The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (2 page)

Now, forty-eight hours later, she was in sunshine instead of snow, catching the scent of ocean instead of exhaust. Outside the Toyota’s window, the Florida coastline curved like a lazy snake, an undulating ribbon of blue-green punctuated by soaring seagulls and cresting whitecaps. It was a million miles away—and a good burst of salty, fresh air—from the choked, congested streets of Boston, where cars played Frogger with each other and dodged potholes the size of small elephants. Down here, Olivia could breathe, really breathe, in more ways than one.

She pressed the speed-dial button on her cell and waited for the call to connect. When her mother answered with her familiar chirpy hello, a wave of homesickness crashed over Olivia, and for a second she had the urge to turn around, to head back to everything familiar.

“Olivia! I’ve been waiting for you to call,” her mother said. “How far are you now?”

“Only another mile or so to go.” Olivia nestled the cell against her ear. “I’ve been ready to crawl out of my skin for the last five miles, just dying to get there already. Maybe I should pull a Boston and put the pedal to the metal the rest of the way.”

“Olivia Jean, if you do, I’ll fly down there and take away your car keys,” her mother said, with the same tone she’d used when Olivia had been little and trying to raid the cookie jar before dinner. “Even if you are over thirty.”

Olivia laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll keep it to twenty miles over the speed limit, like any respectable Massachusetts driver.” On her left, a half-dozen bright, happy shops lined a wide boardwalk, across the street from the beach. A white-and-pink awning fronted the Rescue Bay Ice Cream Stand, a quaint little place with umbrella-covered tables and a giant plastic cow sporting a bright pink bow. An elderly couple enjoying swirled cones—one chocolate, one vanilla—raised a hand in greeting as Olivia drove past. She returned an awkward wave, just as a man walking his dog raised his hand in greeting and a shopkeeper sweeping the walk did the same. The instant welcoming atmosphere gave Olivia pause. It wasn’t that Bostonians were frigid, exactly, but rather less overt in being neighborly.

There was something . . . warm about this town, something Olivia had liked the second she arrived. “Ma, you should see this place. It’s like another planet.”

“Well, we’re still stuck on planet Arctic here. It’s too darn cold to even look out the window, never mind go anywhere.” Anna Linscott was no doubt bundled up by the fireplace in her Back Bay townhome. Olivia could see her now, sitting in the threadbare rose-patterned armchair Anna had owned since the day she got married, the blue-and-green afghan Nana Linscott had crocheted draped across her lap. “There was a ring around the moon last night. A storm is coming. I’m thinking three inches, maybe four.”

“It’s January and you’re in New England. There’s always a snowstorm coming.”

Anna laughed. “True. But if I see a ladybug—”

“And she lands on your hand, spring is on its way.” Olivia grinned at her mother’s superstitious weather predicting. Half the time, Anna was more accurate than the guys at Channel 7, so maybe there was something to her folklore. Olivia glanced out the window again, drawing in another deep breath of balmy air. “This is bliss. Palm trees and beaches and—”

“Alligators and geckos.”

“They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.” Olivia fingered the picture taped to her dash. A perfect Florida bungalow, painted in sherbet colors of pale yellow and soft salmon, trimmed in white, nestled in the middle of a neat yard, flanked by rows of blooming annuals and fruit-laden citrus trees. “Mom, do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

“I think you have to do this.” Anna sighed, a mixture of support and worry. “Then maybe you’ll finally have the answers you need, and deserve.”

Olivia’s finger danced across the picture again. Would she? All her life, Olivia had felt like a lock without the right key, a puzzle missing a piece. Now, maybe here, she’d find what she was searching for.

Herself.

And if not, she’d at least get one hell of a tan.

“Darn,” her mother said. “Your dad’s beeping in. I sent him to the grocery store. By himself.”

Olivia laughed. “Say no more. I’ll hold.” She glanced again at the photo on the dash, then up at the GPS.
Distance remaining: 0.9 miles.
Butterflies danced in her stomach.

When the lawyer had rung her doorbell last week, Olivia insisted he must have had the wrong address, the wrong Olivia Linscott, and the wrong will in his hands. Did she have any relatives in Florida, he’d asked, and she’d said no. Everyone in her little family lived in Boston, and always had. They’d practically come over on the Mayflower, as Aunt Bessie said. No one moved away, except crazy cousin George, who went to Alaska to marry an Inuit woman he’d met at a Trekkie convention. Olivia had seen the pictures of their
Enterprise
-themed wedding. Quite inventive, considering they’d held it outdoors. In February.

Then the lawyer had asked if she knew the identity of her biological mother, and Olivia’s world flipped upside down. Her mother. The woman who had given birth, then walked out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, leaving her newborn daughter behind.

Her birth mother.

A woman she’d never met.

A woman who’d never contacted her, never done so much as send a Christmas card.

A woman who had left her property in Florida, a porcelain necklace, and not much else. There’d been no letter, no explanations. No idea of who Bridget Tuttle had been.

Or why she’d abandoned her baby.

All her life, Olivia had wanted to know why. She’d toyed with searching for her biological mother on the Internet, then drawn back at the last minute, afraid the answers might not be ones she wanted to hear. And now, that door to a personal connection, a face-to-face, was closed. Forever.

She swallowed hard and pressed a finger to the photo again. Her only link to Bridget Tuttle remained in this piece of property and the town of Rescue Bay. Someone here had to have known her mother and would be able to fill in the blanks that now gaped like black holes.

Maybe this desperate need to know stemmed from all the changes over the last year. Maybe it was finally having a tangible reminder of someone who had been, up till now, a mythical figure. A ghost, really.

Olivia had prodded the lawyer for more information, but he’d said he was merely the messenger, a Boston attorney hired by the Florida probate, and knew less than she did. He handed her the deed, along with the picture of the house and an envelope with the necklace, then wished her good luck.

She’d stood there for a long time, staring at that picture, before making the most impulsive decision of her life. Just . . .
go
.

Within days, Olivia had quit her job, loaded her car, packed up Miss Sadie, and headed south. And now here she was, hitting the reboot button on her life after a disastrous end to her marriage and too many years working a retail job that had been as fulfilling as cotton candy for breakfast.

In Rescue Bay, she wouldn’t know anyone. She wouldn’t turn a corner and expect to see the man who had promised to love her forever—which turned out to be one year and three months. She wouldn’t face well-meaning friends determined to drag her to a bar, as if a few drinks and sex with a stranger solved anything. She wouldn’t look around her half-empty Back Bay town house and think of dreams that had died a slow, reluctant death.

In Rescue Bay, she could start over. The sight of the sun and beach made her feel renewed, refreshed, reenergized. Maybe later today, after she’d settled in, she’d grab her suit and head for the beach. It was margarita weather, and Olivia wanted to soak up the warmth. To . . . thaw.

Yes, that was it. Thaw her bones, warm her heart again.

“I’m back,” Anna said, her voice bright with laughter. “I love that man, but I swear, some days I could clobber him.”

“Don’t tell me. He was stuck in the bread aisle.”

“He didn’t even make it that far this time. He got sidetracked in produce. Apparently putting
apples
on the list had him flustered about Galas versus Fujis. And don’t even get me started on the
bag of salad mix
.”

Olivia bit back a chuckle. “Dad means well.” She reached out to the passenger side and ran a hand down the whisper-soft white fur of Miss Sadie, her bichon frise and fellow adventurer—who had slept in her doggie car seat from Baltimore to Rescue Bay, Florida.
Lazy little puppy
, Olivia thought, smiling at the snoozing dog.

“Since your father retired,” Anna said, “he’s trying to help out more. He says it’s his way of learning how to survive without me, should I suddenly be abducted by aliens.”

“Mars would have a force to reckon with if that happened, Ma.” Blood relation or not, Olivia had always been close to her mother. She’d treasured the story of how Anna, an OB nurse, had seen the abandoned baby girl in the hospital and moved heaven and earth—and her cautious husband, Dan—to adopt Olivia and bring her home. Anna had nursed her adopted daughter through colic and chicken pox, puberty woes and acne battles, lost puppies and first dates.

“Me? I’m sweet. Mild-mannered. And don’t you dare laugh, missy. You were the one who outcried every baby in that nursery.”

That homesickness wave rose again in Olivia, but she pushed it back. Mom and Dad were coming down to Florida in March, and Olivia had already made plans for a return visit for July fourth. “Loud and insistent, right from the beginning, right?” Olivia said.

“I prefer to call it . . . determined. You’re a strong person, kiddo, and you always have been. Your father and I thank God every day for bringing you into our lives.”

“I’m grateful to have both of you, too.” Still, a ribbon of guilt flickered in Olivia’s chest. With parents like hers, why did she still want more? Why did she want a connection with the one woman who had never wanted her?

Palm trees spread their wide leaves over Olivia’s car as she turned off the coastal road and headed toward the center of Rescue Bay. The GPS came on again, still sounding about as excited as an MBTA conductor calling “Ashland” for the thousandth time, and announced the last quarter mile to her destination. “I’m almost to the house,” Olivia said.

“Oh, good. Tell me everything you see, the second you see it. Goodness, I’m excited and I’m not even there.”

The GPS announced one last left turn, then a second later said, “You have arrived at your destination.”

Olivia scanned the street for the pretty little bungalow in the pictures. This was it, the moment she’d been waiting for. She craned forward, looking left, right, north, south. “I can’t find it. Maybe I got the address wrong—”

Then she saw the house. Or rather, what was left of it. Not one part of the building before her matched the picture the lawyer had given her. Maybe the structure had once been that happy, cheery landscaped home, but if so, that had been a long, long,
long
time ago.

Holy. Crap.

Her elation deflated with a whoosh. The perfect little bungalow turned out to be a run-down building on a dead-end street, with an overgrown, sprawling backyard and a decaying wraparound front porch. A swing hung from the front, creaking back and forth in the slight breeze. Time and sunshine had faded the sunny yellow paint to pale butter, darkened the bright white trim to dingy gray, and worn down the salmon shutters to anemic pink. One shutter hung askew, another was missing altogether, and the window boxes that had once held blooming annuals now held nothing but dirt and desiccated stalks.

She checked the address. Twice. Right place, wrong decade in the photo.

This
was her inheritance? It looked like one more rejection, only from the grave. The woman who had abandoned her in the hospital twenty-nine years ago had abandoned this place, too.

“So . . . what do you think?” Anna asked. “Is it as pretty as the picture?”

Olivia scanned the lot, searching for something, anything, to redeem this . . . legacy. Anchoring the yard was the Rescue Bay Dog Rescue, or so the sign said. The low-slung white building sprouted chain-link kennels on either side like tentacles. Chunks of grayed wood siding displayed worn, naked wooden faces underneath peeling white paint. The eastern corner of the kennels had rotted away, leaving a gaping hole to the inside. The roof sagged in the middle in a deep concave bow. One strong gust of wind, and what was left of this place—of Olivia’s inheritance and her future plans—would crumble. She bit back a laugh before it became a sob.

“Olivia? Are you still there? Did you find the house?”

“Uh . . . yeah. It’s . . . a whole lot more than I expected.” She forced brightness to her voice. “Turns out there’s an animal shelter on the property, too. It’s . . . it’s closed down now.”

“Animal shelter? Why, that’s right up your alley. Sounds like the perfect place for you.”

“Yup. Exactly what I imagined.”

Why was she surprised? Her biological mother had left her crying in a bassinet, alone, unwanted. Now Bridget Tuttle had saddled her daughter with a disaster that looked just as abandoned as Olivia had felt all these years. The letdown hung heavy on her shoulders, ached in her gut. She fought the urge to cry.