The House on Blackberry Hill: Jewell Cove #1 (Jewel Cove) (26 page)

“Most of the town has relatives in here,” Tom said, leading the way through slowly. “My grandparents are over there, as well as their parents and brothers and sisters.” He pointed at headstones bearing the Arseneault name. “Over here is the Collins family. Josh’s dad, Frank—my uncle. He was a fisherman, lost at sea.”

Abby paused. There was a spot for Meggie beside him, her name already there with the date left to be engraved. A love that deep and abiding seemed incomprehensible somehow, and yet right all the same.

“The Foster plot is over here,” Tom said quietly, leading her down a worn path. She glanced at headstones along the way—some newer, others so old they were tilting and the engraving was hard to make out. Even though it was off the beaten path, the whole place was well tended, with freshly cut grass trimmed uniformly around the markers. Tom stopped and Abby looked at the headstones. George and Elizabeth. Jedediah and Martha. Robert and Richard, the two sons killed overseas. Abby wondered if there were even bodies there or if the markers had been placed simply in memory. Burton Foster—had he been a cousin? Louisa, died an infant. Elijah. Edith. Marian.

All the bloodline and spouses except Iris, who hadn’t been a Foster at all, and her son. The line had died with Marian.

Abby stepped forward and arranged the roses around the base of Edith’s headstone. “She was there that night,” she murmured, her hand gently tracing the carved words on the headstone. “Marian was there the night Edith died. Do you think she remembered it? I hope not. I just hope Marian knew how much her mother loved her.”

Tom came forward too, squatted down beside her and picked up a stem that she’d dropped. He put his hand on the granite and sighed. “I think Marian knew. Edith made a mistake, but you’re right, she didn’t deserve this. You can’t help who you love. At least Edith had the guts to follow her heart. I used to wish Erin had been willing to risk everything for love. And when she finally was, I would have given everything for her to take it back.”

Abby paused at the tight thread of pain in his voice. “What do you mean? When she chose Josh?”

He shook his head, pushing his hands against his knees. They cracked as he stood up. “She was going to leave him. That’s what no one knows. Not even Josh.”

“She was going to leave him for you?”

Abby stood up now and looked at him. He was staring out over the waving grass of the nearby field. “Did Sarah and Jess tell you about the night Erin and Josh got engaged? About what I said?” At her silent nod, Tom continued. “See, the thing about that night at the Rusty Fern is that even though I was drunk, I was right. She shouldn’t have married Josh. Later Erin confessed to me that Josh checked all the right boxes. I wasn’t good enough for her family.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Abby dismissed the idea. “You’re wonderful. You have a successful business and you’re honest and loyal and hardworking.”

He smiled but there wasn’t much heart in it. “Thanks for saying that, but I was a lot younger, trying to get the business off the ground, a manual laborer with a fixer-upper cottage, and Josh was a doctor with better manners than his rough-around-the-edges cousin.”

Abby’s heart ached for him. “So she let you go and put the military and miles between you. Like Kristian did with Edith.”

“Only Kristian didn’t have a choice, did he? He had to go. I chose, Abby. When Erin came to me right before she deployed the last time and asked me to leave everything behind and be with her, I refused.”

Abby’s chest squeezed. Erin had come back and asked Tom to run away with her? What a horrible position to be in. Happiness, but at such a cost.

“You refused because of Josh.”

“I refused because I knew we could never truly be happy, not with Josh between us. How could I let her divorce him and be with me? He was like my brother. I couldn’t do that to him. I either had to hurt her or hurt him. I told her to go home and make it work. That she’d made her choice. I told her to…” His voice caught. “To start a family like Josh wanted.”

“Do you regret your decision?”

His dark gaze settled on her, accepting the inevitable guilt. “What do you think? Instead of running away with me, instead of going home, she ran away to another tour. And she didn’t come home again. I have to live with that every day.”

He turned away and began walking to the truck while Abby stood, dumbstruck, in the middle of the cemetery. That was what Tom was carrying around? Because of his decision, the woman he’d loved was dead. That was how he saw it, wasn’t it? He was blaming himself.

She went after him, crushing a cluster of purple violets as she rushed to catch up. Tom had been there for her more than once, and most of the time she’d given him a hard time for simply being private. Who could blame him now? No wonder he didn’t want to show how he really felt. He’d been burned too often and still bore the scars.

“Tom, wait…”

She caught up with him about ten feet from the truck and grabbed his arm. “Tom. You have to stop blaming yourself. You can’t live that way.”

“If I hadn’t turned her away, she wouldn’t have gone overseas again. She would have been safe…”

“And you would have been miserable.” She considered for a moment. “The night at Sarah’s, Josh said some pretty nasty things. You could have come back at him with this.” Especially in the heat of the moment. As ammunition went, it was pretty good.

“He lost his wife, Abby.” Tom stared at her like he couldn’t believe she was suggesting something so stupid. “I couldn’t hurt him that way. Not deliberately.”

Her heart ached for him. “You,” she said softly, “are surprisingly loyal and compassionate.”

“I’m not!” He shouted it out and the words echoed through the woods behind them. “Don’t you get it? I was tempted, Abby. So tempted. I kissed her that night and we almost…” He ran his hand over his hair. “I was guilty of everything in my mind and in my heart.”

“This is crazy. You feel guilty for not being with her, you feel guilty for betraying your cousin when you did no such thing, you just feel guilty for everything! Did it ever occur to you that you don’t need to take responsibility for every little thing? Surely Josh deserves some of the blame. After all, you had her first.” Not to mention Erin’s part in all of it. She’d been the one to pit cousin against cousin.

Tom’s eyes blazed. “He’d been through his own challenges. He’d lost his dad and was dealing with trying to hold the family together.”

“So it’s okay that he moved in on your girl?”

He closed his lips.

Abby furrowed her brow, feeling a spurt of anger toward this apparent saint of a woman who’d driven such a deep wedge between Tom and Josh. “Do you know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand how one woman can love one man and marry another and still inspire such devotion in both of you!”

She began to stomp away, feeling less sorry for Erin by the moment and annoyed that Tom and Josh had both been completely wrapped around her finger.

“Why, because no one has ever loved you like that?”

The words cut into her deeply. She caught her breath, frozen to the spot. They were words spoken in anger, lashing out because of his own pain, but they were weapons just the same. Apparently he had no problem deliberately hurting
her
.

She turned around, determined not to cower away from tough conversations any longer. “Yes, because no one has ever loved me like that. I’ve never been in love before. I sure as hell haven’t been loved the way you and Josh love her. But I do know that if someone loved me as much as you loved Erin, nothing in the world could have forced me to let them go.”

Whether she was perfect or flawed, Tom was going to love Erin until his dying day, wasn’t he? It was a splash of cold, sobering water. “I feel sorry for you. You have a lot to give someone, but until you let go of her it’s just a waste.”

*   *   *

For long seconds Tom just stared at her. The mourning dove’s cry echoed through the cemetery and over the meadow. Abby’s words hit him with the force of a truck. He’d opened up to her, trusted her, and she still didn’t understand. He knew he was being cruel, but he lashed out anyway.

“Wise words from someone who admits to never having been in love.” Again his words hit their mark, and seeing her wince, Tom felt like an even bigger ass.

“Everyone has their own pain, Tom. It’s not limited to you and your situation. Don’t think you know me, because you don’t.”

“Does anyone?” He stepped forward. “Does anyone really know Abigail Foster?”

Standing in the cemetery talking about love and Erin and Josh and Abby, Tom felt a surge of anger that had nothing to do with the past. He wanted to reach over and demand Abby let him in. Demand that she really trust him.

She met his gaze evenly. “No. No, they don’t. And that’s just how I plan to keep it.”

Tom gave a bitter laugh. “Well, honey, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. You talk about me ‘letting go’ of the past when you’re too afraid to even let anyone in at all.”

*   *   *

Silence filled the cemetery; even the dove halted its song. Now Abby knew she’d made the right choice by stopping whatever had been going to happen between them. She could never compete with Erin’s ghost. And at this point, making love was a big enough deal that she didn’t want to squander it on someone who would be thinking of someone else.

“So what now? You run away again?” Tom accused.

“There’s nothing to keep me here, is there?” Abby paused as the words sank in before saying quietly, “I’d like to go home now.”

“I promised you dinner.”

“I don’t think either one of us is in the mood for that right now. I have a frozen pizza. It’ll be fine.”

Tom made a move as if to protest further.

“Please, Tom. Just take me home.”

He brushed by her and went back to the truck, opened the door and stood next to it. Moments later they pulled into her driveway. Tom shut off the ignition and turned to face her. He was still annoyed, she could tell. And something more. Something deeper below the surface than simple anger.

“I believed you when you were sure no one would. I have been there for you, and maybe I should remind you that you were the one who put a stop to whatever it was that was happening between us in your bedroom. If you think I could do any of those things if I didn’t care about you in some way, you really haven’t bothered to know me at all.”

Abby was pissed off that Tom could manage to make her feel so small. To feel like she’d somehow wronged him, but more than that she was tired. Today had been too emotional, too stressful. She might have her own fears and misgivings but at least her heart wasn’t tangled up in someone else’s.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? You’re so far from over her. And that’s too big a risk for a girl like me. I’ve known it all along, okay? So let’s just call this what it is. A bit of a mess when all is said and done. And probably best to leave it all here since I’ll be putting the house up for sale before too long.”

Silence descended on the cab of the truck.

“Fair enough,” Tom finally said, his face stony with attempted indifference. “Truce, then? There’s not much point in arguing.”

Or anything else, Abby thought, disappointed. A truce between them seemed so … bland. Being with Tom might be messy, but she’d kind of gotten used to it. He challenged her but that wasn’t necessarily all bad. She’d started looking forward to it.

But it wasn’t all good, either. “Truce,” she replied, putting her hand on the door handle.

*   *   *

The kitchen was done, the cupboards and countertop and the new tile floor installed. With the last of the draperies on order and the painting complete, there was nothing holding Abby back. She’d gone to the Realtor in town and within twenty-four hours the house had been listed at a price tag that she personally thought was astronomical. She also knew it was worth every penny, especially considering all the renovations Tom had done. What had once been a landmark was now a showpiece unmatched on the mid-coast.

All that was left now was for Tom to put up the refurbished chandelier and there would be no reason to see him again. She didn’t need to stay in town to sell the house. That’s what Realtors and lawyers were for, after all.

She was in town the morning the
FOR SALE
sign went up and ran into Jess at Breezes. Jess was carrying an extra-large paper cup with a tea bag string hanging from beneath the lid. When she saw Abby a smile lit her face. “Hey, stranger,” she said, meeting Abby on the sidewalk. “Missed you at the last candle class.”

“Sorry. It got really busy at the house, getting it ready for the Realtor.”

“You’re still bent on selling?” Jess sounded disappointed, and her lips turned down in a small frown.

Abby tried to make her voice light; after all, there was nothing sad in the news. It was what she’d intended to do all along. She was going to go back to Canada. She had a job waiting next fall. An apartment.

Maybe that would put enough distance between her and the feelings that seemed to crop up ever since she’d set foot in Jewell Cove. Feelings like warmth and belonging. They made returning to her life in Halifax sound supernaturally boring. “Sign’s going up this morning. I expect to be flooded with offers by two o’clock.”

Jess’s eyes clouded with worry. “So soon … I thought maybe with things between you and Tom…”

Abby swallowed. “There is no me and Tom, Jess. There never really was.” Why were the words so hard to say?

“Maybe if you hung around longer.”

“He’s still in love with Erin.” Abby kept her voice low; after all, she’d learned quite quickly that there were big ears everywhere in a place this size. “You must know that. I couldn’t compete with her even if I wanted to.”

Jess sighed. “I wish they would both move on. Neither one of them is happy.”

She didn’t need to say the name for Abby to know she meant Josh. Abby looked at Jess and asked something she’d been wondering for a long time now. “What was it about her, Jess? For Tom and Josh to fall so hard, to ruin their friendship? I don’t get it.”

Jess fiddled with the tab of her tea bag. “I don’t really know. She was beautiful, and physically strong, but there was a vulnerability about her, too. A ‘little girl lost’ vibe. I think they both responded to that. I think she was the sort of woman that makes a man want to take care of her, you know?”