Sea Glass Inn Read online

  Karis Walsh

  Sea Glass Inn

  2013

  Bold Strokes Books

  Sea Glass Inn

  © 2013 by Karis Walsh. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-823-0

  This Electronic book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: January 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  CREDITS

  Editor: Ruth Sternglantz

  Production design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover design by Sheri ([email protected])

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing the words is the easy part. I humbly thank the people who do the hard work behind taking a manuscript and turning it into a quality book. A grateful thank you to Radclyffe, for creating this amazing company, filling it with dedicated and talented people, and inviting me to be part of it. To Cindy and Toni and our eagle-eyed proofreaders, for turning out beautiful print and electronic books. To Sheri, for designing such a lovely cover that captures the essence of my book—this one is going in a frame on my wall. Finally, to Ruth, my editor. From idea to proposal to completed manuscript, this book has her fingerprints all over it. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  On a personal level, this book was inspired by a deep love of the ocean and by the friends and family who share this love. Thank you to Mom, Dad, Staci, Brad, Madison, and Morgan. And to my grandparents who are missed so dearly. I’m thankful for our cherished memories from the shores of Washington and Mexico and Hawaii.

  To Corina, for lounging on the beaches with me in sunny Spain. And to Colette, for spending days scrubbing oil-covered birds with me at Ocean Shores. All of you are with me every time I stand on a shore and watch the waves.

  Dedication

  With love, for my dad.

  Because he taught me to notice.

  Chapter One

  Melinda Andrews clicked the windshield wipers to their highest setting as yet another logging truck sailed past in the oncoming lane and sprayed her car with muddy water. She fought to keep her spirits lifted as she drove along the rain-soaked winding road that led from Salem to her new home on the Oregon coast, but she lost another inch of ground in the battle at every turn. Growing up, she had spent vacations on the coast with her family, and somehow the area had been frozen in endless summer in her memory. The signs that winter was fast approaching the ocean communities caught her by surprise. The spruce and firs lining the highway were still green and full, but the deciduous trees had dropped their leaves after an early cold snap. The side of the road was covered with a blackish slime as the leaves decayed on the forest floor, and a depressing gray sky loomed through the bare branches.

  Mel allowed her memories to resurface and color the drab October afternoon. The August sun. The promise of adventure. The summer day when she had first looked at Pamela Whitford’s painting of the ocean and had the crazy idea she wanted to live there, be part of the coastal community.

  Her son, Danny, had been at football camp and her divorce had just been finalized, so Mel had escaped to the only place she had ever felt alive and happy. She had come to the ocean alone and wandered the busy streets with a welcomed sense of anonymity. She could still hear the distant chime that sounded as she’d pushed through the Seascape Art Gallery’s door and entered the brightly lit space. She had stood there in awe, immersed in a maze of panels zigzagging through the room, each covered with a different artist’s vision of ocean life.

  From watercolors to collages, a swell of waves and beaches enticed tourists to pay ridiculous prices and take home a small piece of their vacation experience. Mel had fallen under the same nostalgic spell as she stood in front of an oil painting and watched the light glistening off the mosaic of sea glass that accented the sweeping brushstrokes.

  It spoke to her of broken pieces made whole again, and Mel knew she had to own it.

  The decision to buy the painting had everything to do with its beauty and the hope it inspired as Mel started her new life. It had nothing to do with the gallery owner who’d come up behind Mel as she stood transfixed in front of the painting. Mel could still recall her voice, so husky and soft, and how it managed to stir to life all the feelings and desires Mel thought she had shut down long ago.

  “You like this one?” the owner had asked, her voice hesitant as if she didn’t want to push for a sale. She smelled like an ocean breeze, salty and fresh and alive.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mel had said, turning away from the picture to face the woman. She was tall and casually dressed, in long cargo shorts and a faded polo shirt. Her sandy-brown hair was cut short on the sides but was long enough on the top so Mel could see its tendency to curl. She looked windblown and confident, more ready to walk along the beach than run a high-end gallery. Her appearance was rough around the edges, like her voice, giving her dimension and texture like the glass gave the painting. Even though they stood a few feet apart, Mel had known the woman’s hands would be the same.

  Rough-gentle. Demanding. Giving. The pain of wanting, apparently not as dormant as Mel had believed, had lanced through her, and she’d suddenly felt out of place in her ironed slacks and silk tank. To cover her confusing thoughts, she’d gestured toward the painting. “I like the way the waves are edged with glass, like they’re shattering on the beach.”

  “The endless destruction of the surf,” the woman had added, her blue-green eyes locked with Mel’s.

  “Change, not destruction,” Mel had said, surprised at the conviction in her voice. She rarely felt this confident talking about art, especially to an expert, but she knew how the painting spoke to her.

  “Breaking apart old patterns and habits so something new can form.”

  “That’s a more positive way of looking at it,” the woman had said, giving Mel a lopsided smile. “But isn’t something always lost when that happens?”

  “Sometimes loss is good,” Mel had countered, trying to convince herself as much as the gallery owner. “It opens the door for new possibilities.”

  The proprietor had just shrugged but didn’t argue. And Mel had felt a sudden and desperate need to grab hold of the truth of her statement. She was afraid to let go of the glimpse of hope she had just found in the beauty of shattered fragments inspired by the artwork.

  And in the long-forgotten glimmer of arousal inspired by the gallery owner. Indulging in a rare moment of personal extravagance, Mel had bought the painting.

  And as if the single act of doing something for herself had cracked open the box she’d built around her dreams and started a new trend, she’d gone directly from the gallery to the realtor’s and bought her painting a new home.

  The painting had been mildly extravagant, the house ridiculously so. The thought of her new home, a sprawling and dilapidated old inn, was enough to jar Mel back to the present. She took advantage of a temporary double lane and passed the slow-moving minivan she had been impatiently following for several miles. She couldn’t explain her sudden haste to get to Cannon Beach. Her drive was harrowing on the slick and steep mountain road, but she had a premonition that once she saw the inn again, the journey to it would look pleasant in comparison.

  Her new home. No matter how many times she repeated the phrase, Mel could barely picture the house in her mind, let alone accept it as a replacement for the elegant rambler she had lived in for the past fifteen years.
Every previous trip to the ocean had included a stay in an upscale oceanfront hotel suite. Beds made, bugs removed, freshly baked cookies on the reception desk. This time she would be the one responsible for all those amenities, all the work required to make the long-neglected old inn habitable not only for her, but for a new crop of guests.

  The real estate agent had assured her the house only needed the right person and a little effort to return it to its former glory as a B and B, but Mel should have asked how many centuries had passed since the house had been such a success. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember asking many questions. She remembered signing her name on the papers, but the decision-making process—what little there had been of one—was still a blur. She had gone directly from the gallery to a real estate office on that beautiful August day, not pausing long enough to think through her half-formed, capricious plan. She asked about a large home she had seen on a bluff, overlooking the ocean, with a weathered for sale sign on its lawn. The agent had talked about low interest rates and cash bonus options while Mel’s mind wandered into some vague and distant future. She could hang Whitford’s painting on the wall, gaze at the real waves below, decorate each room with charming, color-coordinated furnishings…

  The thought of living full time in one of her favorite places had seemed like a dream come true. As she had walked through the small town of Cannon Beach with hordes of tourists and the memory of happy family trips surrounding her—and with the encouragement of her eager realtor—Mel had found it easy to imagine filling a large, empty inn with paying customers.

  Now she berated herself for being so hopelessly gullible. She had lived in Salem for years, only a few hours from the coast, and she knew how often it rained in Oregon. Yet in her mind she had pictured year-round sunny days. Given the likelihood that the current weather would be the norm from October to May, she had no idea how she would be able to make a bed-and-breakfast turn enough profit to repay her loans.

  For once in a life filled with safe, rational, carefully studied choices, she had acted on a foolish, expensive whim. She had no training in the hotel business, and being an innkeeper hadn’t been part of her life’s plan. But neither had she planned on being alone at forty. Or being divorced, with all the accompanying baggage, from her eighteen-year marriage to Richard. She’d always imagined she would feel free—relieved—if she ever had the chance to remove the shackles of her conventional life, but instead she felt her throat constrict, her stomach clench in panic. For better or worse, she had tied her fate to a dilapidated house and weedy yard when she signed her name on the loan papers. Unless she declared bankruptcy, Mel saw no way to gracefully back out of the deal.

  After a lifetime of clouding herself and her desires with other people’s expectations, she longed for truth, for transparency. But she didn’t even seem capable of offering it to herself. She tried to picture the house as she navigated the wet highway, but the only images she could call to mind were from her fantasies and daydreams. She had walked through the old house with her realtor and pictured each room fully decorated and fully occupied. She’d imagined a sanctuary for gay and lesbian travelers, a place where they could find the acceptance and freedom to be themselves she had so often longed for.

  But now, try as she might, she couldn’t recall the actual state of the house, and that scared her. She didn’t think her arts and crafts experiences as a Boy Scout den mother qualified her to renovate an inn, especially if the rooms needed more than a simple coat of paint.

  And she had a nagging suspicion that the problems with her new home would be deeper than simply cosmetic. In fact, she would be surprised if the damned house hadn’t collapsed under the first autumn rains.

  She had a vague recollection of the inspection report, but she hadn’t read much beyond “structurally sound” before she’d put the papers in the bottom of one of her moving boxes. And filed the memory of the house’s actual condition in the back of her mind.

  She only had herself—and the artist Pamela Whitford—to blame for her rash decision. The painting had been the catalyst for Mel’s move, but she had been seduced by more than the art. She had fallen for the artist herself, or at least a fantasy version of her. She felt somehow connected to the hand that had drawn those crashing waves, embedded the rough sea glass in the still-wet paint. For the past months, Mel’s daydreams had been full of images of Pamela drinking wine and discussing art with her as they watched the sunset from Mel’s back porch. A rickety back porch Mel had to learn to repair if she wanted any part of her fantasy to come true.

  What had she seen in the house? A chance to erase the nagging regrets she felt after a lifetime of self-denial and safety. To reinvent herself. To start over. But now, two months later, the reality was finally starting to surface. Mel headed toward a new life with the wrapped painting on the seat beside her and her earlier optimism lying in broken pieces in her heart. Desperate to regain some hope for the future, Mel pulled off the road when the shoulder widened. A sign marked it as a scenic-view spot, but all Mel could see beyond the trees were rain and clouds. She dug a business card and her cell phone out of her purse and hoped she had enough signal to make the call.

  “Seascape Gallery.”

  Two simple words, but the seductive sound of the gallery owner’s voice slammed Mel right back to that summer day.

  “Hello?”

  Mel raised her hand to her chest as if she could slow her racing heartbeat with her touch. She forced herself to start talking. “This is Melinda Andrews. I bought a mosaic from you in August. Do you remember me?” Please say yes, she added silently.

  ❖

  Pam’s grip on the phone tightened. Of course she remembered Melinda Andrews. She could visually recall every person who had bought one of her paintings since she had opened the Seascape Art Gallery eight years ago. Of course, it helped that she had only sold seven of her own pieces amid the hundreds by other artists, but Pam would have remembered Melinda even if she hadn’t bought anything.

  Pam could picture her distinctly from a few months earlier as she’d moved through the gallery wearing the excited glow reserved for tourists to the coastal town of Cannon Beach. Locals only came to Pam’s shop to complain about those tourists, and their irritation was usually reflected in their expressions. Pam had just walked out from the back of the shop, called by the chime on her door, when she’d seen Melinda standing by the front window. The sunlight caught something wistful, longing, in her eyes as she stood in front of the mosaic. Her carefully combed hair and too-pressed linen-and-silk outfit—a sure sign of a well-to-do traveler—had faded into the background as Pam had watched her connect with the blue-gold waves Pam had drawn.

  Pam had known Melinda would buy the painting no matter what price she put on it.

  “No,” Pam lied. She fought down her desire to sketch the slight curve of Mel’s nose, the sharper line of her chin, and instead doodled a series of connected triangles across a piece of paper. “I’m sorry, but I have so many customers it’s difficult to keep track of them all.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Melinda’s voice didn’t mask disappointment well. “It doesn’t matter. The painting I bought is by an artist named Pamela Whitford. I’d like to buy a few more of her mosaics for my new inn. I bought an old house and I’ll be running it as a bed-and-breakfast. I’m calling it the Sea Glass Inn, so I’d like to have some art using sea glass in each of the rooms. Do you have more of her work in your gallery?”

  Her sentences ran together as if she needed to spit them out as quickly as possible. Pam couldn’t tell if Mel’s haste was due to nervousness or excitement, but she knew for certain it should have been the former. New businesses were as common as seagulls on the coast. She had seen so many people, drawn to what they imagined was some idyllic way of life, attempt to open a little surf shop or inn or restaurant. They expected to wander through town in sandals and cutoffs and make money off tourists without stress. But, over and over, Pam had watched the businesses pick their owners clean and
leave their empty carcasses on the sand, like gulls pecking at seashells. The long hours spent catering to the tourists during the high season. The creative effort needed to survive the rest of the year. Pam knew from experience that the schedule was grueling even for someone driven heart and soul to support her ocean-side, reclusive life. She accepted the workload, but she hadn’t come to Cannon Beach expecting paradise or an easy life free from pain. So she hadn’t been disappointed.

  “Congratulations,” Pam said, silently adding the words Melinda really needed to hear. Oh, honey. Back out of the deal while you can. You’ll be bankrupt before the next tourist season even starts. “I don’t have any Whitfords in the gallery right now, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find something here to decorate your rooms.”

  “I guess…maybe…but I really wanted…” Her words died away and Pam forced herself to remain silent. “If I could just get in touch with her, maybe she’d take a commission for more paintings.”

  “She’s difficult to reach.” Pam hedged, not wanting to admit she was the artist Melinda was trying so desperately to find. Pam couldn’t accept a commission for more work when she could barely finish one painting a year. She started them frequently and would lose herself for a brief time until something broke her focus and the deceit of painting would come rushing back to her conscious mind. And make her stop.

  How could she create something so lasting, so permanent, when she knew too well how transitory beauty and love really were? All she could promise Melinda was a big enough pile of broken canvases to fuel a decent beach fire.

  “But I’ll try,” Pam said.

  Pam didn’t know why she made the weak promise, but Melinda accepted it with obvious gratitude. Pam hung up after taking down her cell number and sat behind the front desk, her hand stiff from holding the phone so tightly. She looked at the paper on the counter and sighed. She had scrawled Melinda’s number and a series of geometric patterns in ink across the consignment form for a group of seal sculptures. She folded the paper and tucked it behind the register.