Page 2 of Finding Forever

Beth shook her head. “I’m turning it down.”

The words fell flat in the warm room.

“You’re doing what?” Maria asked.

“I’m not the right person.” Beth said it fast. She’d had a few weeks to line up the reasons, and they came out in a tidy row. “I don’t have a degree, and I’ve never managed anything like it. A few bake sales and being on the Welcome Center’s board don’t count. They want someone qualified. Not a woman who gives her time away for nothing.”

“You ran the church fundraiser committee for years,” Julie said softly. “And volunteering isn’t nothing. It shows you have a good heart.”

Beth frowned. “It’s not the same as being in paid employment.”

Maria picked up a container of sugar. “You put the midwinter craft fair together, and you know every artist and quilter for forty miles. Why would you turn down the job?”

Beth’s reasons sounded thinner out loud than they had in her kitchen at midnight, but she held on to them the way you hold a railing. “It’s a real job. There’s a lot of grant money involved, a deadline, and people looking over my shoulder. If I get it wrong, the whole town will be standing there, watching me make a mistake.”

“Or watching you get it right,” Susan said.

Beth bit her bottom lip. When she’d read the letter, she’d felt something in her chest that she hadn’t felt in years. It was a longing she thought she’d packed away with Jessie’s things after he died. She’d seen how much art could do—how it could mend a broken heart, start a friendship, and bring people together who might never have spoken.

She’d always dreamed of being part of something like the arts center. Sapphire Bay had a couple of exhibition and event spaces, but nothing like what Natalie was proposing—a place where different groups could meet, create, and exhibit their work throughout the week.

After she’d talked to Natalie, she’d wanted the job so much that it scared her. But wanting to do something and being able to do it were two different things. If she failed, she’d never forgive herself.

Susan wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Who’s in charge of remodeling the building?”

“Dave McGuire,” Beth said, glad of somewhere else to put the conversation. “He’s the main contractor at the Finley Point resort. Natalie said he’ll split his time between the arts center and the resort.”

“Doesn’t your brother work with him?” Julie asked.

Beth nodded. “He only has good things to say about him.”

She’d seen Dave around town, but she’d never paid much attention to him. The only things Beth could remember about him were that he was tall, broad-shouldered, and always seemed polite.

Susan came around the counter and rested a hand on Beth’s arm. “Let me say one more thing. You’re always making sure everyone around you has what they need. This time, instead of doing something for somebody else, take the job for yourself. Natalie is a good judge of character. She wouldn’t have offered it to you if she didn’t think you could do it.”

Beth looked at the letter. She thought of all the reasons she couldn’t do the job, and of how much she wanted to say yes.

“I’ll think about it,” she heard herself say.

While everyone went back to their baking, Beth slid the letter into her pocket. She’d think about what her friends had said, then decide what to do.

In the meantime, she had another tray of brownies to pack and a wedding cake to plan.

Chapter 2

Dave McGuire let himself into the old hardware building before sunrise, while the rest of Sapphire Bay was still asleep.

He found the switch by the door and turned on the lights. Two of the long fluorescents flickered and caught; a third stayed dark. The room was bare and yellow around him. Plaster dust and mouse droppings littered the floor, and the air smelled of a place that hadn’t been warm in a long time.

It was barely past six. Hank and the others wouldn’t arrive for another hour, and that hour was the reason he’d come early. A man couldn’t think with a crew around him, and Dave liked to think before he picked up a single tool.

He walked the floor slowly, looking past the mess to what the building would become. He’d learned a long time ago that old buildings and people had more in common than most folks realized. Neither appreciated being judged by the cracks everyone could see. Sometimes all they needed was someone patient enough to look a little deeper.

And this building had a lot of cracks. Somebody had run a hardware store here for forty years and then walked away. Water had damaged the north wall, twisting the baseboards and bowing the plaster. The ceiling sagged where a pipe had burst, several tiles were missing, and it looked as though half the birds in town had nested in the rafters.

None of it surprised him. He’d read the inspection report twice, and the building was telling him the same story now. The damage was bad, but underneath, the framing was solid.

Dave placed his hand flat against the brick of the east wall and felt how thick and square it was. Old masons had built this to last, and it had. The floor joists were full-sized lumber, the real thing, nothing you could buy now. Whoever had let the roof go had been careless, not unkind. The building had simply been waiting for somebody to come back and want it.