Pelican Court (Cedar Cove #3)(49)

“I understand what it’s like to start up a new business,” Grace hurriedly assured her. The truth was, she’d barely noticed that she hadn’t heard from him much lately. Anytime she did hear from Cliff, it had seemed like an intrusion.

She hated feeling this way, but she couldn’t help it. Cliff was like Buttercup. He was big and warm and friendly and there when she needed him. On the other hand, her friendship with Will was exciting and new. The two of them talking for hours every day and keeping it a secret held a hint of intrigue. They were conspirators.

“Are you in love with my father?” Lisa asked, her arms elbow-deep in dishwater.

“I…I—”

“Are you embarrassing our dinner guest?” Cliff asked as he stepped into the kitchen. He stood behind Grace, slid his arms around her waist and kissed the side of her neck. She closed her eyes—not to savor the tenderness of the moment, but in relief because she didn’t have to answer Lisa’s question.

This was wrong, but she couldn’t say anything to Cliff. Not with his daughter and her husband so close. Not with Cliff’s granddaughter napping in the other room. It would have to wait until they were back in Cedar Cove, in familiar territory.

She could have told him on the flight home, but Grace refused to do that to him, especially after the hospitality his family had shown her. That would’ve piled wrong on top of wrong.

The instant Grace was back in Cedar Cove, she collected Buttercup from Kelly and Paul’s and headed home. Ten minutes after she walked in the front door, she was sitting in front of her computer.

“Oh, be there,” she whispered as she logged onto the Internet. She brought up the message board and hit the appropriate icons and waited an interminable few moments.

“Will, are you there?” she typed.

Almost immediately he responded. “Welcome back. How was Thanksgiving with your boyfriend?”

“Wonderful. How about yours?” she typed, wincing at the half lie.

“All right, I guess.”

“I had a good time, but I missed our chats,” she typed.

It seemed forever before Will answered. “Grace, thank you. I hated being without you. I didn’t realize how much I’ve come to rely on our talks to get me through the day.”

“I rely on you, too,” her fingers raced to tell him. She gnawed on her lower lip. “I thought about you constantly.”

Another long moment passed. “You’re all I thought about, too.”

Grace shouldn’t be this happy, but joy filled her. She felt like a teenager all over again—a teenager head over heels in love.

Fourteen

Thick, dark clouds marred the December-morning sky over Cedar Cove. Peggy Beldon walked down the stairs, and from her view through the upper hallway window, she saw that the waters of the cove were murky and restless, churning up whitecaps.

It didn’t surprise her that Bob was already awake. He’d probably been up for hours. Ever since he’d talked to Pastor Flemming, that day at the golf course, he’d been sleeping poorly. When she’d asked him about it, Bob had repeatedly shrugged off her questions. She’d pressured him until she got an answer, although it hadn’t been too satisfactory.

In the beginning, their marriage had been shaky. Bob wasn’t the same after Vietnam. They’d married shortly after he was discharged from the army, but he’d started drinking by then. At first it was just a few beers with his friends after work. Peggy didn’t begrudge him that. Then Hollie was born, followed two years later by Marc, and Peggy had been so preoccupied with motherhood she hadn’t really noticed what was happening to her husband. Soon he was out with the boys every night or bringing his drinking buddies home. She and Bob had argued often and she’d grown increasingly desperate.

The summer afternoon Bob received his first DUI, she realized that his drinking was more than a few beers with friends; it had become a serious problem that dominated their marriage and their lives. Despite her tears and her pleas, he refused to acknowledge there was anything wrong.

Peggy would always be grateful to the friend who’d recommended she start attending Al-Anon meetings. Without the support and encouragement she’d received from other men and women married to alcoholics, she didn’t know where she’d be today. It forever changed her life. She’d stepped back and stopped protecting Bob from the consequences of his addiction. If he drove drunk, she phoned the police; if he fell down on the floor too drunk to get up, she left him there. His drinking was his problem and she refused to make it hers, refused to be caught in the eye of a hurricane because he chose to hide his sorrows in booze.

Thankfully, after Bob had been fired by the third plumbing contractor in a row, gotten his car insurance canceled only to be renewed at rates that rivaled a house payment and been called before a judge, his head started to clear. Then and only then did the light dawn. He’d gone to his first AA meeting and by the grace of God, hadn’t touched a drop since.

Shortly after he’d achieved three weeks of sobriety, he came to her and told her everything that had happened one terrible day in Vietnam. He’d wept bitter tears of guilt and self-recrimination as she held him and cried with him. She’d marked the date he sobbed out his story on her heart, because it was that day their lives and their marriage had changed. It was that day she knew Bob had the power to stop drinking. That had been twenty years ago now, in January 1983. He’d helped many an alcoholic through the AA program since then, and she continued to attend Al-Anon.