Page 31 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

He shut the coffee maker lid and turned it on. The water hissed as it spurted out of the opening.

“You could, but it’s like any other tragedy.” Quinn understood what his mother was trying to do. Meredith didn’t understand the degree to which the accident had damaged Jacob. The reason why he’d drank himself into oblivion and couldn’t be a father. “He was the only survivor.”

“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s more my mother who suffered.”

He glanced over at her and that was when he felt her pain—a grief that hung around her like the fog in the morning. His first instinct was to go to her, and it surprised him.

A feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time swept up inside him as he looked at her, and he went back to the coffee.

What was that?

“How do you take it?” he asked, turning his back to her.

“I’ll take some cream,” she said.

He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a bit flushed as he poured the coffee.

“I can answer anything,” he said. “I mean, if you have questions.”

“Was he really this great man?” she asked, picking up the photograph of Jacqueline, the love of Jacob’s life.

“Yes.” Quinn didn’t even hesitate. “He was one of the greatest.”

CHAPTER12

“Wow,” she said, looking at the cup of coffee. She swallowed down the bit of irritation that brewed every time this town defended her absentee father. “The greatest.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I know that must be hard to hear, and I’m not trying to dismiss what you’ve been through, but the man we knew was very generous.”

Meredith never went searching for her father like a couple of her adopted friends had done when they’d turned of age. She’d never had the longing to find that missing father in her life. She had Gordon and her mother, and they had been enough.

She tried not to show her annoyance, but he must have seen through it, because he began to defend his answer.

“He helped his neighbors, always,” Quinn said. “And my son adored him.”

She blinked at this. What was she supposed to say? Yay, the man who left her as a baby took care of his neighbors.

“Mr. Michaud,” she began.

“Quinn, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I always feel like people are talking to my father when they call me that.”

“Quinn,” she corrected herself. “I think it’s best if we leave Jacob out of all of this.”

He frowned. “You don’t want me to talk about Jacob?”

She so badly just wanted to lay it all out. Explain how she felt like that little abandoned girl every time he mentioned something about the supposedly great man, Jacob.

But her phone began to vibrate. It was Gordon.

“I need to take this,” she said.

She had texted everyone to let them know she would be staying the night in Maine—the kids, Remy, and Gordon.

She had thought about Phillip but decided against it. Remy would kill her if she had.

She got up from the table and walked outside onto the back porch. She didn’t know the house well enough to find a private spot, but the waves pounding against the shore would hide her conversation well enough.

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