* * *
THE UNEXPECTED STORM had blown over, but it left behind a few threadbare clouds and an unseasonal chill in the summer air. Erin laid out Kitt’s long-sleeved pajamas and left him to dress for bed before checking in on Burke.
Her brother-in-law had collapsed onto the bed in the Galway Room, one of the Moontide’s middle-size bedrooms, as soon as they had returned home from the Delphine.
As she peeked inside the door he’d left ajar, she could see he hadn’t moved from where she’d left him, and the gentle rise and fall of his chest told her he’d fallen into a sound sleep. She moved into the room and opened the armoire, pulling out one of the family afghans, knitted years ago by Aunt Lenora’s grandmother.
She buried her face briefly into the soft, worn cotton, inhaling the scents of lavender and cedar from the armoire’s interior before she unfolded it and stepped toward the bed. She draped the blanket over Burke’s sleeping form, arranging it carefully, the same as she did for Kitt when he fell asleep on the couch while reading.
She lingered in the room, tidying up small details like centering the pair of porcelain songbird figurines sitting slightly askew on the fireplace mantel, pushing the ceramic pitcher and basin on the bedside table away from the edge and tugging a stray cobweb free of the wooden desk chair.
At one time, Aunt Lenora kept a girl on the payroll to come in twice a week for detailed cleaning of the rooms at the B&B. But in the last year, the inn’s revenue had dropped so much that she’d been forced to try to clean the rooms herself. At eighty-nine, scrubbing floors and washing windows had taxed the older woman to her limits. When Erin had come upon her one day, leaning on the wardrobe in the Killarney Suite and heaving for breath, she had known it was time to take over.
The next day, she’d given Connor her two-week notice at the restaurant and began working at the inn full-time. She booked the reservations (though there were fewer than there once had been), made the morning breakfast (and lamented how much food was wasted), kept up with the piles of laundry that a B&B generated and cleaned the rooms, all while raising Kitt on her own and keeping an eye on Aunt Lenora.
The older woman had reluctantly given over much of the B&B’s maintenance to Erin, but that didn’t mean she’d retired. On any given day, Aunt Lenora could be found outside in the garden, tending to vegetables and flowers or crawling up into the attic to go through the expansive mementos stored in its rafters.
Erin had found her there just last week, after hours of searching. She’d fallen asleep in the attic’s drafty environment, curled up in a pile of blankets with her arms wrapped around an album. After waking Aunt Lenora, Erin returned to the attic to restore order and found the album lying open.
It was a scrapbook of Gavin’s life with pressed clippings of his high school wrestling career, a copy of his graduation program, the Findlay Roads Courier’s article about his time in the army and then, at the back, his obituary.
Erin hadn’t needed to read the words. She knew each one by heart.
Sergeant Gavin Daniels passed into eternal rest this past week at the age of thirty-two.
She and Aunt Lenora had decided to leave the specific details of his passing out of the paper, for Kitt’s sake more than anything. It had been bad enough that her son had lost his father. She wanted to shelter him as much as possible from the senselessness of Gavin’s death by a drunk driver.
The obituary had gone on to list Gavin’s various accomplishments in the army before detailing what Erin considered the most important part of his life’s summation.
Gavin leaves behind his wife, Erin, and his son, Kitt, as well as a great-aunt, Lenora, and a brother, Burke, along with many friends who will forever miss his spirit, laughter and kindness.
In the stifling air of the attic, Erin had started to cry, and even now, recalling the words, she had to blink back tears. That final statement had been truer than she might have known. She missed Gavin more with each passing day.
Her grief was cut short as Burke groaned in his sleep, and Erin turned back toward him. His face was lined with emotion, his brow furrowed in slumber.
She bit her lip, her feelings a tangled mess. On the one hand, she felt sympathy for the way the day had gone. He and Tessa had seemed like the perfect couple. She was petite and blonde, cute and sweet, and a lovely foil to Burke’s tall, muscular physique, brown hair and blue eyes. They were easy around each other. Burke would often drape an arm around Tessa’s shoulders as she leaned into him. The sight had always pierced Erin with a pang of envy, and she told herself it was the residual grief of losing Gavin.
But after today, she was forced to admit she wasn’t so sure that was the only reason. Because at the root of her jumbled emotions about this day, there was one she hadn’t expected to feel.
Relief.
She was relieved that Tessa had fled, pleased that she wasn’t going to be Burke’s wife. And that feeling frightened her. She had buried whatever she once felt for Burke. She’d convinced herself her feelings for him were long dead. She had loved Gavin, had married him, borne him a son, had been faithful during his years deployed overseas with the army and had grieved him every single day since his death.
And yet...she couldn’t ignore how her heart had thumped with joy when it became apparent that Tessa had bolted.
Burke stirred, curling his fingers into the afghan she’d placed over him. She felt herself flush as she watched him.
She shouldn’t have felt relief. She shouldn’t have been happy about what he’d lost. She shouldn’t be feeling anything for Burke at all, except to think of him as Kitt’s uncle, her brother-in-law. She had loved Gavin. She still missed Gavin.
But as Burke sighed in slumber, she felt that same rush of relief once more. Biting her lip in frustration, she quickly turned and hurried from the room, down the hall and refused to look back.
BURKE SURFACED FROM sleep slowly, some elusive memory chasing him toward wakefulness. He kept his eyes closed, trying to orient himself. The bed beneath him was soft, much more comfortable than the flimsy mattress he was used to on the boat.
That’s when he remembered. He’d sold the boat, the most permanent home he’d had in the last fifteen years, because he’d planned to move in with Tessa after the wedding.
But there had been no wedding. And he no longer had a place to call home. He was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment at this realization. He’d never settled before in his adult life. Moving back to Findlay Roads and buying the boat had been the closest he’d come to putting down roots. He’d convinced himself that roots were overrated, and he’d done his best ever since his high school graduation to stay on the move, never lingering too long, never growing attached. Because he knew what happened when you grew attached to things.
Tessa was proof of that.
Why had she bailed on their wedding yesterday? He thought back on the last few weeks, leading up to their big day. She’d been distracted and perhaps a little moody, which was unusual—Tessa was one of the sweetest people he’d ever known. She was kind and encouraging, warm and welcoming. But he’d chalked it all up to stress over planning the wedding. Now he realized that she must have been having doubts, feeling the pressure of committing to him. And clearly she’d decided a lifetime as his wife was not for her.
He felt a pang of disappointment at the thought. He could have loved Tessa for the rest of his life. He did love Tessa, he quickly amended. But now there’d be no forever for them.
As he wallowed in this realization, he eventually began to prickle with awareness. The room around him was silent, but he sensed sunlight filtering through the windows. He had yet