Page 84 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

Her mother’s favorite.

She hit the low G, holding it, then center C, and quickly to D, then two long Es.

“You are my sunshine,” she whispered out, her throat catching. She stopped playing, removing her fingers from the keys.

She stared at the piano as a light breeze billowed out the curtains. She could hear laughter coming from outside.

She grabbed the lid to close the piano back up again, but something stopped her. A need to finish the song. To hear her mother’s favorite song again.

Pulling out the wooden bench, she sat down and placed the top part of her right foot on the pedal. She shook out her hands, stretching out her fingers, and then held them in place above the keys as if they might get burned if they touched.

With one long inhale, she closed her eyes, placed her fingers down on the keys, and began to play. She used just her right hand at first, but then her left naturally found its position, and the song played without her even thinking about it.

“Are you playing the piano?” Remy asked, coming into the house.

Meredith quickly dropped the wooden cover. “Just playing around. How’d it go?”

Remy shook her head. “He doesn’t have time to come up.”

Meredith jerked her head back. “But I thought I heard laughing.”

“We had a nice talk.” Remy shrugged. “But he can’t make it up right now.”

“Oh, Remy, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said. She set her wine down on the counter. “I think I’m going to lie down.”

“Did you tell him it was important for you?” Meredith asked, wishing she could knock some sense into that man. “Does he know?”

“Meredith, do you think I’m just hoping he can read my mind?” Remy huffed. “I have told him flat out that I want to leave him if he doesn’t try. And he doesn’t want to. He just doesn’t want to.”

At this point, Remy no longer talked but cried. She cried so hard her whole body shook and she held onto the counter’s edge for support. Meredith rushed up to her, and Remy fell into her arms.

“It’s going to be okay,” Meredith said. “I promise you’re going to be okay.”

CHAPTER30

Jacqueline hadn’t been the kind of mother who had packed a lunch and sent her kids with a kiss to school. She was messy, disorganized, and scatterbrained half the time.

But there was no question that Jacqueline loved her kids. She devoted all her passion to her daughters. She gave everything she had to give them the best childhood possible, even if that meant leaving the love of her life for a better father for her child.

“Do you think she loved Gordon and Jacob the same?” Meredith asked while she and Remy went through the last of the paintings in the living room. Remy’s friend from Boston was on his way to check out Jacob’s collection.

“I think you have different kinds of love,” Remy said, flipping through the stacked pile of Jacob’s landscapes. “I just feel like she never got closure with Jacob. Like the one who got away, but she had to let it go, which I think brought a lot of conflicting feelings for her. I think she loved Gordon, but she also always loved Jacob.”

Meredith thought about the mermaid statue and how at peace her mother looked. If she had come up to model for it at that time period, she would have already been going through chemotherapy. Her body had already been failing and deteriorating by that point. Had Jacob only seen her beauty, even up until the end?

“I think a true love story is about second chances,” Meredith said. “I think the true story is how they found their way back to one another.”

Remy picked up a smaller painting. It was of a pink beach rose with its yellow center. She placed the painting against the others of the same time period. The last paintings they believed Jacob had painted, based on the similarities to the few he had signed and dated.

“I guess she loved both of them,” Remy said.

Meredith nodded at that. Would she ever fall in love again?

She thought about the way her stomach had that fluttering feeling when she stood next to Quinn, and she couldn’t help but blush at her sudden crush on the neighbor.

A ding went off from Remy’s phone. “He’s almost here.”

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