CHAPTER 9

“I think you’ll be comfortable in here,” Jo said, so brightly that Ella could clearly hear the nerves in the older woman’s voice.

Ella, who’d limped after Jo down a hallway to a door at the rear of the house, bit her lip as the door swung open to reveal a light, airy bedroom with an old-fashioned four-poster bed pushed awkwardly against the far wall.

“Oh, it’s … lovely,” she said, fumbling it in her momentary confusion over the odd placement of the furniture, the solid mahogany dressers and intricately carved nightstands shoved aside to leave an empty, gaping space in the middle of the room.

“Sorry,” Jo apologized, bustling into the room to strip the bed with quick, efficient motions.

“This is your room,” Ella realized, dread settling over her like a fog. She glanced around at the scuffed hardwood floors, the bare walls—and found confirmation in one of the framed photographs sitting on the antique dresser.

Picking up the one that had caught her eye, Ella stared down at … herself. And Merry, in one of those shots Merry loved to take, grinning wildly at the camera held at arm’s length. Merry’s hair had blue streaks in the picture, which was how Ella placed it.

“My graduation?” she asked faintly.

“Merry sent it to me. I hope you don’t mind.”

Jo’s anxious voice scraped across the raw places in Ella’s spirit. She did mind, but what could she say? “No, of course not.”

“I love that one.” Jo left the sheets in a pile on the bed and came over to stand at Ella’s shoulder. “Merry has a gift for capturing a moment.”

The graduation candid was the only shot with Ella, but there were a couple more of Merry—one on the back of a motorcycle, prepregnancy, the other one in what Ella referred to as one of Merry’s arty moments. It was black-and-white, a little fuzzy around the edges, but the picture of herself reflected in a music-store window caught the essential wistfulness underlying Merry’s playful, buoyant exterior.

“She’s very talented,” Ella agreed, carefully setting the frame down. “Not that she agrees. She hates every picture she takes; I’m kind of amazed she let you have these.”

“It took some begging, but I was motivated.”

Ella could feel Jo’s searching gaze like a touch to the side of her face. Heart pounding, she pretended a fascination with the other photos on the dresser. There was one of the blond teenager from earlier, Taylor, astride a massive black horse and leaning over the animal’s neck as it jumped a fallen log. And the last one was of an elderly woman in a floral-patterned housedress, her white hair impeccably set in curls and a shrewd intelligence shining from her sharp blue eyes.

Touching the glass over the old lady’s weathered cheek, Ella was surprised to feel the lump rise in her throat. “Is that…?”

“Aunt Dottie. Your great-aunt, Dorothea Selden Hollister. The room is still set up for her hospital bed—that’s why all the furniture is like this. I haven’t had a chance to move everything back. She needed around-the-clock care, at the end. I know this house is a wreck, but it’s all I have left of her.”

Grief throbbed through Jo’s low voice, making Ella shift her weight uncomfortably.

She’d thought it was awkward entering her estranged mother’s front parlor in the arms of the man she’d bickered with, leaned on, and soul-kissed half an hour after meeting him. But no, this was ten times worse.

Not only did Ella feel a pang of loss for a woman she never had the chance to know, but she almost wanted to reach out and comfort Jo Ellen, who had known and loved and cared for her aunt in her final days.

Suddenly antsy, as if her skin were a badly tailored suit that pinched and pulled, Ella jerked away from the bureau. “I can’t put you out of your own bedroom. Really, I don’t feel comfortable…”

Jo snagged her wrist before she could get more than a few steps toward the door. “No, it’s fine! The guest rooms are all upstairs, and with that ankle, you really shouldn’t … please. Let me do this for you. I want to.”

Ella could clearly discern the naked desperation in Jo’s voice, and the soft, weak part of her responded to it, wanting to hug and make nice and smooth over this difficult moment.

But that was a crutch, she reminded herself. Years of therapy had taught her to deal honestly with the situation rather than doing whatever it took to cover up the truth. Facing Jo Ellen squarely, Ella forced herself not to duck the real issue.

“I don’t want you to think that my taking this room—even for one night—means that I want anything else from you. Or that I’m going to give you anything in return.”

Jo took a deep breath. There was pain in her eyes, but she didn’t let it crush her, and she didn’t use it to manipulate the situation. Ella met her gaze with the first inkling of respect nudging at the back of her mind.

“I understand. And believe it or not, I appreciate your frankness. This is a nearly impossible situation, made worse by the fact that I know … God, do I know, that I brought it on myself. I’m not asking for your sympathy, and I’m willing to work for your trust. But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t match your frankness with a little of my own.”

She inhaled again, and panic flared behind Ella’s breastbone. “Do we really have to talk about this? Surely we’ve said everything that needs to be said.”

“Almost.” Jo lifted her chin in an achingly familiar gesture. “I understand you don’t want anything from me, and I respect your feelings. But you deserve to hear this, at least. I’m sorry. I apologize for … too many things to name, but most of all for not being the mother I should have been. For not being the mother you and Merry deserved. I regret it from the bottom of my heart, and I completely acknowledge your right to whatever anger you still feel toward me.”

Jo made it through the whole speech without a break in her voice, but her eyes were wide and shiny with tears she was too stubborn to let fall.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, Ella hammered all her years of therapy into a plate of armor over her heart. “I’m not angry with you,” she finally said. “Anger is unproductive and pointless, and implies an unresolved issue. My issues with you have been resolved. Thank you for the apology, but it’s unnecessary. I’m fine.”

The light in Jo’s eyes dimmed, but she nodded without arguing. “Good, then. We’ve both said what we needed to say. Let me just get a set of fresh sheets for the bed, and I’ll leave you alone. I know you must be tired.”

Abruptly aware of exactly how exhausted she was, Ella gave up the fight over which room she should take and nodded. If Jo wanted to displace herself, she wouldn’t argue.

But as her mother slipped out of the bedroom, Ella’s restless eyes landed on the photo of herself and Merry, in pride of place in the center of the dresser. And she couldn’t help the ache that opened up in her chest.

*   *   *

Ella woke to the buttery, tantalizing scent of fresh-baked biscuits and a painful crick in her neck from the flat pillow on her great-aunt’s antique four-poster bed. If she’d known last night about Jo’s neck-torturing pillow, she might’ve protested her room assignment more vigorously. Yow.

Gently flexing her ankle, Ella waited for the twinge, but it didn’t come. Ha! She’d been right that her so-called sprained ankle was only twisted. She’d be fine, as always.

Ella wished she could throw a bathrobe on over her pajamas and head to the kitchen in search of biscuits … but one glance at herself in the bathroom mirror while she brushed her teeth had her rethinking that scenario.

It was a fantasy, she acknowledged with a sigh, wincing at the screech of water through the old pipes when she turned on the shower.

She’d never be able to face whatever fresh hell today might bring in a tank top and flannel pants covered in cartoon frogs.

Half an hour later, Ella was freshly scrubbed and ready to face the day. She made the bed, meticulously tucking in the quilt at the corner of the mattress and smoothing down the sheets.

There. Now you couldn’t tell Ella had ever been there. She wished she could strip the bed again and launder everything, but she didn’t know where the washer and dryer were, and she didn’t want to go poking around the house.

Tidying her things off the nightstand and back into her suitcase, Ella managed to knock her sleep mask to the floor. Bending down to retrieve it, she bumped the wobbly, three-legged antique that served as a bedside table.

She reached out to steady the thing, and the single slim drawer in the center popped open.

Now what?

Ella certainly didn’t intend to look inside. It was a complete invasion of privacy and nothing she saw in that room—nothing she learned on this entire trip—was any of her business.

Since she had no intention of building a relationship with her mother, she had no reason to care about what was happening in Jo’s life.

Except … when she went to close the drawer, she couldn’t help noticing that it held a very official-looking letter. A letter that was dated only a few days previous. Words like “lien” and “debt” jumped out at her as if they’d been bolded.

“Delinquent payment.” “Court.”

Ella closed the drawer with a snap and hurried out of the room, determined not to care, not to even think about that stupid letter.

This house … it’s all I have left of her.

Distracted by memories of last night’s talk with Jo and trying to deal with the fact that her stomach appeared to have tied itself into a knot, Ella got lost twice on her way to the small, white-tiled kitchen at the back of the house.

She braced herself to see Jo, and did her level best to wipe the new knowledge she’d just gained off her face. Breathing out a slow, steadying sigh, Ella opened the door.

But no amount of breathing could have prepared her for the way everything inside her jumped at the sight of Grady Wilkes standing over the old white porcelain stove.

Ella stopped stock-still in the doorway and sent up a fervent prayer of thanksgiving that she hadn’t stumbled in here, braless and hair all sticking up on one side of her head.

“Good morning,” he said, without looking up from whatever he was doing with the stove. “I hope you like red-eye gravy.”

Ella’s usual breakfast consisted of a buttered cinnamon raisin bagel from the coffee cart on the corner, so she didn’t consider herself a connoisseur of breakfast foods. And she certainly wasn’t a cook—the apartment she rented in Alexandria boasted a kitchen approximately the size of the claw-footed enamel bathtub she’d just showered in.

Red-eye gravy didn’t sound particularly appetizing. Still, she had manners.

“What are you doing here?” Ella demanded.

Okay, so maybe this one time, manners could take a backseat to finding out why Grady Wilkes was in her mother’s kitchen at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning.

“Fixing breakfast.” His response was short and clipped, as if he weren’t any happier to be here than she was to see him. “Do you want some or not?”

Ella’s stomach answered for her with a long, embarrassingly audible gurgle. A smirk tugged at the corner of Grady’s mouth.

Lifting her chin, Ella sank down on one of the ladder-backed wooden chairs and folded her hands on the scarred pine tabletop with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Breakfast would be delightful. Thank you.”

Two chipped platters in the center of the table were mounded with enough food to feed a family of ten. Flaky, golden biscuits steamed gently on one, while the other was piled with thick slices of dark red meat—maybe ham?

Ella swallowed as her mouth started to water. “Shouldn’t we wait for everyone else?”

“They’re not here.”

She blinked, her interlocked fingers tightening until the tips went numb. “What?”

Grady turned away from the stove and faced the table, leaning one hip on the counter. Tall and rawboned, his dark blond hair shaggy and his jaw rough with stubble, he should’ve looked silly with blue-and-white striped oven mitts covering his hands.

But instead, he looked completely at home, in his element, and it didn’t matter that he was holding a cast-iron skillet and a long-handled wooden spoon instead of a handsaw and a crowbar. He leaned across the table to ladle a thin, darkly fragrant liquid over the waiting ham and said, “Your mom and sister. They were up early—I guess they wanted to catch the sunrise over the eastern marsh.”

Something inside her shriveled at being left behind, but Ella firmed her jaw and nodded. This was what they were here for, and she’d been very clear and forthright with Jo the night before. If anything, she should be pleased Jo was respecting her wishes and wasn’t pushing her. “Good. That sounds nice.”

Grady gave her a look from under his lowered brows, a lock of hair falling over his forehead and making him seem younger, somehow. “The island is better than nice. And dawn breaking over the water … it’s a sight that can change your life.”

“Maybe you can show it to me sometime.” She grabbed a biscuit off the top of the pile and set it on her plate before she realized how unintentionally flirty that sounded.

She sneaked a sidelong glance at Grady, pulling off his oven mitts and tossing them to the counter, to see if he’d noticed. The slight red flush at the tips of his ears said he probably had.

Ella blinked. Underneath the mitts, Grady was still wearing those leather gloves.

He pulled out the chair next to hers and reached for the platter of breakfast meat. “I’d be happy to, if you’re here long enough. There’s a lot to see on Sanctuary Island.”

“Like the wild horses.” Ella couldn’t remember her dreams from the night before, but she had a shivery awareness of the sense of freedom and majesty she’d felt, watching that band of horses sweep across the field. “Where did they come from, anyway? I couldn’t find anything about their origin online. Is there a mystery to it?”

“Not a mystery, exactly.” Grady piled so much ham onto his biscuit, it was going to take two hands to get it to his mouth. “But there are a few different theories. No one knows the truth, for sure.”

“That would drive me nuts,” Ella said, laughing. “Don’t you want to know?”

“I know everything I need to about the horses. The rest, I take on faith.”

There it was again, something uncurling in her chest and turning toward Grady like a flower seeking sunshine. “What’s your favorite theory about the horses?”

A half smile quirked up the corner of Grady’s mouth, and the look he slanted her way made blood throb heavily in her veins. “Some people say the horses are descended from livestock the British colonists hid on the island to avoid paying taxes to the crown; some say the first horses on Sanctuary belonged to the Harringtons of New York, who owned the whole island back in the thirties and used it as a summer home.”

Ella propped her elbow on the table and leaned in, fascinated by the rich warmth of Grady’s voice as he spun his tale.

“But what I believe,” he continued, “is that the horses were here first, before the colonists, before the millionaires. The Spanish explorers brought horses to North America in the fifteenth century, sailing them across uncharted seas to the eastern shores of a newly discovered land. The voyage was dangerous, and many a crew came to grief on the rocky shoals off the coast of Virginia … including a Spanish galleon with a herd of Arabians in the hold. When that galleon foundered and sank, those horses, bred for toughness, elegance, and survival in the harshest conditions on earth, refused to go down with the ship. They swam and swam until they found land … a small, uninhabited island that the horses made their own. Now, hundreds of years later, they’ve adapted to the island’s conditions and learned to flourish here.”

“I love that story,” Ella told him, dazzled. She could almost see the terrified horses kicking out into the storm-tossed waves, pushing through exhaustion to reach the beach.

“That’s why I spend so much time looking out for the wild horses and their habitat.” Ella tried not to melt at the way Grady’s jaw went hard with determination. “Sanctuary is their home, just as much as it is ours.”

A pang shot through her. This wasn’t her home, and she didn’t know why it hurt a little to be reminded of that. “Thank you for cooking,” she said, trying to drag the conversation back up to the surface.

Ella wasn’t great at accepting help, but she was trying to do better. “I’m not an invalid, though—my ankle must have only been twisted, like I said, because it’s fine today. So if Jo asked you over here to babysit me, you don’t need to feel obligated.”

Grady paused in the act of building the perfect ham biscuit. “You’re not an obligation. I’m here because I want to be.”