Lavender Beach by Vickie McKeehan Read Free Book Online

head. “Look, you’re working yourself up into a snit again. Wrong move. I don’t know any easy way to say this so I’ll just be blunt. Scott Phillips died in Iraq the same day you flew Nick out of that hell zone.”
    “Okay, so he has a brother. The guy I saw must’ve been Scott’s brother.”
    Cord shook his head again. “No. Scott was an only child who lost his parents at the age of five. After that he came to Pelican Pointe to live with his grandparents. He grew up in the house where Promise Cove is now. Once his grandparents died, Scott never had any family until Jordan and Hutton came along.”
    That gave Eastlyn pause. “Hutton’s his? Interesting. Then what I saw last night had to be a figment of my imagination, a hallucination of some kind brought on by withdrawal. Sure, that’s it. I must’ve seen his pictures out at the inn and just banked the photos in my head…” When she saw the look on Cord’s face, she protested, “What I saw last night isn’t possible.”
    “You justify it any way you want. But the same thing’s happened to a lot of other people around here, including me.”
    “You see Scott?”
    “All the time.”
    “But he’s dead.”
    “Next time you see him, be sure to bring that up. Sometimes he forgets that little nugget. I’m sure that info will get a laugh out of him.”
    “I’ve landed in the Twilight Zone ,” Eastlyn said, running her hand through the unruly waves of hair she hadn’t bothered to brush.
    “More like The Sixth Sense . You know, a bunch of ghosts who don’t know they’re already dead. I always loved that movie.”
    “How can you joke about this?”
    “I’m used to it. Him. I’m used to seeing Scott around town. He’s the reason Nick and I drove to Bakersfield.”
    “What? Why?”
    “He urged us to go to there and see if we could talk you into coming here to start your life over.”
    “You mean you do everything Scott tells you to do?”
    “Mostly. It’s easier that way than to bump heads with him in the middle of the night when he shows up, unannounced, scares the bejesus out of you and refuses to leave you in peace. Plus, Scott has this annoying habit of being right all the time.”
    Cord ignored the look on her face and shifted gears. “By the way, I meant to mention this earlier, thought I’d let you settle in a little bit first. There’s an AA meeting every Sunday afternoon at the church. It’s such a small group that we’ve managed to merge into a get-together for both recovering alcoholics and those with substance abuse problems, a place to pour your heart out if need be. Most Sundays I manage to make it over there before they finish up. That is, if I’m not tending to an emergency. You’re welcome to join us.”
    “You? Had a problem?”
    “Me. Have. I’ll always be an alcoholic who takes antidepressants every single morning. My dad says it runs in the family.”
    “I had no idea. Look, I appreciate you thinking of me. But it hasn’t been all that long for me out of rehab and I’m still managing to follow the program pretty well on my own without outsiders listening to my heartfelt story. So I think I’m good to go.”
    “Suit yourself. Just remember the group is there, if or when, you need to talk.”
    Eastlyn left it at that. But on her way to work, she decided to swing by Phillips Park just to reaffirm to herself that the whole thing was real, that Scott was really dead and she couldn’t possibly have talked to him on the beach.
    When she pulled up at the curb, she didn’t even bother getting out of the Bronco. Instead, she stared at the entrance where a plain wooden sign with the words, Phillips Park , hung between two stone pillars, metal lanterns on top of each post. It was a simple, yet powerful memorial from the town to a war veteran.
    As she sat there on Main Street, she began to think back to her first week at the inn. There had been little things she’d been unable to explain while staying there, especially at