Spring Comes To Barncastle Inn (5 page)

             
Sadly, Peter saw the void that Diane Barncastle's passing left in his neighbors' lives, especially Ted's. He remembered her cookies the best of all, along with chilled pitchers of lemonade served up on humid summer days.

             
“How do you go on without her?” he'd asked Ted a few weeks ago. The question remained unanswered in his own mind, even two years past Kate's death.

             
“I ask God for enough grace to face every new day,” Ted said. “When I think of the years I've been without her, I know my time on this earth is growing shorter until I see her again. However, the remaining years feel like lifetimes. So I concentrate on day after day. It doesn't hurt as bad now. I've made my peace with it.”

             
Enough grace to face every new day. Peter could handle that. He'd never imagined, though, facing the task of raising Marin solo.

             
He'd never imagined anyone capturing his interest like Kate had, once. Sadie's reappearance in his life had hit him like a line drive.

             
Not for the first time during the past week, his thoughts drifted to Sadie. Her laugh, her smile, her quick wit, the way she managed Marin and her precocious ways. He recalled the blush that had swept across her face yesterday when she caught him staring while she gave him an enthusiastic tour of the new shop at Barncastle Inn.

             
“I bought this end table for five dollars at a tag sale in town.” Sadie ran her fingers across the table's maple surface. “It was scratched up and someone had painted it a garish purple. So I sanded it down to the wood underneath and stained it. Now, I'm selling it for fifty dollars. And it's beautiful.”

             
“Yes, beautiful.” But he'd been looking at the way her hair glowed, the way the sunlight coming through the window caught hints of red among the gold strands.

             
“You weren't looking at the table.” A dimple appeared in her cheek.

             
“No. Yes. No.” He raised his hand to brush a wisp of hair over her shoulder.

             
“Dad,” Marin called across the shop, where she stood at a display of handmade soap of different varieties and scents. “Goat's milk soap. It's good for eczema. Don't you have eczema?”

             
The mood crasher made him smile now, but not then. Sadie, however, had laughed.

             
The sugar house door swung open, the nighttime chill dropping the temperature by at least twenty degrees. Even so, sweat still beaded on Peter's forehead. 

             
Marin stood in the doorway of the sugarhouse. The top of her long nightgown covered her boot tops. Her coat was draped over her shoulders. This time, she'd interrupted thoughts of Sadie, besides the moment between the two of them earlier at the store.

             
“I can't sleep.” In the middle of the night, she looked even younger than ten, her brow furrowed, her cheeks round. A light sleeper from infancy, Marin would only be soothed with music or kept asleep by white noise.

             
“I'm almost done here, then I'll make you some warm milk.” Peter eyed the fire. Next year, if he decided to open the sugarhouse, he'd invest in a gas cooker instead of using wood.

             
“Why do people make warm milk to help other people sleep?”

             
“There's an enzyme or something in milk that when it's heated, supposedly makes you drowsy. Or that's the idea.” The chilly air outside battled against the heat of the building “Come in and close the door.”

             
She stepped completely into the glorified barn and let the door swing shut behind her. “It's kind of gross. Even when you add vanilla and sugar to it.”

             
“Well, what do you propose to help you sleep?”

             
“Mama's CD.” She studied the pot.

             
Kate had recorded a few of her original songs, Psalms set to music she wrote and arranged. The songs had become a treasured memory that Kate Callaghan Appleman had lived, loved, and shared her talent with those who knew her best, if not the music world.

             
“I thought you said you didn't need it anymore.”

             
“I do tonight.”

             
He wouldn't tell her no, of course. You couldn't tell someone else when to let go, even a child. Maybe you could guide them along, but not by force. His own grief had taught him that.

             
“Okay. I'll find the CD.” He'd meant to transfer the sound files to a more portable digital format, but life had intervened.

             
“You like her, don't you?”

             
“Like who?”

             
“Sadie Barncastle.” Marin blurted out the five syllables.

             
“Yes, I like her a lot.”

             
“I do too, but not for us.”

             
“What do you mean, not for us?”

             
“I don't—I don't know.” Her lower lip trembled and she rubbed her eyes. “She's nice and she's funny and smart. But she's not for us. She almost said so.”

             
“What? Why are you bringing this up?”

             
“I saw you today. You were both smiling at each other, the way Luke and Jayne smile at each other. You can't like-like her.”

             
“Like-like?”

             
“More than friends-like.”

             
He shouldn't have let the conversation drift this way, but three a.m. probably had a lot to do with it. That, and one persistent child.

             
“The thing is, Marin, Sadie and I knew each other as children, and now we've been getting to know each other again as adults. I'm not even thinking of like-like right now.” Which maybe wasn't entirely true.

             
“Good. She said you needed to be happy on your own before you'll be happy with someone else.”

             
“Ah, so you two have been talking about me?”

             
“Once.”

             
She said you needed to be happy on your own before you'll be happy with someone else. He didn't want to let that idea roll around in his brain right now.

             
“I'm happy enough, Marin, being here and having you as my daughter.” He didn't want to ask her if she missed Newburyport, or the ocean, or her old school, or the home they'd left behind where strangers now lived inside its walls.

             
“See? She was right. She's not for us.”

             
The thought followed him back to the house after he locked the door to the sugar house behind them.

**

Palm Sunday. Sadie always liked the sound of it, with Easter one week away, going to church and reenacting the Triumphant Entry with the sounds of “hosanna” and the waving of palm branches. The church in town where they attended staged a parade of sorts on the grounds. The pastor then spoke of the way the crowds hailed Jesus as king, but only days later screamed for his execution.

             
“Do we ever do the same thing, in a manner of speaking, when God doesn't do what we think He should?” The little takeaway even now rang in Sadie's ears as she picked a few weeds from around the crocus that bloomed near the main house.

             
She knelt, her ankle barely giving the tiniest twinge since the sprain. Thankfully, Luke's veterinarian friend had x-rayed her ankle at cost. Thankfully, too, there was no break, since she couldn't pay for any extra treatment besides what she'd already done for her ankle.

             
She'd begged God, pleaded with Him to give her a new job. She had a good life in Andover, a great job she loved, a circle of friends, a good church. Maybe her romantic life was nonexistent, but she'd kept hoping that one day the right man would come across her path, or she'd come across his.

             
Then, she'd had such a vivid night with Peter. They'd laughed and talked as if the best of the old times had caught up with them after so many years.

             
So natural, so special. So real.

             
Marin, too. Sweet, smart, funny little girl that had them chuckling over the most unexpected things.

             
Peter had driven her home, helped her to the front door. She tried not to imagine what it would have been like to kiss him there, on the front steps. Hold your horses, girl.

             
Ironic, with all her scheming not to leave the city, she'd ended up here. As had Peter, months before. No, it needn't be a sign of anything.

             
“Lord, I'm going to trust that You're sorting this out. Because I'm tired of trying to figure things out and getting disappointed,” she murmured aloud. Yes, sometimes she was like that crowd in Jesus' time, fickle in her worship and devotion when God didn't seem to cooperate with her wishes.

             
“You don't have to do that,” a voice said nearby. Uncle Ted.

             
“Oh, I saw these strays here. I figured a few pulls will help. It's going to be a busy week.”

             
“That it is.” He sank onto the nearest step. “Diane planted those flowers, all of them. It's been a while since anyone's tended to them properly. We've done our best.”

             
“Of course.”

             
“She'd have been up to her elbows in that store, planning it. She always liked to poke around in a good gift shop.” He gazed out across the yard, across the parking area and at the carriage house, where a brand-new sign now hung: Carriage House Gift Shoppe. The sign company had installed it yesterday.

             
“I'm glad. I'm going to do my best to help bring more exposure to the inn. I want to see all the rooms booked, every week, every month, every holiday because people can't resist coming here.” Sadie's own determination surprised her.

             
“Good. I didn't think much of Jayne's idea at first, years ago, but it was an answer to prayer. Just like you coming here.”

             
“You...you prayed for this?”

             
“Maybe not specifically you coming here.” Uncle Ted rubbed his chin. “We needed something new. Not that Jayne and Luke weren't doing an outstanding job with the inn, but even I realized the importance of trying to offer our guests, old and new, something different.”

             
Sadie nodded. She understood that. “When my company—my old company—helped businesses evaluate their marketing plans, we found a lot of people reluctant to change, especially to try something different.” She tried not to think of the promotion around the corner, before her hopes shattered into countless pieces. “You know, I think I'm on the brink of something new myself. Change isn't easy.”

             
Uncle Ted nodded, then his expression brightened at the sound of a vehicle coming up the lane. “Ah, the Applemans.” He shot her a pointed look. “They've been coming around a lot the past couple of weeks.”

             
“Yes, they have.” Sadie turned from where she knelt. Here came Peter's Volvo, and her heart leapt. She almost reached to smooth her hair, but thought better of it when she looked at her fingers covered with soft earth after pulling weeds. She couldn't hold back the grin when Peter exited the vehicle and Marin hopped out from the other side.

             
Uncle Ted heaved to a standing position. “Peter, good to see you.”

             
“Mister—Ted, same here.” He smiled at Sadie, who found her feet and brushed the dirt from her knees.

             
“I'll leave you kids to talk.” Uncle Ted winked at Sadie before ambling off toward the barn.

             
“See you,” Peter called after him, then turned those beautiful blue eyes back in Sadie's direction. “Hey, I have a favor to ask.”

             
“Sure, what it is?”

             
“Marin and I are taking a drive this afternoon, and we won't be back until late. We haven't taken time away from the house in a few weeks. So, I was wondering if you could check on the sugar house every three hours or so?”

             
“Oh, okay.” At his first words, “taking a drive this afternoon,” Sadie thought a road trip sounded just dandy. She ignored the disappointment that swirled around inside her.

             
Marin beamed. “We're going up to Quechee Gorge.”

             
Sadie nodded. “That sounds fun. I think I've been there once. It's beautiful.”