Falling For The Single Dad. Lisa Carter

door. “The black sheep has come home at last.”

      * * *

      Caroline drove around the square. Past the Sandpiper Café. The post office. The Coast Guard station. Recreational and commercial fishing vessels bobbed in the harbor. Fair-weather flags fluttered in the breeze. Beyond the inlet, barrier islands emptied into the vastness of the Atlantic.

      The white clapboard church hugged the shoreline. Its steeple pierced the azure sky. Leafed-out trees canopied the side lanes, where the gingerbread-trimmed Victorian homes fanned out from the center of the town square like spokes on a wheel.

      Driving out of town, she averted her gaze from the cemetery on a high slope overlooking the marina. She’d finally found the courage to face her father and sisters. She didn’t know if she had the courage to face the graves. Maybe she’d never have enough courage to face them.

      Leaving the coastal village behind, she headed down Seaside Road, which connected the oceanside villages. Her heart pounding in her ears, she pulled off the secondary road into the Duer driveway. A simple sign at the turnoff read Duer Fisherman’s Lodge.

      Caroline stopped at the top of the driveway. Her hands white-knuckled the wheel. She paused to reorient herself with her childhood home. To prepare for the changes the devastating hurricane eight months ago had wrought. But on the surface, everything appeared the same.

      She scanned the white, two-story Victorian with the wraparound porch. The picket fence still rimmed the shade-studded perimeter of the yard. The silvery surface of the tidal creek glimmered behind the house. She released her death grip on the wheel.

      Home to seven generations of proud Duer watermen, including her father, Seth Duer, possibly the proudest of all. In the last century during the days of gilded grandeur, Northern steel magnates had “roughed” it at the Duer fishing lodge. Her ancestors had served as hunting guides in winter, oystered, crabbed and run charters in summer. But those days, like the steamers traveling the waters between New York City and Wachapreague, had long since passed.

      She took a deep breath and released the brake. The car coasted toward the circle drive. The grand old lady, freshly painted and restored from the ravages of the storm, appeared better than ever under her youngest sister’s watchful restoration. Caroline parked and switched off the engine.

      Restoration... Her fondest hope.

      She whispered a quick prayer and got out of the car as a tall, Nordic blond man in jeans and T-shirt stepped around the corner of the house from the direction of the old cabin. A phone shrilled inside. Then stopped.

      He advanced, hand outstretched. “I didn’t realize more guests were arriving today. I’m—”

      “Sawyer Kole. Honey’s husband.”

      He dropped his hand, confusion written across his craggy features. As if recognition teased on the fringes of his memory. The front door squeaked on its hinges.

      Sawyer Kole’s eyes went glacial at the same moment Honey gasped, “Caroline.”

      Caroline’s gaze flitted to the honey-blonde woman poised on the porch steps. Whom she’d last beheld when Honey wasn’t much bigger than Izzie. Now a lovely woman in her midtwenties and soon to be a mother. Caroline’s eyes fell to her youngest sister’s rounded abdomen. Caroline thought of little redheaded Izzie, and something stirred in her heart.

      With great deliberation, Sawyer moved between them. Blocking Caroline’s view of her sister. Protecting his wife. From her.

      Voices drifted from the dock at the edge of the tidal creek. A carrot-haired boy, maybe Izzie’s age, ran ahead. The strawberry-blonde woman, Caroline’s younger sister Amelia, bounced a dark-haired baby on her hip as she strode up the incline from the water.

      Catching sight of her, Seth Duer, their father, came to a dead stop. As fit as she remembered, though his hair beneath the Nandua Warriors ball cap and his thick mustache were more salt than pepper. His gray eyebrows bristled.

      Oyster shells crunched beneath the little boy’s sneakers. “Hey, Aunt Honey!” He waved. “Mimi, Granddad and I showed my baby how to bait a line.”

      The expression on her father’s grizzled face froze Caroline to the marrow of her bones.

      Amelia squeezed their father’s elbow. “Daddy.” The baby squirmed in her arms.

      Seth and Marian Duer’s third-born daughter. The tomboy son Seth had never had, but longed for. Renowned illustrator. Married to Braeden Scott, senior chief at Station Kiptohanock.

      Amelia’s face had shuttered with neither pleasure nor foreboding. Unable to get a read on her sister, Caroline glanced at the redheaded boy. Max. An old ache resurfaced.

      Her older sister’s boy. Born moments before Lindi died after a head-on collision with a drunk driver on Highway 13. Adopted and raised by Amelia, Max’s beloved “Mimi.” And Amelia was now also the mother of the toddler in her arms, Patrick Scott.

      The silence roared between them until Max in his innocence broke it.

      “Who’s that, Mimi?” His eyes were so like Lindi’s. “She looks like the other sister in the picture above the fireplace. The one you told me not to mention around Granddad.”

      Caroline flinched.

      Seth’s blue-green eyes, the color of Amelia’s, too, flashed. “Don’t worry about learning her name. She probably won’t be around long enough for you to get used to using it.”

      Caroline and Honey had inherited their mother’s dark brown eyes. Caroline frowned at the thought of her mother and pushed yet another memory out of her mind.

      Amelia shifted the baby to a more comfortable position. “First, let’s see why she’s here.”

      “Please...” Caroline whispered.

      Her father snorted. Then the tough, old codger scrubbed his face with a hand hard with calluses. “Come to rub our noses in her highfalutin jet-set lifestyle.”

      She lifted her chin. “You don’t know anything about my life.”

      “Whose fault is that, girl?”

      He’d yet to say her name, Caroline couldn’t help noticing. As if he wanted no part of her. Her insides quivered. She wrapped her hand around the cuff of her left sleeve.

      Seth crossed his arms over his plaid shirt. “There’s two kinds of people born on the Shore, Max, my boy. Best you learn now how to identify them both.”

      Caroline gritted her teeth.

      “Those who don’t ever want to leave...”

      She knew if she didn’t get out of here in the next few minutes, she was going to implode into a million, trillion pieces.

      “And those, like my runaway daughter.” Seth speared her with a look. “Who can’t wait to leave and who never return.”

      “Until now, Dad. Caroline’s come home.” Always the peacemaker, her sister Honey. Far more than Caroline deserved from the baby sister she’d abandoned.

      Caroline examined the set expressions on her family’s faces. What had she expected? What else did she deserve?

      “She never returned after her mother died,” Seth growled. “Not for her sister’s funeral. Not during Max’s chemo. Not after the storm almost leveled our home.” He clenched his fist against his jeans. “Not for a wedding. Or a birthday. Not even a postcard, much less a phone call.”

      And Caroline suddenly understood that nothing she could ever say would erase the damage she’d inflicted. Nor wash away the hurt of the past. This... This illadvised, ludicrous attempt at reconciliation was for naught. She spun on her heel.

      “Don’t go,” Honey called.

      “Let ’er go,” Seth grunted. “Let ’er run away like before. It’s what she does best.”

      “Daddy...