The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (19 page)

“Yeah, that’d be great.” That odd emotion from earlier surged again in his chest and bloomed into a smile on his face. A damned smile, as if he were seventeen again and the girl of his dreams had just agreed to go to the prom with him.

The feeling lasted a minute, maybe two, and then Luke remembered that dating Olivia meant opening up to her. Telling her about what he’d done. The mistakes he had made.

Dating Olivia meant letting her get close, letting her rely on him, trust him. Luke raised a hand to the scar that cut a crescent into the side of his face, and the smile disappeared. He tossed the rake into the wheelbarrow and headed back inside, where the dark welcomed him with open arms.

Twelve

The last time Diana Tuttle had been this nervous, she’d been a sophomore, lying in the backseat of a Buick with Sean Baxter on the night of his senior prom, her dress shoved up around her waist. Sean was smiling that charming grin of his and telling her he had protection.

Fifteen years later, she had a son and Sean was long gone. That was what she got for trusting men. No wonder she worked with animals all day. Animals never broke your heart. Never let you down. Never ran out when you needed them most.

Or showed up when you wanted them the least. Like Olivia had.

Diana stepped onto the porch of the house that she had grown up in, the house she knew as well as she knew her own, her hand automatically going to the knob, before remembering that someone else owned this house now.

Her sister.

A sister her mother had never mentioned. A sister she didn’t want or need. Diana wished Olivia would just go back to Boston and stop trying to force a relationship where there’d never been one before. Diana wasn’t here for a connection, for God’s sake. She was too old for that whispers-in-the-dark and giggles-over-dinner sisterly bond.

She intended to tell Olivia that, straight off, before the other woman got any ideas about the two of them becoming buddy-buddy.

Before Diana could raise her hand to knock, the door opened, and Olivia stood on the other side, her face filled with hopeful nervousness. Diana wondered if right now, the two of them mirrored each other. “Hi. I’m sorry I’m late. We had someone bring in a dog that had been hit by a car and . . .” She shrugged.

“No problem. I understand. Do you, uh, want to come in?”

No, she didn’t. She didn’t want to enter her mother’s house and see the marks of another woman in the furniture, the décor, the dishes in the sink. She didn’t want to build a relationship with someone who had, right or wrong, stolen what should have been Diana’s. Diana grew up in this house. Diana had dusted that furniture, raked those leaves. Not Olivia. But she bit her tongue and nodded instead.

Olivia opened the door wider and stepped to the side. “Forgive the mess. I’ve been doing some renovations.”

Renovations? It looked like a hurricane had made landfall inside the tiny bungalow that Diana had lived in for half her life. Plaster and lath lay in a dusty pile to one side of the living room. Two thirds of the walls had been stripped back to the studs, and the threadbare mauve carpet that had once been acreage for a Barbie and Ken village was now gone, exposing stained, dusty oak floorboards.

“Let’s go in the kitchen,” Olivia said. “I made some coffee.”

Diana followed behind Olivia, walking in this surreal world that was familiar, yet not. Hers, and yet not.

Olivia had the same trim figure as their mother, the same blond hair, and the same smile. But it was her eyes, those deep green eyes, that Diana knew. Bridget’s eyes.

There was no doubting the family connection. The question was why Bridget had never told Diana that she had a sister. She had spent hours with her mother, especially toward the end, when Diana had closed her practice down for two weeks and spent every day tending to Bridget. She couldn’t find a moment to say,
Hey, you have a sister and I thought it’d be nice if she inherited the house
?

Diana stepped into the kitchen and stopped dead. Most of the cabinets were gone, the countertops ripped out, the flooring removed from one side of the room. A piece of plywood was set up over the two remaining base cabinets, serving as makeshift counter space. “Oh my God. It looks like a bomb went off in here.”

Olivia laughed. “That might have been an easier approach than the one I took.” Then she sobered and pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry. I bet you have a lot of memories in this kitchen. And I bet it’s hard to see it like this. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to meet here.”

“You’re right. It is incredibly hard to see it in your hands instead of mine.” Oh, shit. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “I’m sorry. I . . . I guess I was surprised that Mom left the house to you.”

“Not as surprised as me.” Olivia pressed her lips together again, as if trying to hold back a tide of words. “I, um ordered Chinese food. I figured you’d be hungry after work and maybe didn’t have time to eat. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I ordered a variety. And I got some cookies from the bakery in town, too.” A nervous hitch filled Olivia’s voice. She crossed to the coffeepot, then back to the table, then back to the pot again. “Uh, coffee?”

“Thanks.” It would at least give Diana’s hands something to do. She fought the urge to run out the door. Olivia was clearly trying hard, and it wasn’t her fault that Diana wanted to scream. The person Diana really wanted to yell at wasn’t here, and never would be again.

Olivia brought two mugs over to them, then sat in the chair opposite. It was the same dented chrome-and-laminate table that Diana had sat at for as long as she could remember. She could remember coloring pictures at this table, eating chicken nuggets for dinner in that same seat, and fashioning a homemade Christmas card for her mother under the brass light that still hung from a slightly tarnished chain.

She could also remember sitting here alone, until the sun dropped behind the trees and the night birds began to call, waiting for her mother to come home. She’d fix herself a sandwich or a can of spaghetti, then tuck herself into bed, never able to fall asleep until she heard the click of the front door.

So many memories wrapped up in this house, both good and bad. Diana wasn’t sure whether to cry or scream. Instead she sat there with that polite tolerant face every woman learned and watched the dark-brown coffee shimmer in her mother’s mug.

Olivia broke the silence first. “I guess I should start at the beginning. I had no idea who my biological mother was until a lawyer showed up at my door a few weeks ago and told me she had left me this house. I was at a crossroads in my life, and I decided I really wanted to get those answers I’d never had, so I packed up my car and headed south.”

“You just . . . moved? Like that?”

“It was crazy, and there are days when I still think about going back home to all the people and the things that I know.” Olivia shrugged. “But I want answers more than I want that.”

“And if you get the answers, are you leaving then?”

Olivia toyed with her mug. “I don’t know. I’ve got a job I love here, and the weather can’t be beat, but it’s hard being away from all my friends and family. Lonely.”

Empathy filled Diana. She knew that feeling, oh, she knew it well. Hadn’t she felt that way a hundred times during her childhood? During her terrible relationship with Sean? How many times had he come home, pulled up a chair to the dinner table, and vowed this time things would be different, and they’d be a real family? Then he’d be gone before the dishes were cleared and her heart would break all over again. Before Jackson was born, Diana had struggled, alone, and knew that ache of wanting another person to talk to at the end of the day. Her hand splayed across the hard surface of the kitchen table, almost close enough to touch Olivia’s palm. “Rescue Bay is a welcoming community. I’m sure that will change the longer you live here.”

What was she doing?
Inviting
Olivia to stay? That wasn’t the plan.

The trouble with her plan, though, was that Diana was starting to like Olivia. To relate to her. Connect.

Olivia dropped her gaze to her coffee cup. The Chinese food take-out boxes sat between them, filling the air with the sweet and spicy scents of pineapple, chili peppers, and soy sauce. But neither of them made a move to open the boxes or to take a bite. “What was she like?”

And there it was, the first of the hard questions. The reason why Diana had stalled and delayed and found a hundred reasons not to call Olivia for days. A part of Diana wanted to stamp her feet like a three-year-old and say,
She was
my
mother; you don’t have a right to know about her
.

Diana bit her lip and searched for the right answer. “Complicated.”

“How so?”

“My mother . . .” Diana caught herself and tried again with words that sounded foreign on her tongue. “Our mother was dedicated to her causes. Not so much to the people around her. I’d be sitting here, at this very table, waiting for her to come home. She’d forget about dinner and soccer games and everything else if there was an animal in trouble or a dog loose on the highway. And I’d . . . fend for myself.”

“Did she ever get married?”

“No.” Diana shrugged. “I don’t think she could love a whole lot of people at one time. I don’t mean that she was hateful or self-centered, it’s just that so much of her energy went into this shelter that it was like there wasn’t much left over.”

The conversation between them was like a minefield, each of them trying to take a step forward without detonating the fragile peace. Olivia’s nervous energy had calmed, but still she held tight to the coffee mug. “I wish I knew why she left all this to me.”

“Yeah, me too.” Diana got to her feet and put her cup in the sink, even though it was half full. She just couldn’t sit there another second and pretend she wasn’t hurt and confused by her mother’s actions. That she didn’t resent Olivia for doing nothing more than being the name on the will.

Diana flipped the handle on the faucet, a move she’d made a thousand times in her life, and watched the water fill the mug, then spill over into the stainless sink. Then the image blurred and it wasn’t until Olivia came over and shut the water off that Diana realized she was crying.

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Diana wheeled around. “Well you did. You upset me just by being here. In this house. Changing everything. It’s not yours. I don’t care if she left it to you, it’s not yours. And I want it back.” Then she crossed the kitchen, snagged her purse off the chair, and rushed out of the house, getting into her car and driving until the tears blurred the road into a gray puddle.

Thirteen

As Monday drew to a close, Luke had spent an hour, maybe two, on his porch, as the sun went down, and darkness dropped its heavy blanket over Rescue Bay, and the mailbox disappeared into the ebony night. He stared at it anyway, as if he could recall the letter he’d sent by will alone.