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Impatience thrummed beneath Kate’s skin. She had grand plans for the Heirloom Inn, but this whole business regarding the lighthouse felt like a distraction.
Was it big news?
Yes.
Would they find answers about their father?
Maybe.
Was Kate interested in pursuing a man who’d left them high and dry over two decades earlier?
Not a chance.
They pulled up to 131 Harbor Avenue, the red house leaning into the sunset. Amelia had asked that they spend the evening getting settled first. Then, later, she would reach out to the lawyer and ask what needed to happen in order to open the conversation and proceedings regarding the Acton property.
“Here we are.” Kate put the SUV into park and looked across to Amelia, who was studying the house through the windshield.
“Are you going to pull in?” Amelia gestured to the garage. The house had been built in the late 1800s and, originally, the secondary building functioned as a storage shed and boathouse. It may have even played barn to some animals, from Kate’s understanding. Their mother converted it to a detached garage sometime in the nineties.
Kate answered, “No. It’ll be too hard to unpack the SUV in that tight space.” She glanced back at the sloppy piles of cardboard boxes towering at odd angles in the back seat and beyond. Amelia’s life spread across the second row and filled the far back of the vehicle. A messy life—so very Amelia. Kate smiled. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat. You must be starving.”
Kate herself hadn’t officially moved into the house on the harbor. She was still waiting to sell her home in the suburbs of Detroit. As a realtor, she intended to list it through the agency she worked for. Over the past week, Kate had taken four trips to and from Apple Tree Hill, the ample family home she’d shared with her late husband and their two sons who were currently away at college, shielded from their mother’s big changes.
Slowly but merrily, Kate had begun bringing her personal effects to Birch Harbor. Furniture, appliances, and other big possessions would stay at Apple Tree Hill as staging for when the house hit the market.
But even without her furniture, Kate settled into her childhood room with surprising ease. Her old iron-frame bed still sat squarely beneath the window, thick lace curtains hanging heavily behind it. The lace managed to remain white thanks to a set of roman shades Nora had installed after Kate moved out for college.
Years earlier, Clara, the youngest of the Hannigan brood, had helped Nora drape everything in the house in dense white sheets. It was more a gesture of drama than one of practicality. Nora should have sold the furniture, maybe even the house.
Kate was glad she didn’t.
On either side of the bed stood a wooden nightstand, though the left did not match the right. Kate had found them at the swap market in eighth grade and had scraped enough money together in order to negotiate with the seller. Later she asked her father to meet her at the corner of the entrance, where he kindly hefted them into the bed of his Toyota.
Once home, Nora had complimented Kate’s choice. She liked that they didn’t match. It would add character to her bedroom. But first, Nora admonished, she had to strip, sand, and stain the two pieces from tip to toe.
They’d sat in the barn, on the brink of rot, until Wendell Acton went in one day and handled the job, surprising Kate late that evening with the project. It had charmed Kate, and she remembered thinking her father was the type of man she would marry one day. She was certain of it.
But that was before.
***
“I’ve got a fruit platter and iced tea in the fridge and a frozen lasagna ready to pop in the oven. Are you still dieting, or can we throw some garlic bread in, too?” Kate cocked a suspicious eyebrow at Amelia, who threw up her hands.
“Bring on the carbs,” Amelia declared, adding, “We can work it off later.”
Kate grabbed the pitcher of tea from the fridge, and Amelia slid the fruit tray out behind her.
They situated the tray and the pitcher and two glasses on the table before lowering themselves onto the dated wooden chairs. Amelia reached for a round of kiwi, slipping it between her lips and puckering.
Grinning, Kate grabbed one for herself. It wasn’t as sour as Amelia’s face had suggested, but her mouth immediately watered around the sweet fruit. Her stare fixed on the wooden serving tray, a relic from their childhood.
“You know, Amelia, Mom left so much stuff here. And yet, the cottage is crowded with things, too.”
Years earlier, when Nora decided the house on the harbor was too much work, or too full of memories, she left it to move inland, away from the water.
Before he'd left, Nora had asked their father to work on building a little cottage by Birch Harbor Creek. The Hannigan matriarch declared she wanted a second home where they could stow away after the birth of the youngest, Clara. At the time, Nora had felt it best to keep everything private, and the house on the harbor was decidedly a public venue, really. Wendell agreed easily and got to work right away, managing to make fast progress before he disappeared later in the summer.
When Nora and her daughters returned home from their extended vacation, not only was Wendell gone, but the house was incomplete.
It took some time until their mother found the help and the wherewithal to get the project done. But she did, and the cottage would eventually become the home where she slipped from the earth into the ether, her soul finding its resting place in Heaven, Kate never doubted.
Despite the woman’s hardness and searing work ethic, she loved her daughters. She loved her husband. Nora Hannigan had only ever done what she thought was best for them, even when the decision was wrought and twisted like a crooked iron gate. That’s what Nora had done. She’d forged an impenetrable barrier between her family and the rest of the world. In her later years, once Clara had grown up, Nora began unlocking the gate, letting some people in and exploring the town for herself as a single woman. Single and heartsick. But no one in Birch Harbor knew how deep Wendell's absence had cut the steely-eyed Hannigan. As far as the town could see, Nora was a beautiful force who ran a severe household by day and joined in raucous Bunco games at the country club by night. An elegant and fun-loving divorcee, perhaps—though there had been no divorce between Nora and Wendell. At least, none that Kate was aware of.
“I think it’s what happens,” Amelia said.
“What do you mean?”
A sigh filled her younger sister’s chest. Amelia took a sip of tea before replying. “When people age, they start clinging to the things that sort of... I don’t know... tie them to Earth.”
“They become collectors,” Kate added thoughtfully.
Amelia nibbled on a sliced apple. “You know?” she asked between bites. “I suppose that was a good thing. I mean, sure, it’s a lot of work. But look at this, Kate.” She waved her arms around.
It was true. For all that Nora and Wendell lacked as parents—availability to help with homework, interest in volunteering at school or bringing sliced oranges to softball practice—they worked hard to leave their daughters a legacy.
Kate Hannigan intended to keep that legacy alive. She glanced around the kitchen, taking in a dated wooden spice cabinet, a butcher block for knives—each one rusty along where the blade disappeared into the handle, no doubt—and the hardy, rustic kitchen furniture and treatments.
The house on the harbor was going to be more than a little lakeside inn.
It was going to be a living history.
Grinning in agreement, Kate tugged a pad of paper and a pencil from the center of the table to the space in front of her. “You’re right. Now let’s talk inn-keeping.”