The bed in her hotel suite felt like heaven. Claire snuggled under the duvet and sheet. At least she was finally warm. Moonlight streamed in through the open door into the room. By the time she’d been checked out at the hospital and had answered the sheriff’s questions, night had fallen. Luke insisted she get right into bed, and she’d been happy to comply.
Luke flipped the metal bar on the door into the jamb. “I’m leaving this open. Your dad said they’d be over shortly. I guess your grandmother is driving everyone crazy.” He grabbed the table at the desk and pulled it beside the bed.
Claire’s heart squeezed. Grandma Emily wasn’t really her grandmother since she was Mom’s mother. “I think I know what Grandma meant by her strange comments about loving me from the first moment she saw me. I think she knew who I really was all along.” She wasn’t sure how things would change now, but there was no doubt her life would be very different.
Luke sat on the chair and reached for her hand. “I think things might not be the way you’d expect. You have a way of getting into a person’s heart, Claire. I don’t think they’ll be willing to step aside for your real mother.”
His thumb rubbed across her palm in a hypnotic movement that soothed her. “You always know the right thing to say, but I think you’re wrong this time. Does your dad know my uncle killed your mom?”
Luke’s eyes flickered. “He knows. He’s wishing he’d listened to Mom’s talk about the child crying.”
“I bet he doesn’t ever want to see me again. Megan too.” The thought of Megan’s sorrow hurt Claire’s heart.
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. “You’d be wrong. You were a little girl. You’re not to blame for any of it.” He scooted over to sit on the bed beside her, then leaned over her and brushed his lips against hers. “I never want to be that scared again. When I saw you lying so still and pale on that buoy, I was sure you were dead.”
“I gave up, just let the sea take me down. But our little orca had other plans. I’ll need to take him some fish as a thank-you.”
He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. “I think your dad wants you to go home and put this all behind you. I hope you don’t put me behind you. It’s not that far from Boston to here.”
She found it hard to think with the sensation of his hands in her hair. “You’re definitely quitting the Coast Guard?”
He nodded. “I realized part of my resistance to coming home was pride, pure and simple. I’d always said I was going to get out into the world and make a difference. But I don’t have to be working for the Coast Guard to do that. Folly Shoals is small and backward maybe, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The world moves too fast now anyway.”
She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I don’t want to go to Boston.”
His smile froze in place. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know, really, not yet. I don’t know what the future holds with my job at Cramer Aviation. The merger didn’t happen, and right now I’m finding it hard to figure out what I want to do with my life. Planes are all I know. But blueberries are in my blood, and I’m a little intrigued to see what I might do in a different career.”
Luke lifted a brow and grinned. “You ever thought about working in a cranberry bog?”
“You offering me a job?”
“Meg ran it. I’m not very good at that kind of thing. Give me a crime to solve, and I’m all over it, but it’s going to take me awhile to get up to speed on anything else.”
“I don’t know anything about cranberries,” she said, though her heart thumped at the thought of working with him. But could she leave everything she knew?
“Well, think about it.”
Her grandmother stepped into the room and came to the other side of Claire’s bed. She sat down and pulled Claire into an embrace. “Claire, don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Claire buried her face in her grandmother’s neck and inhaled the sweet scent of her cologne. “I-I’m not Claire.”
Her grandmother pulled back and cupped Claire’s face. “Honey, I knew you weren’t Claire the minute I laid eyes on you. I confronted Harry and he told me the truth. I always knew you were Rachel. But your appearance brought my daughter back from the dead. I couldn’t tell her and see all her joy disappear again.”
“I thought maybe you knew,” Claire whispered.
“The differences were clear. No asthma, missing scars, the difference in the shape of your face. One tooth had a small chip in it where she fell against my coffee table. That was missing too. Lots of little things. Claire was always a little difficult right from the day she was born. But not you. You climbed on my lap as soon as Harry brought you home. You had me wrapped around your little finger from that moment. Timothy too. It doesn’t take blood for love to flourish.”
She drank in her grandmother’s words. “I don’t know what to call myself.”
“I’d stick with Claire. It’s what you know and how people know you. Take the trauma you’ve gone through and let it make you stronger and more compassionate.” Grandma released her and slipped off the bed. “Your grandpa is clamoring to get in here. I’ll let him know he can come in.”
Everything was moving too fast for Claire to grasp it, but she caught the fact her grandma hadn’t mentioned Lisa. “What about Mom? Does she hate me now? I’m the other woman’s child.”
“She’s trying to reconcile her jealousy of Mary with her love for you. A small thing that really upset her is that your father bought three dolls when he was in Paris, one for each of his three daughters. And she never knew. But she’ll come around. Give her a little time.” Grandma leaned down and brushed a kiss over Claire’s forehead. She slanted a glance at Luke. “Take care of her, young man.”
“I will.”
Her grandmother headed for the door, but Luke continued to look down at Claire. “You willing to see where we go from here, honey?”
She reached up and grasped his neck, pulling him down so she could kiss him. “I don’t think you have any choice now. Not with Grandma on the warpath.”
Organ music filled the rafters of the little church. The communion table had been removed to make room for the closed coffin. Luke sat on the front row with Claire on one side of him and Megan on the other. His sister had rooted through the attic to find a picture of their family in the happy days before their mother went missing. It rested atop the coffin.
His mouth was dry as he studied that picture. They looked so happy on the front porch of their home. He was looking up at his mom with an adoring expression. For just a moment, he thought he smelled the cranberry candles she used to burn.
His gaze lowered to the casket itself, a plain oak one topped with a flower arrangement that included cranberry blossoms. Finally they had closure. Their lives would have been so different if she’d lived. Claire’s would have been different too. Would they even have met if circumstances had been different? It was hard to unravel the threads and know what might have been and what now was because of this tragedy. His grandmother had always told him God was in the habit of taking the awful things that happened in life and turning them into diamonds in our path.
Maybe she was right.
A murmur went through the church, and he turned to see Aunt Nan wheeling his father toward their pew. Pop had adamantly refused to come, and they’d left him at the house an hour ago. What had changed his mind?
He rose and went to help his aunt. “He call you?”
Aunt Nan nodded. “I was about to leave for the service, so I ran by to get him.”
Pop’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. “No need to talk about me like I’m not here. It’s not a crime to change my mind.” He sniffled and wiped at his face with the back of his hand.
Luke squeezed his dad’s shoulder. “It’s okay to grieve, Pop. It’s been a long time coming.”
His gaze transfixed on the casket, his dad nodded. “She deserved better than to be tossed into a field like a piece of trash.”
Luke’s eyes blurred, and he swallowed hard. “She did.”
The grips of the wheelchair were still warm from his aunt’s hands. Family was all about passing the baton, working together, dealing with the ugliness that existed even in people he loved, weathering the hard knocks of life by linking hands and stepping out in faith.
He pushed the chair beside the pew where Megan and Claire waited. Rest in peace, Mom. Maybe they all could now.