To top off her embarrassment, she now stood in his kitchen—actually simmering in her own imagination about some possibility of a life where she and Wayne were falling in love.
If this theory is correct, Wayne and whoever this new girl is could really burst through that door in a matter of minutes.
Or worse. Maybe they’re in the bedroom, and they’re about to come out to get the garlic bread out of the oven...
Elise turned off the oven and blew out the candle, just in case. She then collected her things and rushed back out the door, grateful that Wayne wasn’t on the other side. Her heart hammered in her throat as she hustled back toward Main Street.
She didn’t want to be alone, couldn’t imagine where her mind might go if she headed back into her little bed and breakfast room. You’re old. All the excitement of your life is over. You’ve had your fun. Why did you think you could have anything else?
She headed down the street and ducked into a little waterside wine bar. She ordered a glass of merlot and collapsed on a stool, her hands in fists under her chin. A sunset brewed itself across the horizon line and an overly crisp breeze cut through the crack of a window. She shivered and sucked down her glass of wine a little too quickly.
When she blinked up again, she realized she had begun to cry.
“Oh, honey. What happened?”
She turned quickly to find Anna, the bride from the previous week, standing beside her.
It was a funny sensation. On the one hand, Elise was grateful to see someone she recognized. On the other hand, she hated to be caught.
“What are you doing here?” Elise asked, sniffling.
“Oh. I actually own this little wine bar,” Anna said with a little smile. “We’re closing up shop in about a week so that Roger and I can head off to our honeymoon. To be honest with you, I’ve never been so ready to see this island in my rearview.”
Elise’s smile waned. “I think I might feel the same.”
Anna gestured to a server behind her and said, “I’ll have the same as her.” The server arrived a moment later with a glass of wine and placed it delicately in front of Anna.
“Cheers,” Anna said.
Elise clinked her glass and took a sip.
“To be honest with you, I’m pretty surprised that you’re still here at all,” Anna said contemplatively.
“Me too, I guess,” Elise said. “I had only planned to be here a week. Things got a little complicated.”
“That’s the word on the street,” Anna said.
Elise scrunched her nose. “I’m sorry about all that drama at your reception. I didn’t know that Tracey was involved, and I... Well, I didn’t know Alex would show up like that.”
Anna waved her hand around. “Don’t worry about it.”
The women blinked at one another. Elise sipped her wine, feeling anxious. Maybe she would have rather been in her room alone, after all.
“Has he done something to you?” Anna asked.
Elise arched her brow. “Alex?”
“No.” Anna gave a light shrug. “I mean, Wayne.”
Anna and Wayne had had a brief relationship two years before. Wayne had alluded to the fact that he hadn’t been ready for it back then. He was grateful he had ended it, as it had allowed Anna to get together with Roger and find happiness in marriage.
Still, Elise knew women well enough to know that bad blood wasn’t cured so easily.
“Oh, I don’t know...” Elise finally replied.
She had always found it really difficult to lie. Tears sprung to her eyes.
Anna stretched her hand over Elise’s on the counter. “You shouldn’t worry yourself about him, you know.”
Elise turned her eyes toward the ground. “I don’t know. He’s...”
“He’s special. Yes, he is,” Anna said, finishing her thought. “But he’s also so complicated. He’s been through a lot. Maybe he hasn’t told you everything?”
Elise gave a lackluster shrug. “I haven’t known him that long. I don’t hold it against him that he hasn’t revealed everything...”
Anna nodded. “Sure. But I also think you should know that Wayne doesn’t have the capacity for honesty all the time. He doesn’t have the ability to see beyond himself and his mourning.”
Elise’s smile smeared totally off her face. She arched her brow with sudden annoyance. “I see.”
“I don’t want you to think that I’m talking bad about him,” Anna said hurriedly. “It’s just that, I see women like you with Wayne all the time, and I think... if only they knew? I don’t want anyone to waste their time the way I did.”
Elise’s heart felt conflicted. She sipped more of her wine and looked out across the water. “I’m not really from here, anyway,” she said, as though that was enough of a thing to say. “It’s not like we have a budding relationship or anything. Maybe I was just hopeful.”
“Oh! Good. So it was just a fling for you,” Anna said.
“Something like that,” Elise said. She forced her voice to brighten. “I’m pretty newly divorced, so...”
“I see! So you’re trying to get your groove back and all that,” Anna said. Her eyes sparkled with humor.
Elise had never felt further from laughter in her life.
“He’s a good guy. I hope one day he gets over all the stuff he’s gone through,” Anna said.
“I hope so, too,” Elise breathed. “I can’t imagine it.”
Mostly because I still don’t really understand it.
“Tracey and Alex were saying something about your mother and their family at my wedding, weren’t they?” Anna interjected then.
Elise wasn’t prepared to get into that. Not now.
But she did have an eager audience.
“Do you know anything about Alex being really sick when he was younger?” she asked.
Anna’s lips parted in shock. “That’s not really common knowledge.”
Elise shrugged. “Is it true, then?”
She wanted to be hard-edged with this woman who had apparently been so bored this evening that she’d wanted to press a final nail into the coffin of Elise and Wayne’s non-existent relationship.
“Yes. Alex had cancer up to the age of ten or something. He fought several rounds of chemo. I think it’s made him an angry person, to be honest with you. It’s normally meant to be the other way around; at least that’s what I always thought. That you were supposed to be grateful for the gift of life or whatever, but Alex lost a lot of his childhood—he spent years in hospitals. His mother usually went with him for these rounds, and Dean, Cindy and Tracey stayed here while Dean made his millions,” Anna continued.
“I see,” Elise said.
Anna chuckled. “I just remembered. Alex said something about you coming to steal all their money. Is that what you’re up to? Or are you just trying to steal Wayne from all of us?”
Elise grabbed a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and slid it across the counter. Maybe the woman meant no harm; maybe she did. But regardless of either possibility, Elise wanted to get as far away from her as she could.
“To be honest with you, Anna... I have zero interest in the Swartz wealth. Do you want to know why?” Elise felt volatile, like a snarky teenager ready with an insult.
“Um. Okay?”
“I made my own wealth. I sold screenplays all through my twenties and have worked on multiple TV shows. I own my house in Calabasas, Los Angeles and even though I know this little island is teeming with beauty, charm and goodwill and all that—I’m about up to here with the idea that I’ve come here as some kind of hurricane to ruin all of you.”
Elise grabbed her purse and stormed out the door. Minutes later, when she appeared in her bedroom, she blinked at the newly-purchased suitcase, the swimsuit she had bought for that afternoon on the sailboat with Wayne and the green dress that hung in the closet.
She cursed all of it.
Why was she still there? Why was she wearing an autumn jacket?
Allis
on had known better than to dip her feet into whatever disaster this was.
Elise’s curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Now, before she got too hurt or ruined too many lives, she was ready to distance herself from the whole affair.
It was time to look for flights back home.
Chapter Three
Cindy was full-on shaking when Wayne found her on the back porch. The woman was now forty-seven years old but didn’t look a day over forty, with glorious dark blonde curls that wafted down her shoulders and almond-shaped blue eyes. Wayne hadn’t seen her in several weeks, and he realized, with a jolt, that she really did look a bit like Elise Darby.
All this time...
“Wayne...” Cindy breathed. She jumped up from her rocking chair and wrapped her arms around him. Her head fell against his chest.
For a moment, Wayne was transported back to Tara’s funeral. Was that the last time he had hugged Cindy like this?
When Cindy pulled her head back, she wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “I’m sorry to call you like that. I didn’t know what to do.”
“No, I get it,” Wayne told her.
“I poured you a glass of whiskey,” Cindy said. “Wine seemed a little too...” She snapped her fingers, looking for the word.
“Celebratory?”
“Something like that.”
Wayne sat in the other rocking chair, the one Fred normally sat in. In other, happier times, he and Tara had sat across from them, glasses of wine in-hand, as they laughed through the night.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy continued, her eyes shadowed. “I haven’t heard a single thing from him since he left the island. I’ve thought about it all the time. Thought—what if he died somewhere, somewhere in Asia or something, and nobody knew how to contact me?”
Wayne’s shoulders were heavy. He scooped his back and stared into the amber liquid of his whiskey. “Michael’s a responsible kid. No matter what happens, he has you and Fred as parents. He can’t shake that.”
Cindy’s chuckle wasn’t a happy one. “You know as well as everyone that Michael looked at you and Tara more as parents than Fred and me. He spent so many evenings over at your house instead of ours.”
Wayne twitched at the memory.
“You know Tara loved that kid,” Wayne affirmed. “She couldn’t have children of her own, and when you gave birth to Michael...”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Cindy said. “I remember it all clear as day. Twenty-four years ago, me and Tara and baby Michael went everywhere together. Tara used to sew him little outfits to wear. She used to babysit him for hours at a time, so I could get some shut-eye.”
“She made it pretty clear to me that if we were going to work, I had to make sure to include Michael in my understanding of who she was,” Wayne said.
“Just because she wasn’t related by blood, she was still that boy’s aunt,” Cindy breathed. “He trusted her much more than he ever trusted me. I think he always resented being from the Swartz family. He hated having that target on his back.”
Michael said that over and over again. He resented being rich. He wanted nothing to do with the Swartz money.
In some ways, his leaving was no surprise at all.
But his return? That was a huge shock.
There was something in the air that year. Maybe that very thing had dragged Elise Darby back to the island where her parents had met and fallen in love.
Maybe that very thing in the air had led Wayne to believe that for the first time in a very long time, he could find love again.
He glanced at his phone once again. Elise hadn’t texted him back.
Profound sorrow stirred in his stomach.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy whispered. “There’s no telling where he’s been, or what he’s been up to, or even why he left... I know Tara’s death really took something out of him. It took something out of all of us. But he was a sensitive guy.”
Wayne closed his eyes. In the months after Tara’s car accident off the island, Michael had tried several times to reach out to Wayne. Wayne had been a shell of his previous and now current self. He had hardly eaten anything; he’d had perpetual grey shadows under his eyes; he’d allowed his dark hair to grow long, nearly to his shoulders. Making conversation with anyone had been a huge struggle, and he hadn’t exactly welcomed Michael.
Michael had thought of Tara as a second mother, yes.
But Michael had a mother.
And Wayne? He hadn’t had anyone.
Still, he hadn’t been able to escape the blame he had put on himself after Michael had left the island with only a note—one that had read: Don’t look for me.
They had lost two people that year: Tara and Michael.
Now, they were getting one back, but they had no idea what state he was in, what he had gone through. It was then, sitting out on the porch, that Wayne realized he’d just half-assumed Tara and Michael were off somewhere together, joyful, and without worry.
How stupid.
“I can’t believe Fred didn’t stay,” Cindy whispered toward her glass. “His own son...”
Wayne didn’t have words. He sipped his whiskey again and huffed.
“I’ve missed you, Cindy,” he told her.
It was Cindy’s turn not to respond for a long time. When she finally did, she said, “The reputation you’ve built for yourself on this island is really weird for me.”
This felt like the worst kind of attack.
Essentially, it meant: You have ruined Tara’s memory with your reckless, bachelor ways.
“I didn’t know what else to do with myself,” Wayne whispered.
It seemed terribly cruel that she had just outright decided what he had done was wrong when she’d been allowed to continue on as Fred’s wife and Megan’s mother.
Wayne’s heart felt stricken. It was almost as though he felt the knife going through right there as she spoke her words. He opened his lips to say something. But what could he possibly say to support all he had done? Even the idea of having met someone else was now all tied up in the issue of the Swartz family and all of their BS.
There was the screech of the back porch door. Wayne and Cindy turned their heads to find Michael Clemmens, aged twenty-four, with hair down to his shoulders, large caverns beneath his eyes, a stoop to his shoulders that seemed to represent just how hard the world had been to him, and a big backpack stretched across his back, presumably filled with everything he owned in the world.
He stood out on the porch and looked down at his mother and Wayne. His mouth made no move to smile. Slowly, he shifted the backpack down to the ground and loosened his shoulders slightly.
What the heck was there to say to someone you loved so much who’d abandoned you?
But a mother’s love was much more powerful than all that.
Cindy stood and tapped her glass of whiskey on the little coffee table. She walked toward him on shaky legs. Her hands found his upper biceps as her eyes looked into his hungrily.
“Oh, honey,” were the only words she could muster before she fell forward and wrapped her eldest son in a huge hug.
Wayne felt strange. He stood and placed his hands on his hips and shifted his weight. When Cindy fell back, she brushed a tear from her cheek and brightened her voice to ask, “I should get you something to eat! You’ve probably traveled a long way and are starving.”
Hurriedly, as though time was running out, Cindy entered the house and marched toward the kitchen.
This left Wayne and Michael in a bit of a stand-off.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Michael said.
These were the first words he’d spoken.
They nearly knocked Wayne to his knees. He couldn’t decide if they were meant to be cruel, if they were angry, or if they were hopeful.
“Your mom called me,” Wayne explained.
“So you’ve kept the band together, then,” Michael said. “You, Mom, Dad—
best friends forever, right?”
Wayne swallowed the lump in his throat. “Not exactly.”
Michael turned his eyes toward the ground. Wayne shoved down his desire to rush forward and hug this man as tightly as he could.
The only kid I’ve ever been really close to—the son I never had. The son who abandoned me, or the son I abandoned when I couldn’t handle the world.
“You want to tell me where you were?” Wayne asked suddenly.
Now I just sound like my own grumpy old man.
Cindy reappeared with a turkey sandwich, its plate piled high with potato chips. In her other hand, she held a bottle of beer.
“Sit down, Michael,” she ordered.
Her voice simmered with motherly love.
Michael did as he was told. He sat in the opposite chair and grabbed the beer and the plate and looked at them both with huge, empty eyes.
Cindy watched him from the side, her hands clasped so tight it turned her knuckles white.
“Thanks, Mom,” Michael finally mustered, as though he had long since forgotten the concept of gratefulness. He then took a big bite of the turkey sandwich.
Cindy sat again next to Wayne, watching her son, captivated. Wayne could have probably written down all her thoughts.
Why is my son so thin?
Where has he been?
What’s happened to him?
Does he hate me? Is that why he left?
Does he hate his father?
Does he hate Wayne?
Half-way through the sandwich, Michael placed the plate on the coffee table, took a large swig of beer, and then said, “You know, I really did have a long journey today, Mom. Wayne. Do you mind if I head up to bed?”
Cindy looked anxious. Wayne thought she might flutter up out of her chair.
“Of course, honey. I put clean sheets on your bed. There are fresh towels on the chair by the window. Your sister’s off the island for the week.”
“She still lives at home?” Michael asked, his eyebrow arched.
“She doesn’t, no,” Cindy said. “She lives with a few girlfriends above the fudge shop.”
Michael looked disappointed, although Wayne couldn’t guess if it was because his sister no longer lived there, or because he couldn’t make fun of her because she still did.
Lost Loves (Secrets of Mackinac Island Book 4) Page 2
