“If I knew what I was doing, that might help,” she said with a self-deprecating snort. “My mother left me this place, and at first, I saw it as a new beginning. I’d been living hand to mouth up in Little Rock, working odds jobs here and there just to keep Kyle fed and clothed.” She shrugged, started gathering up dish towels. “My mother and I weren’t exactly close. She left us when I was young and I never forgave her. So I was shocked when I found out I’d inherited this old place. Shocked and amazed.”
She glanced around, her green eyes lifting toward the high ceiling of the kitchen. “I used to dream of living here with her. I got to visit her during the summer, but I wanted to live here all the time, with both my parents. My dad did the best he could, working hard to raise me, sending me to school, cooking dinner for us at night, helping me with my homework. But…I guess I needed my mama, too. That’s why I was crying this morning. I needed my mama.”
Adam looked down at the aged wooden floor where the slant in the boards met in the middle of the big room with a soft sag. “That had to be tough. Why didn’t you live with her? I mean, fathers rarely win custody of a child.”
Stella let out a soft chuckle, then shook her head. “My family doesn’t go by the book on such things. They never divorced, never consulted any lawyers. They just kind of agreed that I’d stay with Daddy. You see, he was the more solid of the two.” She started walking toward the little laundry room just off the kitchen. “My mother’s only passion was her art. She could paint a pretty picture, but she didn’t have a pretty life.”
Adam didn’t question her anymore. She looked drained, washed out, defeated. “Uh…I guess I’ll go get a shower and some sleep.” At her nod, he stopped. “Stella, maybe we could negotiate an arrangement of sorts.”
She lifted her slanted brows. “What kind of arrangement?”
The question was asked with a not-so-subtle suspicion, as if she’d made arrangements before and lived to regret them.
“In exchange for room and board, I could help out around here for a while. Fix things up, cook. I’m good at things like that—you know, fixing up, cleaning up and cooking.”
Adam hated the plea in his voice, but he didn’t want to leave the Sanctuary Inn just yet. Something about the needy old house had captivated him. Or maybe it was something about the need he saw in the woman standing beside him that had captivated him. Besides, he wasn’t intent on going anyplace in a hurry. He’d come here to get as far away as possible from his past and his old life. Why not stay awhile and just…rest?
Stella looked at him as if he might be crazy, her eyes going wide, her mouth opening and then closing. “You’d be willing to do all that just for a place to sleep?”
“Sure. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not destitute. But I am on a budget, being retired and all. And it’d just be until I can find…until I can decide what to do next.”
She stood with her foot propped against the partially open door to the laundry room, the bundle of towels in her hands. “I’ll have to discuss it with Papa and Kyle, but I think we might be able to work something out. I mean, if you can make meals like the one you made this morning and help me get this place back into shape, well, who am I to turn you away?”
“I can fix that oven, too,” he reminded her. “Easy.”
“Then you’ve got a job.” She named her terms. “Room and board—and a weekly salary—I insist on paying you for your time and trouble.” She told him what the last maintenance man got paid. “Is that reasonable?”
“More than reasonable. Thank you,” Adam said, no other words available. It had been a long time since anyone had just accepted him. But then, he figured Stella had just about reached the end of the road, same as he had. “I’m going to my room now. I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, later,” she said, her expression puzzled and questioning. She turned to head into the laundry room, then whirled back around. “Adam?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you here?”
Adam braced one hand on the swinging door opposite her, wondering how to answer that very loaded question. “It’s the first place I saw that had a vacancy,” he said. “Seemed like a good place to lay my head.” And before she could question him again, he turned and went through the swinging door, the swish, swish of it moving behind him, sending little currents of air chasing at his retreating back.
Stella went about the business of getting all the linens washed. This work she didn’t mind so much. This work had meaning. Washing away the old, bringing out the fresh and clean. She liked to fold the sheets and towels just out of the dryer, the smell of sunshine and tropical breezes making her put her nose to the crisp white linens.
At least her mother had had the good sense to buy nice linens. Or maybe it had been Mrs. Ebard. Mrs. Ebard and her husband had managed the Sanctuary up until the day Stella had taken over. Tired and old and cranky, the married couple couldn’t wait to leave and be done with the falling-down old house. Stella remembered Louise Ebard’s words to her the day she’d called to tell Stella that Estelle Forsythe had died.
“She just went to sleep and never woke up. Heart attack. At fifty-five. And her a little skinny thing, at that. ’Course, it might have been the smoking and drinking or the late nights out in that studio, who knows.” After much sniffing and crying, Mrs. Ebard had added, “She wanted you to have the inn, honey. Told me long ago—that’s in her will. But I have to tell you, things are bad here. It’s a bit run-down. We don’t get many visitors except the ones that have been coming here for years. Just the regulars or the occasional traveler who can’t find anything better. I still cook and Ralph works on the yard and house, but we can’t keep at this anymore. It’s just bad.”
“Really bad,” Stella said now, hearing the sound of her son’s laughter out in the back garden. Her daddy was out there with Kyle, trying to clip the wisteria back before it took over the studio. Her mother had loved wisteria. But as beautiful as the purple, scented blossoms were this time of year, Stella knew even wisteria, left untamed, eventually suffocated everything in its path. The same way her mother had filled a room and suffocated everyone and everything in it, taking over, demanding, manipulating, the sweet scent of her perfume mixed with the charcoal smell of cigarettes wafting through the air until Stella would almost choke with the pain and grief of not measuring up, of not understanding that her mother was both brilliant and a bit mad.
“Flighty.” That’s what her father had called his Estelle. Flighty and scatterbrained and tormented and talented. Not a woman made for maternal instincts, not a woman made to stay with one man. Not a woman to want her only daughter to bother her when she was working. One simple, hardworking man and one small, scared little girl, left behind, with only the scent of wisteria to comfort them.
And yet, they’d both willingly come here to the home where the woman they’d loved had lived alone amongst strangers. And died alone, all of her guests gone. Maybe they were each hoping to catch a bit of Estelle’s elusive spirit, to be near the places she’d been near, to touch the things she’d touched.
Stella hoped her father tamed that wisteria vine, once and for all. And she had to wonder for the hundredth time why she’d even bothered coming here. Did she want to be reminded of all that her mother had given up in order to have her freedom, her art? Did she want to be here so she could remember, or had she brought her son and her father here to start over, to forget?
Daddy would tell her to put her trust in God. Daddy was a good, Christian man with a solid work ethic, but he’d had his heart broken long ago. Had that been a part of God’s grand plan for him?
Stubbornly, Stella put her nose to a white lace-trimmed pillowcase, closing her eyes to take in the freshness of it. New, clean, washed. She prayed God would one day make her feel that way. And then she thought about Adam Callahan and wondered what his story was. What was he running from, to come