What's Left Behind (3 page)

The vet tech headed past the open examining room door.

Inside, Dr. Anderson was waiting for them.

Last chance, last chance, last chance.

The door clicked shut.

A
bby resented Celeste’s blueberry muffins.

Third try in a row, Abby set her index finger at the beginning of her newly acquired desk toy, a two-sided sand labyrinth she’d casually admired at Lily Beth’s shop, Heart Stone, and then purchased on a whim. She pushed her finger through the grit of sand along a winding path that thus far had fallen short of the promise to quiet her mind.

She needed something bigger to move her whole stressed-out body through.

Who was Celeste to say she should distance herself from Charlie? Abby couldn’t tell him to stop calling her every night and take away his touchstone of comfort. Charlie would always be Luke’s father; she would always be Luke’s mother. She shouldn’t have to explain herself to Celeste. Caring for Charlie had kept her semi-sane for the last four months.

Abby’s index finger jostled from the labyrinth path, spilling sand onto her desk. She sighed and swept the spilled sand back onto the toy. Peace was highly overrated. Unfortunately, Celeste’s prize-winning muffins deserved every ounce of praise that had earned their starred spot on Abby’s breakfast menu. Also unfortunate, the fact Abby had let Hannah, the chambermaid she usually sent for the muffins, leave early.

Abby slid her feet back into her sandals and took her straw tote down from its hook. Within the last hour, she’d checked her favorite couple, the Sanchezes, into Room 3, made dinner reservations for the sisters in 5, dismissed Hannah, and completed most of the preparations for tomorrow’s continental breakfast.

That left one more task before she could walk into town.

Outside, Abby breathed in the remains of the day. The heady warmth of the lowering sun baked the recently mowed grass. Sharp green notes accented the subtle scents of the sea. And the newly blossomed lupine—purple and blue cones—waved from the perennial bed.

Luke had thought the lupine smelled like grape soda.

She sat on her heels, smoothed her skirt, skipped her fingers across the first two handprint stepping-stones. If any of her guests glanced out a window, they’d see only the back of her head. If anyone strolled outside, it would seem she was gazing past the yard and across the bay, lost in prayer. Close enough to the truth.

Abby lowered her hands to the third stepping-stone and settled her fingers into Luke’s sun-warmed handprints, the end of his life’s short path. The dry skin of the stone roughed her fingertips. Before her, the waves tapped the shore. Farther off, a bell buoy clanked.The high call of children’s voices drifted from across the neighboring peninsula. She marveled how much bigger her son’s hands were than hers, how much stronger they’d been. When she closed her eyes and tilted her chin to the sun, she imagined Luke’s warmth bathed her face.

“You’re back home now,” she said. “Back home for the summer. Probably, you’re staying out too late and making me worry.” She laughed. “I know you’re making me worry.”

She let the sentence vibrate in the air before her until she could taste the bittersweet memories from last summer. Luke had one foot in Hidden Harbor, the other jutting into the future. He’d spent his free days with his buddies, playing volleyball on Head Beach, hiking over the sharp edges of Breakwater Point, and jumping into the high-tide thrill of the Bath Tub. Nights, he’d stayed out hours past curfew and returned home smelling of beer and bonfires, his pockets lined with girls’ phone numbers Abby would later discover in the wash. “But then you apologize. You kiss me on the cheek. You work extra hard weeding and mowing, anything I ask. And even though I want to get angry—”

Her fingers trembled, lifted from the print. Her hands fisted atop the stone. The side of her forefinger rubbed the flesh of her thumb. “I can’t stay mad at you,” she whispered.

Abby opened her eyes and blinked against the light. She brushed off her skirt and turned to find her guests out on their balcony. Greg Sanchez stood behind his wife, Jenny, his hands wrapped around her waist; his face rested in the crook of her neck.

Abby’s heart startled at the sight. The beautiful, perfect sight. She raised a hand in greeting, slow, tentative, not wanting to interrupt the couple’s perpetual honeymoon. Ongoing for five years straight.

Jenny waved back. “Thank you for the beautiful flowers!” she called across the yard.

“My pleasure!” In addition to the lupine, the small perennial garden included day lilies, irises, violets, and lavender for drying. The snow-white beach roses transplanted from her childhood home had given the Briar Rose B&B its name. Pretty to look at, but not enough for a cutting garden.

As a thank-you for all of her referrals, Blossoms by the Beach gifted Abby with a few free arrangements a year. Abby loved sharing with the couple who’d first come to her bed-and-breakfast as newlyweds and returned the same weekend every year, as predictable as her lupine. She’d taken extra care with the suite, arranged a dozen white peonies in a cut-glass vase, washed the windows with vinegar and newspaper, spritzed her softest sheets with homemade lavender mist.

“No one gets out of this life without a little wear and tear,” Lily Beth often said.

Abby hoped that wasn’t true. Others’ misfortune didn’t ease her sorrow. The fringe benefit of working in hospitality was that she got to both augment and share other people’s happiness. And her guests had no clue about her life.

How perfect was that?

Abby race-walked through the yard and down the driveway. Her sandals bit into the pea-stone drive with ferocity she didn’t understand. Gravel flew in her wake. She turned down Ocean Boulevard, arms pumping, scooting to avoid the poison ivy edging the sidewalk.

Less than ten minutes later, she stood in the shade beneath the awning at Sugarcoated, her reflection screaming at her like a madwoman. Wrinkles filigreed her filmy white skirt. Most of her hair had escaped from a once-tidy ponytail. And a blond halo frizzed around her face. She wrangled her hair, steeled herself for Celeste’s green-eyed disapproval, and pushed into the near-empty bakery.

Above her head, the door-top bell jingled. The smell of fresh-every-half-an-hour coffee and hot-from-the-oven pastries, and the toffee-colored walls wrapped Abby like a warm hug, direct from Celeste. Softened her, despite not wanting to be softened.

A dark-haired man sat at a table with his back to Abby, looking too tall for the bistro table and chair. He leaned against the wrought-iron chair back. Long, denim-clad legs stretched to the side of the table, crossed at the ankles. A laptop stood open and angled sideways, away from Abby’s line of vision. The man gestured. His hand, held palm up, sliced the air, as though someone were sitting in the empty seat across from him. A laugh, deep and un-self-conscious, had Abby thinking of thick woods and privacy, the amber tones of maple syrup, the intimacy of familiars.

A slight turn of the man’s head revealed a curve to the side of his mouth, his face creased in a grin. A flash of blue eye directed affection toward the empty chair. “How much stuff are you planning on taking with you?” he asked. “Far as I can remember, they do have stores in New Hampshire.”

Abby’s sandals tapped across the wooden floorboards. The man turned his head fully in her direction, as though responding to the sound. He caught Abby’s gaze, and his chin lifted. Half a nod, as if in greeting, although she didn’t think she’d met him before.

Good-looking man a few years older than her with energy that reached across the room. No, she would’ve remembered meeting him. Even in her Luke-obsessed world—a state strangely similar to new motherhood—she would’ve remembered.

The man touched a finger to his ear, a half cringe of explanation, and Abby smiled. Earbuds and a wire. Skype. She should’ve guessed.

“Gracie girl,” the man said, his gaze still trained on Abby. “Yeah, you’re a goofball.You get it from your dad.” He was speaking to his daughter—gentle, teasing, self-deprecating sense of humor. One of the ideal-guy qualities Abby had once written on a wine-fueled, Celeste-encouraged list.

Top of the page.

Abby dropped her gaze. Her heart pounded in her belly, hollow and echoing. She window-shopped the contents of the pastry case she could recite in her sleep, ran a fingertip along the heat of the lighted glass. Apricot-glazed fruit tarts, caramel-topped cheesecake cups, and powdered sugar-dusted cannoli watered her mouth. But when she swallowed, maple syrup flavored her tongue.

The man chuckled. “Okay, all right already. See you tomorrow.” He lowered his voice. “Love you, too.”

An image of Luke rose up and crashed over her like a rogue wave and squeezed the air from her lungs. Over the past four months she’d discovered the course of grief was unpredictable, random, and completely unfair. One minute she could be chatting with a guest over a plate of Belgian waffles and discussing the difference between organic and free-range eggs; the next she’d have to casually excuse herself, feigning the need to check on something, anything, in the kitchen.

If only she had a Skype connection to her son.

“That was embarrassing,” the man said.

A buzz of warning trickled up the back of her head, as though the stranger had seen inside her and called out her pain.

Abby slipped on her innkeeper face, stepped forward. She squared her shoulders and offered her hand. “Abby Stone,” she said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

The man stood, all six foot something of him, and took her hand in his. Grip firm, but not crushing. Grin genuine and glad to meet her. His bright blue eyes shot her full of light and made her throat ache.

The first time in months she’d felt alive.

“Rob Campbell,” he said. “I didn’t realize anyone was hanging in the eaves.”

She laughed, and his light pulsed through her chest.

“Care to sit down? My imaginary friend went home.”

“Oh, uh, I was just waiting for Celeste,” she said, gesturing toward the kitchen. Which must’ve sounded insane.

“Celeste’s in back making coffee for me. My usual evening cup of decaf.”

Usual evening decaf? As opposed to his regular morning cup of caffeinated brew? The name Campbell sounded familiar, but she didn’t think Celeste had mentioned him before.

Abby’s gaze wandered to Rob’s laptop, open to a series of three-dimensional technical drawings.

“I’m working on a labyrinth for the elementary school,” he said, and the technical drawings clarified into the mazelike pathways she’d navigated with her desk toy. Until a few days ago, she hadn’t paid much attention to labyrinths. Now, they were popping up everywhere. “Celeste got me the gig.”

In Celeste’s spare time, she was president of the elementary school PTO; it proved the saying, if you want to get something done, give it to the busy person. Had Celeste mentioned a labyrinth project for the school? Abby hated to think Celeste had shared this with her and she hadn’t paid attention.

Worse, she hated to think Celeste had deemed her so overwrought she hadn’t bothered to share in the first place.

Abby’s desk labyrinth had attracted her with images on the box of full-scale versions of a formal park in Barcelona, and the casual grounds of Kripalu, a yoga and health center in Lenox, Massachusetts. But she hadn’t considered an in-between version, small enough to fit into the limited acreage of the Hidden Harbor Elementary schoolyard.

Or the backyard of Briar Rose.

“You a fan of labyrinths?”

“You know what? I think I am. I own a bed-and-breakfast, Briar Rose, and I’d like to put a labyrinth in the backyard,” she said, deciding right there and then. The idea of a grand project that required envisioning and planning simultaneously filled her empty spaces and lightened her. Free time was her enemy. Not that she had much of that.

“What kind of scale are we talking about?” Rob pulled a chair out for her, and Abby lowered herself to the seat. He angled his laptop in her direction, and sat down beside her, close enough for her to inhale the just-showered clean menthol smell of his skin. Close enough for her to notice a tiny star-shaped scar beside his right eye and imagine pressing her lips against its raised surface. “This here is a simple three-circuit design I’m working on for the school. They’ve about an eighth of an acre to work with, give or take. How much open land do you have to play with?”

Abby pictured her perennials, Luke’s stepping-stones, and the flat green expanse that dropped into the ocean. Maples and pines covered the rest of her property. “About a quarter acre,” she said. “Give or take.”

Rob rubbed a finger against the center of his chin. “You could easily fit seven circuits. What kind of materials are you interested in? A grassy path with plantings? A stone walkway? Any sort of theme?” His passion for his work drew her closer.

Abby shook her head, grinned. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“The elementary school’s labyrinth is also a butterfly garden,” Rob added.

Butterfly garden, thank goodness. That project Celeste had mentioned.

Celeste came out from the back, carrying a stainless-steel coffee dispenser. She wore a blue cupcake-covered apron and matching handkerchief. Her son and daughter trailed behind her. Four-year-old Phoebe, wearing a miniature version of her mother’s apron, shot across the café. Abby grinned, eager to catch her wild-haired goddaughter in her arms. But then the tiny firecracker leaped onto Rob’s lap and landed with a thud that sent a flutter to Abby’s throat.

Ever since Luke had died, Celeste had worried spending time with her seven-year-old son, Elijah, would be too hard on Abby. But sometimes what you’d never have hurt more than what you’d lost.

Celeste nodded at Abby and Rob, and her gaze narrowed. A flicker of a smirk, and Celeste turned to place the carafe on the counter. Elijah stocked the coffee lid dispenser, reminding Abby of how Luke used to love helping her set up for breakfast buffet.

The always-cautious Elijah waited for Abby to wave to him before he came over to Abby and gave her a slender-armed hug. Celeste often wondered aloud whether she’d given birth to a little old man, but in some ways her dark-haired son was more like her than her daughter. He noticed everything. Abby hugged Elijah back, breathed in his damp-necked little-boy scent. Remembering hurt, but forgetting was even worse.