Harbor Street (Cedar Cove #5)(75)

Olivia started to weep.

These weren’t ordinary tears, either. Her shoulders heaved with sobs as she clung to him, kissing him as though she couldn’t stop. A moment later, she was crying so hard she had to pull away in order to breathe. With her head against his chest, her arms circling his middle, she continued to weep.

“Olivia?” he asked anxiously. He’d never seen her cry like this, never known her capable of this heart-wrenching kind of grief. His hands were in her hair as he tried to comfort her.

“I almost lost you,” she managed to say between hiccuping sobs. “Jack, oh Jack, please, please, don’t ever do that to me again.”

He closed his eyes and tightened his hold on her.

“All I could think about was losing you…I kept remembering the day Jordan drowned and…don’t leave me, Jack! Don’t leave me, I love you so much.”

“I would never leave you,” he assured her, still stroking her hair.

“I couldn’t stand it.”

“Never,” he promised. “I’ll never leave you, Olivia.” And, God willing, he’d keep his word.

Thirty-Eight

“Roy, would you fill the water glasses?” Corrie called from the kitchen. Their company was due any minute, and she was decidedly flustered.

They were having the Beldons over, and cooking for someone like Peggy Beldon was a challenge. Peggy’s skill in the kitchen was worthy of her own cooking show on the Food Network. What did one serve a culinary virtuoso?

After days of flipping through cookbooks, Corrie chose baked halibut with wild rice and fresh green beans. Dessert was coconut cake, using Charlotte Jefferson’s recipe. With this cake, Charlotte had apparently won the blue ribbon in the Kitsap County Fair five years running. Corrie didn’t doubt it. If the cake tasted half as divine as it looked and smelled, even Peggy would be impressed.

“Done,” Roy said, holding an empty water pitcher in his hand. “Anything else you need me to do?”

Corrie stepped back and surveyed the dining room. The presentation was elegant, if she did say so herself. A fresh flower arrangement sat in the middle of the mahogany table, which was covered with a pale-yellow linen cloth. Matching napkins were folded into the shape of birds about to take flight. Corrie had picked up this neat trick watching a Martha Stewart show a few years back. The simplicity of it had attracted her. Their very best china and silverware were laid out for their guests.

The doorbell chimed, and Corrie drew in a calming breath. She didn’t know why she’d worried so much. It wasn’t a competition, and Peggy wasn’t critical. She supposed her own perfectionism was the culprit; that and her desire to make sure their friends had a wonderful time.

Roy welcomed the Beldons. After he’d taken Bob and Peggy’s coats, they all gathered in the living room and Corrie brought out an appetizer. It was an easy recipe she’d gotten off a package of cream cheese. You started with fresh Oregon shrimp mixed with cocktail sauce and heaped it all on a block of the softened cream cheese. Small crisp crackers were arranged around it.

Roy took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured three glasses. Bob had a soda. It didn’t seem to bother him that wine was served, although Corrie was sensitive to the fact that their friend was a recovering alcoholic. Bob had assured them it wasn’t a problem the last time they’d had the Beldons to dinner, which was—oh, she was embarrassed by how long it’d been. The night of the fruit basket, as she always thought of it now. Last October…

They toasted one another and made small talk for a while, just catching up on life.

“Do you ever hear from Hannah Russell?” Roy asked. He sat next to Corrie, his arm draped around her shoulders.

Hannah was a young woman who’d lived with the Beldons the previous year. Her father had died two years earlier at the Thyme and Tide, and his death had shaken the entire community—especially when it was revealed to be no accident, no natural death. Max Russell had been murdered. No one was more shaken than Bob, who appeared to be a suspect at the beginning.

Even now Corrie didn’t understand all the connections. She knew Max and Bob had served together in Vietnam; Dan Sherman had been with their unit, too. So was a fourth man, now a colonel. The men had held on to a terrible secret—a massacre in a remote village. They’d all been involved and, needless to say, none of them had ever gotten over it. They’d handled that unbearable memory in different ways. With Bob it had been drinking….

Dan was the first to die. His death, however, had been a suicide. Then Max was murdered, and there were all sorts of questions and misconceptions regarding his death.

The shocking truth about Max’s death came later, when it was learned that his own daughter had killed him. No one had been more stunned than Peggy, who’d befriended the girl and welcomed her into their home. The Beldons had let Hannah live with them, helped her find employment, encouraged and supported her.

“I haven’t talked to Hannah in months,” Peggy said, and her words rang with sadness. “I’ve written her any number of times, but she never answers. The last I heard, she’d been taken to California to await sentencing for her mother’s death.” Hannah had initially tried to engineer her father’s death by having a friend tamper with his car, but it was her mother who’d died.

“Peggy was in court when Hannah accepted the plea agreement.” Bob shook his head in confusion. “Somehow Hannah blames us for her arrest.”