Chapter 27
Her house was dark.
He got out. Hudson stayed in the truck, chin on the console, watching.
He knocked. Waited. Knocked again. The door was locked. She never locked the door. He'd walked into this house a hundred times since September and the door had never been locked and the fact that it was locked now told him more than the empty driveway.
He tried her phone. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
He drove to Jon's.
The bar was closed, Wednesday morning, but Jon's truck was in the lot. Beck went around back. Jon was wiping down the patio tables. He turned when he heard the footsteps. His face did something Beck had never seen it do, a rearrangement that started as surprise and ended as something guarded.
"Beck."
"Have you seen Kirstin?"
Jon set the rag on the table. "She called me last night from the road."
"The road."
"She's with her mother."
Jacksonville. She hadn't gone home and closed the door. She hadn't gone to her beach or to Morgan's or anywhere on the island. She'd packed and locked the house and driven three hours south to April's. She'd left the island.
"When?"
"Last night. Few hours after she left your meeting."
Beck stood in the sand behind the bar. The string lights were off. The chairs were stacked. The place where he'd kissed her while she took breaks from tending bar was just wood and sand and morning light.
"Did she say why?"
Jon picked up the rag again. Folded it. Set it down. Picked it up.
"She said enough," Jon said. "Go home, Beck. Give her some time."
He drove to Riley/Banks. The white clapboard building on the corner. Morgan's Jeep and Addison's Defender in the lot. He went in.
Morgan and Addison were at the worktable. They stopped talking when he walked through the door.
"Have you talked to her?"
Morgan leaned back in her chair. "She texted this morning."
"What did she say?"
"She said she needs space."
"Space from what?"
Morgan and Addison exchanged a glance.
"Beck," Addison said. Quiet. Careful. "Give her a few days."
"A few days."
"Yeah."
He stood in the office where twenty-four hours ago Kirstin had heard seventy-five million dollars and sent him a text that said she was just an island girl. The sign proof was on the corkboard. The business cards were on the desk. Her name was on the wall and she was in Jacksonville.
He drove home. He sat in the Range Rover in the driveway with his hands on the wheel. Hudson shifted on the console and whined once, low, the sound a dog makes when the energy in the car is wrong and he doesn't know why.
Beck picked up his phone.
Please call me. I need to talk to you.
He waited. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Hudson put his head down and closed his eyes.
The phone buzzed.
I'll call you tonight.
He read it three times. Tonight. She'd call tonight. That was something. That was a door still open, a thread still connected, a voice he'd hear before the day was over.
He went inside. He fed Hudson. He sat on the couch and he waited.
April's house was quiet in a way that reminded Kirstin of the island and nothing like the island at all.
She'd arrived after midnight. The drive had taken two and a half hours because the interstate was empty and she was crying too hard to read the speed limit signs.
April had been at the door. Robe and slippers and the porch light on.
No questions. She'd taken Kirstin's bag from the passenger seat and walked her inside and put her on the couch and sat beside her until the crying stopped.
Wednesday morning. The Jacksonville sun came through April's kitchen windows, warmer than the island, different light, the light of the mainland. Kirstin sat at the table in a t-shirt and sweatpants borrowed from her mother's closet and held a coffee she wasn't drinking.
"You want eggs?" April said.
"No."
"Toast?"
"No."
"Kirstin, you have to eat."
"I'm not hungry, Mom."
April sat across from her. She didn't push. She just sat with her coffee and let the morning be what it was.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Kirstin stared at the coffee. "They offered him seventy-five million dollars."
April sipped her coffee. "And?"
"And I googled his last contract under the table. Five years. A hundred million."
"Okay."
"And I just..." Kirstin put the coffee down. "Mom, I'm a bartender who didn't take the bar. That's who I am."
"That's not who you are."
"That's exactly who I am."
"That's what you do, Kirstin. It's not who you are.
" April set her mug down. "You're a woman who finished law school.
Who's studying for the bar. Who helped build a firm with her name on the wall.
And you're a woman who fell in love with a man who bakes bread at four in the morning because her birthday mattered to him. "
"Mom—"
"Do you hear yourself? You're not leaving him because of who he is. You're leaving because of who you think you aren't."
The tears came. She knew. She'd known it on I-95, somewhere in the dark between the island and Jacksonville, the mile markers passing, the tears blurring the road. She knew her mother was right.
Knowing didn't help.
"I love him," she said. "I love him more than I knew was possible. But I can't fit in that life. It's too much. The money and the scouts and the contracts. I don't know where I go in that."
"Have you asked him?"
"He'll say the right thing. He always says the right thing."
"And that's a problem?"
"It's a problem because I don't believe it. Not because he's lying. Because I don't believe I'm enough for it to be true."
April was quiet. The kitchen. The sun. The coffee going cold.
"I left your father because I convinced myself I didn't fit on that island," April said.
"I told myself my life was too small for what I wanted.
And I was wrong. I wasn't too small. I was scared.
" She reached across the table and took Kirstin's hand.
"Scared looks a lot like too small when you're the one feeling it. "
"What if I go back and it doesn't work?"
"What if you don't go back and it would have?"
Kirstin held her mother's hand. The kitchen was warm and the sun was on the table and she was three hours from the island and three hours from the man she loved and the distance felt like it was measured in something larger than miles.
"I told him I'd call tonight," she said.
April squeezed her hand. "Then you call tonight."
The porch at April's faced the street. A quiet neighborhood in Jacksonville, old trees, a block where people walked dogs in the evening and the streetlights came on at the same time every night.
Kirstin sat in the chair with her phone in her hand and a blanket across her knees.
The air was cool but not cold. Not like the island.
The island would be colder now. The marsh would be dark and the oaks would be bare and the man she was about to call would be sitting somewhere waiting because she'd told him she'd call and he believed her because Beck believed everything she said.
She dialed. He answered on the first ring.
"Hey." His voice. God, his voice. The same voice that said love you like it was easy. The same voice that said her name like he'd been practicing.
"Hey," she said.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm okay."
"Where are you?"
"Mom's."
A pause. She heard him breathe. She heard the quiet of the rental behind him, the same quiet she'd fallen asleep in a hundred times.
"When are you coming home?" he said.
She closed her eyes. She pressed her free hand against her chest and held it there.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But I can't be with you anymore."
The silence on the line was the loudest thing she'd ever heard.
"Why?"
"I'm just an island girl, Ethan." The tears started and she let them. "Your life is too big for me. I just don't see where I fit in."
"You fit right in the middle," he said. "The most important place."
She pressed her hand harder against her chest. She bit her lip. His breathing was on the other end, uneven, and she was doing this to him and she knew it and she couldn't stop.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Take care of yourself, baby."
She ended the call.
The phone went dark in her hand. The street was quiet. The streetlights were on. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her face against them and the crying came in waves that bent her forward and shook the chair and she couldn't stop it and she didn't try.
She didn't hear April come out. She just felt the blanket come up around her shoulders, heavier, tucked in, and April's arm around her, pulling her close, and her mother's voice against her hair.
"I'm here, sweetheart. I'm right here."