Chapter 2 - An Unlikely RefugeThe elderly man studied me through the lowered window of the Bentley. His expression held recognition, though I was certain I had never seen him before.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted.
The man opened the rear door. “My daughter runs a small inn two streets from the harbor. It’s warm, respectable, and she has the unfortunate habit of feeding everyone who walks through her door.”
“I don’t know you,” I said.
“Graham Bell,” he replied, extending one gloved hand. He looked more closely at me and his brows lifted. “My goodness... You’re Julian Ellison’s daughter.”
For a few seconds, the cold seemed to disappear. Nobody had called me that in years. Not Clara Whitmore. Not Raymond’s wife. Not the barren woman who failed the Whitmore legacy.
“How did you know my father?” I asked.
“For nearly thirty years,” Graham said, folding his glasses. “Get in, Clara.”
Graham’s daughter owned a narrow white inn called Harbor House overlooking a quiet strip of Long Island Sound. Grace Bell was fifty-two, soft-spoken, practical, and completely unimpressed by wealth. When her father explained who I was, she handed me a mug of hot tea and showed me to Room Nine on the second floor.
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It was a simple room with a brass bed, a quilt stitched with tiny sailboats, and a writing desk beneath the window. It was the most peaceful room I had entered in years.
When the door closed, I sat on the bed and put both hands over my stomach. “Okay,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “I don’t know what we’re doing. But I’ll figure it out.”
