The Hideaway

Mrs. Melman touched her husband’s elbow. “We’ll have to tell Maylene and George. They just love quaint places like this.”

As the Melmans shuffled into the kitchen, Bob Crowe and his wife entered the dining room. Bob booked a weekend right after we opened for business. “You’ve outdone yourself.” He pulled a banana out of the basket on the table. “I know I talked this place up in the newspaper article, but I still had doubts it would make it.”

“You and me both,” I said.

“How’d you get Sammy to back off, anyway?”

“It wasn’t me. Someone offered him a better piece of property and he took it.”

“You sure got a lucky break. There’s no chance anything Sammy could build would be half as classy as this.”

The Crowes followed the Melmans into the kitchen in search of steaming coffee and pastries. The air smelled of cinnamon and apples mixed with a tang of salty air from the open windows. The sky was bright, the sun sparkled, and my heart was full. My new Hideaway. My new life.

It wasn’t lost on me that if it weren’t for Mags drawing me back to Sweet Bay, I wouldn’t have had any of this. I’d still be churning away in New Orleans, thinking I’d found all I was to do with my life. I’d thought I was done with The Hideaway forever, but family was the magnetic pull that drew me back. I may have given up on Mags a long time ago, but in her own unorthodox way, she was the one who saved me in the end.

The phone in the hall rang, and I jumped up to get it. “The Hideaway, this is Sara.” I loved the words as they left my mouth.

“Hey, babe,” Crawford said.

“Hey, yourself. Why didn’t you call my cell?”

“I know you love answering the house phone.”

I smiled even though he couldn’t see me.

“You’re out early this morning,” I said. The background noise told me he was in his truck with the windows down.

“I’m on my way to the McCaffertys’ house in Lillian to meet the floor guy. You’d love this place. It’s a rambling old Creole full of antiques. I mean antique antiques.”

“What are they doing to the house?”

“Adding on. Again. They need room for the grandkids. Although I don’t know how kids and all these antiques will mix. How did the night go? Was Major on his best behavior?”

“I didn’t hear a peep out of him until he got feisty this morning about his toothbrush. But he’s fine. It’s all perfect, actually.” It had been a few weeks since the last construction worker left, but the newness had yet to wear off for me.

“I can’t wait to see you,” he said. “I have a few more stops to make, then I’ll head your way. Need anything?”

“Just you.”

At ten, after giving the Melmans a map of the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay and suggesting a few places they could grab lunch, I went next door. It was a beautiful thing, my business being forty feet from my home. Sometimes I missed the clattering streetcars and morning “rush” of traffic in the Quarter, but you couldn’t beat walking next door with your coffee mug to flip the Open sign around and begin the day.

In the three months I’d been back in Sweet Bay—for the second time—renovations on The Hideaway had wrapped up, and Crawford and his team built a small cottage on the empty lot next door. We were fortunate to have a long stretch of good weather in early fall, and the builders made quick work of the cottage. It now housed my new shop, Lost and Found. Allyn was the one who’d convinced me I could do it.

“You started the first shop from scratch. Why can’t you do it again? Alabama surely has just as many estate sales and old barns to salvage as Louisiana does. They’ll eat your stuff up, just like they do here.”

Crawford was on Allyn’s side, of course. They met when Crawford and I drove to New Orleans to pack up my loft and bring a few things back home from the shop. Allyn insisted on taking us out to dinner. I picked a sidewalk café near Jackson Square, a place I thought would be just noisy enough to distract us from the fact that Crawford and Allyn would have nothing to talk about. But I was wrong—I could hardly get a word in between them bantering back and forth, first about farming and motorcycles, then about me.

“You’re the lucky one who gets all of Sara’s pent-up romantic yearnings,” Allyn said to Crawford, nudging me with his shoulder.

“That makes me sound like I’ve been locked up in a tower somewhere.”

“You basically have,” he said, then turned to Crawford. “No one has been able to break down that wall she built around herself.”

“You did the hard work,” Crawford said. “All your advice at least convinced her to give me a shot.”

“Do I even need to be here? I can scoot out if you two want to keep talking about me and my wall.”

Crawford smiled at me. A candle flickered on the table between us, right next to a red glass vase holding a plastic rose. His knee touched mine under the table.

The truth was, I’d had to convince him to give me a shot when I got back to Sweet Bay. I drove to his house after I told Dot and the others they didn’t have to move out. He didn’t believe I was there to stay.

“I can’t do this twice,” he said. “How do I know you’re not going to skip town again?”

“I’m not going anywhere. This is where I need to be—where I want to be. Everything has changed.”

Crawford leaned against his kitchen counter, hands in his pockets, and smiled, but it wasn’t his usual smile. “Of course it has. You have the house back.”

“Yes, I have the house, but it’s more than that. I’m sorry for not calling, for not explaining myself to you. Once I got back to New Orleans, it didn’t take long to realize I’d made a huge mistake.” I stepped closer to him and put my hand to his face. “There’s nowhere else I want to be, and no one else I want to be with.”

He covered my hand with his own but still didn’t speak. Finally, he gave me a real smile. “You’re back?”

“I’m back for good.”

Despite being a week into December, it was a warm day. Sunlight flooded through the bank of windows facing the bay. Not long after I propped open the front door, a gaggle of ladies entered the shop, all fleshy arms and laughter.

“You’ll have to forgive us if we’re too loud, dear,” one of them said. “We’re just excited to be here on a girls’ weekend. Our husbands are out hunting and we have a lot of shopping to do.”

“You’ve come to the right place. I have a little bit of everything, so make yourselves at home. Let me know if you have questions.”

They were still puttering and gossiping when Crawford walked in. It may sound crazy, but I could have sworn the sun blazed brighter and the breeze turned warmer when he entered. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. He walked through the room, stopping to chat with the ladies and make them blush with nothing but his charm and easy smile. It was hard to believe I’d even considered leaving him—and everything else—for my overloaded life in New Orleans.

“This is perfect.” One of the women touched a buffet table in the back of the shop. “I’m looking for something just like this to go in my dining room. I love the rustic look. Where did it come from?”

“A woodworker up in Still Pond made it,” I said. “He’s been making pieces like this for most of his life. He can’t handle the workload he used to, so he only makes a limited number of pieces now. I have two tables in here and another handful next door that are also for sale. He does custom orders here and there, if you ask nicely.”