Chapter 29
April's couch had become the place where days happened to her.
She'd been there since morning. The blanket. The book she wasn't reading. The coffee April had made and set on the end table an hour ago, untouched and cooling. The house was quiet. April was somewhere in the back, giving her space completely and without announcement.
Her phone buzzed on the cushion beside her.
She turned it over. Addison's name.
A photo loaded first. A baseball field, bright, somewhere she didn't recognize.
Beck and Luke, side by side, mid-laugh. Kids around them.
Beck was in a t-shirt and a cap and his head was tilted back and he was laughing at something Luke had said or done and his face was open and unguarded and happy in a way that made her grip the phone harder.
Underneath:
He thinks you're done but I know better. Don't pretend you don't miss this.
She stared at the photo. She studied his face. The curls under the cap. The jaw. The laugh that came through the screen. He was on a field with kids and Luke and he was happy and she was on a couch in Jacksonville with a book she hadn't opened and coffee she hadn't touched.
She didn't respond. She locked the phone. She put it face down on the cushion and pulled the blanket up and stared at the ceiling.
The photo stayed behind her eyes.
She heard the truck before she saw it.
The familiar rumble of Jon Green's twenty-year-old F-150 coming down April's street, out of place in a Jacksonville neighborhood the same way Jon was out of place anywhere that wasn't Ellery Cove. April was at the kitchen counter. She turned to Kirstin.
"You smiled just like that when you were a little girl and he pulled up."
Kirstin hadn't realized she was smiling. But she was. The truck was in the driveway and her father was in it and for the first time in a week something in her chest loosened.
April opened the front door. Jon came up the walk in jeans and a flannel with a single flower in his hand.
April's favorite. He held it out and April took it and kissed him on the cheek and pulled him into a hug that lasted longer than hello.
She held him and he held her back and Kirstin stood in the hallway watching two people who hadn't been married in twenty years hold each other like the years didn't matter.
"Kirstin," April said. Her face was against Jon's shoulder. "Get a vase and some water."
Kirstin went to the kitchen. She pulled a vase from under the sink and filled it and set the flower on the counter. Behind her she heard April take Jon's hand and lead him inside.
He came to the kitchen.
"Hey, baby girl."
"Hey, Daddy."
He hugged her. The Jon hug. The one that smelled like the bar and the island and salt air and twenty years of wiping down the same counters and greeting the same people and being the same man every single day.
She pressed her face into his chest and he held her and he didn't say anything because Jon Green knew when words weren't what his daughter needed.
They sat at April's kitchen table. The three of them. Coffee for April and Jon. Nothing for Kirstin because she still wasn't eating right and April had stopped pushing.
"He's been at the bar every day," Jon said. "Sometimes Luke's with him, sometimes Brady. Mostly alone."
"Has he said anything to you?"
"He asks if you're okay." Jon squeezed her hand across the table. "I tell him you'd be better if you were with him."
"Dad." She closed her eyes. "It's complicated."
Jon laughed. He turned to April and pointed at her, then at himself.
"Her. Me. That's complicated." He leaned back in his chair.
"You see, baby girl, next to you there ain't nothing on this world I love more than that woman right there.
" He held April's eyes. "She may not admit it, but she feels the same way.
But we never could figure out that one little thing that held it all together. "
Kirstin turned to her mother.
"Guilty," April said. "He's infuriating. He never takes anything seriously. He's always smiling." She looked at Jon across the table. "And I do love him as much now as I ever did."
"I don't get it," Kirstin said. "What was missing?"
"I never made your mom want more than she already had," Jon said. "When she was with me she was content, and that ain't no way to live."
April took Kirstin's hand. "He's right. And that is exactly what Ethan does for you. He makes you want. And he encourages you to want."
"Think about it," Jon said. "Since you met that man, you stopped working weekends at the bar, you redid that kitchen, and you signed up for the bar." He counted on his fingers. "In what, three months?"
Tears started down Kirstin's face. Slow at first and then faster because her father had just told her the truth in the simplest language he knew and it was the truth and she'd spent a week pretending it wasn't.
"Oh shit," Jon said. "Come on, baby girl, don't do that to me." He turned to April. "April, help."
The tears turned to laughter. It came out broken and wet but it came and April laughed with her and Jon sat across from them looking relieved and confused in equal measure because Jon Green could manage a bar on the busiest night of the year but could not manage two women crying at a kitchen table.
"Go get dressed, girls," he said. "There's this amazing little Cuban place downtown. I'm taking my girls out tonight."
The restaurant was small and loud and perfect.
Yellow walls, tile floors, music coming from a speaker behind the bar that played salsa too loud and nobody cared.
The menus were laminated and the water came in plastic cups and Jon ordered for the table because Jon ordered for every table he'd ever sat at.
"Trust me," he said. "I've been here three times."
"You've been to Jacksonville three times?" Kirstin said.
Jon glanced at April. April studied her water.
"I've been to Jacksonville more than three times," Jon said.
Kirstin looked between them. Her father. Her mother. The flower in the vase at home. The hug at the door that lasted too long. The look passing between them right now across a table in a Cuban restaurant.
"How often?" Kirstin said.
"Often enough," April said. She picked up her menu. "We're not discussing this."
"We're absolutely discussing this."
"We are not." April opened the menu and held it in front of her face. "Order the ropa vieja."
Jon was grinning. The Jon grin. The one he wore behind the bar when he knew something the rest of the room didn't.
The food came. Jon made April try the plantains off his plate. She said she didn't like plantains. She ate four of them. Kirstin had the ropa vieja and it was the first real meal she'd eaten in a week and the flavor hit her in a place she hadn't known was hungry.
Jon told stories. The bar, the island, a tourist who'd tried to order a Manhattan and Todd had given him a glass of orange juice and the tourist had drunk the whole thing and tipped twenty percent.
April laughed at every story like she was hearing them for the first time and maybe she was and maybe she wasn't and it didn't matter because April laughing at Jon's stories was Kirstin's childhood and she'd missed it.
She watched them. Across the table. The yellow walls and the loud music and the laminated menus.
Jon leaning toward April when he talked.
April tilting her head when she listened.
His hand on the table near hers, not touching, almost touching, the distance between their fingers the exact distance between two people who loved each other and never figured out how to close the gap.
This is what she'd have. This is what twenty years from now looks like if she doesn't go back. Dinners in restaurants. Flowers at the door. The love still there and the life still separate. Content. The word Jon had used. Content ain't no way to live.
She pulled her phone from her purse under the table. She opened Beck's thread. He hadn't texted. He hadn't called. He'd gone to Jon's bar every day and asked about her and left it at that because Beck didn't chase.
She typed.
I just wanted to say hi. Hope you're doing well.
She sent it. She put the phone face down on her leg. Her heart was going fast. The restaurant was loud. Jon was telling April about the new fish supplier and how the guy showed up with a truck full of mullet instead of grouper and Jon had said "do I look like a man who serves mullet?"
Her phone buzzed against her thigh.
I miss you.
Two words. No anger. No questions. Just the truth. The only thing Beck had ever given her.
She looked up from the phone. Jon and April were leaning toward each other across the table, lost in something, a story or a memory or just the comfort of being near each other after all this time.
They weren't watching her. They were somewhere together that had nothing to do with the restaurant or Jacksonville or the years between them.
Kirstin smiled. A real one. A happy one. Her parents across a table in a Cuban restaurant, still in love, still unable to close the distance, still showing up with flowers anyway.
She looked back at the phone. I miss you.
The smile was still there but it had changed.
Jon drove them home. April sat in the passenger seat with her hand on his arm and Kirstin sat in the back and watched the Jacksonville streets pass and held her phone in her lap with both hands.
Jon hugged her at the door. The same hug. The bar and the island and the salt air. He held her and she held him back and he said, "I love you, baby girl" and she said "I love you too, Daddy" and he walked to his truck and she watched him go and the taillights disappeared at the end of the street.
April kissed her forehead. "Good night, sweetheart."
"Good night, Mom."
She went to the guest room. She closed the door. She sat on the edge of the bed with her phone and the house was quiet and the warmth from the restaurant was still on her skin and Jon's voice was still in her head. Content ain't no way to live.
She opened Beck's thread. I miss you. Still there. Still two words. Still the truth.
She typed before she could stop herself.
Call me if you want. I'd love to hear your voice.
She sent it. She stared at the screen. Thirty seconds passed. A minute.
The phone rang.
She answered and his voice was there and the distance between Jacksonville and Ellery Cove collapsed into nothing.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
"I miss you, Kirstin."
"I miss you too, Beck."
For a moment it was enough. His breathing on the line. Hers. The silence between them full instead of empty, the silence from the kitchen and the porch and the bed she'd left three weeks ago. She closed her eyes and let his voice hold her and she almost believed this was fixable.
"Then why don't you come home so we can talk about this?"
She opened her eyes.
"Because you told me you'd stay, Ethan. Twice." Her voice was steady. She'd practiced this in her head for days, the argument, the words, the case she'd built from a couch in her mother's house. "And the next thing I know they throw a contract at you and?—"
"What?" he said. "How is holding a job leaving?"
She laughed. It came out sharp and short and nothing like the laugh at the restaurant. "Job," she said. "Right. Playing a game for millions of dollars is a job."
"What's that supposed to mean."
"You don't need a job," she said. "You need the crowd. The adrenaline." She went quiet. The guest room was dark except for the light from the hallway under the door. "You don't need me or the island."
"Kirstin, stop."
"No. I won't," she said. "You lied to me."
"I didn't lie to you."
She heard herself say it before she knew it was coming.
She'd practiced the argument for days. Built the case from her mother's couch.
But what came out was underneath all of it, the thing that had lived in her since she watched him shake hands with scouts in the outfield and sit in the Riley/Banks office while Addison read him the numbers and become someone the world wanted back.
"You said you'd stay."
The line was quiet. His breathing. The distance.
"Kirstin—"
She hung up.
She sat on the edge of the bed. The phone was dark in her hand. The guest room was quiet. The hallway light under the door made a thin yellow line across the carpet and she stared at it until it blurred.
The warmth from the restaurant was gone.