Memories in Sea Glass: Driftwood Key Beach Reads #2

9. Jess

Jess ran for the kitchen, everything else forgotten.

Flooding? How can it be flooding? It’s not even raining.

But sure enough, as she arrived in the kitchen she could see water burbling onto the floor from underneath the dishwasher. It was already nearly an inch deep, and it was only a matter of time before it warped her newly finished and painted pine flooring.

She yanked open the dishwasher door and frantically pressed the button to turn off the cycle. But the water kept erupting from below the machine anyway.

“No,” she moaned, tears prickling her eyes.

“Good grief,” Clint growled, sprinting into the kitchen and opening the cupboard under the sink.

“I turned it off,” Jess said desperately. “But it won’t stop.”

“There isn’t a separate shut-off for it,” Clint said darkly. “Hang tight.”

Jess wasn’t sure she could hang tight. If this went on much longer, she would be doggy paddling.

When Clint ran back in a few minutes later, his jaw was set.

“I have good news and bad news,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said.

“Good news is that there’s a shut-off to the kitchen,” he told her.

She glanced down and saw that the geyser under her dishwasher had stopped.

“Bad news is that there’s no water to your kitchen at all now,” he told her before she could ask. “And based on the way that dishwasher is installed, I strongly suspect permits weren’t pulled when this kitchen went in.”

“That’s really bad, isn’t it?” Jess asked.

“Depends on your point of view,” Clint said. “But if you want to make updates or sell the place, it’s going to be an issue.”

“Why is it an issue for making updates?” she asked, looking around at the cute but seriously dated kitchen.

“Because before you make them you’ll need to pull a permit,” he said. “And they’ll send someone in to look at what you’re proposing. They’ll see this isn’t an original kitchen, and that there’s no previous permit in the file.”

“Oh,” Jess said, her heart falling. The kitchen would probably need to be updated whether she stayed or not.

“But that’s a problem for another day,” Clint told her. “You have towels and a mop? I’m going to grab my wet-dry vac out of the truck and see if we can get this cleaned up before it damages the floors.”

“Of course,” she said, relieved to be able to do something.

By the time they were finished vacuuming and sopping up the water, the whole family was pitching in, taking sopping wet towels out to the washing machine, and helping Clint carry the full vac outside to dump.

“Anything else we can do?” Becca asked Clint when he and Kyle got back in.

“Help Jess with the dishes before we go,” he said, shrugging.

“The dishes,” Jess said, suddenly wondering how she was going to wash the dishes when the dishwasher and sink weren’t usable.

“The bathtub,” Becca said cheerfully. “That’s what I had to do when our kitchen was being remodeled. Don’t worry, Jess. We’ll all help.”

Jess was frozen in place, completely overwhelmed.

It wasn’t a nice feeling. It was too similar to how she had felt just over a month ago when she’d come down here and seen what a wreck the house was. Her veins had turned to ice and her stomach was twisting up.

Things aren’t the same,a voice in the back of her head reminded her gently. You have family, now. You don’t have money yet, but you have a job. And most importantly, you already know you have the strength to turn a bad situation around.

Looking up at her daughters, the McKinnons, and sweet, furious Clint, Jess suddenly found herself laughing.

“Jess?” Clint said worriedly as she laughed harder and harder.

“I’m f-I’m fine,” she gasped, bending over to catch her breath. “I’m sorry. It all just kind of hit me at once.”

“What hit you?” Glory asked.

“That I’m going to figure this out,” Jess said, wiping her eyes. “We’ve been through worse than a kitchen without water. We’re going to be fine. Right, honey?”

“Right,” Glory said, smiling.

Jess’s heart squeezed at the sight of her very last baby, so close to grown—sun-kissed and happy, and ready to roll up her sleeves when a mess got made, even if it might ruin her cute shoes.

They had all come so far.

“Come on, everyone,” she said. “The food isn’t broken. Let’s eat.”

A chorus of beloved voices cheered that idea and Jess led the way out the back porch where all three picnic tables were practically groaning under the weight of all the delicious food.

Anthem turned on the ancient radio to an announcer bragging that they had tuned in to the best yacht rock station in the Keys. A moment later Christopher Cross was singing about sailing, and Anthem was harmonizing and swaying along.

Everyone circulated with plates, sampling the food Jess and the girls had prepared as well as all the dishes the others had brought, compliments answered with happy smiles.

With the afternoon sun blushing pink over the water, the scent of the salt air mixed with the delicious food, and the twinkling lights Clint had hung from the railings yesterday, it was all so beautiful that Jess almost couldn’t believe it was real.

“Feels like home,” Clint said, leaning against the back of the house and shaking his head.

And he was right. When they were kids, back at Mary’s house, things were always going wrong. But she didn’t really remember the wrong parts. She mostly remembered everyone banding together to make those things right.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jess asked dreamily.

“You’d better get some of that lobster mac and cheese before you hurt Mom’s feelings,” Clint said, indicating a casserole dish of Jess’s favorite.

Jess nodded and headed over to grab a plate.

She could sense Clint at her elbow. He grabbed his own plate after she did, and the two of them floated around the tables, serving themselves from the many offerings.

By the time she got to Becca’s table, Jess’s plate was full.

Becca looked up at Jess, smiled, and patted the seat beside hers.

She sat, only remembering to check on Clint after she was settled.

He had found himself a spot leaning on the railing beside Glory and Liam’s son, Dylan. The three were already laughing about something.

As if he could feel her eyes on him, Clint looked to Jess and winked.

Her cheeks heated and she turned her eyes back to her plate, but not before Becca noticed.

“Wow,” Becca giggled. “You guys have it bad.”

“We don’t,” Jess denied, taking a big bite of lobster mac and cheese so she wouldn’t have to add any follow-up.

“Okay,” Becca said, shrugging. “I mean, no one would blame you if you did. You used to look at him like he was Rob Lowe or something when we were kids.”

Jess shook her head in denial, still chewing. But she could feel herself blushing even more than before.

“And he’s a good guy,” Becca went on, not even noticing. “He’s a hard worker and he’s done very well for himself. It’s not his fault what happened with his wife.”

“What happened with his wife?” Jess heard herself ask with her mouth full.

“They were young,” Becca said, shrugging. “He wanted a family of his own, always has, for obvious reasons.”

Jess nodded. She had wanted a big family of her own too, after all the shuffling around and seeing how much fun it was at the McKinnons.

“She was pretty, and she paid him a lot of attention,” Becca went on. “The rest of us didn’t like her much, but we love Clint, so we opened our arms to her. Within a year or so, it was clear it wasn’t going to work out. She finally admitted to him that she didn’t actually want kids. She left him for another guy, and they went to Miami, but my two cents is that she would have left regardless. Driftwood Key wasn’t home for someone like her.”

“That’s terrible,” Jess said, her eyes moving to Clint again.

He’d already had trust issues when she knew him as a teen. He’d been through something rough with his parents, but he never talked to anyone about it—not even Mary, as far as Jess knew. His failed marriage must have set him back even more.

“He swore off dating after that,” Becca said, shaking her head. “We didn’t believe him, of course. But I guess he’s proven us wrong. It’s been so many years now.”

Clint caught Jess looking and started to smile at her again. But he must have seen the concern in her eyes. His expression hardened and he looked to Becca immediately, eyes narrowed.

“Well, shoot,” Becca chuckled. “I think he knows we’re talking about him.”

But Jess couldn’t bring herself to laugh. All she could do was picture teenaged Clint falling apart in Mary’s arms.

How could anyone dare to hurt him?