* * *
Ashley Scott rarely made caramel cake. It might be a delicious staple of the South, but it took forever to whip the caramel icing—twenty minutes in the stand mixer to get the right frothy consistency.
But Jackie loved caramel cake. And since today marked the end of his summer vacation, she’d made a whole cake just for him. He’d already had a slice after dinner. And there would be plenty to pack in his school lunches for the rest of the week.
Maybe that would improve his mood. Jackie was too smart for his own good sometimes. And he was also just a little odd, her boy. What with his imaginary pirate friend…who might be a ghost.
Kids teased him, and school wasn’t his favorite place, especially at recess or lunchtime. Ashley sometimes wondered what Adam, her late husband, might think of their child. Would her husband, who’d been a man’s man, be ashamed of the boy who got perpetually bullied at school?
Probably.
But she wasn’t ashamed. She worried about Jackie. And loved him with all her heart, which was why she’d made a double recipe of caramel cake—so Jackie could have his own cake and the ladies of the Piece Makers quilting club could have theirs.
The quilting group met every Tuesday at Howland House, and they’d been getting scratch-made cake every week for decades. The cakes were a tradition that Ashley’s grandmother had started when she’d formed the group during World War II. Ashley had taken over the tradition after her husband and grandmother had died within a year of each other.
It seemed impossible that it had been three years since Adam had been killed on deployment. She still cried for him, especially at night, but she’d been learning to live with the loneliness. Besides, her bed-and-breakfast kept her too busy for self-pity most of the time.
Grandmother might not have liked the idea of turning Howland House into an inn, but it had been the only way Ashley could keep the old place in the Howland family. Her married name was Scott, but she’d been born a Howland—a direct descendant of Rose Howland, the woman who had planted the daffodils that had given Jonquil Island its name. Magnolia Harbor, the largest town on the island, had been founded more than a hundred years after Rose had died. But her daffodils remained.
Ashley checked the oven clock. It was nearly seven. The quilters would be arriving shortly. Their cake now took pride of place in the newly refurbished kitchen, sitting on Grandmother’s milk-glass cake stand beside a stack of her china plates and the silver cake server.
Cake had been served on those plates almost every week for eighty years. The sheer longevity of the Tuesday-night meetings made them both a burden and a joy to be a part of. Ashley didn’t dare end the tradition, but sometimes she wished the group would meet elsewhere, or maybe give up the old-fashioned practice of hand quilting. They could make a lot more quilts if someone would invest in a long-arm sewing machine capable of machine quilting. The truth was that sometimes Ashley wanted a Tuesday night off.
The sound of the big front door opening pulled Ashley from her dissatisfied thoughts. A moment later, Sandra Jernigan and her sister, Karen Tighe, came into the kitchen. Sandra and Karen, like Grandmother, were members of the Martin family. They had been Grandmother’s nieces, which made them Ashley’s cousins once removed or something like that.
In any case, Ashley, Sandra, and Karen were part of an extended family that included Topher, who was even more removed, relation-wise. But in this town family counted, especially if your surname was Howland or Martin. The Howlands and the Martins had founded Magnolia Harbor.
“How is he?” Sandra asked the moment she arrived, utterly ignoring the caramel cake that her sister immediately dived into. Sandra didn’t have a sweet tooth, but Karen did.
“I assume you’re asking about Topher?” Ashley said.
Sandra nodded.
“Well, he’s still not eating meals with the boarders. But I saw him leave the cottage and come back with a bunch of grocery sacks. I have no idea what he’s eating, but he’s eating something.”
“You should have offered to go shopping for—”
“No, Sandra, she shouldn’t have offered to shop for him,” Karen said, interrupting her sister around a mouthful of cake. “Topher needs tough love.”
Karen and Sandra bore a family resemblance if you looked hard enough, but the two of them tried their best not to enhance it. Karen rarely wore a skirt while Sandra was a bit of a fashion plate, although her sense of style was about twenty years out of date.
“The poor dear,” Sandra said, giving Karen a glare. “We really need to make an intervention.”
“And do what?” Ashley asked. Her cousins were meddling in Topher’s life. She was resisting the urge, although clearly the man needed help.
“I don’t know,” Sandra said, her voice laced with deep and genuine concern. “He’s so alone. He’s been alone since his father died.”
“Before that,” Karen said on a long, mournful breath.
Oh boy. Yes, Topher had lived a difficult life, losing his mother at the age of four and his father when he was eighteen, shortly after starting his freshman year at Alabama. Still, he’d managed, and he’d done well for himself until the accident.
Not surprisingly, Sandra and Karen, who had been babying him most of his life, wanted to swathe Topher in Bubble Wrap now that he was hurting.
“He’ll be okay,” Ashley said, trying to invest her voice with more conviction than she felt. Topher was desperately injured in both body and spirit. But maybe all he needed was a little time.
Ashley had met Topher only once or twice as a kid, when her father’s military service had allowed Daddy to return home to Magnolia Harbor for family celebrations. She remembered Topher as a nerdy kid. Sort of like Jackie, now that she thought about it.
That brought her up sharp because Ashley hadn’t been kind to Topher when they were younger. She was four years older and had hung out with their cousins Steven and Timothy. The older kids made a point of excluding Topher from their games, leaving him to play with the little girl cousins.
Melanie, Alicia, and Lindsay had adored Topher. Like him, they were all in their thirties now. Each one had checked in with Ashley over the last few weeks, concerned about him. Apparently Topher was not returning phone calls and seemed to have forgotten that his extended family loved him no matter what.
“I heard from Isaac Solomon down at the marina that Topher took his boat out yesterday,” Karen said.
“He did?” Ashley asked. “I guess I didn’t notice that he’d left the cottage. I was busy doing back-to-school shopping with Jackie.”
“Well, apparently he did. He sailed to Lookout Island with Jessica Blackwood. I called Donna, and she confirmed that he’s hired her niece to do a site visit for a house out there.”
Ashley brushed an imaginary crumb from her marble countertop. “Well, I guess that’s not a surprise. He’s been talking about building a house out there since he returned to Magnolia Harbor.”
“Yes, but I thought he’d give it up once he was back home with family. We can’t let him run away from his problems. And besides, it’s not safe for him to live alone out there,” Karen said.
Ashley studied the veins in the marble but said nothing.
“Tell me you don’t disagree,” Sandra said.