Now she was grateful she had heeded her motherly instincts that seemed to have become superacute since Maddie’s illness.
More than anything—more than she wanted to live in this house, more than she wanted this move to work out, more than she wanted to breathe—she wanted her daughter to be healthy and strong.
“I hope we can live here,” Maddie said. “I really like that dog.”
Julia hugged her daughter and helped her out of her seat belt. Maddie slipped a hand in hers while Simon took his sister’s other hand. Together, the three of them walked through the gate, where the one-dog welcoming committee awaited them.
The dog greeted Simon with the same enthusiasm he had shown that morning, wagging his tail fiercely and nudging Simon’s hand with his head. After a moment of attention from her son, the dog turned to Maddie. Julia went on full mother-bear alert, again ready to step in if necessary, but the dog showed the same uncanny gentleness to Maddie.
He simply planted his haunches on the sidewalk in front of her, waiting as still as one of those cheap plaster dog statues for Maddie to reach out with a giggle and pet his head.
Weird, she thought, but she didn’t have time to figure it out before the front door opened. A woman wearing shorts and a brightly colored tank top stepped out onto the porch. She looked to be in her late twenties and was extraordinarily lovely in an exotic kind of way, with blonde wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail and an olive complexion that spoke of a Mediterranean heritage.
She walked toward them with a loose-hipped gait and a warm smile.
“Hi!” Her voice held an open friendliness and Julia instinctively responded to it. She could feel the tension in her shoulders relax a little as the other woman held out a hand.
“I’m Sage Benedetto. You must be the Blairs.”
She shook it. “Yes. I’m Julia and these are my children, Simon and Maddie.”
Sage dropped her hand and turned to the twins. “Hey kids. Great to meet you! How old are you? Let me guess. Sixteen?”
They both giggled. “No!” Simon exclaimed. “We’re seven.”
“Seven? Both of you?”
“We’re twins.” Maddie said in her soft voice.
“Twins? No kidding? Cool! I’ve always wanted to have a twin. You ever dress up in each others’ clothes and try to trick your mom?”
“No!” Maddie said with another giggle.
“We’re not identical twins,” Simon said with a roll of his eyes. “We’re fraternal.”
“Of course you are. Silly me. ’Cause one of you is a boy and one is a girl, right?”
Sage obviously knew her way around children, Julia thought as she listened to their exchange. That was definitely a good sign. She had observed during her career as an elementary school teacher that many adults didn’t really know how to talk to kids. They either tried too hard to be buddies or treated them with obvious condescension. Sage managed to find the perfect middle ground.
“I see you’ve met Conan,” Sage said, scratching the big dog under the chin.
“Is he your dog?” Simon asked.
She smiled at the animal with obvious affection. “I guess you could say that. Or I’m his human. Either way, we kind of look out for each other, don’t we, bud?”
Oddly, Julia could swear the dog grinned.
“Thank you again for agreeing to show the apartment to us tonight,” she said.
Sage turned her smile to Julia. “No problem. I’m sorry we weren’t here when you came by the first time. You said on the telephone that you knew Abigail.”
That pang of loss pinched at her again as she imagined Abigail out here in the garden, her big floppy straw hat and her gardening gloves and the tray of lemonade always waiting on the porch.
“Years ago,” she answered, then was compelled to elaborate.
“Every summer my family rented a house near here. The year I was ten, my brother and I were running around on the beach and I cut my foot on a broken shell. Abigail heard me crying and came down to help. She brought me back up to the house, fixed me a cookie and doctored me up. We were fast friends after that. Every year, I would run up here the minute we pulled into the driveway of our cottage. Abigail always seemed so happy to see me and we would get along as if I had never left.”
The other woman smiled, though there was an edge of sorrow to it. Julia wondered again how Sage had ended up as one of the two new owners of Brambleberry House after Abigail’s death.
“Sounds just like Abigail,” Sage said. “She made friends with everyone she met.”
“I’ve been terrible about keeping in contact with her,” Julia admitted with chagrin as they walked into the entryway of the house, with its sweeping staircase and polished honey oak trim. “I was so sorry to hear about her death—more sorry than I can say that I let so much time go by without calling her. I suppose some foolish part of me just assumed she would always be here. Like the ocean and the seastacks.”
The dog—Conan—whined a little, almost as if he understood their conversation, though Julia knew that was impossible.
“I think we all felt that way,” Sage said. “It’s been four months and it still doesn’t seem real.”
“Will said she died of a heart attack in her sleep.”
“That’s right. I find some comfort in knowing that if she could have chosen her exit scene, that’s exactly how she would have wanted to go. The doctors said she probably slept right through it.”
Sage paused and gave her a considering kind of look. “Do you know Will, then?”
Julia could feel color climb her cheekbones. How foolish could she be to blush over a teenage crush on Will Garrett, when the man he had become obviously wanted nothing to do with her?
“Knew him,” she corrected. “It all seems so long ago. The cottage we rented every year was next door to his. We socialized a little with his family and he and my older brother, Charlie, were friends. I usually tried to find a way to tag along, to their great annoyance.”
She had a sudden memory of mountain biking through the mists and primordial green of Ecola National Park, then cooling off in the frigid surf of Indian Beach, the gulls wheeling overhead and the ocean song a sweet accompaniment.
Will had kissed her for the first time there, while her brother was busy body surfing through the baby breakers and not paying them any attention. It had just been a quick, furtive brush of his lips, but she could suddenly remember with vivid clarity how it had warmed her until she forgot all about the icy swells.
“He was my first love,” she confessed.
Oh no. Had she really said that out loud? She wanted to snatch the words back but they hung between them. Sage turned around, sudden speculation sparking in her exotic, tilted eyes, and Julia could feel herself blushing harder.
“Is that right?”
“A long time ago,” she answered, though she was certain she had said those words about a million times already. So much for making a good impression. She was stuttering and blushing and acting like an idiot over a man who barely remembered her.
To her relief, Sage didn’t pursue it as they reached the second floor of the big house.
“This is the apartment we’re renting. It’s been vacant most of the time in the five years I’ve lived here. Once in a while Abigail opened it up on a short-term