An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach #1)(49)

“Ms. Flynn? You’re right on time. I’m Barb Brock. Please come in.” She stepped aside for Maggie to enter.

“Thanks so much for fitting me in.” Maggie smiled and tried to look over the Realtor’s shoulder to the space beyond the entryway. She could only see what appeared to be a blinding sea of white.

“I’m happy to do it. I had an early morning showing and I have another at noon, so this worked out well for me.” She smiled brightly. “There’s been a ton of interest, as I’m sure you can imagine.” She gestured toward the living room and dining room area. “A house with so much charm and history and yet one that is totally renovated and fully functional for the modern family . . . well, such a buy doesn’t come along very often.” Barbara’s phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced at the incoming call and said to Maggie, “Why don’t you wander around down here while I take this?” At that, she stepped out onto the porch, leaving Maggie alone in a house full of memories.

Maggie stood at the entrance to the living room for a long moment. The room was, like the entry, white. White walls, white furniture, white throw rugs and white throw pillows. She felt momentarily disoriented as her eyes scanned the room for something familiar. Her searching eyes located the fireplace, but it, too, had been painted . . . white. The only touch of color in the room came from two tall green leafy plants that flanked the entry to the dining room, itself adrift in an all-white sea.

She was riveted to the spot—the same spot where she’d stood when her father, seated in the long-gone leather wing chair, had announced that he and her mother were divorcing, and he was moving to Michigan. Forty years ago almost to the day. She’d been so stunned by the news she’d been unable to breathe for a very long moment. Her mother had sat stoically on the middle cushion of the sofa and stared into space, not a muscle moving, not even blinking. Maggie’d never been able to get a true read on what her mother had been feeling at that moment. But for Maggie, the walls of her life, her security, had quietly tumbled down, piece by piece. She had still been emerging from her own private hell and was about to begin her first year of college a semester late when her father had decided he’d had enough of Massachusetts coastal living and was going back home to the Upper Peninsula, where he’d been born, and where he’d apparently reconnected with a former neighbor when he’d returned for a family reunion—without her mother—the previous summer. Maggie had turned heel and run up the steps and locked herself in Sarah’s old bedroom. By that time, Sarah had been gone for six years, but Maggie had never missed her—needed her—as much as she had on that day. She’d lain on Sarah’s bed, holding her sister’s pillow to her face. Her father had left the following morning and hadn’t bothered to return, not even for Maggie’s mother’s funeral, for which Maggie would never forgive him. They hadn’t spoken in years. It was as if he’d forgotten he’d once had a life—a family—in Massachusetts. She and her mother had been erased as neatly and as quickly as a fourth grader would erase the wrong answer on a homework assignment.

“Ready to see the kitchen?” Barbara touched Maggie on the shoulder.

“What?” Maggie blinked and the tableau faded into the all-white room. “Oh, yes.”

She followed the Realtor past the staircase that still retained its original oak glory. It and the floor were the only touches of natural wood left that Maggie could see.

“Now, are you ready for this?” Barbara stood in the kitchen doorway, one arm extended like a TV shopping host displaying her next item. “This is all new. The addition is only four years old, all the latest technology, top-of-the-line appliances. What do you think?”

“I think it’s . . . white.” Maggie felt like she’d stumbled into a snow globe. Everything in the room was blindingly white.

“Absolutely on trend, every inch of it.” Barbara was positively glowing. “A true gourmet chef’s dream. I’d kill for a kitchen like this in my house. The owners sank a fortune into it.” She ran a possessive hand along the counter covering the island.

“Granite?” Maggie asked to have something to say.

Barbara shook her head. “So last year. This is quartz. Much trendier. Easier to care for with the look of marble.” She lowered her voice. “Those beams overhead? Planed from a tree in the backyard that came down in a storm a few years back.”

Maggie went to the french doors that opened to the yard and peered out. Gone were her mother’s flower beds and the vegetable garden she’d planted every summer, and there was no trace of the ageless peonies she’d prized. Maggie fought a wave of nausea. This might not have been as good an idea as she’d first thought.

“Wait till you see the master bedroom.”

Maggie started to follow Barbara from the room when the Realtor stopped and said, “Oh, the dining room. It’s this way.”

The door to the dining room had been moved when the addition was built. Maggie felt even more disoriented approaching the room from a different direction. It pained her to see that her mother’s beautiful wallpaper had been stripped off, and the gorgeous crystal chandelier that had hung over the dining room table for three generations was gone, replaced by a chrome-and-glass fixture that took Maggie’s breath away with its starkness.

“I know, right?” Barbara apparently noticed Maggie’s reaction and had mistaken shock for awe. “That fixture is to die for.”