Love on the Sound Read online

  Thank God for modern technology, she thought as she opened up her bookkeeping program. In just about forty minutes, she downloaded her bank statement into the bookkeeping software, paid her bills and closed out the financials for August. It had, she noted with glee, been a very good month in August. The giant water bill made her wince a bit, but what could you do about that? She’d really beefed up the garden and that took water, a lot of it. It would get better, she reassured herself. For fun, she toggled over to the graph button and presto, she was looking at a multi-bar line graph whose squiggly lines documented her progress over the past three years. Sometimes, she felt like she was reverting back to being a child playing dress up, here on this isolated little island, with her inn, a grown up sized doll house, pretending to be an innkeeper. But now, as she looked at the squiggly line that started at zero three years ago, dipped way below zero most of her first year, and was now finally climbing out of the red zone—it was one of the moments where it hit her hard that this wasn’t pretend. She was making actual money. Not only was she surviving, but if this upward trend continued, she could actually make it through the next year without dipping into her savings or whipping out the credit card.

  Who would have thought three years ago that the sight of a bar graph could bring tears to her eyes? She smiled ruefully as the screen blurred and wiped at her eyes with the crumpled napkin. Swiveling her chair around to face the bookcase, she looked at the picture of Kevin’s great aunt Amelia that she’d found in the inn and had framed. Amelia had been a knockout when she was young—very Katherine Hepburn-ish with sharp cheekbones and wavy shoulder length hair. Amy had boxed up most of the photos to send to Kevin’s family but asked them if she could keep a few to hang around the house. In it, Amelia, who Amy judged to be about 70, stood on the beach, the wind blowing her wispy silver hair back, the inn tiny in the background. She was laughing, her head tilted back and her face creased in wrinkles, one of her knobby hands held up to her cheek. She was thin and her body a bit bowed, and she reminded Amy of one of the trees that lined the coast—blown back by the wind, sand and water, a bit worn, but still holding strong.

  Amy had only met her once. Amelia flew down to Portland to attend their wedding. She’d only been able to stay for the day, and Amy had found herself wishing she could have stayed for longer, when there weren’t so many other people and things to do that needed her attention. As it was, she only spent a brief time with Amelia at the reception, where it was obvious that she adored Kevin, and he adored her in return. Later, he’d told Amy that he used to visit On the Sound for at least two, sometimes three, weeks every summer while growing up, along with the rest of his family, and that she was one of his favorite relatives—bright, witty, a bit eccentric. Fun. They should go visit her soon, he’d said.

  But time slipped by, and somehow they’d never made it up to On the Sound to see Amelia. A year after they were married, she shut down the inn and moved into a retirement home, admitting she could no longer keep up with the demands of the business. When she died two years later, at age 87, Kevin had been shocked to learn that she’d left him On the Sound. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it,” he’d confessed to Amy. “Mom says it’s become totally run down. Even if it was in perfect condition, it’s too huge to keep as a vacation home—there’s no way we can afford the upkeep.”

  “Maybe someone else in your family would want it?” Amy had suggested.

  Kevin had laughed. “No. You know how my family is—the Island is much too quiet for them. Hell, it’s a bit quiet for me too, but I always did love visiting there, more than anyone else did. I guess we’ll just have to go up there and figure out what we need to do to sell it.”

  But with his job, they’d been too busy to travel up to the Island. And then, just a few months after Amelia passed away, Kevin was dead. Amy sighed and tilted her chair back into a patch of sun coming through the window. It still hurt to remember that period of time immediately after his death. She’d moved through it at times numbly, other times overwhelmed with grief and rage, the endless days lining up into place ahead of her one after another with no mercy.

  She’d paid the property taxes for On the Sound soon after his accident, and that triggered her to tell his family they should take it. They assured her that it was hers to keep, despite her protests. What the hell was she supposed to do with this property? No one wanted it, and why should she have to be the one to clean it up and sell it? For God’s sake, didn’t she have enough to deal with? She shoved it aside to deal with later. It wasn’t until May, about eight months after Kevin’s death, that she found the deed to the inn while she was forcing herself to sort through his things. Suddenly, rather than a burden, it seemed like a gift from heaven. Kevin’s presence lingered at the kitchen table they’d bought together at a vintage furniture store, in the painting he’d found at an art show, in the chipped tile in the bathroom where he’d knocked her heavy metal decorative vase off the counter. She was dying to get out, to get away.

  On the ferry to the Island, Amy was charmed by the sunlight sparkling off the water, the lapping waves against the side of the boat, the green mounds of the tiny islands they slowly passed. Lopez Island was at first unimpressive—just another mound, but slightly bigger. Nothing much was around the boat dock. But once she drove off the dock and into the island proper, the trees and fields stretched green in front of her, bound on one side by that deep blue water. Seagulls soared and cried overhead, and as she drove by, people waved to her. She felt a loosening inside her chest for the first time since Kevin’s death.

  On the Sound was not a pretty sight, Amy found when she met her Realtor and the inspector there the next day. Paint peeled in strips from the side facing the Sound, and raggedy weeds grew wild in the garden. Inside, the inspector took grim delight in informing her of the multitude of side effects from the past several years of neglect—roof leaks, water damage in the dining room and kitchen, porch sagging, furnace on its last legs—the list went on and on. Plus, Amelia had left boxes and boxes of her belongings and furniture behind, anything that she couldn’t take to the retirement home. Apparently, Amy realized, no one from her family had come to sort through them—which made sense, given that Kevin’s death had occurred so soon after Amelia’s. Kevin’s mother had never recovered.

  Despite the inn’s flaws, Amy could make a pretty penny on the property, the Realtor assured her. Plenty of people would be willing to snap up a prime location like this on the water. Even if she just did the cosmetic stuff, a new coat of paint, taming the gardens, she could sell it for a lower price and still make a decent profit.

  Amy spent the next week on the Island, cleaning out the inn. A few of the boxes contained Amelia’s photo albums. At first Amy had pored through them solely with the goal of finding photos of Kevin as a young boy and wept when she came across his gap toothed, ten-year-old grin. But, the more she leafed through them, she found herself drawn into the ongoing story that unfolded over the years, On the Sound the one constant in the background. Amelia posing with guests, Amelia working in the garden with a big floppy hat, sitting on the porch with a huge group of people, all with martini glasses, labeled Thanksgiving 1985. She found herself mourning the loss of this woman she’d only met once and feeling guilty that her possessions had been left in boxes, neglected, for so long. Her gift of the inn, her life’s work, had been tossed aside, not only by Kevin but by the rest of his family and was left in the care of a virtual stranger. And now, she was going to sell it to other strangers, who would do who knew what with the house. It didn’t seem right.

  While On the Sound was in disrepair, Amy could see the charm in the creaky hardwood floors, the windowpanes next to the doors where the glass had warped with age, so the front yard was a blur of greenery and blue sky. She liked breathing in the ocean air in the mornings, liked the quiet that fell at night, liked that she could see the stars. She liked that there was absolutely nothing familiar around her. For the first time in months, she
felt as if she could breathe.

  When she had to leave to head back to Portland, back to work, she stood at the back of the ferry and watched until the Island was just a tiny speck on the horizon. There would be no reason to go back—she had boxed up everything and could easily direct movers to ship Amelia’s personal belongings to Kevin’s family. The rest could be donated or sold. She could arrange for the painting and the landscaping by phone from Portland.

  At home, she slipped back into a funk. She found herself thinking about On the Sound all the time, imagining what it would be like when the new owners spruced it up. She hoped, oh how she hoped, that they wouldn’t ruin it. At work while she was on the phone, she doodled crude sketches of how she would decorate the rooms. Her agent called to ask her when she wanted to put it up on the market, and she hesitated. She hadn’t arranged for the painting or the landscaping. Maybe she should do more repairs?

  One Friday night, about a month after she’d visited Lopez, Amy sat at home alone, well into her second glass of Merlot. Outside the gray sky darkened into evening, and cold rain streaked the windowpanes, even though it was June, which was typical of Portland. It was just after seven, and she hadn’t eaten yet. Getting off the couch to cook something that she wasn’t hungry for seemed like a gigantic task that wasn’t worth the effort. She eyed the bottle and quelled the impulse to drink it all. She looked at her watch and wondered how long she could wait before she wasn’t embarrassed to just crawl into bed and oblivion. What the hell. She poured herself another glass. Looking around the house that she and Kevin had loved so much, Amy felt itchy, trapped. Sorry for herself. Maybe, she told herself, she just needed to paint the walls. A fresh new color for a new start. New furniture. Of course, it was too bad the living room wasn’t like the one at On the Sound, with those fantastic floor to ceiling windows that let in so much light.

  Stop it, she scolded herself. Stop daydreaming about a place you’re not living in and start making your current life work.

  The trouble was, she couldn’t think of a single paint color she wanted to use on her living room walls. She could, however, think of the exact shade of cornflower blue she would paint the living room at a B&B on Lopez Island.

  By the fourth glass, she began to wonder. Could she live at On the Sound? She owned it, didn’t she? And hadn’t she always loved to decorate and bake and cook and putter around the house? What was running a B&B if not that? She wouldn’t be lonely with guests coming and going. She could use the money she’d gotten from Kevin’s life insurance. She could sell her current house, which she realized she was beginning to hate, because it reminded her of what she had lost.

  By her fifth and final glass, she was staggering into the bathroom to throw up—she’d never been able to hold her alcohol. And, after that, she tumbled into bed, her only thought of making the room stop spinning so horribly around her.

  In the morning—okay, it was nearly afternoon by the time she dragged herself out of bed—she whimpered her way through the shower, and through sheer force of will braved the sunlight to drive to McDonalds, although very slowly so her head and body would not explode. Why, oh why in the name of all that was holy did it have to be so bright? In the parking lot, she ate what should have been a horrible breakfast of a McDonalds cheeseburger and fries—but God, her old college remedy still worked—and realized her drunken thoughts hadn’t gone away. Really, she had nothing to lose, she concluded, the thought hitting her like a cold slap in the face. She was sitting in her car, wolfing down a fast food burger, hungover, alone. What life was she clinging too? The life where she dragged herself out of bed in the mornings, endured the bulk of the day at work and then counted off the minutes at night until she could go to bed and forget about the whole process? Her family loved her, but they were out of town, living their own lives and couldn’t be there with her every time she was sad, which was every two minutes. Her friends were supportive, but she could see them beginning to wonder when she would get over her depression and get back to her old self. Life moved on. She hadn’t.

  The only time in the past nine months when she hadn’t wanted to crawl into a corner and weep, to stop the world and get off, was the week she’d spent at Lopez Island.

  She didn’t allow herself to think any further. She just marched forward, head down, battering through any obstacles in her way. And so, a month later, her house was sold, her belongings packed, her resignation tendered and her friends and family shocked and worried about her sanity. During the four hour drive in the U-Haul, towing her car behind her, Amy basked in the glow of her newfound freedom. When she pulled into the tiny town of Anacortes and maneuvered the truck into the line to wait for the ferry’s return from the Islands, she turned off the engine. Only a few minutes, and she would be…home. For a moment, Amy gazed at the line of cars leading down to the water’s edge, where the water was a dull blue under the gray skies, and then frantically twisted off her seatbelt, threw open the door, and was violently ill all over the pavement.

  Oh dear God, what had she done?

  Now, two years later, Amy eyed Amelia’s photo and smiled at the memory. She liked to think that Amelia had been watching her at that moment, wherever she was, and that she had gotten a good belly laugh out of her predicament.

  She shut down the computer and scooped up her plate. On her way out, she paused by the photo and patted the frame. “I’m taking good care of this place. I hope you know that,” she murmured. “Not to mention, I kicked serious ass last month.”

  Grinning, she headed back downstairs. Talking to a photo of a dead woman was probably another sign of the insanity that had gripped her in the past few years. But what the hell. It’s not like anyone could hear her, which was, she had to admit, one perk to being single. She had full license to be as crazy as she wanted to be. Of course, it would be nice to share her success with someone other than an inanimate object.

  The ringing of the phone interrupted her thoughts, and she raced down the rest of the stairs and into the reception area.

  “On the Sound, this is Amy,” she said when she picked up the phone. Automatically, she turned to the computer that nestled in the corner of the large, antique rosewood desk that she used as a check in and out station. As the female caller—very cool and professional—inquired about availability in two weeks, Amy browsed through her reservations calendar. School would be in session, so her weekdays were definitely looking sparse. The lean season was about to begin, so she really shouldn’t celebrate one great month, she reminded herself.

  “We can definitely accommodate you. How long of a stay are you wanting?”

  The smooth voice didn’t waver. “I should be more specific. It would be a long term stay. Eight weeks. Of course, it may run shorter than that and probably will. I don’t want to incur any penalty if the reservation needs to be shortened.”

  Amy forced herself not to choke. Eight weeks? Visions of dollar signs danced in her head. “That’s not a problem,” she replied, striving to sound just as ultra professional as the caller. “I can certainly accommodate you. Are you traveling alone or with someone?”

  “The reservation is for my employer, and he’ll be by himself. I’ve researched the other rooms on this island, and yours does seem to be adequate. He is used to more luxurious accommodations, however, and will require your best and biggest room.”

  Adequate, huh? Amy rolled her eyes, some of her glee at the booking ebbing away. “I have a very nice suite on the second floor that will provide him with a lovely view of the sea and the gardens. There’s a fireplace and a roomy sitting area with a couch. A desk is available should he wish to work, and we offer free WiFi.” She held back a sigh, and pulled up her contact list. As much as she hated to turn business away, she’d learned there was nothing worse than a guest with over inflated expectations. “However, Lopez Island is a very quiet and rustic place. If your boss is looking for a luxury accommodation, he might be better off at Rosario Resort on Orcas Island. Shall I give you the number?”r />
  “I’m aware of the resort, but my employer is quite insistent on Lopez Island.” The woman let out an irritated sigh. “So, this will have to do. However, there is one other stipulation before I’m willing to make the reservation.”

  Can’t wait to hear this. “And what would that be?” Amy inquired.

  “My employer is very...well-known. His privacy must be respected and protected at all costs. This means no reporters, no publicity, no matter how much your inn might benefit. He wishes to remain as anonymous as possible. Can you agree to these terms?”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Probably some Microsoft millionaire executive down from Seattle who thought rooming in an “adequate” B&B was roughing it. Eight weeks, she reminded herself. Enough money to start refinishing one of those guest rooms on the third floor. “The comfort of my guests is my first priority,” Amy said. You insulting bitch.“Disregarding their privacy to get publicity for On the Sound is not something I have any interest or desire to do.”

  “Excellent,” the woman said, her flat tone indicating she did not find anything about the situation remotely excellent. “I assume you need a credit card to secure the room?”

  “Yes, as well as a phone number that I can contact should I have any problems.” Amy took down the payment information and notified the caller of her cancellation policy, check in time and that driving directions were available on the website. “One last thing,” she noted. “I’ll need the name of the guest. Rest assured I’ll keep it confidential.”