper. “It’s…nothing. Nothing that needs discussing now. Supper at my house tonight. Nina, you and Gunner, too.”

“We’ll be there.”

“What about me?” Julietta asked. Emma kissed both her cheeks.

“You are a given, darling.” She headed for the door. “Seven o’clock. Bring wine.”

Gunner’s cell rang just as Emma closed the door. Bits of her brother-in-law’s hushed conversation drifted back into the kitchen. Nina poured another round of coffee before sitting down herself, her attention focused on her husband.

“He’s going to have to leave,” she said quietly. “It was nearly impossible for him to get out of the city to come here at all. Huge things happening at the gallery.”

“How huge?” Julietta asked. “Da Vinci huge?”

“Not art-wise. There’s been this firm out of Sweden wooing us for years. They want to buy us out, and I think temptation is starting to get to Gunner. If they succeed, the good news is neither one of us will ever have to work again.”

“And the bad news?”

Nina smiled into her coffee. “Neither one of us will have to work again.”

“How tempted are you, Nina?”

“I love the gallery. We’ve worked really hard all these years to grow it from that stinky little artist co-op into what it is now. But I’m ready to let it go, maybe travel a bit. I just don’t think Gunner would last a year living the life of the idle rich.”

The sisters ate and chatted, but Nina’s attention remained on Gunner. When he came to the doorway and motioned her to him, she went without a word. The pair of them, arms around one another, shared the phone. Gunner’s hand moved up and down his wife’s spine, as unconscious an act as it was sensual. Johanna forced herself to look away, a little embarrassed and a lot envious.

“Could you imagine the world devastation should those two ever have kids?” Julietta was still staring in that unnerving way she had. No self-consciousness, no apologies. “We’d all have to wear sunglasses or suffer some sort of beauty-blindness.”

“Is that like snow-blindness?” Johanna joked.

“No.” Julietta snorted. “Photokeratitis is real. I made up beauty-blindness.”

“Well, they’re not going to have kids, so the world is safe.”

“It’s not too late. She’s only forty-one.”

Johanna let it go. Nina had vowed to never have children, to never pass along the genes they all inherited lest any child of hers suffer their parents’ fate. Emma seemed determined to prove her sister’s fears wrong with three sons in quick succession. And if Julietta’s suspicions proved right, perhaps another.

Left alone with her youngest, unflappable sister, Johanna hedged, “So, Emma and Mike were having problems, you know, in bed?”

“It was a few years ago.” Julietta bit into her toast. “When Gio was a toddler. She wanted another baby. He said they couldn’t afford any more, and didn’t trust her not to accidentally-on-purpose sabotage their birth control. So,” she shrugged, “no sex was the only way to make sure it didn’t happen.”

“He didn’t trust her?”

“I wouldn’t have either. She really wanted another baby.”

In the next room, Gunner and Nina were laughing. Julietta’s attention diverted quickly, always too easily. She pushed out of her chair and joined them.

Johanna sipped at her coffee, basked in the sunshine coming through the big kitchen window and the sisterly gossip she didn’t realize she missed. If I she were in Cape May, she’d have already put in half a day of work. Sleeping in, having her breakfast made for her, indulging in chatting with these sisters she loved, it let her, if only for a moment, forget all the reasons she had for staying far away from Bitterly.

A soft knock on the back door opened her eyes. Charlie waved from the other side of the glass. She leapt too quickly to her feet and nearly spilled her coffee.

“All done?” she asked as he stomped his boots clean.

“Boys are just finishing up.”

Johanna stepped aside to let him in. He put up his hands.

“I’ll get snow all over the floor.”

“Who cares? Get in here. And call your boys. I’m making them hot chocolate.”

“No need to—”

“It’ll take two minutes. Sit. Warm up. It’s the least I can do. Okay?”

Charlie chuckled softly. “Sure.”

Johanna called out to the boys who shouted in return. Head stuck in the pantry, she was relieved to find the ingredients necessary for a real cup of hot chocolate, and not the powdered stuff in an envelope.

“Help yourself to the coffee,” she said over her shoulder, “unless you want hot chocolate.”

“I’d love some. Thanks, Johanna.”

He spoke her name softly, like a whisper before falling into sleep. Johanna stirred the melting butter and chocolate, added the sugar spoonful by spoonful. By the time she started incorporating the milk, she could speak without her voice cracking.

“Thanks again for last night.”

“No worries. That reminds me—I have your backpack. You left it in the truck.”

“Oh, I did, didn’t I. Totally forgot about it.”

“I’ll have one of the boys get it.” He passed behind her to call out to his sons.

Johanna shivered. Lowering the heat, she stirred as if her life depended upon it not sticking to the bottom.

Charlie peered over her shoulder. “Smells good. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything but the packaged stuff.”

“I doubt there’s even any real cocoa in that.”

“Probably not. You never struck me as the cooking type.”

“I never was.”

“But you own a bakery.”

“An impulse decision, not a lifelong dream,” she admitted. “I was vacationing in Wildwood, and decided to check out Cape May. I fell in love with the town, the Victorian houses and quaint shops. It’s real old-world, you know? Even in the height of summer. When I saw CC’s for sale, I…” She bit the truth off there.

Charlie answered for her. “You bought it.”

She shoved him playfully. “I hocked everything I owned and mortgaged six of my nine lives, but I did.”

“CC’s, huh?”

“Cape Confectionary. It came with the name. CC’s for short.”

“Ah, I see.”

“After all my failed attempts at earning a living, this one has turned out to be something good. Who’d have thought I would have a knack for baking? In the summer, I do breakfast and lunch too. It gets kind of crazy, tourists from all around the world there to see the famous Jersey Shore. It’s like no place else on earth. You should bring the kids down.”

Her cheeks were burning before the words were out of her mouth. Johanna took the pan off the burner, kept her back to him as she poured three mugs. Stomping on the small porch off the back of the house signaled the boys’ arrival. Another moment and they were in the kitchen, stripping off snow gear in the boisterous way of young men.

“Caleb, Will, this is Johanna Coco. Johanna, two of my boys.”

“Hi, again,” Caleb waved, his smile wide. “We met through the window already. Here’s your backpack.” He retrieved it from the pile of coats and scarves. “Got a little snowy.”

“Thanks.” She held out a steaming mug. “I’ll trade you.”

He took it with an enthusiastic, “Thanks,” and flopped onto a kitchen chair. His brother, dark-haired as Gina, did not share his enthusiasm, but he took her offering and sat beside his father at the table. Johanna placed the last cup in front of Charlie.

“What do we owe you gentlemen for your services?”

“This’ll do.” Charlie sipped. “Come on, Jo. It’s a favor to friends.”

“Last night was a favor,” she said. “This is not. You have to let me pay you something.”

“No I don’t.”

“Charlie.”

“Johanna.” He laughed. “Seriously. Don’t make this awkward.”

“Hey, I want some.” Julietta blew through the room, took the pan from the stove. She poured herself the little bit left. “Dang.”

“I’ll make more, Jules.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Caleb raised his empty cup. “Ow! Quit it, Will.”

“You’re being rude.”

“No, I’m not. It’s a compliment. How’s a compliment rude?”

Will rolled his eyes and shook his head. He reminded Johanna of Nina at his age, when anything and everything her sisters did was somehow embarrassing to her.

“If your dad won’t let me pay you, then I think more hot chocolate is an absolute must. Will? You want some too?”

He looked into his cup. “Well, if you’re making it anyway…”

Johanna started mixing ingredients again, silently happy to keep them around a little while longer. Her slip was already fading. As if Charlie would ever bring his kids to Cape May, of all places. As if anything about that teenage-summer still mattered to him at all.

“We always pay you,” Julietta was saying. “Don’t be stupid.”

“This is different. Don’t start with me, Jules.”

“I’m not starting anything. You are.”

“What are you, twelve?”

Johanna stiffened, but Julietta laughed and shoved him. “Then come to Emma’s for dinner tonight. We’re all going to be there. If you won’t take money, we can pay you in food. My sister’s as good a cook as Gram was.”

“Thanks but—”

“Charlie, I can’t take this much rejection in one day. You know I’m special that way. I’ll square it with Emma. Come. It’s the least we can do for all you’ve done the last few days.”

Charlie’s shoulders slumped but he smiled fondly. “All right. Thanks.”

“Great. Be there at seven. Bring wine.”

Johanna stirred and stirred. The action soothed. She poured out cups while the others chattered. Will and Caleb were trying to convince their dad to take them snowboarding. Charlie said Charlotte could do it. He’d already promised Tony and Millie he’d make a snowman with them. Julietta told the story about the time Emma went up the mountain on some school trip, and how she nearly killed herself and five others by falling in the middle of the slope. Their words were far away and apart, as if she were a ghost listening from the shadows in an altered world. Johanna tried to shake herself out of it. She hadn’t needed this slip from reality in a long time. Of course, being in Bitterly would trigger it.

The scraping of chairs on the hardwood restored her hearing, her sense of place. Johanna found herself helping Charlie into his big jacket.

“Sorry about the floor.” He pointed to the puddles around his sons’ discarded boots. “I’ll have the boys—”

“Don’t worry about it. Julietta will do it.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll make her more hot chocolate.”

He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in deep creases there for as long as she could remember. Back then, they smoothed as quickly as they formed. Today, they did not, and Johanna liked it quite a lot.

“I’ll see you later then?”

“Yup. Later.”

“Come on, boys.” Charlie was out the door before his sons could pull on their boots. Johanna bit down on her lips suddenly buzzing with words like—Stop. Stay. Do you ever think of me? Of that summer? It was so long ago, and they had been so young. In those sweaty months before Labor Day, Charlie McCallan made her happier than she ever thought she could be. And then it was over, just like that.

She dug into the front pocket of her backpack, pulled out two crumpled twenties and stuffed them into the boys’ hands.

“Don’t tell your dad.”

“Wow,” Caleb said. “Thanks, Johanna.”

“Thanks,” Will murmured, shoving the bill into his pocket.

Closing the door behind them, Johanna leaned against it. Dinner. With Charlie. She glared at her sister.

“What?”

“You know what. Heavens to Murgatroyd, Jules. I’m going to murdilate you.”

“You’re welcome.” Julietta handed her the mug of hot-chocolate dregs, kissed her cheek. “And you can clean up the floor.”

* * * *

Johanna lay alone, in the dark, supine on her grandmother’s bed and a hand on her overburdened belly. Emma’s famous macaroni and meatballs sat heavily alongside the pastries Charlie brought—recompense for having to bring his eight-year-old twins, Millie and Tony, to dinner when his older kids stayed late at the slopes. Johanna’s middle nephew, Henry, had been thrilled. He and Tony were classmates, and though Millie was as well, she mostly ignored the boys to instead braid and unbraid the silky strands of Nina’s golden hair. Nina happily took her own turns at Millie’s thick, red curls and Johanna had to wonder if her sister’s childlessness was the choice she always insisted it was.

Gio, the youngest nephew, pestered Henry and Tony, while Ian, the oldest, seemed to share a special bond with his Aunt Julietta. Most of her evening was spent helping the ten-year-old with his math homework. In the thick of it all, Johanna had felt as full of love as she had been of the food.