Lost and Found in Lavender Bay (The Lavender Bay Chronicles #2)

43. Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

“ W ait. What?” Maureen stared at Gail, who blinked several times, taking a moment to recover.

“I’m pretty sure this belonged to my mother.” Gail turned it over again in her hand, studying it.

“Grammie?” Maureen placed a hand over her chest for emphasis. “My grandmother. Your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? I showed Mom the medal, and she didn’t say anything about it being Grammie’s.”

“Because she might not know the story. Might never have heard of it.”

“Can you tell me?”

Gail smiled. “Of course.” She leaned on the counter, the medal still in the palm of her hand. “You know Grammie had an accident at the plant during the war, right?”

Maureen nodded. Sure, she knew the story. They all did. During the Second World War, Grammie had taken a job at an aviation plant over in Cheever that had been repurposed to make cargo planes for the military. She wasn’t there long when her beautiful hair got caught in a buffer, leaving her disfigured. She spent most of the rest of her life wearing scarves and wigs but as she got older, especially when she wasn’t going out as much, she didn’t bother. As Grammie and Granddad had lived with them, Maureen was used to it and took no notice of it. Her sisters were the same, she was sure. Thinking about it now, it must have been a horrific ordeal for her grandmother to go through.

Gail picked up her story. “Anyway, she took the accident pretty hard at the time.”

“That’s understandable.”

“She was going out with a guy, a soldier, and when he came home on leave, they broke up.”

“Poor Grammie!” Maureen had not known this story. Or that her grandmother had had a boyfriend before Granddad. But that wasn’t surprising. She’d seen old black-and-white photos of her grandmother before the accident, and she’d been stunning. Statuesque with long golden, honey-colored hair, she’d certainly been a looker. It came as no surprise that she would have had a boyfriend, or maybe even more than one.

Her aunt appeared thoughtful. “Though I suppose if they hadn’t broken up, she would never have met Dad, and we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”

Maureen lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were such a deep thinker, Aunt Gail.”

“I surprise even myself.” Gail laughed, but it turned into a fit of coughing.

“Are you all right?”

Gail waved her off and soon stopped coughing, though her eyes were watering and her face was red. “Anyway.” She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her dress and wiped beneath her eyes where her mascara had smudged. “She said a religious medal had been given to her by a very dear friend, and when she lost it swimming in the lake, she was heartbroken. Looked everywhere for it and even though we aren’t Catholic, she prayed to St. Anthony.”

“Funny that I would be the one to find it,” Maureen said. “If you think about it, I mean. All those years that have gone by. Decades . All the people on the beach since then, and it’s her granddaughter that finds it.”

Aunt Gail shivered even though it wasn’t cold. “I know. My hair is standing up on the back of my neck.” She shuddered again.

Maureen wondered if this was one of those cosmic, there’s-no-such-thing-as-coincidence moments, as if there were greater forces at play here.

“It’s almost as if it was you that was meant to find it,” Gail said.

A shiver ran up Maureen’s back. When she and her sisters were kids, they’d say someone was walking over their grave.

Gail picked up the medal and handed it back to her. “For whatever reason, it was supposed to find you.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I most certainly do!”

Maureen pocketed the medal.

“St. Anthony is the saint you pray to when you lose something,” Gail said.

“So, if I lose my car keys, I should pray to him?”

Gail put the loupe away, back in its drawer. “Not only items. If you lose anything, pray to him.” Then with a shrug of her shoulders, she added, “That’s what they say, at least.”

Coffee Girl was packed when Maureen stopped there shortly after lunchtime on Friday afternoon. Immediately, she spotted Angie running from the kitchen to behind the counter and back through the stainless-steel butler doors. The place smelled of coffee and sugar and vanilla, a heady combination.

Maureen approached the counter and surveyed the long glass case full of every pastry imaginable. There were scones, cakes, pies, muffins, and cheesecakes. Her mouth watered.

“Who’s next?” Angie asked in a tone that said she better have her order ready.

Maureen stepped forward and Angie’s features softened. “Hey there. Good to see you.”

“You too.”

“I’ll have the usual,” Maureen said.

“Café au lait and the white chocolate raspberry muffin?”

Maureen nodded and pulled her wallet out of her purse.

“This is on me,” Angie said.

“No, Angie. We’ve had this discussion. You’re running a business. No freebies for the family.”

Angie chuckled. “Okay, boss. You’re owning your big sister shoes today.”

Maureen had to laugh.

Angie punched in her sister’s order, and Maureen tapped her bank card against the card reader to pay for it.

“Go on, grab a table and I’ll bring it over to you.”

Maureen turned around and scanned the shop, spying a small open table for two toward the back. She wound her way through the packed seating area and set her purse on the floor by her chair and waited.

Angie appeared and set her beverage and muffin down in front of her. She pulled out the other chair and sat down. “It feels good to get off my feet for a minute.”

“I bet. Aren’t you having anything?”

Angie shook her head. “No. I just had my lunch.” She paused and asked, “How are you doing? How is everything?”

Woven throughout her questions was the more specific one: How’s Everett ?

With a slow nod, Maureen said, “Okay. I’m taking it one day at a time.”

“That’s smart. Any word?”

“No, nothing.” Maureen took a tentative sip of her café au lait and decided it needed another minute to cool down.

Angie heaved a sigh. “Hopefully, Everett will come home soon.”

“Hopefully.” She broke off a piece of her muffin and put it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

Angie scowled. “Who said you did anything wrong?”

Maureen shrugged. “I keep going back down through the years, wondering what we could have done differently.”

“This has nothing to do with you or Allan. At the end of the day, it was Everett’s choice.”

Maureen wasn’t totally convinced. “Everything was so perfect. Or at least I thought so, with the boys in college and Ash getting ready to go off in the fall. ”

Angie leaned back, draping one arm over the back of the chair. “Can I be blunt?”

Maureen laughed. “When are you not?”

Her sister tilted her head slightly. “True, but my directness usually serves a purpose.”

“Go on.”

“Maureen, you’re a little bit of a perfectionist. Always have been. I think you need to let go of that concept, or at least change your definition of it. You’re hung up on how things appear to the outside world.”

Maureen reserved comment. There was some truth in what her sister said. And it stung a bit.

Angie’s assistant manager approached the table and relayed some problem to Angie about something going on in the kitchen.

“Okay, thanks, Melissa. I’ll be right there.” She shifted in her chair, ready to stand up.

“Speaking of perfectionism,” Maureen said with a lift of the eyebrow. “When are you going to let Melissa take on more duties? You’re going to run yourself ragged.”

“It’s just habit.”

“Not a good one,” Maureen continued. “I’m not the only perfectionist in the family. And in the spirit of honesty, you’re also a control freak.” She said this in the most loving way possible, because her younger sister could sometimes be prickly.

“Guilty as charged on both counts.” Angie stood up from the table. “I’ve got to go.”

“All right, take care of yourself.”

“You too. Keep me posted about Everett.” And she was gone .

After she left the coffee shop, noting the line outside Java Joe’s across the street, which would surely send Angie into orbit, Maureen wandered down Main Street, in no hurry to go to work. She had some details to go over, but she couldn’t concentrate.

She walked to the end of the block and looked across the street at Prime Vintage. Brutus was not in his usual spot by the front door. She did a double-take and spotted him in the front window, ensconced between an antique globe and a small table. He seemed vigilant.

On a whim, she stopped into Gloria’s Gifts on the next block to browse. The gift shop was a hodgepodge of things. There was soft, pleasant music playing in the background, no doubt from a CD the store sold. The air was fragrant with a scented candle. She lifted a few from the display, sniffing them, deciding she liked the lavender and thyme one best.

She strolled through the aisles, looking at all the wares and falling in love with a ceramic butter dish that would match her kitchen perfectly, but then deciding against it, thinking she had enough butter dishes at home. In the aisle of wind chimes, she had to duck a few times to avoid getting hit in the head with one of them. She had enough of those at home as well.

At the back of the shop was the novelty section. Some retro stuff and gag gifts. There were things like rain bonnets, plastic change purses, mood rings—she’d had one as a teenager that turned her finger green, and all it had confirmed was that she was moody—and whoopee cushions.

Edna Knickerbocker was in the middle of the retro section, holding a squirt gun. Why an eighty-five-year-old woman would be looking at a fluorescent orange squirt gun aroused an unusual amount of curiosity in Maureen.

Maureen approached her, and Edna looked up. Her gnarly fingers kept squeezing the white plastic trigger.

“Hello, Maureen, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Knickerbocker, how are you?”

“I’m good for my age. How’s Everett? Has he come home yet?”

Maureen’s mouth went dry. That was the problem with Lavender Bay. Like other small towns, not only did everyone know your business, they also felt it was okay to comment on it and ask questions. If you were looking for privacy, this wasn’t the place.

“No, he hasn’t.”

Edna shook her head. “Addiction is tough. I’m praying for him.”

“I appreciate that,” Maureen said sincerely. They not only needed prayers, they could use a miracle or two. Wanting to change the subject, she nodded toward the squirt gun. “What’s up with the water gun, Mrs. Knickerbocker?”

Edna looked at it and chuckled. “This? It’s for my neighbor, Hal.”

Maureen knew of Edna’s neighbor. He was as old as Edna. “Hal wants a squirt gun?”

“No, of course not,” Edna said in a tone that suggested it was ridiculous to assume an eighty-five-year-old man would want a squirt gun. But then there she was, holding one in her hand. “We like to play practical jokes on each other. This should take him by surprise.” She broke into a fit of laughter, and Maureen found herself laughing too, buoyed by the idea of having that much fun when you were in your eighties. She tried to call up an image of her and Allan playing with squirt guns, but it seemed ludicrous. Maybe when they were in their eighties, it wouldn’t seem as ridiculous.

“Hey, whatever happened to that raccoon?” Edna asked.

“I hired a company who offered a compassionate removal service,” Maureen explained.

“Ha, they probably took him to the park like I did.”

Maureen was about to say something, but Edna kept talking. “I better go. At my age, I could go any minute,” she said. She waved the squirt gun around. “So it’s best if Hal gets a belt of this today.”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” Maureen said.

“I think so too. Ta-ta!” The old woman disappeared, nimbly walking down the aisle to the front of the store.

As Maureen exited the store, having made no purchases, the narrow storefront of the jewelry store across the street caught her eye, and she had an idea. Looking both ways before crossing the street, she dashed across it to the jeweler tucked neatly between the Annacotty Room and the Quirk and Quill.