Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series (3 page)

Throughout the two hours or so of
the celebration, Serena noticed that Jeff was being very attentive to
Nonna. He brought her plates of food, glasses of wine, and he looked
like he was really listening to her. More than once, Serena saw her
grandmother talking close into Jeff’s ear as he leaned down to hear
her. Once, he looked over at Serena and motioned her over.

“
Your grandmother has been
telling me about your family,” he said. “About the diner. It’s
really interesting.”

Serena didn’t know what to say
to that. Jeff had never shown any interest in her at all. He’d
never asked her questions about her childhood, where she was from—all
the things a romantic couple would ask. Come to think of it, Serena
had never asked Jeff anything about his life, either. It was as if
they had an unspoken agreement to keep things impersonal, not really
get to know each other. So, Serena didn’t know how to deal with
this new and interested Jeff. She wanted to keep her wall up, the
wall where he didn’t know anything about her. The wall where she
could keep herself private from him, separate from him, protected
from hurt. Now, Jeff had invaded her personal life on the most
personal of all days, her mother’s funeral. She couldn’t deal
with it.

“
Really,” Serena said
noncommittally.

Jeff looked at Serena for a
second, deep into her eyes with his newly blue eyes.

“
Yep,” he said.

As the celebration wound down and
everyone but the staff and Nonna and Serena had left the diner, Jeff
said, “Can I follow you both home? Just to make sure you get there
all right?”

“
Well, of course we’ll get
there,” Serena said, somewhat sarcastically. What did he think? She
couldn’t find her own way home?

But Nonna jumped in. “That’s
very nice of you, Jeff. Thank you.”

Jeff gave Serena a told-you-so
look, and then laughed.

“
It’s okay, Serena,” he
said. “I don’t bite.”

She laughed. “Okay,” she
said.

When they reached the cottage,
Jeff got out of his car and helped Nonna out of Serena’s car. He
walked her up the front steps.

“
Thank you, Jeff,” Serena
said, thinking he would leave and go wherever he was going that
night.

“
Jeff,” Nonna said. “Please
come in for a glass of wine.”

“
I’d love to, Mrs. Fontana,”
he said.

“
Please call me Elena,”

“
I’d love to, Elena,” Jeff
said. “That’s a pretty name.”

“
Thank you,” Nonna said. “It
means ‘shining light.’”

“
That seems right for you,”
Jeff said, taking Nonna’s arm and leading her into the cottage.

Nonna led Jeff to the couch.
Serena followed like a lost puppy. “I’ll get the wine,” Nonna
said as she walked to the kitchen. Jeff and Serena sat silently on
the couch. A few minutes later, Nonna returned with a small tray
holding three glasses of red wine.

Everyone took a sip. “This is
good,” Jeff said.

“
My cousins in New York send it
to me. It comes from Italy. I guess they take pity on me down here on
the bay. But it’s true. It’s harder to get stuff down here.”

After a few minutes, Nonna asked
Jeff where he was staying for the night.

“
I haven’t gotten a place
yet,” he said. “But I’m not worried. There are a lot of places
on the coast.”

“
We’ve got plenty of room
here,” Nonna said. “Why don’t you stay with us for the night?
I’d really like it if you would.”

“
Well,” Jeff said looking
over at Serena to make sure it was all right. She gave him a slight
nod. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

“
I’m going to bed now,”
Nonna said. “It’s been a long day. I’ll see you in the
morning.”

Jeff stood and took her
grandmother’s hands. “Goodnight,” he said. Nonna reached up and
he leaned down to give her a hug. He was a giant compared to her
small grandmother.

“
I’m going to change,”
Serena said. “We can sit on the back porch for a while if you want
to.”

“
Okay,” Jeff said. “I’ll
go get my bag while you change.”

In her bedroom, Serena looked at
herself in the mirror of her dresser. The days since her mother had
died had been filled with activity. Now, that was over and Serena
would be left with her solitary thoughts. The woman that looked back
at her from the mirror was changed. She had crossed a threshold. She
was now a child without a mother. She looked away from the mirror and
got her jeans and a T-shirt out of the dresser.

Jeff was sitting on the couch
when she went back downstairs. His gray duffle bag sat on the floor
beside him.

“
Let me show you where you’ll
be staying,” Serena said. Jeff followed her upstairs and Serena led
him to the spare bedroom, a very small room but it had everything
that was necessary. She couldn’t put him in her mother’s room.
She had only gone in there to find a dress for her mother to wear in
her coffin. That had been painful enough.

“
I’m afraid it’s pretty
small,” Serena said.

“
This is fine,” Jeff said. He
said he would join her downstairs after he changed out of his suit.

Serena got a bottle of chilled
white wine from the refrigerator and pulled down fresh wine glasses
from the cabinet. She put the wine in a deep bowl with ice and took
it to the porch. By the time she walked back in the kitchen from the
porch door, Jeff was there. He picked up the two wine glasses and
followed Serena back out to the porch.

“
Is that a pier I see?” Jeff
asked after they had settled in their seats.

“
Yes, it’s a little pier.
We’re on an inlet from the bay.”

“
It’s nice,” Jeff said.

Serena had lit a small lantern
and she could see Jeff’s face in the faint light.

“
I was surprised to see you
today,” she said. “I never expected you to come. I don’t even
know how you knew when the funeral was.”

“
I Googled it,” Jeff said. “I
found it in the
Luna Bay News
online.”

Of course. The
Luna Bay News
had gone online several years ago. Serena read it every day when she
was in Atlanta.

“
I remember when my nonna
died,” Jeff said.

His what? His nonna? That was
what Italians called their grandmother. What did he mean his nonna?

“
Your nonna?” Serena said.
“Are you Italian?”

Serena realized she didn’t know
anything about Jeff. Not anything.

“
Yes. Well, I’m one-fourth
Italian. My nonna married a Scottish man and my mother married my
American father. So I’m one-fourth.”

“
I never knew that,” Serena
said.

“
I know,” Jeff said. “I
grew up in Philadelphia and my nonna took care of me while my parents
worked. Your grandmother reminds me of my grandmother. It was hard
when she died.”

“
I’m sorry,” Serena said.

“
It was a long time ago,”
Jeff said. “I was fifteen at the time. I still miss her, though.”

The early October night was
still. It was silent except for an occasional deep-throated croak
from a frog. A quarter moon shone down on the inlet. Serena had spent
her life on that water. She had fished countless times from the pier.

“
Let’s walk on the pier,”
Serena said, standing up.

She and Jeff walked through the
grassy yard and onto the pier. It was dark except for the moonlight.

“
This must have been a great
place to grow up,” Jeff said. “I grew up in a city and hardly
ever saw the coast.”

“
It was pretty great,” Serena
said, remembering. She grew up in the diner, like her grandmother and
her mother before her. She grew up on the water, the inlet, the bay,
the ocean.

Her mother tended the garden,
both at the cottage and behind the diner. Serena remembered that when
she was very small, her mother pinched the herbs between her
fingers—basil, oregano, rosemary, lemon mint—and put her fingers
to Serena’s nose. “That’s rosemary,” she would say. Or,
“that’s basil.” Serena could smell the herbs in her memory. She
missed her mother so much.

And then her tears began to fall.
Tears for her mother, for her childhood, for her grandmother. Jeff
put his arm around her and pulled her to his chest. She wept against
him as he stroked her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Finally, Serena quieted and
pulled away from Jeff. He had never, in their six months of knowing
each other, put his arm around her. It was a new and different
feeling and she didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“
Let’s go back to the porch,”
Jeff said, taking her hand.

They sat on the porch drinking
wine late into the night. Jeff told her about his grandmother, who
spoiled him rotten. He told her about his childhood in Philadelphia,
law school at Emory in Atlanta, and his work for the big firm now.

Serena told him about growing up
on Luna Bay and learning to cook in the diner. She told him how her
grandmother and mother had encouraged her to go to culinary school
and have a career. They had scrimped and saved and sacrificed for
Serena. She told Jeff about Bridgewater’s and Daniel and how
difficult he was.

By the time they went to bed,
Serena and Jeff knew a lifetime about each other.

“
I’ll see you in the
morning,” Serena said at the door to Jeff’s room. “Thank you so
much for coming.”

Jeff kissed her goodnight. “See
you tomorrow,” he said, closing the door to the spare room.

Serena woke up to the rich smell
of coffee brewing. She had slept heavily through the night and felt
refreshed for the first time in days. She quickly dressed in jeans
and a light sweater before she went downstairs.

Jeff and her grandmother were
sitting at the kitchen table, both holding cups of coffee.

“
There you are, sleepyhead,”
Nonna said.

Serena blushed.

“
We were waiting on you to get
up before I started breakfast,” Nonna said.

“
Let me get breakfast,”
Serena said.

“
No, no. You sit down and have
some coffee,” Nonna said, getting up and walking to the stove.

Serena sat down and looked over
at Jeff. He smiled at her.

“
Elena has been telling me
about the early days on Luna Bay,” Jeff said.

“
Oh?” Serena said, stirring
her coffee.

“
It’s interesting how the
highway system after the war created new businesses,” Jeff said.

“
I didn’t realize you knew
anything about highways,” Serena said.

“
I majored in modern American
history in college,” Jeff said. “It’s interesting to talk to
people who lived it.”

A few minutes later, Nonna
brought plates of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast to the table.
Serena spread her toast with butter. Halfway through the meal, Nonna
got up and poured fresh coffee into everyone’s cup. When they were
finished, she gathered the plates and put them in the sink. She
wouldn’t let Serena or Jeff help her.

“
I guess I’d better get on
the road soon,” Jeff said. “I’ve got to be at work bright and
early in the morning.”

“
I hate to see you go, Jeff,”
Nonna said.

“
Me too, Elena. It’s been
good to meet you.”

Jeff went upstairs and came down
a few minutes later with his duffel bag. He hugged Elena, then held
her hands in his.

“
Thank you for coming,” Nonna
said. “I hope to see you again sometime.”

“
You will,” he said. Nonna
smiled at him.

“
I’ll walk you out,” Serena
said following Jeff to the door.

She stood with him beside his
car.

“
When do you think you’ll be
back in Atlanta?” Jeff asked her.

“
I’m not sure. I know the
restaurant is probably falling apart with Daniel in charge, but I’ve
got some things to take care of here. Nonna needs my help.”

“
Will you let me know when you
get back?” Jeff asked.

“
Of course I’ll let you know.
Thank you for coming. It’s meant a lot of Nonna and me.”

Jeff kissed her lightly on the
lips before getting in his car. Serena watched him drive off down the
quiet road. She watched until she could no longer see his car.

Nonna was washing the dishes when
she went back inside. It was a scene Serena had seen many times in
her life, but this time it made her cry. Life would go on, and Nonna
was letting her know that.

“
I’m going to the diner,”
Serena said.

“
I’m going with you,” Nonna
said.

“
I was thinking you might want
to take it easy today. The last few days have been pretty rough.”

Nonna turned off the water at the
sink and turned to Serena, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.