Christmas at Whisper Beach Read online

  Van swallowed. Kathy, despite being sick, didn’t look any older than Van. And the other woman? Could she possibly be the grandmother?

  “This is Kathy Davis and her mother, Charlise Brighton,” Joe said.

  “Sorry we’re so late but it took a long time to get Kathy checked out of the hospital.” Charlise looked around the room. “Kathy insisted on coming in to thank you, but I think we should really be getting her home.”

  “Of course,” Mom Enthorpe said. “And we’ll have plenty of time to visit after the holidays. Kids, why don’t we take your mom and grandmother over to the house, while you get your things ready?”

  “Thank you,” Charlise said.

  Owen took his mother’s other arm. The girls followed closely behind.

  “Better take their coats over before they totally forget them,” Joe Jr. said.

  Granddad had already thought of that and he carried his bundle out the door.

  Van put her arm through Joe’s, as much to support him as for her own support. She was suddenly feeling a little weepy.

  A half hour later, Mom and Joe Jr., both carrying large bags of holiday food to go, joined them outside the farmhouse to say goodbye. Kathy was already settled into the front seat. Charlise stood with the kids.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did for the kids here. We sure do appreciate it, don’t you, kids?”

  The three of them nodded, mumbled thank-yous. There were manly handshakes between Owen and the guys. Hugs from Kayla and Haley, until Haley got to Van.

  She looked up.

  Van nodded.

  Haley’s head jerked a reciprocal nod.

  “Come on, kids. It’s getting late.” Charlise trundled them to the backseat.

  Van moved closer to Joe and he put his arm around her.

  Kayla and Owen climbed in, but Haley stopped, then ran back and threw her arms around Van. If Joe hadn’t been supporting her, they both would have fallen over.

  Van dropped her arm from Joe and hugged Haley back.

  “Thank you,” Haley said.

  “Thank you, too,” Van said.

  Then Haley was in the backseat, Charlise shut the door and they drove away.

  “Did you get all the presents in the trunk?” Joe asked his dad.

  “Most of them. We’ll take the rest over tomorrow or the next day.”

  The Enthorpes returned to the party. Only Joe and Van remained in the lot watching the taillights of the car flit in and out of the trees as they drove away.

  “I’m going to miss them,” Joe said.

  “So am I,” Van said. “But they’ll be back. Owen will still come out weekends. And Haley and Kayla, well, I hope they’ll want to do stuff sometimes.”

  “I think you found a good shopping sidekick in Haley.”

  “We did have fun.” Van had to stop and swallow. She really was going to miss them. More than miss them. It felt like a little piece of her just got snatched away.

  “You know something?”

  “Hmm?”

  Joe breathed out a sigh, a sigh that sounded like he’d been holding it a long time. “I think I learned something this week.”

  “I did, too. What did you learn?”

  Joe held her close but kept his eyes trained on the now deserted road. “That it’s not the babies you make . . .”

  “But the children of your heart,” Van finished.

  She looked at Joe, he looked at her.

  “We sound like a country-western song,” she said.

  He laughed. “We sound like . . .”

  “Christmas.”

  Chapter 12

  Christmas day was everything Van remembered and more; louder, brighter, more festive and boisterous. There were more presents than Van had ever seen, more silliness and heartfelt gratitude. And even when Elizabeth, in Maddy’s absence, began singing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” it didn’t sound sad. It sounded like a promise.

  At first Van tried to steel herself, not give in totally to this wonderful feeling. But she couldn’t resist. She knew it wouldn’t last, but it would always come back. And that was what counted.

  When they finished the second pot of coffee and Mom began gathering up the wrapping paper for the recycling bin, Joe stood. “If you’ll excuse us, I have to take Van away for a minute.”

  Van frowned at him.

  “Nothing bad,” Joe said. “Just a little present I forgot about.”

  From the tail of her eye, she saw Granddad wink.

  “Don’t be late for turkey,” Joe Jr. said.

  “Better change out of those shoes and put on your muck boots,” Granddad added.

  She looked from one to the other. “Does this entail livestock of any kind?”

  Joe grinned. “Possibly.”

  She turned to the others. Mom Enthorpe looked clueless, but the two Joes were definitely looking conspiratorial.

  Van stood. Pointed at Granddad. “I’m going, but remember, I know where you live.”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” he replied. “When’s that turkey gonna be ready?”

  Joe held out her coat and snow boots.

  She took them, but before she could put them on, he trundled her out the front door and into the truck. “Now you can put on your boots.”

  She pulled on the boots and sat up. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He drove down the drive and turned onto the road, but not toward town.

  “You know about me and surprises.”

  “Yeah, that’s why it’s a surprise and why you have to cover your eyes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because it’s Christmas. Now cover your eyes, and put your head down so I know you’re not peeking.”

  Van huffed out a sigh, but she covered her eyes with her hands.

  After a couple of minutes, the truck turned off the road.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Don’t look,” Joe replied.

  They bumped along for another minute then Joe stopped the truck.

  Van lifted her head.

  “Don’t peek!”

  “I’m not. Where are we?”

  “Stay.”

  She heard the door open and shut. She was so tempted to take one little look. The passenger door opened and Joe pulled her out of the truck and set her down. Her boots sank in the snow.

  “Are you losing me in the woods? Do I get breadcrumbs?”

  “Very funny. Now get serious.” He turned her around.

  She had no idea where they were, but for a change she didn’t mind.

  “Okay, open your eyes.”

  She did, blinked against the glare off the snow. Looked further afield. “It’s Granddad’s house.”

  “Ours, if we want it.”

  “Ours?”

  “Ours, with his compliments. It needs some work. If you don’t like it . . .”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s kind of big.”

  “We can grow into it.” She took a breath, exhaled, watched the cloud her breath made in the cold air. “Fill it with kids of our hearts?”

  “Only if you really want to.”

  “I do. But let’s wait a year until we get these businesses off the ground.”

  “Sounds like a plan. And since you just said, ‘I do,’ I have something to ask you.”

  He reached into his pocket, brought out a small black box and knelt in the snow. “Vanessa Moran . . .”

  Announcement to The Beach at Painter’s Cove

  And don’t miss the latest full-length novel from Shelley Noble!

  THE BEACH AT PAINTER’S COVE

  Four generations of women and one summer filled with love, family, secrets, and sisterhood . . .

  The Whitaker family’s Connecticut mansion, Muses by the Sea, has always been a haven for artists, creativity—and the occasional scandal. Now, after being estranged for years, four generations of Whitaker women find themselves once again at The Muses.

&
nbsp; Leo, the Whitaker matriarch, lives in the rambling mansion crammed with artwork and junk. She plans to stay there until she joins her husband Wes on the knoll overlooking the cove. Her sister-in-law Fae, the town eccentric, is desperate to keep a secret she has been hiding for years.

  Jillian, is a jet setting actress, who has run out of men to support her. She thinks selling The Muses will not only bring her the funds to get herself back on top but also make life easier for her mother Leo, and Fae by moving them into assisted living.

  Issy, Jillian’s daughter, has a successful life as a museum exhibit designer that takes her around the world. But the Muses and her grandmother are the only family she’s known and when her sister leaves her own children with Leo, Issy knows she has to step in to help.

  Steph, is only twelve-years-old and desperately needs someone to ignite her imagination. What she begins to discover at the Muses could change the course of her future.

  Despite storms and moonlight dancing, diva attacks and cat fights, trips to the beach and flights of fancy, these four generations of erratic, dramatic women may just find a way to save the Muses and reunite their family.

  Click here to buy!

  Announcement to Whisper Beach

  If you missed how Van and Joe fell in love, be sure to check out

  WHISPER BEACH

  Fifteen years ago, seventeen-year-old Vanessa Moran fell in love and lost her virginity but not to the same boy. Pregnant, desperate, and humiliated, she fled friends and family and Whisper Beach, New Jersey, never breathing a word about her secret to anyone. She hasn’t been back since. Now a professional Manhattan organizer, she returns to the funeral of her best friend’s husband. She intends on just paying her respects and leaving—though she can’t deny she also wants the town to see how far she’s come as a successful business woman. But her plans to make this a short visit fall by the wayside when her girlfriends have other ideas.

  Dorie, the owner of the pier’s Blue Crab Restaurant where Van and her friends worked as teenagers, needs help. Dorie’s roving husband spends every penny they make and now their restaurant is failing.

  Joe, the boy Van left behind without an explanation, has never stopped loving her. While he’s wary of getting hurt again, he also can’t help wondering what would happen if they took up where they left off.

  As the summer progresses and the restaurant takes on a new look, trouble comes from unexpected sources. For Van, this summer will test the meaning of friendship and trust—and how far love can bend before it breaks.

  Click here to buy!

  An Excerpt from Whisper Beach

  Vanessa Moran was wearing black. Of course she always wore black; she was a New Yorker . . . and it was a funeral. She’d dressed meticulously (she always did), fashionable but respectful, chic but not different enough to call attention to herself.

  Still, for a betraying instant, standing beneath the sweltering August sun, the gulls wheeling overhead and promising cool salt water nearly within reach, she longed for a pair of faded cutoffs and a T-shirt with some tacky slogan printed across the front.

  She shifted her weight, and her heels sank a little lower in the soil. The sweat began to trickle down her back. She could feel her hair beginning to curl. She should have left after mass, sneaked out of the church before anyone recognized her.

  But what would be the point of that?

  When she saw Gigi sitting bolt upright in that front pew, Van suddenly felt the weight of the years, the guilt, the sadness, the—and by the time she’d roused herself, the pallbearers were already moving the casket down the aisle.

  She bowed her head while her cousin and, at one time, best friend passed by, but she couldn’t resist glancing up for just a second. Gigi looked older than she should; she’d gained weight. And now she was a widow.

  Her cousin, Gigi. Practically the same age, and best friends from the first time Gigi poured the contents of her sippy cup over Vanessa’s curly hair. Vanessa didn’t remember the incident, but that’s what they told her. Of course, you could hardly trust anything the Moran side of her family said.

  And Van knew she couldn’t leave without at least paying her condolences. Wasn’t that really why she’d come? To make her peace with the past. Then let it go.

  So she followed the others across the street to the cemetery, stood on the fringes of the group, looking across the flower-covered casket to where her cousin stood between her parents. Gigi leaned against her father, Van’s uncle Nate, the best of the Moran clan. On her other side, Aunt Amelia stood stiffly upright. Strong enough for two—or three.

  Behind them the Morans, the Gilpatricks, the Dalys, and the Kirks stood clumped together, the women looking properly sad in summer dresses, the men in various versions of upright—nursing hangovers from the two-day wake—wilting inside their suit jackets.

  The one person Van didn’t see was her father. And that was fine by her.

  Gigi, whose real name was Jennifer, was the good girl of the family. Except for the sippy cup incident, she’d always done the right thing. Boring but loyal, which Vanessa had reason to know and appreciate, Gigi was now a widow at thirty-one. It hardly seemed fair.

  Then again, what in life was fair?

  Van passed a hand over her throat. It came away wet with sweat. This was miserable for everyone, including the priest who was fully robed and standing in the sun in the middle of a New Jersey heat wave.

  He opened his hands. It was a gesture all priests used, one that Vanessa had never understood. Benediction or surrender? In this case it could go either way.

  “. . . et Spiritus Sancti . . .”

  Vanessa lowered her head but watched the mourners through her lashes. In the glare of the sun it was hard to distinguish faces. But she knew them. Most of them.

  “I wondered if you’d show.”

  Vanessa’s head snapped around.

  “Shh. No squealing or kissing and hugging.”

  “Suze? What are you doing here?”

  Suzanne Turner was the only person Van had kept in touch with since leaving Whisper Beach. And that had been sporadic at best. She hadn’t actually seen Suze in years. But she was the same Suze, tall and big-boned, expensively but haphazardly dressed in a sleeveless gray sheath and a voile kimono. A college professor, she looked fit enough to wrestle any recalcitrant student into appreciating Chaucer.

  Suze leaned closer and whispered, “Same reason you’re here. Dorie called me.”

  “And where is she?”

  “Probably over at the pub setting up the reception. She demands your presence.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes. “I suppose I have to go.”

  “Damn straight. Dorie said if you sneaked out again without saying good-bye, she’d—and I quote—follow your skinny ass to wherever and give you what for.”

  Vanessa snorted. Covered it over with a cough when several disgruntled mourners turned to give her the evil eye.

  “Let us pray.”

  Suze pulled her back a little ways from the group. She was trying not to laugh. Which would be a disaster. Suze had a deep belly laugh that could attract crowds.

  Vanessa lowered her voice. “How does she know I have a skinny ass? For all she knows I could have gained fifty pounds in the last twelve years.”

  Suze glanced down at Vanessa’s butt. “But you didn’t. Did you ever think that maybe Dorie is clairvoyant?”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes. She certainly hoped not. She moved closer to Suze, gingerly lifting her heels out of the soil.

  “A bitch on shoes, these outdoor funerals,” Suze said. “You look great by the way. You’re bound to wow whoever might be here and interested.”

  Van narrowed her eyes at Suze. “How long have you been here? Who else is here?”

  “I don’t know. I just got a cab from the station. The train was late and I was afraid I’d miss the whole thing. Changed clothes in the parish office. Nice guy, this Father Murphy.”

  Another snort from Vanessa. She couldn
’t help it. “You’re kidding. His name is Murphy? Really?” Every Sunday her father would drop her mother and her off at the church with a “Going over to Father Murphy’s for services. I’ll pick you up afterwards.” Mike Murphy owned the pub two blocks from the church. Mike was short on sermons, but his bar was well stocked and all his parishioners left happy.

  Seemed nothing much had changed in Whisper Beach. They’d be going to the other Father Murphy’s as soon as Clay Daly was laid to rest.

  “In the name of . . .”

  It was inevitable that some one would recognize her. As the amen died away and eyes opened, one pair rested on hers. Van stood a little straighter, lifted her chin. Pretended that her confidence wasn’t slipping.

  There was a moment of question, then startled recognition, a turn to his neighbor and the news rippled through the circle of mourners like a breeze off the river.

  Van helplessly watched it make its way all the way to the family until it hit Gigi full force. Van could see her startle from where she was standing. The jerk of her head, the searching eyes. Van stepped farther back from the crowd and wedged herself between Suze and the Farley Mausoleum.

  It was a desperate but futile attempt. Gigi found her and almost as one the entire family, the Morans, the Gilpatricks, the Dalys, and the Kirks, turned in her direction.

  “Busted,” Suze whispered.

  “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” Van whispered back.

  “Then you should have come earlier and made your condolences . . . before the public arrived. You can’t expect them not to be curious. It’s been twelve years, and half of the people here thought you were dead.”

  Suze was right. She could have called. Warned them she was coming. Asked if she would even be welcome. She hadn’t.

  She wasn’t even sure why she had come, except that everything had coalesced at once. Her staff had been urging her to take a vacation. Dorie’s letter had arrived at the same time. And Van thought what the hell; she blocked out two weeks of her schedule, made reservations at a four-star hotel in Rehoboth Beach, and got out her funeral dress.