Summer in Eclipse Bay Read Online Free Page B

beginning.”
    â€œIf that’s what you want to do.”
    She hesitated, looking for the right place to begin. “I was with my aunt a lot during the last couple of years of her life. She needed someone to take care of her and there wasn’t anyone else. Aunt Claudia was not the most popular member of the family.”
    â€œHell, I didn’t even realize she had a family. She never mentioned the subject.”
    â€œShe was the renegade. The black sheep. The one who was always a source of acute embarrassment. But I had always liked her a lot. And she liked me. Maybe it was because I looked so much like her. Or maybe she just felt sorry for me.”
    â€œWhy would she feel sorry for you?”
    â€œI think she saw me as a loner, just as she was. My parents divorced when I was small. They both remarried and started new families. I spent most of my youth shuttling back and forth between them but I never felt at home in either house. Aunt Claudia sensed that, I think.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œClaudia was very special to me. I know she had her faults, and her business ethics left a lot to be desired. But I loved her and she cared about me in her own way. She worried that I was too inclined to play it safe. She said I spent too much time trying to smooth things over and calm the waters. She kept urging me to take a few chances.”
    â€œ She sure knew how to take ’em.” Mitchell chuckled reminiscently. “Maybe that was one of the reasons I couldn’t take my eyes off her back in the old days.”
    â€œShe never forgot you, Mitch. When she became seriously ill, I went to stay with her until the end. It took over a year for her to die. We had a lot of time to talk.”
    â€œAnd one of the things you two talked about was Eclipse Bay? Is that what you’re saying?”
    â€œYes. She became increasingly obsessed with what had happened here. Said she didn’t have a lot of regrets, but the destruction of Harte-Madison was one of them. She talked about how she wished that she could make amends.”
    â€œShe should have known she couldn’t go back and fix something that happened so long ago,” Mitchell said.
    â€œI know. But the subject became more and more important to her. Maybe because toward the end she became a serious student of New Age metaphysics. She talked a lot about karma and auras and such. At any rate, she asked me to come here after she was gone to find out how things stood. She wanted me to see if there was anything I could do to repair some of the damage she had done.”
    â€œWell, shoot and damn.” Mitchell whistled softly. “So that’s why you showed up here in town late last summer?”
    â€œYes. But shortly after I arrived, Rafe and Hannah returned and fell in love and made plans for Dreamscape. And then Gabe and Lillian started getting serious about each other. I turned around one day and you and Sullivan were having coffee together at the bakery.” She smiled slightly. “It has become very clear that the feud is a relic of the past. The Hartes and the Madisons don’t need my help mending the old rift.”
    â€œHuh,” Mitchell said again. Thoughtful now.
    She cleared her throat. “So, I feel that it’s time for me to go.”
    â€œJust like that? You plan to slip out of town and disappear into the sunset?”
    â€œIt isn’t that simple. As I said, I have to sell the gallery. And then there’s the Children’s Art Show.”
    â€œLoose ends.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI don’t like it,” Mitchell said flatly.
    â€œWhat don’t you like?”
    â€œSomething doesn’t sit right here.” He whacked his cane absently against the trunk of a tree and eyed her with growing suspicion. “You sure Nick Harte hasn’t been making a pest of himself?”
    â€œNo.” Another quick dance step back. This was getting sticky.