books. Julio’s was likely the only bookstore in the civilized world where books were arranged by the author’s first name.
“I nearly froze to death in Korea,” Julio proclaimed many times, wide face gleaming with sweat. “Did something to my brain. Since the fifties, I can’t remember last names for anything.”
In Julio’s store, patrons would find Ernest Hemmingway’s masterpieces snuggled right up to Eugene Fitzwater’s Guide to Forest Mushrooms.
She shook away the wave of nostalgia. “Are you absolutely sure about this, Cy?”
“Like I said the first sixteen times, Rosa, I’m sure.”
Her heart kept up its rapid staccato, as it had from the moment Cy told her the news. Her tiny decorating business, the humble Dollars and Sense Design, had won the lottery, or more specifically, the chance to enter the Great Escapes magazine contest. Ten teams, ten different locations and a budget of five thousand dollars. The winner scored a photo spread in Great Escapes and the gaggle of clients that would go with it.
“Tell me again,” she said.
Cy rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his mop of blond hair. “Bitsy called me three weeks ago and told me her very own Pelican Inn was one of the locations. She insisted that I enter our business in the contest and, whammo, a miracle occurred. We were actually selected.”
Rosa shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“They probably liked the sappy emotional angle.”
“What sappy emotional angle?”
Cy raised an eyebrow. “We spent three years of our lives here when Dad went AWOL. Bitsy might as well be a relative.”
Rosa nodded. No need to say the rest. They both knew Bitsy had had no business taking in two abandoned teenagers when their father took off, indulging in one of the strange fits of wanderlust that had seized him since their mother passed away at the beginning of their sophomore year. It was not the first time he’d left. Manny Franco might have been trying to escape the overwhelming responsibility of raising two motherless teens. Or it could have been an inability to handle his own grief. In any case, they’d awakened shortly after their sixteenth birthday to find a pile of money on the table and a scrawled note.
Gotta get away for a while. Take care of each other. I’m sorry. Daddy
A “while” had stretched into days, then into months and finally years, with only occasional phone calls and quick visits, their father’s behavior growing more and more bizarre with every passing year. His last text to Cy was six months ago, indicating he was in the Southwest fossil hunting in the desert with a bunch of college kids. It did no good to remind him he was an insurance investigator, not Indiana Jones. He’d lost something when their mother died, and Rosa was sure he would spend the rest of his life trying to find it.
Bitsy should have called social services back then and reported Manny Franco for abandoning his kids. Her salesman husband, Leopold, was a constant traveler and a man who was never able to keep money in his pocket. Bitsy was responsible for a dilapidated inn with virtually no help from Leo. Even when he’d died five years ago, there had been no financial relief, no life insurance to ease Bitsy’s bottom line.
Even so, because she’d been a friend to Katy Franco all those years ago, instead of making that call to social services when Manny left, Bitsy had brought the twins to the Pelican Inn and sold her car to pay for their necessities. Rosa swallowed a sudden lump in her throat as they drove up the winding road that led to the top of a bluff overlooking the ocean, the location of the rustic inn.
The old, gabled structure still sported the same faded yellow paint, accented by window boxes spilling over with crimson geraniums. White-painted trim and a pelican weather vane on the peaked roof added to the charm. Rosa inhaled a deep lungful of sea air as she got out of the car. Heavenly. Could there be a more soothing place than the Pelican?
A thrill of unease shivered through her, upsetting her moment of bliss. She peered around the tiny parking area, looking for a car that might be driven by Bitsy’s nephew. A silver Mercedes and a dusty motorcycle occupied the lot under the shelter of a Monterey pine. “What if Pike’s here?”
“He’s busy with his law firm,” Cy said, handing over Baggy. “Besides, if he saw you, he’d probably run like a scalded cat. You remember the scar on his lip?”
She felt a flush crawl into her cheeks. “Who knew lips would bleed so much?” Rosa recalled a few of the “situations” she’d run into with Bitsy’s nephew Pike, a man at whom she would cheerfully hurl a tureen of her aggressive marinara sauce if given the opportunity. The memories were surprisingly vivid and painful. The feeling rose up strong as an ocean wind, the knowledge that she was nothing more than an awkward girl with her nose pressed to the glass, looking wistfully at the life she was not a part of. An outsider. Always. She wondered if Pike had heard about her expulsion from law school.
“If he shows up to bother you, I’ll take care of it.”
Cy was the gentlest person she knew, but he would always have her back. She swallowed a lump in her throat and shook away the thoughts. “Let’s go talk to Bitsy. I’m dying to see her, and we’ve only got three weeks to get this pelican whipped into shape.”
Cy surveyed the peeling paint on the shutters and the clinging scalp of ivy that adhered to the gutters with the tenacity of Super Glue. A redwood railing flanked the narrow steps that led to a front porch complete with cozy love seat and a tangle of climbing hydrangeas framing the charming nook. “Three weeks and five thousand dollars. It’s going to be a stretch,” Cy mused.
“It’s what we’re good at, remember?” Rosa tucked Baggy under her arm while Cy carried a bunch of yellow daisies they’d purchased. A widow for going on five years now, Bitsy deserved long-stemmed roses, dozens of them, but for now daisies would have to do. Rosa marched up the flagstone walk, doing mental gymnastics as she went. “We’ll want to capitalize on the view from the sitting room and we can draw attention to the exposed beams in the kitchen by painting the walls a light color.”
Something scuttled across the roof overhead, but she ignored it in the rush of excitement she felt. She raised her hand to knock, but the door flew open before her knuckles made contact with the old wood.
“Rosa, sweetie! Cy!” Bitsy cried, drawing back suddenly the way people generally did when they got an eyeful of Baggy. “Is that...a dog?”
“Probably,” Rosa said, shifting Baggy to the side and allowing Bitsy to wrap them in a double hug. “He was left in a bag at the pet store where Cy works part time. He doesn’t smell, and as far as I can see he’s house-trained.”
Bitsy laughed. “Better than some men I used to date way back in the day, before I married Leopold. You two look smashing.”
“Not as smashing as you,” Rosa said, trying to keep from tearing up, her voice muffled by Bitsy’s denim shirt. It wasn’t idle flattery. Bitsy was still tall and regal in spite of her nearly seventy years. Her hair shone white-blond in the buttery afternoon sunshine, cornflower-blue eyes as sharp as they’d ever been, her features enhanced by a touch of satin lipstick and artfully applied powder.
She pulled the twins to arm’s length. “Imagine you two staying at the Pelican again, but now you’re all grown up.” Her eyes filled with a mixture of pleasure and something Rosa thought for a moment was pain. “Come in, come in.”
