The Sea Glass CottageAuthor: RaeAnne Thayne
Genre: Women's Fiction/Romance
Release Date: March 17, 2020
Publisher: HQN Books
Description:
"Emotional and deeply satisfying. I savoured every page" - Sarah Morgan
New York Times Bestselling Author
The life Olivia Harper always dreamed of isn’t so dreamy these days. The 16-hour work days are unfulfilling and so are things with her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when she hears that her estranged mother, Juliet, has been seriously injured in a car accident, Liv has no choice but to pack up her life and head home to beautiful Cape Sanctuary on the Northern California coast.
It’s just for a few months—that’s what Liv keeps telling herself. But the closer she gets to Cape Sanctuary, the painful memories start flooding back: Natalie, her vibrant, passionate older sister who downward-spiraled into addiction. The fights with her mother who enabled her sister at every turn. The overdose that took Natalie, leaving her now-teenaged daughter, Caitlin, an orphan.
As Liv tries to balance her own needs with those of her injured mother and an obstinate, resentful fifteen-year-old, it becomes clear that all three Harper women have been keeping heartbreaking secrets from one another. And as those secrets are revealed, Liv, Juliet, and Caitlin will see that it’s never too late—or too early—to heal family wounds and find forgiveness.
1
Olivia
Olivia
Olivia shoved her hands into her pockets against the damp Seattle afternoon. Nothing
would take the chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave,
huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done anything but
make her crave cake.
She couldn’t hide away in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have to
reenter life and go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a
typical spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.
This was stupid. The odds of anything like that happening to her again were ridiculously
small. She couldn’t let one man battling mental illness and drug abuse control the rest of her
life.
She could do this.
She reached out to pull the door open, but before she could make contact with the metal
handle, her cell phone chimed from her pocket.
She knew instantly from the ringtone it was her best friend from high school, who still
lived in Cape Sanctuary with her three children.
Talking to Melody was more important than testing her resolve by going into the Kozy
Kitchen right now, she told herself. She answered the call, already heading back across the
street to her own apartment.
“Mel,” she answered, her voice slightly breathless from the adrenaline still pumping
through her and from the stairs she was racing up two at a time. “I’m so glad you called.”
Glad didn’t come close to covering the extent of her relief. She really hadn’t wanted to go
into that coffee shop. Not yet. Why should she make herself? She had coffee at home and
could have groceries delivered when she needed them.
“You know why I’m calling, then?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice.
“I know it’s amazing to hear from you. You’ve been on my mind.”
She was not only a coward but a lousy friend. She hadn’t checked in with Melody in a few
weeks, despite knowing her friend was going through a life upheaval far worse than
witnessing an attack on someone else.
As she unlocked her apartment, the cutest rescue dog in the world, a tiny, fluffy cross
between a Chihuahua and a miniature poodle, gyrated with joy at the sight of her.
Yet another reason she didn’t have to leave. If she needed love and attention, she only
had to call her dog and Otis would come running.
She scooped him up and let him lick her face, already feeling some of her anxiety calm.
“I was thinking how great it would be if you and the boys could come up and stay with me
for a few days when school gets out for the summer,” she said now to Melody. “We could
take the boys to the Space Needle, maybe hop the ferry up to the San Juans and go whale
watching. They would love it. What do you think?”
The words seemed to be spilling out of her, too fast. She was babbling, a weird
combination of relief that she hadn’t had to face that coffee shop and guilt that she had
been wrapped up so tightly with her own life that she hadn’t reached out to a friend in need.
“My apartment isn’t very big,” she went on without waiting for an answer. “But I have an
extra bedroom and can pick up some air beds for the boys. They’ve got some really
comfortable ones these days. I’ve got a friend who says she stayed on one at her sister’s
house in Tacoma and slept better than she does on her regular mattress. I’ve still got my car, though I hardly drive it in the city, and the boys would love to meet Otis. Maybe we
could even drive to Olympic National Park, if you wanted.”
“Liv. Stop.” Melody cut her off. “Though that all sounds amazing and I’m sure the boys
would love it, we can talk about that later. You have no idea why I called, do you?”
“I… Why did you call?”
Melody was silent for a few seconds. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she finally
said.
The breath ran out of Olivia like somebody had popped one of those air mattresses with a
bread knife.
“Oh no. Is it one of your boys?” Oh please, she prayed. Don’t let it be one of the boys.
Melody had been through enough over the past three months, since her jerkhole husband
ran off with one of his high school students.
“No, honey. It’s not my family. It’s yours.”
Her words seemed to come from far away and it took a long time for them to pierce
through.
No. Impossible.
Fear rushed back in, swamping her like a fast-moving tide. She sank blindly onto the
sofa.
“Is it Caitlin?”
“It’s not your niece. Stop throwing out guesses and just let me tell you. It’s your mom.
Before you freak out, let me just say, first of all, she’s okay, from what I understand. I don’t
have all the details but I do know she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay. It could have been
much worse.”
Her mom. Olivia tried to picture Juliet lying in a hospital bed and couldn’t quite do it. Juliet
Harper didn’t have time to be in a hospital bed. She was always hurrying somewhere, either
next door to Sea Glass Cottage to the garden center the Harper family had run in Cape
Sanctuary for generations or down the hill to town to help a friend or to one of Caitlin’s
school events.
“What happened?”
“She had a bad fall and suffered a concussion and I think some broken bones.”
Olivia’s stomach twisted. A concussion. Broken bones. Oh man. “Fell where? Off one of
the cliffs near the garden center?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know all the details yet. This just happened this morning and it’s still
early for the gossip to make all the rounds around town. I assumed you already knew. That
Caitlin or someone would have called you. I was only checking in to see how I can help.”
This morning. She glanced at her watch. Her mother had been in an accident hours
earlier and Olivia was just finding out about it now, in late afternoon.
Someone should have told her—if not Juliet herself, then, as Melody said, at least Caitlin.
Given their recent history, it wasn’t particularly surprising that her niece, raised by Olivia’s
mother since she was a baby, hadn’t bothered to call. Olivia wasn’t Caitlin’s favorite person
right now. These days, during Olivia’s regular video chats with her mother, Caitlin never
popped in to say hi anymore. At fifteen, Caitlin was abrasive and moody and didn’t seem to
like Olivia much, for reasons she didn’t quite understand.
“I’m sure someone tried to reach me but my phone has been having trouble,” she lied.
Her phone never had trouble. She made sure it was always in working order, since so much
of her freelance business depended on her clients being able to reach her and on her being
able to Tweet or post something on the fly.
“I’m glad I checked in, then.”
“Same here. Thank you.”
Several bones broken and a long recovery. Oh dear. That would be tough on Juliet,
especially this time of year when the garden center always saw peak business.
“Thank you for telling me. Is she in the hospital there in Cape Sanctuary or was she taken
to one of the bigger cities?”
“I’m not sure. I can call around for you, if you want.”
“I’ll find out. You have enough to worry about.”
“Keep me posted. I’m worried about her. She’s a pretty great lady, that mom of yours.”
Olivia shifted, uncomfortable as she always was when others spoke about her mother to
her. Everyone loved her, with good reason. Juliet was warm, gracious, kind to just about
everyone in their beachside community of Cape Sanctuary.
Which made Olivia’s own awkward, tangled relationship with her mother even harder to
comprehend.
“Will you be able to come home for a few days?”
Home. How could she go home when she couldn’t even walk into the coffee shop across
the street?
“I don’t know. I’ll have to see what’s going on there.”
How could she possibly travel all the way to Northern California? A complicated mix of
emotions seemed to lodge like a tangled ball of yarn in her chest whenever she thought
about her hometown, which she loved and hated in equal measures.
The town held so much guilt and pain and sorrow. Her father was buried there and so
was her sister. Each room in Sea Glass Cottage stirred like the swirl of dust motes with
memories of happier times.
Olivia hadn’t been back in more than a year. She kept meaning to make a trip but
something else always seemed to come up. She usually went for the holidays at least, but
the previous year she’d backed out of even that after work obligations kept her in Seattle
until Christmas Eve and a storm had made last-minute travel difficult. She had spent the
holiday with friends instead of with her mother and Caitlin and had felt guilty that she had
enjoyed it much more than the previous few when she had gone home.
She couldn’t avoid it now, though. A trip back to Cape Sanctuary was long overdue,
especially if her mother needed her.
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