She’d felt a similar relief when she handed over Starlight Point to her children Jack, June and Evie. A grieving and shocked widow at the time, she hadn’t thought she could put one more thing on her plate, and she was confident her children were stronger than she was. In the five summers since her beloved Ford had succumbed to a heart attack, she’d seen for certain the strength of her three children.
And her own strength.
“I’m just a little closer to sixty than you are,” Henry said, drawing her back into their conversation. “But I feel like eighty after setting out straw bales and lifting pumpkins all day yesterday.”
“Is it still better than sitting in the cockpit of a plane?”
Henry ran a hand through his hair and looked down the midway as if he were considering the question. Virginia wondered if he missed his old job now that he was retired. Without a family, did he feel lonely? She’d felt as if she’d been set adrift when Ford died, but she still had her children to give her a reason to get out of bed.
“Most days, yes. It’s nice not worrying about hijackers, lightning and schedules.”
“We have lightning and schedules here,” Virginia said.
“So I guess I feel right at home,” he replied, smiling. “Just don’t bring in any hijackers for my benefit.”
Virginia laid a paper copy of the decoration placement diagram on the wagon’s wood floor and smoothed it with both hands. “Alice saw to every detail,” she said.
Henry leaned over her shoulder to view the diagram, and Virginia felt the warmth from his body. There was a touch of autumn in the air, just enough to make his warmth welcome. It had been a long time since she’d thought about men and heat in the same sentence. Or noticed what a man smelled like. Or wondered if one found her attractive.
“Mom.”
Virginia turned so quickly she almost knocked Henry off his feet. Evie, blond ponytail making her look as if she were twelve and not twenty-five, handed a bottle of cold water to her and Henry. “I could get someone else to do all this physical labor.”
Virginia realized her heart was racing. Was it the new awareness of Henry, a man with whom she’d worked all summer? Or was it this new consciousness being interrupted by her daughter—and making her feel guilty?
There was no reason she should feel guilty.
“You mean someone younger?” she asked Evie, keeping her tone light and playful.
Evie laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Maybe a little. Can I help it that I love my mother?” Evie put an arm around Virginia’s shoulders, which increased her distance from Henry. He stepped back, eyes on the ground. “And, besides,” Evie continued. “I don’t want you to wear yourself out. You have to save energy for Gladys.”
Virginia smiled at the thought of her new labrador.
Henry removed the cap from his water bottle and took a long drink. “Who’s Gladys?”
“My new dog.”
“New?” Henry asked.
“I had a dog named Betty for years,” Virginia said.
“Roughly one hundred years,” Evie added.
“She wasn’t that old,” Virginia protested, and then she laughed when Evie waggled her eyebrows at Henry. “Fine, she was fourteen but she was wonderful.”
Evie straightened her smirk into a neutral expression. “She had many wonderful qualities in addition to her less wonderful ones.”
“Don’t we all?” Henry asked. “So is your new dog—?”
“Gladys,” Virginia supplied.
“Gladys. Is she a puppy?”
Virginia shook her head. “She’s about four or five.” She’d given serious thought to a litter of puppies curled into a ball at the humane society, but then Gladys had stolen her heart.
A chocolate lab with a few years under her belt, her soulful eyes had looked deep into Virginia’s own and forged a connection. Virginia had signed the paperwork immediately and driven to her small house on the old road adjoining Starlight Point, a warm nose on her shoulder the whole way. It was nice having another living soul in the house again after being alone so long. In the few days they’d been together, she’d taken Gladys for a morning walk through Starlight Point before it opened for the day, two romps on the beachs and one trip to the pet-friendly supply store in Bayside.
“And she was already saddled with the name Gladys,” Evie said. “Mom didn’t pick that one.”
“You could probably change it,” Henry said. “Maybe to something that rhymes with Gladys so it doesn’t confuse her.” Virginia and Evie swung their heads in unison to stare at Henry and he held up both hands. “Don’t ask me to think of something that rhymes with that.”
“Already tried it. My brother thought of a few suggestions, but we had to reject them.”
“I’ll use my imagination,” Henry said. “I’ve never had a dog, couldn’t have one because I was never home. Wouldn’t have been fair.”
Virginia noticed her daughter’s look of confusion and it occurred to her that she knew a substantial lot about Henry, but Evie did not. Virginia and Henry had worked together most of the summer, grilling hot dogs on the boardwalk, handing out prizes at employee game nights and manning a table at a season pass holder appreciation night. He’d shared stories of his early years flying for the air force and then his twenty-five-year career as a commercial airline pilot. While Virginia had devoted her life to Starlight Point, Henry had been all over the world.
“Why weren’t you ever home?” Evie asked.
Virginia could have answered the question for him, but she listened instead while he gave Evie an account of his years in the air, his retirement and his move home to Bayside where he kept busy working at Starlight Point.
“And what do you do when you’re not judging beautiful baby contests and keeping my mother out of trouble?” Evie asked.
“Nothing,” Henry joked. “That’s a full-time job. But I do have a 1960 Chevy pickup I’m restoring. It’s how I avoid fixing the porch door at my house. I hate doing home improvements.”
“Which is why I live in a condo,” Evie said. “I see now why you’ve never had a dog, and you probably never found time to have a dozen children either.”
“No children,” Henry said. “My brother and sister have kids and grandkids now, so I’ve enjoyed being an uncle. I show up with presents on special occasions, and I’ve been lucky enough to give free plane tickets to my nieces and nephews for their honeymoons. I can’t complain.”
Virginia thought of her honeymoon with Ford more than thirty years earlier. He’d sunk all his money into buying Starlight Point from a previous owner who’d fallen on difficult times, so their honeymoon did not involve a flight to a tropical paradise. They’d honeymooned right in the Lake Breeze Hotel. It had been substantially renovated just recently, but she still thought of her late husband when she walked through the doors into the lobby. He’d loved that hotel, just as he’d loved Starlight Point.
She hoped he’d