The Goodbye Café (3) (The Hudson Sisters Series) - Softcover

Stewart, Mariah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501145126 ISBN 13: 9781501145124

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2019

Synopsis

From Mariah Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of The Chesapeake Diaries series, comes the next book in her popular Hudson Sisters series, which follows a trio of reluctant sisters who set out to fulfill their father’s dying wish and discover themselves in the process in this “sweet reminder of the importance of family” (First for Women).

California girl Allie Hudson Monroe can’t wait for the day when the renovations on the Sugarhouse Theater are complete so she can finally collect the inheritance from her father and leave Pennsylvania. After all, her life and her fourteen-year-old daughter are in Los Angeles.

But Allie’s divorce left her tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, so to keep up on payments for her house and her daughter’s private school tuition, Allie packed up and flew out east. But fate has a curve-ball or two to toss in Allie’s direction—she just doesn’t know it yet.

She hadn’t anticipated how her life would change after reuniting with her estranged sister, Des, or meeting her previously unknown half-sister, Cara. And she’d certainly never expected to find small-town living charming. But the biggest surprise was that her long-forgotten artistry would save the day when the theater’s renovation fund dried up.

With opening day upon the sisters, Allie’s free to go. But for the first time in her life, she feels like the woman she was always meant to be. Will she return to the West Coast and resume her previous life, or will the love of “this amazing, endearing family of women” (Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author) be enough to draw her back to the place where the Hudson roots grow so deep?

About this title

About the Author:

Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas and short stories. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives with her husband and two rambunctious rescue dogs amid the rolling hills of Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she savors country life and tends her gardens while she works on her next novel. Visit her website at MariahStewart.com, like her on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorMariahStewart, and follow her on Instagram @Mariah_Stewart_Books.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Goodbye Café CHAPTER ONE

At the earliest light of a summer day that promised to be even hotter than the record-breaking heat of the day before, Allie Hudson Monroe made her quiet way through the otherwise deserted streets of Hidden Falls, Pennsylvania. She strode with purpose, a large canvas bag over her shoulder, toward the intersection of Hudson Street and Main, where she crossed, and once on the other side, entered the Sugarhouse, the 1920s Art Deco theater that was her family’s legacy.

Built by her great-grandfather and bequeathed to her and her two sisters by their father, Franklin “Fritz” Hudson, the Sugarhouse had been boarded up for years. Since Fritz’d specified in his will that his three daughters had to live together in the family home on Hudson Street and restore the theater before they could receive their generous individual inheritances, his “wish” had actually been more of an ultimatum. Only the thought of receiving the promised windfall could have coaxed Allie to leave her California home and face the heat and humidity of a summer spent in the Pocono Mountains along with her estranged sister, Des, and her newly discovered half sister, Cara. Fortunately, life in Hidden Falls had turned out to be much more interesting than Allie’d ever imagined. She and Des were on their way to burying long-held resentments on both their parts, and she’d found Cara—whose mother may or may not have been married to their father, the paperwork on that being a little shady—to be amicable and open to their new relationship. Best of all, perhaps, was discovering their father had a sister they’d never met. Their aunt—christened Bonnie but called Barney by just about everyone who knew her—was delightful, welcoming, and loving to her nieces. While Allie was still finding her way, navigating carefully through these new relationships, she was also finding untapped riches within herself.

She’d even found herself a little short on the snark that had been one of her least endearing personality traits. Maybe even a kinder, gentler Allie, though nothing was a sure thing.

As she’d done for the past week, after stepping inside the theater, Allie left the front door unlocked for the contractors who were working on the building. She turned on only enough lights to guide her to her destination: the scaffold that had been erected in the middle of the lobby. Shingles blown off the roof during a fierce summer storm had resulted in a leak in the ceiling and caused considerable damage to its hand-painted motifs. Allie had accepted the challenge of restoring them, and she would, one way or another.

One way would have been to hire an artist with sufficient talent to repair the intricately painted designs on the ceiling. Another would be for Allie, who wasn’t completely lacking in artistic ability, to make the repairs herself. Since there were no funds for the former, the latter was going to have to do. Though she’d majored in art and had had some training, she’d never fully tapped into her innate artistic talent. This was her chance to prove to herself—and everyone else—that she had more going for her than just a pretty face and a stunning figure. Only to herself did Allie admit she’d skated on her appearance for far too long. She was eager to find what else she had to offer, especially now that her fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old daughter was with her for the summer and striving to find herself as well. It was suddenly more important than ever to be the kind of mother, the kind of role model, she wanted for Nikki: the happy, loving mother, and the strong, self-reliant woman Allie and Des had never had in Nora, their own mother.

The air inside the theater was hot, close, and dusty from the work the contractors were doing in the basement: repairing a recently discovered section of concrete wall that had been weakened by the same storm that had damaged the ceiling. Allie stifled four sneezes that followed in quick succession as she made her way into the lobby.

She took a really deep breath, then sneezed several times more, before staring straight up.

“It’s fine,” she whispered to herself as if encouraging a small child. “It’s not all that high. Not high like, oh, a twenty-story building might be. You’ve done this before. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other and climb.” She straightened her shoulders before adding, “Just don’t look down.”

She shifted the canvas bag higher up on her shoulder before latching on to the lowest rung. One by one, sweating hand over sweating hand, one uncertain foot at a time, her heart crazily beating in her chest, Allie climbed the rungs until she reached the top platform. She couldn’t remember what had precipitated her fear of heights, she only knew it had always been with her. Des shared the same fear, one of the few things they acknowledged to have in common other than their parents.

“Don’t look down, girl, just don’t look down.” Allie sang softly to the tune she’d made up earlier in the week. “Everything’s okay as long as you don’t look down.”

She eased herself onto the edge of the platform, then carefully swung one leg over until she was straddling the plank. She wiped her palms on the red shorts she’d borrowed from Cara, still slightly annoyed that her sister’s size-six clothes actually fit her. Allie had always worn a four. She hadn’t been conscious of having gained weight, but there was no Pilates studio in Hidden Falls, no spin classes, none of the fixtures of her life in L.A. Walking trails (in this heat, are you kidding?), a track at the middle school (so not her style), and a gym if you wanted to drive two towns down the highway and work out with a bunch of sweaty strangers (no, thank you) were not an option. So when she needed a pair of old shorts to wear while she painted at the top of the theater, she’d had to borrow. She’d fully expected the pair Cara proffered to bag on her and require a belt to hold them up. She was appalled when she’d had to inhale to zip them. Since she was a full five inches taller than Cara, the shorts were really short. Which really wasn’t much of a concern because who did she see in Hidden Falls she’d like to impress with her mile-long legs? No one, that’s who.

She slowly lowered herself to sit on the edge of the plank, then paused to readjust the pins that held the coiled braid of her long, thick blond hair. She knew it was messy, but she’d never worn a braid until yesterday when she realized she had to come up with something better than the ponytail that skimmed the tops of the paint jars every time she moved her head. Nikki had suggested the braid, and at that point, Allie barely cared, as long as she could keep her hair out of the paint. For possibly the first time in her life, Allie was unconcerned with her appearance, her focus totally on her work.

She scooted forward to position herself directly under a white patch where a plaster repair had been made. There were areas where moisture had destroyed entire sections of the beautifully painted ceiling. Allie felt sick every time she looked at it, knowing it had been the handiwork of an artist who had known some limited fame during his lifetime, but who’d become well known as time went on. That he had a close personal relationship to Allie’s own family had made him even more of a favorite of hers: he’d courted and married a great-great-aunt.

When the theater was still quite new, the first Reynolds Hudson had employed Alistair Cooper, a young artist from the local college, to design and hand paint the ceiling. No one knows exactly how long it took Alistair to complete the work, but it was universally agreed that it was a thing of beauty. Geometric shapes, painted in vibrant yellow, green, gold, blue, and red, wound together, radiating out from the chandelier to create a glorious spectacle on the ceiling’s background of peacock blue. Alistair’d met the lovely Josephine Hudson and fallen in love, and once her parents had determined he was bound to be a famous artist, they’d permitted the two to marry.

“I’m not worthy,” Allie murmured as she prepared to go to work, lining up the jars next to her on the platform. Just the fact that she was attempting to re-create the beauty Alistair had envisioned made her feel like an impostor. “I seriously am not.”

She’d never try to restore the work freehand; she wasn’t so arrogant as to think she was Alistair’s equal. But she’d cleverly made tracings of his designs, then turned the tracings into stencils, which she then placed over the missing areas of the ceiling. She’d had the original paint colors matched as closely as could be done, so any minute difference was imperceptible from the floor below.

Allie cleared her throat before sliding a stencil from her bag. After carefully positioning it directly over her head, she taped it lightly to keep it in place.

“I feel like such a fraud,” she grumbled. “I can’t believe I have the audacity to even attempt this. Yet here I sit . . .”

She searched her bag for just the right brush, then opened the first jar. Taking a deep breath, she touched the brush to the paint, then leaned back as far as she could and began to fill in the center of the design with the pale yellow.

When the paint dried, she’d begin the border of blue, then outline it in gold to match the original. Taking her time, she painstakingly copied Alistair’s work. Ignoring the oppressive heat at the very top of the room, Allie focused all her attention on her task. She was so absorbed she didn’t hear the door of the theater open and close.

“Mom.” Allie’s daughter, Nicole—Nikki—stood at the bottom of the scaffold. “Can I come up?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Allie replied without looking down. Even from the top of the scaffold she heard Nikki’s deep sigh.

“May I come up?”

“You may if you wait a minute. Let me finish this one section.” Allie remained focused on the diamond shape she was completing.

A few minutes later, she called down, “Okay, now you may climb up, but take your time and be really careful.”

She’d barely gotten the words out when Nikki was scrambling across the platform, her long blond hair, so like her mother’s, flowing over one shoulder.

“You climb like a monkey.”

Nikki grinned. “Thanks. I’ve been practicing.”

“Oh really? When?” Allie moved her head slowly from side to side, trying to work out the kink that had settled in her neck.

“Mark and I raced up to the top the other day. I would have won but his arms and legs are longer than mine. I should have made him give me a handicap.” Nikki swung her legs over the side of the platform, making it sway slightly and forcing Allie’s stomach to flip.

“When were you and Mark in the theater together?” Allie frowned.

“Last week. Aunt Des was showing Mark’s uncle Seth the section you already finished. He was gobsmacked.” A smile spread across Nikki’s pretty face—so very much like Allie’s—as she looked up. “Everyone knows you’re doing an awesome job. When the paint dries, no one will be able to tell the difference between what you’ve done and the original.”

“I doubt that’s true, but thank you, sweetie.” Allie knew she was doing as good a job as anyone could possibly do, but all the same, her daughter’s words warmed her heart. Still, she harbored no illusions about her work: not freehand but with the use of props. But the bottom line was that it looked pretty darned good from the floor of the lobby. “So what are you up to this morning?”

“Mom, it’s almost noon.” Nikki was still looking up, her eyes studying the sections her mother had already painted.

“Seriously?” Allie frowned. It felt like she’d only been in the theater for a short time. And yet almost six hours had passed, which probably accounted for the fact that her neck and back were burning from the stress of having kept the same position all that time.

“You were up really early. I heard you leave but I was too tired to get up and go downstairs and have breakfast with you.”

“I wanted to get some time in here before it got too hot.” Allie wiped the back of her neck with a tissue she pulled from her bag. Her skimpy tank was stuck to her, front and back, so wet she could wring the sweat out, and now that work was no longer a distraction, she felt like a sticky wet mess. “I had no idea I was here so long. I’ve had enough for today.”

She glanced at her daughter.

“So what are you up to?” Allie repeated the question as she began to repack her bag.

“I wanted to ask if I could go out to Seth’s farm this afternoon.”

Allie raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. Mark’s working with Seth today.”

Nikki nodded. “They’re making frames for the new grape plants Seth brought back from France last week. They worked over the weekend to get the plants into the ground, but now Seth wants to get the frames up before the plants start to grow.”

“And this would involve you how?”

“I offered to help paint the frames.” Apparently anticipating resistance from her mother, Nikki hastened to add, “Mark’s sister, Hayley, and their friend Wendy will be there also. I just met her yesterday. She’s really nice and wanted to help, so I asked Aunt Des and she said sure. I could go with Aunt Des. She’s going to be helping, too.”

“I guess it’s all right.”

“Yay! Thanks, Mom.” Nikki’s phone immediately appeared in her left hand and she began to type with a speed only the young have mastered. Seconds later, they heard a ping. Nikki swiped her screen, then smiled. “Mark is already out there. He’s been working since early morning with Seth.” She pocketed the phone.

“What’s going on back at the house?” Allie stretched her shoulders, grateful for a few minutes looking straight ahead rather than up.

“Not much. Aunt Barney’s going over to Tom’s house to help him sort through some stuff of his mother’s. He said he doesn’t know what stuff’s valuable and what’s not.”

“Shouldn’t Tom’s sister be doing that?”

Nikki shrugged. “She lives in London.”

“Oh. Right. What’s Cara doing?”

“She got up early, not as early as you, though. She packed a picnic. She and Joe are spending the day out at the lake. They’re going to kayak and stuff.”

Nikki’s phone pinged again.

“I gotta go.” She looked up at Allie. “Aunt Des is ready, and she wants to leave by twelve thirty and it’s twenty after.” Nikki leaned forward as far as she could to kiss her mother’s cheek. “You’re the best mom. See you later. And thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.” Allie watched Nikki work her way down, nimble as an elf, before adding, “I think.”

She continued to pack up her things, fighting off the feeling she got whenever Nikki spent time with Mark. Oh, of course everyone said what a good kid he was. He was smart, he was athletic, he was polite, he was hardworking, and he was adorably cute. He’d volunteered to build houses in Haiti with a group from his church. Rationally, Allie knew Nikki’d hit the boyfriend jackpot. He was the son of Seth’s cousin. Did it make her a bad mother that she knew Nikki’d be returning to California at the end of the summer and that would probably be the end as far as Mark was concerned?

Mothers weren’t always rational where their young teen daughters were concerned when it came to boys. Allie knew she was overprotective sometimes—some might say ove...

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1501145126
• ISBN 13: 9781501145124
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416