10

After breakfast the next morning, Adam bounded down the inn’s front steps, rubbing damp palms down his cargo shorts. Just as he reached the walkway, he heard a familiar voice.

“Where you going in such a hurry?” Levi asked.

Adam tipped his head down the road, beyond the three-way stop. “Going for a walk.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

The older man’s knees creaked as he eased down the steps, clinging to the white rail and finally meeting Adam on the grass. Adam had to consciously slow his pace to stay even with Levi’s ambling gate, but he was quickly glad he did.

Levi took careful steps, watching his path as though expecting a vine to reach out and wrap around his ankle. “I took a little spill getting off the subway a couple years ago.”

Adam had a sneaking suspicion that little spill was code for a nasty tumble, but he didn’t interrupt the slow words filling in the gaps.

“Esther got all riled up and made me see my doctor.”

Adam conjured a very clear, very amusing mental picture of Esther up in arms over her husband’s health, and it made him smile. Her hands had probably fluttered furiously, her face pulled tight as she waggled a finger in a poor doctor’s face. “You fix him. You hear me? You fix my husband.”

He kept his humor in check, instead giving Levi a nod of encouragement.

“Some little girl who was younger than my granddaughter said I’d chipped a bone in my hip. Ha!” His step over an uneven patch of concrete was a little more cautious than his I’ll-show-them speech suggested, and Adam reached out, ready to catch Levi if he stumbled. “Doc told me I had to stay off it for a month, and then if it hadn’t healed, she was going to do surgery.”

“So did you? Stay off it?”

“For about a week.”

That sounded about right. It would seem this man wouldn’t be kept down.

“Did you have to have the surgery?”

“Nah.” His Brooklyn accent hung a little heavier on his single syllables. “She thought I was a pushover, but there’s more to me than meets the eye.”

It was true. Levi wasn’t particularly tall or broad. If Adam had to wager a guess, he’d bet that Levi had spent a few of his formative years literally starving in a Nazi work camp. Maybe he would have been a bigger man if he’d grown when he was supposed to.

But he had a spirit that made Adam forget his stature.

“Esther has me watching every step, threatening to put me in a home if I break a hip for real.” She would do it, and they both knew it.

When they reached the intersection at the end of the harbor road, Adam pointed to the left. “I’m headed to the church.”

“Figured.” Levi’s eyes flickered with a knowing that made Adam want to bolt. “Me too.”

“You’re going to the meeting?” He hadn’t meant to sound so shocked, but he couldn’t keep his tone in line. The man had survived a maniac who tried to eliminate his entire race. But he’d succumbed to the siren song of a bottle?

“Don’t look so surprised, boy.” Levi hiked up his trousers, a throwback to the sixties and a time when men wore suits to the office, despite the bright sun and low breeze. “We’ve all got a few secrets, don’t you know?”

“Sure. I know. I just didn’t think that someone like . . .”

“Like me? What do you think I am?” His pale brown eyes glowed amber as his wide mouth pulled into a tight line.

Adam searched for the right words. “I think you probably have a pretty incredible story, and I wouldn’t pretend to know it.”

Levi nodded. “Good.” Pursing his lips like he’d sucked a bad lemon, he squinted toward the white steeple in the distance. “I left Hungary in 1946, an angry, angry orphan. Barely eleven, I was sent to live with my uncle’s family in Brooklyn. And when there’s that much anger in a boy, he has but three options. Forgiveness, the bottle, or death. I chose the bottle.”

Adam let out a long breath. He had a hunch what the meeting leaders would say. What’s in the bottom of a bottle can’t change the past, and it can only ruin the future.

But what he really wanted to know was how long it took to drink that pain away.

Maybe, if he knew the pain would ebb, it might be worth it to go back, to give up eight years sober for the hope of relief.

“Problem was, no matter how much I drank, I still remembered.”

The problem was, Adam hadn’t started drinking to forget. It had started as a social activity, but it had numbed his ability to deal with reality. When he quit, he discovered he didn’t know how to handle the tough stuff. He didn’t want to handle it.

As they reached the church lawn, its green grass rolled out like a red carpet, Adam stopped. “What exactly did you remember?”

Levi clapped him on the back, his hand surprisingly firm. “All of it.”

With that he swung open the front door of the church and stepped into the cool interior.

Adam followed him in, craving the reminder that the booze wouldn’t heal the pain or turn off the nightmares. He was going to have to figure out another way to deal with that.

His career was counting on it.

That Sunday Adam found himself back inside the First Community Church of Rustico. This time sitting in the last pew on the right as women in bright floral dresses swept down the aisle, herding children both big and small into the right rows.

It had occurred to him early that morning—between the orange fireball and a double cup of coffee—that the entire community congregated at the church every week. What better place to fill in some holes?

Not to mention Father Chuck had said something at the meeting on Tuesday that had been poking him like a cactus in his shorts. “When you have trouble believing, surround yourself with people who don’t.”

Adam wasn’t so sure what he believed anymore. It had been easy when he was a kid. His mother’s faith had been enough to sweep him along, carrying him to safety in her current. She never doubted, never faltered. Her every step had been true and right in his young eyes. She’d believed in grace and faith and most of all love.

But without her, he wasn’t so sure he could believe in those things.

He wanted to.

Who didn’t want to believe that forgiveness could be given, even to the undeserving? That no one was beyond grace?

But the steps he’d learned in meetings said he had to make amends for his actions. Except there was nothing he could do to make his mistakes right. He couldn’t bring Connor back or ease a family’s grief.

Adam had sat in another pew not unlike the one beneath him now. In a small Boston chapel overflowing with active and retired men in uniform, he’d watched Connor’s mom hug a folded American flag as tears poured down her cheeks. His little sister had held onto her dad’s hand until her knuckles were white and her arms shook.

There were no amends for that kind of pain.

So there was no forgiveness.

But he wanted to believe that there could be.

So he’d followed the ones who did.

As though his thoughts had conjured her, Caden stepped into the sanctuary. Her gaze landed on him immediately, a warmth filling her face as she wove her way to him.

“Adam? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

It felt strange to stay seated while she stood, so he joined her. “You know how it is. This town is downright lonely on Sunday mornings if you’re not at church.”

She looked around his shoulder at the otherwise empty pew. “Are you sitting with someone?”

Before he could respond, Aretha Franklin joined them, slipping an arm around Caden’s waist and hugging her side. Only then did he realize Caden too was wearing the unofficial church uniform, a flowing dress covered in pink and yellow daisies. It stopped at her sweetly dimpled knees, and he couldn’t help but sneak a look at the rest of her legs, which were gently tanned, probably from their walk on the beach and a hundred others. He liked that she liked being outdoors.

But he quickly glanced away. He had no right to be looking at her legs.

Especially under Aretha’s watchful eye.

In a church.

Instead he focused on the dimple in Caden’s cheek that was equal parts surprise and pleasure.

“It’s good to see you again, Adam.” Aretha held out her hand, her skin nearly translucent.

He accepted it in a gentle shake, wondering if he should bow and kiss it instead.

“You can’t sit all the way back here.”

He looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see a reserved sign on the seats. “I can’t?”

“You can sit with Caden and her family.”

“I can?”

Caden let out a little snort—his snort. “Come on.” She led the way to the third pew from the front on the left and pointed out the members of her family in quick succession. Mrs. Holt he’d met at the ladies’ thing at Aretha’s house. Mr. Holt was a burly man with a fair beard and intense eyes. Adam caught Dillon’s name but missed his wife’s and lost track of the kids after the second of five.

He’d never been so happy to hear piano music, his cue to sit down without having to remember any names. Caden slid into the pew, and he slipped in beside her. She held the hymnal but didn’t seem to need it, closing her eyes and lifting her face toward the wooden cross at the front of the sanctuary as she sang every word in a clear alto.

He didn’t try to sing along, simply enjoying Caden’s voice as it harmonized with the others.

After four verses of three different hymns, Father Chuck took the podium and read from the book of Ecclesiastes. “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”

Father Chuck ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair before launching into a passionate sermon about the importance of friendship. While the pastor’s eyes roamed the room, Adam couldn’t help but feel a surge when they landed on him, like this message was meant for him, like the minister knew that his words at the meeting would propel Adam to this service, this pew, this seat.

Pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

It wasn’t the fall to be pitied but the isolation.

Adam hadn’t been exactly alone since his fall. There had been a million interviews with his military handlers. Then, of course, Garrett had given him a shove to get back in the game. But they weren’t his friends. They were business associates who needed to solve his fall so that it didn’t reflect poorly on them.

None of them wanted to help him up.

Except maybe . . .

Hoping Father Chuck wasn’t looking right then, Adam risked a glance toward his elbow and discovered not only Caden but also the youngest Holt, snuggled onto her lap. Caden rubbed a hand absently down her niece’s arm, both of their faces focused at the pulpit.

Caden.

She’d become his friend.

Somewhere in the last four weeks, he’d failed to notice how much he’d come to look forward to their mornings and sometimes afternoons. She’d listened when he unloaded a story he didn’t even know he needed to share. And then she’d done the only thing she knew to. She’d held him. And she’d encouraged him to go to a meeting, no judgment or censure in her voice.

Adam smiled back at Father Chuck. If this sermon was intended to help him realize the unexpected friendship of this trip, then it had succeeded.

He was still contemplating that as he listened to the rest of the church sing a final hymn. When they filed out at the benediction, he felt a tiny hand slip into his. Jerking his head down so fast that his neck popped, he discovered the little Holt ambling at his side. She couldn’t be more than three or four, and her giant blue eyes stared back up at him. “Mom says I can’t leave without my big person.”

“And I’m your big person?”

“Uh-huh.” She tugged on his hand, winding her way through the crowd and dragging him along behind.

His eyes darted around, searching out someone who was actually responsible for her. As they burst into the sunlight, he caught sight of Caden two steps behind them.

The girl tugged for freedom. “Can I go play? Please!”

“Stay under the tree.” Caden grabbed the sweater that the girl shrugged off as she bolted for a group of kids about her own age. “Violet likes you.”

“Really? She doesn’t even know me.”

“Like that’s important.” Caden sniffed. “Violet has a very defined set of criteria for her big person, and when we were singing the last song she said she thought you’d do.”

“I’m . . . honored?” Adam chuckled. “And what are my responsibilities as Violet’s big person?”

But there was no time to find out as Mr. and Mrs. Holt joined them, followed shortly by Mrs. Burke, her grin ear to ear. “Have you heard all the talk about Bethany’s cakes for fellowship time this morning?”

Actually, no.

But she wasn’t looking for a response.

“She got up at five thirty this morning to make fresh mini cherry Bundt cakes. They were gone almost as soon as she delivered them. People have been talking about them all morning.”

“I’m sure they were delicious.” Mr. Holt crossed his arms over his chest, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. And the man had taught Caden much of what he knew, so Adam was inclined to agree with him.

Still, Adam couldn’t take his eyes off Caden, who looked like she’d taken a foul ball to the stomach. Shoulders drooping, arms wrapped around her middle, she stared hard at her sandals.

The weight of Mrs. Burke’s gaze fell heavy on him. Her words from the week before echoed somewhere deep inside him, stinging his chest and making his stomach roll. He looks more like my Bethany’s type anyway.

Well, he didn’t know what Bethany’s type was.

But he did know that she wasn’t his type. He’d always preferred women with warm smiles, and a dimple or two never hurt. He liked them kind and thoughtful, the type who would drop off chicken soup to a sick neighbor or drive all the way across town to help a friend move. That wasn’t Bethany’s shtick. No matter how her mom tried to play her up.

“We’ll be sure to try one next time.” Aretha’s arrival to their little group seemed to be Mrs. Burke’s signal to leave, and she swept away with a curt nod and flippant wave to her fellow auxiliary ladies.

Aretha slipped an arm around Caden’s shoulders and gave her the squeeze Adam wished he could. It wasn’t easy to show concern in this element. Everyone treated Caden like she was some sort of tour guide for the poor reporter from the States. He couldn’t tell if they pitied her—for what, he had no idea—or him for being stuck with her. But they didn’t get it. He’d had more fun with Caden than he had since college.

He really wanted to pull each of those old biddies aside and remind them what common courtesy looked like. They spoke about Caden like she wasn’t even present, like she wasn’t part of their community. How quickly they’d forgotten that a few weeks before she’d cooked for an inn full of guests and then made seven dozen donuts for their church.

Not a single donut had come home. He knew. He’d asked.

They were quick to accept her gifts.

And just as quick to forget who gave them.

Caden wasn’t going to remind them. That would just get the tongues wagging and make her the center of attention, something she clearly didn’t want. He didn’t really want it either. But he was like a new toy. Curiosity had them buzzing around him for the moment. It wouldn’t last.

With a wink and another squeeze, Aretha said, “I heard those little cakes went so fast because Bethany only made two dozen of them.”

Mr. Holt grunted.

“And Josie said they tasted like the cherries came from the Boston States.”

Adam’s ears were piqued at the unfamiliar phrase, especially after his recent stop there. “Boston States?”

“Oh, hon, my granddad and his friends all used to call the United States the Boston States. And some of us old-timers still haven’t kicked the habit. I forget that Marie is the only one around here actually from Boston.”

The hair on the back of his neck jumped to attention, and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from rubbing them together. “Marie is from Boston?”

“Sure is. But we love her anyway.”

His stomach flipped and his mind began to race. Was it just a coincidence that he’d been sent to an inn run by a woman from Boston, Connor’s hometown?

Garrett didn’t do coincidences.

Neither did Adam.

Connor was somehow connected to Marie Sloane. He would bet his career on it.