Page 24 of Happy Harbor
Kendra scoffed. “Thanks for believing in me, Mom.”
Josie stopped and looked at her. “I do believe in you, but I also know that your teenage brain is probably thinking you’ll get away with more shenanigans in this little town. Let me tell you, the women of Happy Harbor will not let you get away with stuff. The teachers and the mommas will make sure you stay on the straight and narrow, or at least that’s how it was when I grew up here.”
“Really?”
She laughed. “Back when I was a kid, any momma on the street had Nana’s permission to pick a switch and swat my legs if I was disrespectful or doing anything that required it.”
“What’s a switch?”
Josie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Youth is wasted on the young.” She started walking again.
“What does that mean?”
They turned the corner, and Josie stopped in her tracks, staring up at the house she’d grown up in all those years ago.
“Wow. Look at it.”
Kendra looked up at the house too. “It’s really pretty.”
Josie raised her hand to her chest. “It’s majestic.” The home was built in 1886 by her great-great-grandfather, Franklin Durham Carter. He’d served as mayor in the late 1800s and was well-known by everyone in town.
Situated on a corner lot, the large, white, Georgian-style home was breathtaking. Surrounded by a waist-high wrought iron fence, the home had two stories, each with its own porch spanning the width of the house. Accented by black shutters and thick columns with spindles between them, the home stood out even among the other historic homes in the area.
There were five wide steps leading up to the porch, which had several white rocking chairs on it. Nana had placed beautiful planters with bright-red flowers on each side of the entry door. On the side of the house was a pergola and a gazebo, which then led into her garden where she’d grown her prized roses and a variety of vegetables.
Around back was a huge covered porch with ceiling fans that overlooked a guest house, a small yard with cobblestone pathways, a swing dangling from a huge moss-covered oak tree, and trellises of every color rose Josie could imagine.
In that moment, her breath caught in her throat as she stood there frozen. How had her grandmother left this place to her? This historic home that people stopped to take pictures of and that had been in regional magazines. How would she ever maintain it? How would she learn to grow prize-winning roses? How would she know what to do when the paint peeled or there was a leak? How had her elderly grandmother done this alone for so many years? And how did she die with her home looking like it just dropped out of a design magazine? Josie suddenly felt so small, so ill-equipped for any of this.
“Mom, are you okay?” She could vaguely hear Kendra, but it seemed to be off in the distance.
However, her own breath sounded loud and clear, like a booming drum inside her head. She could hear her heartbeat. She could feel hot tears stinging her cheeks. She could feel her hands shaking.
“Mom!” The volume of Kendra’s voice snapped her out of wherever she was trapped, and she could hear sounds again. A faraway car revving its engine. A bird squawking. She could smell grass. Her vision cleared, and she wiped away a stray tear that had been left behind. A lone soldier.
“Sorry about that,” she said softly, through a still-shaking voice.
“Come over here,” Kendra said, in a kinder tone than Josie was used to. She pulled her over to a power box on the corner of the property. They sat down, and Josie caught her breath. “What was that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I guess that was a panic attack?” She didn’t know since she’d never had one, and she hoped to never have one again. It felt like she was dying.
“You scared me. I thought you were having a heart attack.”
“Me too,” she said, chuckling in an effort to make her daughter feel better. As a kid, Josie had spent far too much time thinking about adult things. She never wanted her daughter to worry about her. “I’m fine now. I think a lot of memories are just flooding back, and it hit me that Nana is really gone. She expected me to take care of this place, and I don’t know how.”
Kendra rubbed her knee. “Do you remember that huge science project I had to do in eighth grade?”
“Yes. It was horrible.”
“Thirty percent of my grade for that stupid project, and I was so scared I wouldn’t pass that class. Anyway, I remember sitting in my room one day with everything scattered around me, crying. You came in to tell me it was time for dinner, and I was sobbing. Do you remember what you told me?”
“‘Stop crying’?”
Kendra laughed. “No. You told me to do the next right thing. You said not to focus on the ten other things I needed to do. Just focus on the next right thing. And then when I finished that one, work on the next right thing. I think this is like that. Nana wouldn’t expect you to know everything about this house or the restaurant, but she trusted you to know the next right thing to do.”
Josie smiled. “You are so smart.”
Kendra shrugged. “I think it’s the salty sea air.”
