Rainier Drive (Cedar Cove #6)
Debbie Macomber
One
Justine Gunderson woke suddenly from a deep sleep, with the vague sense that something was wrong. A moment later, she remembered, and an intense sadness pressed down upon her. Lying on her back, she stared up at the dark ceiling as the realization hit her yet again. The Lighthouse, the restaurant she and Seth had poured their lives into, was gone. Gone. It had burned to the ground a week ago, in a blazing fire that lit up the night sky for miles around Cedar Cove. A fire started by an unidentified arsonist.
Without bothering to look, Justine knew her husband wasn’t in bed with her. Only a week had passed since the fire, but it felt like a month, a year, a lifetime. She didn’t think Seth had slept more than three or four hours at a stretch since that shocking phone call.
Folding back the sheet, she climbed slowly out of bed. It was barely four, according to the digital readout on the clock radio. Moonlight filtered through a gap in the curtains, creating patterns on the bedroom walls. Justine slipped her arms into the sleeves of her robe and went in search of her husband.
As she’d suspected, she found him in the living room, pacing. He moved ceaselessly, his angry strides taking him from the fireplace to the window and back. When he saw her, he continued to walk, looking away as though he couldn’t face her. She could tell he didn’t want her near him. She barely recognized this man her husband had become since news of the fire.
“Can’t you sleep?” she asked, whispering for fear of waking their four-year-old son. Leif was a light sleeper and although he was too young to understand what had happened, the child intuitively knew his parents were upset.
“I want to find out who did this and why.” Fists clenched, Seth turned on her as if she should be able to tell him.
Tucking her long, straight hair behind her ears, Justine sank into the rocker in which she’d once nursed their son. “I do, too,” she told him. She’d never seen Seth this restless. Her strikingly blond husband was of Norwegian extraction, a big man, nearly six-six, with broad shoulders to match. He’d been a commercial fisherman until soon after their marriage. That was when they’d decided to open the restaurant. The Lighthouse had been Seth’s dream, and with financial assistance from his parents, he’d invested everything—his skill, his emotions, their finances—in this venture. Justine had been at his side every step of the way.
In the beginning, while Leif was an infant, she’d kept the books and handled the payroll. When their son grew old enough for preschool, she’d assumed a more active role, working as hostess and filling in where needed.
“Who would do this?” he demanded again.
The answer eluded her just as it did him. Why anyone would want to hurt them was beyond her comprehension. They had no enemies that she knew of and no serious rivals. It was hard to believe they’d been the target of a random firebug, but maybe that was the case. So far, there’d been little real progress in tracking down the arsonist.
“Seth,” she whispered gently, stretching her hand toward him. “You can’t go on like this.”
He didn’t respond, and Justine realized he hadn’t heard her. She longed to ease his mind, to reassure him. Her fear was that the fire had destroyed more than the restaurant. It had stolen Seth’s peace of mind, his purpose and, in some ways, his innocence. He’d lost faith in the goodness of others and confidence in his own abilities.
Justine’s innocence had been devastated one bright summer afternoon in 1986, when her twin brother, Jordan, had drowned. Justine had held his lifeless body in her arms until the paramedics arrived. She’d been in shock, unable to grasp that her brother, her twin, was gone. He’d broken his neck after a careless dive off a floating dock.
Her entire world had forever changed that day. Her parents divorced shortly afterward and her father had quickly remarried. To all outward appearances, Justine had adjusted to the upheaval in her life. She’d graduated from high school, finished college and found employment at First National Bank, then risen to branch manager. Although she’d had no intention of ever marrying, she’d been dating Warren Saget, a local builder who was the same age as her mother. Then she’d met Seth Gunderson at their ten-year high-school reunion.
Seth had been her brother’s best friend. She’d always felt that if Seth had been with Jordan that day, her brother might still be alive, and her own life would’ve been different—although she wasn’t sure exactly how. It was ridiculous to entertain such thoughts; she recognized that on a conscious level. And yet…it was what she believed.
All through high school she’d barely spoken to Seth. He was the football hero, the class jock. She was the class brain. And never the twain had met until that night nearly six years ago, when she’d run into him at the reunion planning meeting. Seth had casually mentioned that he’d had a crush on her during their high-school days. The look in his eyes told her he’d found her beautiful then and even more so now.
They hadn’t experienced an easy courtship. Warren Saget hadn’t wanted to lose her and made a concerted effort to pressure her into marrying him. He’d instinctively understood that Seth was a major threat. Warren bought Justine the largest diamond she’d ever seen, promising a life of luxury and social prominence if she agreed to be his wife.
All Seth had to offer Justine was a twenty-year-old live-aboard sailboat—and his love. By that time, she was so head-over-heels crazy about him that she could scarcely breathe. Still, she struggled, unwilling to listen to her own heart. Then, one day, she couldn’t resist him anymore….