Page 1 of Rebuilding Friendship Inn

ChapterOne

Clara Tanner knelt in front of her daughter, pressing the busyness of the airport out of her peripheral vision. “Lena,” she said. “Look at Mom.”

The twenty-year-old clutched her stuffed elephant, her eyes blitzing all over the place. This man. That woman. The television screen with the news playing on silent, the captions running along the bottom.

Everywhere but at Clara.

“Lena.”

Her daughter had been born with Down Syndrome. She possessed the chubbier cheeks classic of those with the mutated gene, and she was lovable, bright, and still very much a child. So much of her world had been upended in the past couple of weeks, and Clara reached way down deep for her extra reserve of patience.

“Lena, we have to get on the plane soon. I need you to look at me.”

Lena finally brought her hazel eyes to meet Clara’s dark brown ones. She gave her daughter a kind smile and reached up to brush her bangs back off her forehead. “It’s like going to see Grandma. Uncle Reuben and Aunt Jean will be at the airport to meet us.”

“Dad’s coming,” Lena said, and Clara nodded encouragingly.

She refused to make her voice higher pitched. She’d never talked to Lena like she was an infant. She had a disability; she wasn’t stupid. “Yes,” she said. “Dad’s getting the pretzels you asked for. He’s coming this time too.”

Their whole family was making the move from Montpelier to Five Island Cove. Clara had arranged with Jennifer Golden to rent a house on the island. It waited in a sleepy, old neighborhood that Clara told herself would be perfect for all of them. It would be away from the news crews, the cameras, and the rumors. The house would offer them far more than protection; the new location, with a new address, would give them anonymity.

Neither she nor Scott would be looking for a new job. They’d managed to get the sale of Friendship Inn to go through with her mother’s generous donation for the down payment. Scott’s only remaining friend in Vermont had financed the loan. Otherwise, they never would’ve been able to do it.

As it was, he was probably putting their soft pretzels on a credit card right now. She’d have to figure out how to pay them off later.

Later.

The word ran through Clara’s mind, as it had been one she’d been seizing onto for a while now. She’d be able to pick up the pieces of her lifelater, once she figured out where she’d be living.

She’d be able to provide a sense of safety and normalcy for Lenalater, once they’d left Vermont and settled in the cove.

She’d be able to find a way to forgive her husbandlater, once all the dust had finally settled from the indictments, the bankruptcy, and the nervous looks from friends and neighbors.

“Here you go, Lena-Lou,” Scott said.

Clara looked up at her husband and got to her feet, a pinch in her back telling her she was getting too old to crouch down. Her knees testified of it too.

Scott still made her world light up, and Clara turned away from him physically, almost wishing he didn’t. His light hair made her think of California, and his blue eyes had spoken to her soul the first time she’d met him.

She clenched her arms across her midsection, feeling how much weight she’d lost recently. Only fifteen pounds or so, but it was enough to make her clothes baggy and her ribs a bit more pronounced.

Since she didn’t have money to buy new blouses and shorts, she wore her old ones, the belt loop just one or two tighter than before.

Clara was a master at cinching everything tight. Life hadn’t been horrible to her; she felt like she’d taken the good with the bad, rolled with the punches, and survived some of the worst storms. She’d been able to do so, because of the man at her side.

Scott Tanner had always given Clara strength. He was rational when she was emotional, and when he needed to vent, their roles reversed. He’d been kind and attentive to both Clara and Lena as the girl grew up, and heaven knew how many challenges the three of them had faced as they dealt with counselors, therapists, and doctors.

Lena’s disability would challenge anyone, but when Clara had found out about the Down Syndrome, her first reaction had been peace. It would be okay. She and Scott could dedicate their lives to their daughter—who’d turned out to be their only child.

She’d felt like thatbecauseof Scott. The man had a larger-than-life personality, which had attracted Clara as well. From small-town Five Island Cove, where everyone knew everyone else, she’d been looking for excitement and adventure once she’d finally gotten out from underneath her father’s thumb.

Scott had provided that. She’d fallen in love with him so fast, and she still loved him now, as she sat down in a hard airport seat a couple away from Lena. Their carryon luggage took up the space between them, and Scott sat to her immediate right, holding the cup of soft pretzel bites for their daughter.

Clara’s thumb moved to her ring finger, where her wedding band should be sitting. She still hadn’t put it back on. She wondered how she could learn to forgive faster. She puzzled through how to feel betrayed and broken and still in love with the man who’d done that to her.

She riddled through when she’d put the band back on, and how she’d feel when she finally did.

A few hours later,Clara’s well of patience had dried up. They couldn’t fly a car over from Montpelier. Couches and beds, all the Christmas decorations, the treadmill, even dishes had remained in Vermont.

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