Page 1 of Second Chance in Charlevoix
Chapter 1
Isabel
Isabel Quinn was born a problem child. Whenever her big sisters got mad at her, which wasn’t often, they pulled out that pathetic story of their mother’s two-day labor. Honestly, Samantha and Marlowe talked as if they’d been there. Izzy knew that wasn’t true. They’d both been home with Aunt Cate and Uncle Monty, who’d flown to Michigan from New York for the birth. Izzy was Joanne Quinn’s third and final child. Her arrival had Big Event written all over it. No wonder she was so spoiled.
Their mother decided to deliver the baby in Charlevoix at the family summer home. As the July Fourth due date loomed, her mother scrubbed the kitchen floor with no luck. Then she trudged down to the beach and back up to Sunnycrest with Dad at herside. Although Mom’s back was killing her, Izzy would not come.
For the sake of convenience, the whole family wanted to combine the new baby’s birthday with the national holiday. Izzy would have liked that. She was all about firecrackers and lots of hoopla. But it didn’t happen that way. As fireworks exploded in a colorful array of red and blue above Charlevoix’s beaches, Joanne Quinn was cocooned in the double hammock on the screen porch, her mother’s rosary in her hands. Bringing her iced tea and watermelon slices, Izzy’s dad was beside himself. What more could they do?
Not even Uncle Monty’s grilled brats or Aunt Cate’s German potato salad could pull Mom from that hammock, or so Izzy had been told. Three days after the Fourth, Joanne’s water broke on one of her nightly trips to the bathroom. The girls heard their dad holler “Game on!” In the dead of night, Aunt Cate and Uncle Monty scrambled into some clothes. There was nothing for them to do, of course, but they wanted to be ready.
While Dad was at the hospital with Mom, her two older sisters had taken their mother’s place in the big hammock until Uncle Monty rooted them out. “Time for the beach, ladies!” Her sisters always laugh when they tell Izzy how they scrambled for their swimsuits and trooped after Uncle Monty through the backyard and down to the beach, swatting at mosquitos andblack flies. Lake Michigan was so still that day. Sam and Marlowe loved to describe the gray haze over the water that July seventh.
After two miserable days of contractions, the delayed birth turned into a caesarean. That should have been a warning. Nothing would come easy if Izzy was involved. But they didn’t know that back then. After Izzy made her red-faced, squalling appearance, both Eric and Joanne Quinn were relieved to “just have it over.” Her dad was exhausted and twitchy from too much coffee. “Five toes, five fingers? Glad this is the last one,” her mother mumbled when she came to, or so Dad told them. Then Mom fell into a drug induced sleep.
Their mom and dad probably had hoped for a boy. After all they already had two girls. Years later she asked her parents what she would have been named if she’d been a boy. “Don’t even think about that, Isabel,” her dad had said, not looking up from the Sunday paper. “You are exactly what we wanted.”
But Mom spoke up, a dreamy look on her face. “Ian. That’s what the boy would have been…” Then she stopped.
“Ian? Stupid name,” Izzy had said, perched on the arm of her father’s favorite chair. At the time, they were back in their house in Naperville, getting ready to start the school year. The name Ian stung because it was so different. But then, so was the nameIsabel. To her satisfaction she’d never had another girl with that name in any of her classes. She was special.
“You are so right. Stupid name. I’d rather have my Isabel.” Folding the paper and putting it on the hassock, Daddy had stood up and stretched. “My Isabel.” Holding out his strong arms, he tried to lift her, the way he had when she was a little girl. But those days were gone.
“Eric.” The warning note in her mother’s voice stopped him. “Your back.”
Right. His back. Her dad liked to work outside. His salary as a teacher didn’t allow for lawn service. He’d taken down some trees at Sunnycrest with Uncle Monty the summer before. The two men had decided that the long boughs reaching out over Sunnycrest could break off during a storm and go crashing through the roof. Dragging those branches down to the road for pickup had left Dad flat on his back for a few days. A black brace became part of his wardrobe whenever he worked outside.
Izzy loved those family stories, even though they were sometimes at her expense. Okay, so her parents had spoiled her. Sam and Marlowe both attributed Izzy’s ability to wrap their parents around her little finger to her blonde hair. And after their parents’ fatal accident, her sisters and her uncle and aunt had continued to baby her.
What else wouldfill that loss? Her family’s love had kept her steady. Well, as steady as she could be. She’d gotten more tardy slips in high school than either one of her sisters. And the unexcused absences? Sam, who was in charge at the time, hadn’t been happy about those calls from school.
“But where were you?” Sam would ask.
“The mall. I needed a present for Sarah’s birthday. Candice came with me. No worries.” She was great at making up stories.
“That’s for me to decide,” Sam would say. Sometimes Izzy had felt so sorry for her oldest sister. “You’re grounded for a week. No more of this, Izzy.” But of course there had been plenty more absence slips and groundings for Izzy.
That had never changed for her. Not Izzy’s two divorces, not adopting a child as a single mother––she was a girl who walked her own path. Well, with the support of Aunt Cate. Izzy was really lucky there. And now she was about to do it again.
Sitting in the kitchen at Sunnycrest that smelled like summer’s vegetables, Izzy had an announcement. How were they going to take it? When they were alone together, Marlowe had said she’d support Izzy but her sister didn’t know what the announcement was about.
After she'd said, “I have news,” her sisters and aunt pinned their eyes to her. Even Piper, the loyal dog sitting at her feet, stopped begging for the next treatdropped from baby Holly's fingers. They’d been enjoying a simple dinner of chicken salad and fresh tomatoes when Izzy broached the topic. She’d learned never to upset them on an empty stomach. And she tried to never to give them bad news right before bed, or they wouldn’t sleep. Izzy figured she was being very thoughtful in that regard.
“I'm going to move in with Skipper,” she told them, her voice tight and breathy. Izzy hoped she wouldn't faint. The looks on their faces made her choke on the words. Skipper Malone was her first ex and that hadn’t ended well. “Just for a while. Skipper and Mrs. Malone. They have a lot of room and I think it's the best thing for Holly.”
“Did you know about this?” Sam turned to Marlowe, who was revealing nothing. She could be a sphinx. Aunt Cate was busy folding the napkin on her lap.
“Izzy, anything more to this?” As the oldest, Sam often took the lead.
The question exasperated her. Did she have to go through a song and dance to justify her decision? At thirty-six, wasn’t she entitled to make her own choices? Okay, some of them had been mistakes. But she’d owned those too.
Face pale, Sam opened and closed her mouth at least twice. She couldn’t blame them. It was probably unusual for a young mother to want to move in withher ex-husband, especially when her former mother-in-law had never liked her. But Izzy felt strongly that this was the best thing. Looking down at Holly in the highchair, she smiled. No matter what they said, she was being responsible.
Major changes were in the works for Sunnycrest. The banging, sawing and hammering were only part of the problem. Marlowe’s bedroom was the first to be renovated. The others would soon follow, and that was just the second floor. Figuring in the living room, dining room and kitchen, this would be a long process. Holly, the light of Izzy’s life, had developed a runny nose and dry cough. Izzy figured the sawdust and chemical smells were to blame.
Although Seth Barrett, their architect, had taped up Marlowe’s room with plastic, sawdust drifted in the air, along with powder from the grout. Even more alarming, Izzy had found a nail in the upstairs hallway on one of the faded oriental runners. It caught in the sole of her sneakers. What if Holly had found it? Her rambunctious toddler put everything into her mouth.
And that brought her back to Skipper Malone, her ex-husband and the pastry chef in her bakery, Coffee and Cupcakes. Years ago she’d been inside the Malone house, located just outside town where the air was crisp and clean. Izzy knew it would be a healthy environment for Holly, despite the history she had with the place.
