Reunion Beach, Elin Hilderbrand [novel books to read txt] 📗

wanted to give her daughter something meaningful. She wrung her hands looking at the wrapped box. She hoped it wasn’t too much too soon.

She’d been warned by articles she’d read not to have too many expectations for the meeting. To act naturally, to let her daughter guide the conversation, and to have photos to share. Her gaze moved to the two photo albums neatly stacked on the dining table. One was a smaller collection of photos of the Earnhardt family, labeled with births and deaths. She had made copies of the originals so she could present the album to Kristina to keep.

The other was quite old and ratty-looking, with worn, bent corners and coffee stains. She smiled, thinking how this album held the heart of this cottage. It had been the guestbook of the Earnhardt beach house for more than half a century. It was chock-full of photos of family holidays and reunions held in this very house—many of them in black-and-white—including several of herself as a child, a leggy teen, and later, the maiden aunt.

She cast her gaze around the tidy 1940s beach cottage that once upon a time was oceanfront but after Hurricane Hugo devastated the island in 1989, the local powers-that-be cut through the dunes and built a road and lots that were situated even closer to the sea. She shook her head at the shortsightedness of greed. This beach house was one of the few that remained intact after that storm. Pure luck. Others, including the one next door, were destroyed by tidal surge, fallen trees, or boats in their living room. People were still digging up silver spoons in their gardens.

Her parents hung on to the beach house when everyone else was selling. It was more than a summer home to them. It was a way of life. How many times had she heard them say that they were waiting for the day they could play with their grandchildren in the cottage? Even after she had found a different family for her baby. Elinor never heard that comment without a stab of pain and resentment. It still hurt how they didn’t have a clue how scarred she’d been by the experience of being ripped apart from her family, her friends, her boyfriend and sent to a Home for Unwed Mothers without once visiting her.

When she’d returned from the Home, Elinor shut herself off from the world. Her parents had told everyone she’d spent a year studying in London. But the truth has a way of leaking out. Whispers about where she’d really been had circulated the halls of high school. She was unceremoniously dropped by her so-called friends. The sad truth was, she didn’t care. Her personal loss felt so much greater than those friendships. She’d felt numb and, in hindsight, had few memories of that time in her life. Yet the memories of the Home and her baby were as fresh today as they were forty years earlier.

Elinor walked past her own bedroom with its white matelassé coverlet and Oriental carpet. Her gaze fell to the doll that sat in a place of honor on a blue velvet side chair. A soft smile of affection flickered across her face. She went to pick up the baby doll and held it out to study its face. It was a sweet, chubby-cheeked baby doll with blond curly hair and wide blue eyes. The doll’s pink lips were open in an O for feeding.

“Hello, Baby,” she said, smoothing the wiry curls. When she’d returned from the Home, her nights were filled with nightmares of the birth, and when she awoke in the morning she was depressed. Her parents, worried, sent her to a therapist in Charleston. He was freshly shaven and seemed not much older than she was in his new suit and wire-rimmed glasses. She’d sat with her arms crossed and glared at the man as he gave her advice on how to deal with being a mother who gave away her child.

In the end, the therapist gave her two things, both of which proved helpful. First, a prescription for an antidepressant. Her father was appalled that a child of his needed any mental drugs, but her mother hushed him up and encouraged her to take the pills.

The second thing he recommended was a baby doll.

Eighteen-year-old Elinor had howled with laughter at that one. “How about a teddy bear?” she’d sneered as she walked out of his office. She never returned.

Then her mother brought a baby doll home from a shopping trip in Charleston. Elinor was furious.

“It’s just to help you sleep,” her mother had said.

“I’m not going to sleep with a baby doll!” she’d shouted, throwing the doll to the floor. “I told you I didn’t want one.”

Her mother, crestfallen, bent to pick up the doll, dusted it off, and then cradled it in her arms. Elinor saw her face relax into a sad smile as she looked into the doll’s human-like pink-cheeked face and it felt like a smack in the face. She ran to her room and slammed the door. Later, as she lay alone in the dark, she realized that her mother might also have regrets and long for the baby she never saw.

Not another word was spoken about the doll. It had just disappeared. Until one night a few weeks later. Elinor was trapped in another horrible dream, sobbing, and calling out, “Please! Let me see my baby.”

All she remembered was feeling her mother wiping the hair from her face, a kiss on her forehead. When she woke up the following morning, the baby doll was cuddled in her arms. She’d named the doll Baby, not daring to give it a proper name, and the doll had stayed in her bed.

“Hello, Baby,” Elinor said, stroking the wiry blond, synthetic hair. She had a true fondness for the doll. Dare she call it a love? Baby had spared her many hard nights over the years. As she lay the doll on the