Second Chance At The Riverview Inn Read online

  Second Chance At The Riverview Inn

  MOLLY O’KEEFE

  Copyright © 2022 by Molly Fader

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  In the closet…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Untitled

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  In the closet…

  “You okay?”

  “Totally,” she lied. “You?”

  He smiled.

  Helen had seen some things. Some beautiful things. But, good lord forgive her, her child’s first smile was NOTHING on Micah Sullivan’s grin. It was so beautiful it robbed her of brain cells.

  “I thought the closet was a bathroom,” she said.

  “You’re not using it as a bathroom, are you?”

  “No!” she said. “Just…taking a second.”

  She wasn’t ready to get out of the closet, but clearly the time had come.

  “I’m Helen,” she said.

  “Micah.”

  She laughed. “I know.”

  “Micah?” Jo’s voice came around the bend of the hallway.

  “I think that’s our cue,” Helen said and stepped around the bucket to get out of the closet, but to her surprise, Micah stepped in and shut the door behind him.

  “You’re not…you’re not using it as a bathroom, are you?” she asked. And then wanted to die. You just asked Micah Sullivan if he was going to pee in a closet.

  For all of you readers who have been so patient and have loved the Riverview Inn as much as I have. Thank you.

  The Riverview Inn series is a series of standalone interconnected books. If this is your first visit to the Riverview check out the other books in the series!

  Wedding At The Riverview Inn

  Secrets At The Riverview Inn

  Home To The Riverview Inn

  Christmas At The Riverview Inn

  Chapter One

  “I’m fine,” Helen said.

  “Totally fine,” her mom, Daphne, echoed.

  They stood in the kitchen of the Athens Organics farmhouse, a bright yellow room with faded wooden floors and breakfast dishes in the sink. The kitchen Helen had grown up in. The safest place in the world.

  “And if I become…not fine?” Helen asked. There were so many ways the situation she was walking into could become not fine. A whole spectrum of socially horrifying moments ranging from vomit and spontaneous combustion to, and it seemed completely possible and painfully likely, bursting into tears.

  Mom stroked Helen’s back like she was ten and home from school with a stomachache. It was comforting, if not weird, since she was twenty-nine. “Just find a cool dark place, gather your thoughts and you’ll be—”

  “Fine.” Helen nodded.

  She’d be fine because the worst had already happened to Helen. It was a law of averages kind of thing. Her fiance being killed in a car accident four years ago when Helen was five months pregnant had to insulate her against further disaster, right?

  God. If only the world worked like that.

  Helen took a deep breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth. Crap. Was that right? She tried it the other way, in through her mouth, out through her nose. And then back the other way.

  I’m getting lightheaded.

  “Honey,” Mom said, the tone changing. Her mother was about to enable Helen putting on sweatpants and curling up with Bea to watch Encanto for the hundredth time. And she did not need to be enabled in that direction. She was doing this huge (but not really huge) thing. It was happening.

  “Don’t honey, me,” Helen said, standing up straight and turning away from her mom to look at herself in the hall mirror. “I’m fine. We established that.”

  Any other person in her shoes would be ecstatic. Over the moon. And she was. She was also just really nervous.

  She was going to meet her favorite rock group—Band of Outlaws. And her favorite singer—Micah Sullivan. Just thinking his name made her insides gooey and her brain whirr. She loved his voice and his songs, and in a few hours she would be looking right at his face. His in-person face. His super-hot, kind of snarling, kind of smiling face with the scar along his forehead from a bar fight in his misspent youth, and his blue, blue sex eyes.

  It was a lot.

  “How do I look?” Helen asked, turning to face her mom. “Should I change?” Again.

  “You look perfect,” Mom said. Which, well, was a standard Mom answer.

  “Am I too casual?” Helen thought about where they were going and who they were meeting. “Not casual enough?”

  For a woman who’d spent five months in maternity pants and then three years in yoga pants, she’d lost the thread on What are pants? and Can I wear these out of the house?

  “Just the right amount of casual,” Mom said.

  Bea, Helen’s three-and-half-year-old daughter, sat at the kitchen island, eating toast dripping with jam. Bea was a more is more kind of kid, especially when it came to jam.

  “What do you think, Bea?” Daphne asked, wiping the jam off her daughter’s face. “Is something exciting going to happen to Mommy today?”

  “No.” Bea said her favorite word and shook her head seriously.

  “I hope you’re wrong kid,” Mom muttered.

  This was sweet and all, but Helen was kind of having a moment and she needed Mom to focus.

  “Does it look like I’m trying too hard? I mean…” Helen pulled the hem of her favorite denim jacket that she legit wore to her first Band of Outlaws concert. And she wore her nearly threadbare Johnny Cash T-shirt. The one with him giving the finger.

  That was cool, right?

  AND she was she was wearing jeans. Her good ones. The pre-baby, pre-pandemic ones. That she could get them on was miracle and a testament to anxiety as an appetite suppressant.

  “I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.”

  It was the most rock-and-roll look she had. And she thought it was pretty good. But considering her age and single mom status, did that automatically make it lame? Probably.

  Was she overthinking everything? Absolutely.

  “Honey?” Mom walked back over to Helen, her beautiful long blond hair was turning silver and she didn’t look like she was old enough to be a grandmother. Those good Larson genes. Mom cupped Helen’s face in her hands. “You could not be more beautiful. You could not be more capable. You won’t throw up on his feet. You’re going to be fine.” She glanced down at her watch. “And you’re going to be late.”

  As if cued, Helen’s stepfather, Jonah, honked the horn in the driveway.

  “And listen.” Mom leaned in conspira
torially. “If the rumors are true…”

  “Which rumors?” Micah Sullivan, lead singer of the Band of Outlaws had a lot of rumors attached to him.

  “You know the ones.” Mom waggled her eyebrows.

  “Mom, in what world do you imagine I’m going to be able to verify those rumors?”

  “I don’t know, honey. He’s a rock-and-roll god. Who knows what is going to happen?”

  And that, really, was the crux of her stress. She didn’t know what was going to happen. And she’d spent the last three-and-half years trying—and in a lot of cases succeeding—in knowing what was going to happen. In some circles she might be called a control freak.

  So much so, she hadn’t been off this mountaintop in the Catskills for quite a long time.

  After Evan died, she’d moved back to her parents’ farm with Bea.

  She worked doing the fundraising for Haven House, the charity Jonah started on the property adjacent to the farm. Helen literally walked to work. And her social life was over at the Riverview Inn, the inn her uncles, Gabe and Max, had built and still managed, which was twenty minutes away.

  She wasn’t, like…a shut-in. That would be ridiculous. But between having Bea and then the pandemic, she, well, she didn’t go much farther than from the farm to Haven House. And Haven House to the Riverview Inn.

  Which, frankly, was more ground, and more room, than lots of people’d had in the pandemic.

  But still.

  “Helen,” Mom said. “Jonah is waiting, and the man is going to lose his cool.”

  “Right.” Because if Helen loved Band of Outlaws, Jonah was borderline obsessed. And this was a fantastic opportunity—not just for her and for Haven House fundraising, it was a big deal to her beloved stepfather.

  Life is hard; you don’t have to make it harder—that was something her cousin Josie had said to her when she’d been freaking out about moving back in with her parents. And it had become her mantra, of sorts.

  Who cared if she was cool? Who cared if she threw up on Micah Sullivan’s shoes? This was about Haven House and Jonah. Not her.

  “Okay, we’ll be back later, Mom.”

  “Have fun,” Daphne said, and Helen turned and hit the screen door. She practically ran down the steps across the dirt driveway to Jonah’s truck. She jumped into the passenger seat and clipped on her seat belt.

  “Helen?” Jonah said. And she looked over at her stepdad with his more salt than pepper hair and his eyes that always saw everything. “You ready?”

  “So ready.”

  Jonah hit Play on his phone and peeled out of the driveway, dirt obscuring the view of the farm and Haven House behind them.

  They took the back roads as far as they could and Helen didn’t say a word when he got up on the highway. She slipped her sunglasses down over her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the seat belt.

  And she was fine. Totally fine.

  She turned up the volume on the radio and Micah Sullivan’s voice—that magical combination of gravelly and smooth—filled the cab of the truck.

  “Is that too loud?” she yelled at Jonah.

  “Just right,” he yelled back.

  Band of Outlaws lived in that sweet spot between rock and country, but Micah’s voice conveyed so much emotion that he got asked to be on all kinds of duets. He did one with Ariana Grande that had just won a Grammy. And during the worst of the pandemic he’d done all kinds of unexpected duets on social media. Country stars, rap stars, hip hop, k-pop, even one with Bangledeshi pop star Runa Laila. And he would do guitar lessons every morning, teaching Band of Outlaws songs in his sun-splashed bedroom with his hair a mess, a cup of coffee steaming on the table beside him.

  Rumpled and notoriously unsmiling with the unmade bed behind him, it was a whole mood. And Helen didn’t play guitar but she tuned into that live stream every morning.

  It was…he was…a real lifeline during those dark days.

  A hot, sexy, rock-and-roll dream-come-true lifeline.

  He’d written the new album during the pandemic and now the band was about to go on tour.

  The song switched and Jonah turned it down. “I still can’t believe this is happening.”

  “You and me both, Jonah.”

  “Did he say how he heard of Haven House?”

  She shook her head. A month ago she’d gotten an email from what seemed like Micah Sullivan’s personal email, saying he would like to donate money to Haven House and asking if he had the right person.

  At first she’d thought it was a scam, but after a moment’s quiet freak-out, she’d replied, that yes, she was the right person, but was this THE Micah Sullivan? He’d replied with the amount he’d like to donate—which gave her another freak-out—that he would like it to be anonymous and that his manager would be in touch with information so she could come and watch the band rehearse in White Plains for their upcoming tour.

  Just so you know I’m real. That’s what he’d said. Just so you know I’m real.

  And then a personal check had arrived for one hundred thousand dollars, signed by Micah.

  “Your mother thinks it’s community service for that bar fight he got into in Albany last year. Or the one this year.”

  Micah Sullivan got into a lot of fights. Dive bars in small towns. In airports. Once legendarily while on stage at his own concert.

  Helen and Jonah had a whole narrative about this in their heads, about how he went to dive bars to try and get away from his fame and whatever, but someone there always recognized him and started shit. Micah tried to walk away but some yokel wouldn’t have it.

  There was no way Micah was the kind of guy who started fights. He was the kind of guy who ended up having to defend himself.

  Though that didn’t explain the airports.

  Or backstage at the Grammys.

  Whatever. It was a character flaw in her imaginary boyfriend she was able to look past.

  “He can’t just want to give to a good cause?” she asked. Haven House was an excellent cause.

  “Of course. I just don’t know how he heard of our good cause,” Jonah said.

  Years ago, when Jonah came into Helen and Daphne’s lives, he brought with him Haven House. A place for single mothers to go with their kids, to get job training, counseling, and education, and most importantly, a chance to rest and recover with their children in a beautiful mountain resort. Over the years it had grown and flourished, and when Helen started to work for Haven House as director of communications and fundraising, she’d increased their reach by about a million.

  “He heard of us because I’ve been working my ass off for two years.”

  “You have,” Jonah said, letting go of the wheel with one hand to clap it on hers. “You totally have. I do not mean to imply you haven’t.”

  She smiled and tried not to freak out and tell him to keep both hands on the wheel. She glanced sideways out the window as the countryside morphed into suburbia. Every once in a while there would be one hold-out farm. A red building with a few horses outside surrounded by a moat of green grass and fields, with gas stations and office buildings right at the edge.

  The people on those farms, were they foolish? Or brave? Holding on to something everyone around them had let go of.

  She shook her head and looked back over at Jonah.

  “I think it was his manager who found us,” she said. “She’s probably got a finger on New York State charities.” For court-mandated community service purposes.

  “Yeah,” Jonah said. “You’re probably right.”

  “But if it makes you feel better, let’s say he read that piece in Eastern New York magazine or Women’s Day—”

  “Or the New York Times,” Jonah protested. She stiffened. That New York Times piece last year hadn’t been so much about Haven House as it was about her and the court case and her very public moment. Every time she thought about it she wanted to puke and cry.

  “Sure. He read it, was impressed by what we’re doing and reached out a yea
r later.”

  Jonah smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go with that. What’s your plan?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked

  Jonah shot her a look. “I mean, you’re going to take his donation and then what…?”

  “Thank him.”

  “Helen. Please. I know you. I’ve watched you work. When you and Evan—”

  “That was political fundraising,” she said. She no longer flinched when she heard Evan’s name. She wondered when that happened. It seemed like she’d let go of something without even realizing it.

  “I know you’ve got more planned,” Jonah said, and Helen kept her mouth shut for, oh…eight seconds.

  “I’m going to ask him to come and perform at the Haven House picnic.”

  “Oh my god, seriously?” Jonah asked, and his look of horror and excitement mirrored exactly how she felt.

  “Yep. I’m going to ask the biggest music star in the world to come and sing at the picnic in September. And maybe—”

  “No. Don’t.”

  “Sign some autographs.”

  “Helen.” He sounded like Helen’s teenage sister Iris. It was adorkable.

  “And be a part of the auction.”

  “Like donate a guitar or something?”

  “Sure. If that’s what he wants.”

  “That auction…” Jonah shook his head. The auction, another thing that had grown since she’d been running it—two years on line and last year in person. People donated all sorts of things, but what it had suddenly become famous for, thanks to the Athens Fire Department, was…bachelors. Bachelor fire fighters donating their time. Not in a gross way, she made sure of that. There were no candlelit dinners or stripper music. There were handyman services and lawn care. Eaves trough clearing and property clean-up. Last year two guys donated the design and building of a tree house.