by Jenny Hale
He finally met her eyes but only briefly, and then he looked back at Paula, offering a small smile. “I’ll stay,” he said. “You still have a lot to take care of here. Julie, why don’t you take Callie and Olivia home?”
Juliette nodded, rounding everyone up.
“I’ll stay too, Luke,” Frederick said. Luke walked over and lifted another board, leading the way.
Twenty-Four
They pulled up outside The Beachcomber and got out of the car. The wind was still strong, whipping against them as they all walked.
Juliette and Lillian stayed with the kids while Olivia, Aiden, and Callie went to see if The Beachcomber had sustained any damage. They got up to the house and went around to the back to check it out. They were on land the whole way, which was a good thing—the waters had receded. The new walkway was damaged, she could already see. Of course the plants were gone too, and the whole yard was a soaking mess, full of debris.
“It can all be repaired,” Aiden said encouragingly.
When Callie turned to see the back of the cottage, her confidence faltered. The new porches had been ripped apart, the wood either washed away or dangling precariously from the stilts, and the shingles were missing on part of the house. She blinked, trying desperately not to tear up. The grand opening was only a week away. There was no possible way she could get it all rebuilt and ready in time. It had been risky to open during hurricane season, but they’d hoped for the best, knowing it was their only shot at recovering the some of the funds they’d spent on the remodel. She swallowed, trying to alleviate the lump in her throat.
Olivia came over and took her hand, squeezing it tightly, which only made the tears come faster as they spilled down her cheek.
“Let’s walk back around front and go inside so we can see if there is any water damage to the interior,” Aiden said softly.
They climbed the front steps and Callie pulled her keys out of her pocket, slipping them into the door. She took off her shoes on the porch and Olivia and Aiden did the same. The front of the house was fine, all the new painting and the furniture still in great shape. The air inside was hot, the air conditioning turned off before they’d left, but it all looked okay. With every step she felt relief.
Until they got to the kitchen.
There was water damage to the ceiling at the outside wall, her new paint having buckled under the pressure of the leak. The entire wall would have to be replaced, and the ceiling patched. Callie bit her trembling lip. First impressions meant everything. People were counting on her for a wonderful vacation. Reviews would make or break a business at this stage. They had to have it perfect for the opening if she wanted to make a success of this. Another tear laced with worry slid down her cheek.
“We can fix this,” Aiden said.
She shook her head, clearing her throat and trying to push away her tears. “That’s very sweet of you,” she said, looking over at Olivia. “I’m just worried about the time…”
“I know it’ll be a rush, but it’s not as bad as you think,” he said. “We’ll just need everyone to pitch in.” Aiden took Olivia’s hand. “I promise. You’ll open on time,” he said.
Even though Luke had sent a text telling his cousin he was fine, Aiden had insisted they all go to Luke’s to make sure that he didn’t need any help. Although it pained her to leave The Beachcomber, she knew there wasn’t much she could do on her own until Aiden’s crew arrived.
Luke’s house had some damage: The garage had flooded, so they used large brooms to push the water out; there was some destruction on the deck which Aiden helped to assess, and a bit of the landscaping would have to be redone. Lillian had been able to save a few of the smaller plants but the stretch to the beach was so large, their acreage so big, that there’d been room for the tide to come up.
It had been a very long day. They all gathered in Luke’s living room, exhausted, when Lillian finally spoke.
“I called your father,” she said quietly to Luke, but everyone could hear. “I just couldn’t sit by and watch him pull everything away from you like that. I told him point blank that he was going to lose you.” She leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “He hired a car to take us home from the hospital when you were born, and he sat next to your seat, cooing to you all the way home.” She looked into Luke’s eyes. “He helped you take your first steps when you started walking, holding out his hands everywhere you went so you could try to reach them… He spent hours outside, teaching you how to ride a bike, steadying the back of it as it wobbled. You didn’t want to go inside that day, and he stayed with you, delighting in your perseverance—do you remember?”
Luke nodded and there was a long silence as they both contemplated the enormity of the situation. “What did he say when you spoke to him?” he asked.
“He’s just scared and hurt. I know him well enough to know that. But I could feel his sadness in his silence.”
Luke took in a breath. “We’ve all had a lot going on. Let’s try to relax and be thankful that our homes were mostly spared by this storm. Why don’t we all just unwind?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes as if relieving the pain there, then went into the kitchen. “Who needs a glass of wine?” he said over the large island separating the rooms.
They all nodded wearily. While Juliette and Luke handed out glasses, Lillian made an impromptu cheese platter with a few crackers and several cheeses. They had broken into small groups of chatter as they sprawled out on the sofas in the large living area. Luke’s face had fallen back into a neutral expression, as if he wanted to block everything out for the time being.
Callie sipped her wine quietly on the sofa, smiling subtly at Aiden as he told Olivia that he’d like to take Wyatt to play mini-golf once this ordeal was over. She also noticed how Frederick had started chatting quite easily with Luke about the dog. She could tell they’d been getting to know one another during their time together at Paula’s by the way they were talking.
After quite a while, once the wine had done its job, and everyone had relaxed a little, Frederick sat up and ran his hands through his hair. In that moment, Callie could almost see what he might have looked like as a young man, and Luke’s strong resemblance to him was clearer than it had ever been. “I brought something,” he said, the other conversations subsiding. He smiled nervously, pulling out the same bag he’d brought when he’d arrived to do the mural. Callie had noticed that he’d taken it with him when they’d evacuated, but he hadn’t opened it until now.
They were all gathered around, scooting together on the sofas in the living room. The bag was too flat to have clothes inside, and she’d never seen anything quite like it. He reached over and set it on his lap, unzipping it, and drew out large sheets of paper, laying them down on the coffee table. Callie had to catch her breath.
Lillian clapped a hand over her heart, getting up to view them: pencil sketches of Lillian, the wind blowing her hair, large sunglasses on her face, smiling; Luke pitching a baseball—he must have been about seven; the back of a woman as she sat reading on a blanket on the beach and another of her, leaning against a surfboard.
“Oh my God,” Callie said, unable to look away from the pictures scattered along the table.
“Alice was there while Luke was growing up, but I was too.” Frederick regarded Luke, his face vulnerable with his admission. “I didn’t go to see him as much as she did because every time I did, it ripped my heart out. But I was there. I kept going to Corolla, I was at his baseball games, I saw him riding horses and learning to surf like I did. Whenever I could muster the energy, I went, but after I saw him, I just felt drained, empty.”
For the first time, Callie saw fondness in Luke’s eyes when he looked at Frederick.
With trembling arms, Lillian hugged them both, and what looked like years of burden fell away from her face, relief flooding it. Frederick had his hand on Lillian’s shoulders now, his fingers moving up to her neck as he pulled her into the embrace, Luke by his
side. It was as if time stood still. Maybe it hurt, maybe things would be changed forever, but this was right. It should’ve happened years ago. Once the moment had passed, Lillian pulled back. “What will we say to the press?” she worried.
“I don’t care,” Luke said. There was a commanding presence to him just then, and it revealed that he’d made up his mind. He wasn’t shying away from the press anymore.
The phone pulsed against Callie’s ear as it rang. Sprawled across her air mattress, she looked up at the fresh paint on the ceiling and the recessed lighting that had been installed where Olivia’s pencil marks had been. She could barely keep her eyes open after the day she’d had, but she had one more thing that she wanted to do. She couldn’t make things right with Luke, but she could start to make them right with someone else.
Callie had seen tonight how right Gladys was when she’d said, “The truth will set you free.” She’d learned by letting Luke into her world and her thoughts how being honest with someone made life richer and not so scary when she’d always thought it was the other way around. So, if she were being honest with herself, she’d have admitted that she missed her mother. She missed those days before everything had become so complicated, and she was going to try mend things.
“Hello?” her mother answered.
“Hi. It’s Callie.”
“Oh, hi, Callie. How’s the cottage? Is everything okay?”
Callie had felt a twinge of guilt for having been in the same city as her mother and not tried to see her, but things had gone so fast, and she hadn’t been ready then. Now she was. Her mother hadn’t been very supportive after she and Kyle had split up, and they hadn’t ever really talked about it, which had hurt Callie. But now, she could step back and see that being supportive might be easier for her mother if Callie would forgive her.
“The cottage had some damage,” she said. “But we’re getting it all fixed. Thank you for asking.”
“That’s great. I’m glad you called to update me.”
Callie sat up. “That’s not why I called.”
“Oh?”
“No, Mom. I called because I just wanted to see what you were up to.” She balled the sheet into her fist and then smoothed it out, her fingertips light with anticipation. She’d never taken a step like this before.
There was a kind of silence, during which Callie felt that her mother was assessing her, trying to decide her motives, but the truth was, she only had one motive: Luke had lost a lot of time with Frederick—time he’d never get back. Callie didn’t want the same thing to happen with her mother.
“I know we haven’t been really close…”
“No,” her mother said, her voice shaky. “I’ll tell you. I’m alone a lot. I used to think that being alone would help me get better, figure out what I needed. I craved the silence, trying to make everything calm down in my head, but now that I have it, it just feels empty. I think about you… Wonder what you’re doing.”
“You don’t have to be alone,” Callie said. “Come stay with us sometime. We have plenty of room.”
When she didn’t respond, Callie said, “The sea air will clear your head better than anything else. I speak from experience.” She heard the small breath before her mother’s smile.
“Maybe I will.”
“You have my number. Just text or call whenever you want to come.”
Twenty-Five
The next day, they all sat around a table at The Beachcomber discussing their parts in the repairs to the bed and breakfast. Everyone except for Luke. Aiden had said that they could do with Luke’s help, but Callie wouldn’t let him ask. He’d had too much to deal with already without putting her own burdens on him, and she still wasn’t sure if he’d ever forgive her for telling him about Frederick. Gladys had returned home and come over to see the damage, and she was beside herself, but Aiden assured her that it would be just fine.
“How long would you estimate repairs to take, Aiden?” Gladys asked. “I know Callie and Olivia are on a time crunch to get it done by next week.”
“It would take two weeks or more usually, but we could do it in less time if we get a whole crew on it. The problem is that I’m not sure I can get a whole crew because builders are in short supply at the moment, as you can imagine, so I’m hoping we can all plan to pitch in.”
“Of course,” Juliette said.
“I’ll be here too,” Frederick said.
They worked all day and all night then the whole week on The Beachcomber. Aiden, Frederick, and Juliette helped every minute they could and Olivia and Callie worked around the clock. Even Lillian and Gladys pitched in for small things.
“We’ve been going full speed,” Olivia said over her plate of oysters.
Once everyone had gone home for an early evening to have a much-needed rest, Callie and Olivia took their showers and finally decided they deserved a night out so neither of them would have to cook. They were both exhausted, and they needed to discuss what they were going to do about the guests arriving before all the work would be finished. So they’d had Gladys watch Wyatt and put some food out for Poppy and gone to a little beachside restaurant. They sat outside on the deck, and tried to come up with a plan.
“We still have to paint the kitchen, we have to finish the porches—they’ve eaten up all our time—and get furniture, and the walkway hasn’t been landscaped. Even if we go back home and keep working all night, we just won’t be finished in time.”
“You’re right, the porches are taking forever,” Callie said, rubbing her forehead. “With Frederick and the rest of us redoing the entire walkway, Aiden has been basically doing the porches by himself. I know he’s going as fast as he can, but we just need more people.” She sucked down the rest of her cocktail—some kind of pineapple rum concoction that she’d asked for at the last minute when she’d ordered her dinner. She’d needed a drink. Everything they’d worked for, every moment they’d spent this summer, came down to this, and it was slipping away from them.
Olivia flagged the waitress and ordered them both another drink. “I’m really worried. I have no clue what we’re going to do.”
Callie looked out at the beach; someone was flying a kite—a rainbow triangle with tails so long they almost touched the sand. The sparkly surface of its fabric shimmered in the sunlight. “I don’t know either,” she said, turning back to Olivia.
A band was setting up in the corner. They both sat quietly, watching them as the sea breeze blew in off the ocean. The waitress set down the next round of drinks.
“Why don’t we invite Aiden and Frederick to come out? Aiden always has such a level head. We could see if he and Frederick have any ideas. If not, they might enjoy the band and it would take our minds off of it.”
“You’re right,” Callie said. “Text Aiden. I’ll text Frederick.”
Callie hadn’t seen Frederick all afternoon. He’d worked in the morning and then spent the rest of the day with Luke. He and Luke had met up just a couple of times, but whenever they had, Frederick had come back beaming. They seemed to be really hitting it off. They’d both gotten involved with a nonprofit Luke had found called Bring Us Home that was rebuilding residences with major damage. The charity was operating on a very strict budget, the destruction in other villages using nearly all their funds for disaster relief. Luke had made a donation, but had also promised he would bring light to their efforts.
“This is the kind of stuff that the media should be covering,” he’d told Frederick. “And if my family name will bring it to the forefront, then so be it.”
Frederick had joined him on a few building sites. The more they worked, the easier it became for Frederick to be near him. Today, he had been planning to go surfing and Callie had told him not to worry about them. He’d already helped so much with the walkway.
Their new-found closeness made Callie think about Edward. He’d remained in New York without a solid answer about his feelings for Luke or the business; he hadn’t been able to see the way the family r
allied to help each other, how they’d spent lots of nights around the dinner table laughing over funny things that had happened. Luke had asked him to come home, Frederick had told them one night, but he’d said he had work to get done. Callie wished things could be different with him.
She tried not to think about Luke, but it was proving difficult. She missed him so much, and she felt terrible about how things had turned out. She yearned to have those lighter times, those wonderful moments with him again, and feared with a heart-splitting sadness that she wouldn’t experience them again. This was the person she was meant to be with, and yet he would barely speak to her. She knew she needed to get her head straight and just move on, but for the first time in her life, she was struggling to do it.
“I told Aiden we need his help to make a plan,” Olivia said. “He said he’ll be at the house when we get home. I’ll tell him when we’ll get there.” Olivia tapped on her phone with a silly grin on her face.
Over the week, Olivia and Aiden had been flirty, and whenever Callie had needed Olivia, she’d always been able to find her outside on the porches, getting something for Aiden, holding something for Aiden, checking on him. They both got all their work done, but they could always be found together.
“You really like him; I can tell,” Callie said with a smile. She was glad to see Olivia happy.
“I do,” she admitted, looking up from her phone and dropping it into her handbag. “I like him so much that I think I’m willing to take that chance and see what happens.” She blushed and broke out into a huge smile. She took a drink and the band started to play. “What did Frederick say?”
“He’s already talked to Aiden—they were worried about it themselves. He’ll be at the house too.”
