Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,134
here.”
“All the way from California?”
“It seems to lead here no matter where I start.”
“I... Why don’t you come in,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yes. Why don’t you join us for dinner?”
He smiled, and he came inside.
“I’ll get another chair,” she said.
She came back in, and made introductions, putting him next to her. He held her hand underneath the table.
Wendy McDonald looked around the room, feeling a sense of satisfaction.
Life hadn’t been without its troubles, not for them.
But in the end, they were together.
And that was all that mattered.
Across time, and geography, through sickness and health, death and new life, secrets and ugly truths, love was what mattered.
Love rolled on, through the ages, through each one of them.
And when they were another piece of history in this brilliant, wonderful place, and their story was pieced together through letters and journal entries, through photos and the memories of the next generation, their legacy would sing out like a golden thread in that great tapestry.
Family. Forgiveness. Hope. Love.
Through all of history, those things endured.
And they always would.
Epilogue
Dear Wendy,
Recently I stumbled across your post requesting tokens from the Lighthouse Inn at Cape Hope, from the era when the building was used as a dorm for the community college.
I was a student there in the ’60s, and it holds a great many memories for me. Both painful and wonderful.
These posts from you led to my reading about all that you’ve done with it, about how you raised your girls there. How you won your position as innkeeper with a letter.
I was moved to tears by your story. And by the fact the lighthouse found you. And I believe in my heart that it did.
There is so much to say, but I fear I could never write a letter quite so complete or stirring as yours.
I have made a reservation to come and stay at the inn for a week at the end of this month, and I hope we get a chance to sit and talk.
I have so much to tell you.
With warmest regards,
Susan Bright-Carlson
—FROM AN EMAIL WRITTEN TO WENDY MCDONALD, SEPTEMBER 2020
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If you loved Secrets from a Happy Marriage, read on for a sneak peek at Maisey Yates’s next book, The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch.
Available July 2020 from HQN Books.
Acknowledgments
I owe many thanks to the staff at the Heceta Head Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast in Yachats, Oregon, for letting me pester them with questions, and poke around the B and B so that I could satisfy my curiosity. To Nicole Helm for reading this book chapter by chapter as I wrote it, and giving her honest feedback as always. To Megan Crane, who read it when it was done and yelled at me because she loved a character so much, and felt she wasn’t getting a fair shake. That feedback changed some major elements, and the book is better for it. To my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for pushing my career in any direction I ask for her to, and for helping make this particular book a reality. The team at Harlequin, who is so supportive of me, and for that I’m truly grateful. And finally, I have to acknowledge my editor, Flo Nicoll, who edited this book with so much insight, and spent hours discussing such deep, meaningful things with me, helping me find the deepest parts of the emotion, and offering me her own wisdom on such tough subjects. Flo is a writer’s dream.
From the Author
Sometimes it takes a special place to bring an idea together. I knew the characters in Secrets from a Happy Marriage from the beginning, but didn’t know quite where I wanted to put them. Then I remembered visiting a beach on the Oregon coast and seeing a lighthouse up on the hill. A quick internet search revealed not only what the lighthouse was, but that it was also a bed-and-breakfast. I immediately made a reservation to stay there.
It was late January, the weather was a misery and I had serious concerns about getting to the lighthouse—it’s Oregon, we’re not equipped to drive in snow!—but I made the trip, and I’m so glad I did. The rich history of the location provided the backbone for this story.
Built in 1894, the house has lived many lives. From the original lightkeepers’ residences, to barracks, to dorms and finally to a bed-and-breakfast. Lives have started, and ended there. Children have taken their first steps in the parlor, and old men have breathed their last in the upstairs bedrooms. The stories of ghosts,