budding calm fled.
When her phone jangled with her sister’s ringtone, she jumped and grabbed it off the desk. “Good morning, Christina.”
“Deelee!” Her sister, Christina Talbot, younger by two years, was the only person who called her Deelee. Well, of all the people in the world she had trusted with the moniker, the only person who still lived in Bailey’s Cove. “I got them. All of them. As of today they are mine.”
“Wait. What did you get?” Her sister had been talking madness about the Three Sisters, three Victorian-style houses built long ago for three siblings. The houses sat side by side on Treacher Avenue a few blocks from the harbor.
“Dora, Cora and Rose, of course.” Christina’s tone held a touch of smug.
“Did you sign the contracts already?” She was certain her younger sister didn’t know the meaning of due diligence.
“I did that a long time ago. Monday I got the money, and at eight o’clock this morning I closed on them.”
As Christina had retorted more than once during their sisterly discussions, Delainey wasn’t the one to be pointing fingers at decision making, good or bad. The big one Delainey had made had been a whopper. So she kept her mouth shut.
“I know. I know,” Christina started again. “Owning them is going to be a total drain on my finances, but this is happening. It’s really happening.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m in Cora. She’s a great lady.” Cora was the center and largest of the three houses. Cora had been the oldest daughter, and apparently, Daddy did love her best.
Delainey had a sudden thought. Her sister’s purchase was the perfect distraction. “Hey, why don’t I come down and join you? You can give me a tour.”
“You’d come? I—I’d, ah, gee, love it.”
Delainey knew her sister’s hesitancy was shock that she’d just up and leave work so early in the day.
“So can I come now?”
“Now? Of course you can come now. I’m here with a tablet of paper and a pencil to work on my wish list. You can give your sisterly advice.” The excitement in Christina’s tone almost inspired Delainey to be optimistic about the Three Sisters.
“You’d be doing me a favor if I could butt in for a while,” she said, already getting up from her desk.
“Okay, I’m going to make you explain that when you get here. Come, I’ll give you that ‘before’ tour you’ve been almost coming to take for six months now.”
Delainey hadn’t wanted to encourage what she thought of as Christina’s scary adventure, so she hadn’t been inside the houses. Now she felt a little ashamed of not being supportive.
She grabbed her coat and flew down the back stairway.
When she stuck her head into the reception area and called out, “Patty, I’m leaving for a while. Call if you can’t live without me,” Patty looked shocked, but it could not be helped.
As she yanked her long blond hair from inside her collar, she ran out the door before anyone could call her back. For six solid years after Brianna was born and she became a single mom, she had been the responsible one, the one who was always where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing and more. If she was to be fair, she had been responsible her whole life except for two short days, and maybe right this minute as she left work shortly after she’d arrived.
The cold February wind rushed inside her open coat and she wrapped the warm quilted fabric around herself. In less than twenty-four hours, she had gone from elated and on her way to the moon to troubled and tumbling out of control. The idea made her muscles twitchy and her head begin to ache.
Yesterday had started like most Tuesdays. Get up. Exercise. Get Brianna up, ready and off to school. The day had changed completely when she came home and ripped open the letter from the university as soon as she got inside her back door. When she shouted, “Yes! Yes!” Brianna had come running to her side.
“Did we win something?” her daughter had asked.
“Yes, sweetie, I did, we did. Mommy gets to go be a lawyer.”
Yesterday’s triumph now seemed so far in the past.
In her car again, Delainey pulled out onto Church Street. Morrison and Morrison’s redbrick building, with a stately facade and dark rich wood on the interior, sat on this main road on the south edge of the “old downtown” of Bailey’s Cove. Across Church Street was the town’s mall. Eight stores, a dry cleaner’s, a real-estate company and the Taco Loco, and the rest, alas, empty. The view out the front windows of Morrison and Morrison wasn’t much better than out the back, Delainey had to concede, just brighter.
Farther south, past Morrison and Morrison, in the “newer” section of town, were the police station, the clinic, a great diner, the new Sacred Heart Church and a small motel. Even farther south and west were several housing developments, most built in the fifties and sixties, including the more upscale homes and one new condo complex built by a hopeful out-of-town contractor.
Church Street spread the town out along the coastline for several miles, four miles, according to the traditional town limits—which most residents used—but six and a half by the new standards set in the 1950s. Delainey drove north until she turned off onto Treacher Avenue. A few blocks down the hill and toward the docks sat Christina’s passions, Dora, Cora and Rose.
Delainey parked facing the harbor, got out and leaned on the open door to take in the subtle beauty of the misty gray morning. Next to her adorable daughter’s face, her favorite sight in the world was this small harbor, home to fishing boats, pleasure boats and one lone yacht. Though right now there were only a few fishing boats and the yacht out there in the fog that obscured the outer islands and even those boats were indistinct images, almost dreams.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The smell of the sea filled her with a sense of being home, of knowing what was good in her life. She would miss all of this if she ever had to live inland.
“Hey, that was quick.”
Christina waved from Cora’s porch and charged down the steps of the old Victorian home. Her blond hair and her long legs flew. The two of them might look very much alike, but Christina had more energy than Delainey could even imagine.
She threw her arms around Delainey and squeezed hard. “You came. I can’t believe you left work. Won’t they fall apart without you?”
Delainey hugged back. “They might, but today I’m visiting my sister’s brand new acquisition. Congratulations.”
“Your leaving work for anything besides Brianna is so out of character for you. You’re scaring me—you know that, don’t you?”
“I told you I’d come.”
“So what happened?”
She grinned at her sister. “I got into law school.”
“Congratulations, sis!” Christina squeezed her in another
