10. Crista
C rista hung way too many grocery bags on her arms, weighed down by a trip to Publix. It seemed like the perfect errand to get her out of the house while Tessa “set up shop,” as she called it, and invited Nolie to the table for a morning of learning.
She went through the open garage door, the sounds of Eli and Jonah’s conversation floating down as they worked on the apartment above. As she climbed the few stairs to the kitchen door, she was already imagining the scene she’d walk into.
Tessa sitting at the dining table, Nolie at her side, deep in concentration as she carefully sounded out words. They’d be bathed in sunlight, the doors open to let that healthy salt air into the room. It would be a quiet, happy moment with none of the stress Nolie experienced when Anthony taught her.
But as she managed to open the kitchen door, she heard a squeal, clapping, and laughter.
Okay, that was?—
She froze at the sight of Nolie whirling through the living and dining rooms, both arms extended. Lacey stood next to a whiteboard leaning on the back of one of the barstools, like a homemade presentation board.
Tessa sat at the dining room table, but she was draped over her chair, with a mess of papers, ribbons, pens, and who knew what strewn about.
Aunt Pittypat ran in Nolie’s wake, barking wildly, her little tail tick-tocking happily.
A morning of learning? If she’d walked into a preschool, maybe.
“I think the bride should fly in!” Nolie yelled. “With wings!”
“Wings?” Tessa and Lacey squealed.
“Yes!” Nolie exclaimed, flapping her arms. “Wings!”
Tessa pointed to the whiteboard. “Then put it on your list, Flying Figsworth!”
Crista’s stomach tightened. This wasn’t what she’d expected.
She set one grocery bag down on the kitchen island, clearing her throat, which wasn’t enough to get their attention.
“Hello?” she tried, making a quick mental note not to lose it…yet.
Didn’t Tessa realize they only had a few weeks? They weren’t teaching Nolie how to fly, for heaven’s sake!
Tessa, utterly unfazed, looked up from her laptop with a bright smile. “Hey, it’s almost like having Kate here again. She’s addicted to Publix. Please tell me you got my Essenza.”
“If it was on the list, I got it,” she said absently, unwinding her arms from the other bags. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re storming our brains!” Nolie announced, prancing over. “It’s like a big party where all you do is have ideas, Mommy! The first rule? There’s no bad idea!”
“And trust me, she’s tried,” Tessa said, tempering that with a droll smile at Nolie.
Crista took the hug Nolie effortlessly offered, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s head.
She was warm, like she’d been playing outside, her hair wild, her face flushed.
She stroked Nolie’s damp cheek, tucking a strand behind her ear. “Have you been, um, reading anything?”
“Not a word!” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes dramatically. “This is just for ideas and Tessa says the best ideas come from moving around. So we’re dancing!”
She added a giggle and a quick spin—done with more enthusiasm than Crista could remember seeing in a long time.
“Now I have to storm with my brain!” She zipped around the island, joining Tessa and Lacey, who seemed to be much more focused on a project than on Nolie.
Had Tessa forgotten she’d promised to work with the child? Had she just figured she’d tell Nolie to play by herself and call it “brainstorming”?
Crista swallowed, consciously forcing herself not to channel her inner Maggie and insist things be done a certain way. As much as she wanted to blow in here and make demands, she knew she must be patient.
Instead, she turned her attention to methodically unpacking groceries, her ears trained on the conversation in the living room.
She knew her own tendencies. She knew she could be dramatic, emotional, reactive. She had spent years trying to curb that, especially lately when it seemed like anything could set her off.
But she also knew she had to play this smart. She was here for Nolie, and she needed Tessa’s help. Starting yet another war with her wasn’t going to accomplish anything.
Still, the irritation simmered beneath her skin as she pulled milk from the bag and slid it into the fridge.
In the living room, the discussion continued.
“Okay, so what if we do a spotlight moment for the flower girl dresses?” Lacey suggested, gesturing to the board.
“Dress,” Tessa said. “I’d like to keep it to one—and we know who that is.”
“Me!” Nolie shouted. “Oh, oh! I have an idea, Miss Tessa!” She waved her hand like the show off in the front row of a classroom.
“Hit me with it, Figgy.”
“What if I have a wand?” Nolie bounced on her toes, waving an imaginary wand. “With ribbons!”
Tessa snapped her fingers. “Nolie, that’s brilliant. I love it. Please add it to the list! You know how.”
Crista stiffened, leaning to peer over the kitchen island. Nolie grabbed the whiteboard marker, her face alight with excitement.
But as she turned to write, her hand faltered. She got the first two letters down, “R…I…,” but then she stopped. Bs were always tough for her, and “ribbons” had two of them. Nolie’s brow furrowed. The marker hovered over the board, her small fingers tightening around it.
What about the dots she’d done yesterday? Crista bit her lip to keep from interfering, but didn’t Tessa see the struggle?
Nolie sighed, deflated, and set the marker down. “I can’t do it.”
Crista’s heart squeezed painfully in her chest.
“That’s okay,” Tessa said, casually and without even looking up. “We can try again on your next big idea.”
Was she even teaching her?
Nolie’s shoulders hunched, and her face fell, and Crista felt it right down to her own toes.
She couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Nolie, sweetie, why don’t you go play in our room for a bit? Set up your Barbies? We brought the Dreamhouse.”
“We’re storming our brains, Mommy!”
Tessa looked up, a question in her eyes that mirrored the sound of Nolie’s complaint.
“And you can finish soon, but I need to talk to…the ladies.”
With a sigh, she headed upstairs, Aunt Pittypat hot on her heels.
Crista turned and zeroed in on Tessa. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Tessa arched an eyebrow. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I’m going to make a quick call,” Lacey said, disappearing with her phone toward the back of the house, obviously reading the room.
Crista hesitated for a second, then walked to the table.
“I thought you were serious about helping my daughter. I moved heaven and earth to get her out of school and dance, left my husband during our only time without a permanent houseguest, and handed her over to you…hoping for the best. I thought you’d take tutoring her seriously.”
Tessa blinked, clearly taken aback. “And what makes you think I’m not?”
Crista swallowed and gestured toward the mess and the white board. “She can’t read at grade level, and she needs structure. She needs practice, repetition, study materials?—”
“And how has all of that structure been working for her so far?” Tessa interrupted, her voice level but firm.
Crista’s mouth snapped shut.
She hated it—hated that Tessa was right. The strict tutoring sessions, the rigid study plans—they hadn’t been helping. If anything, they’d made Nolie more resistant, more frustrated. But that didn’t mean that playtime was the answer.
“Look,” Tessa said, leaning forward. “I understand Nolie. I was Nolie. If anything, I had an even harder time. But you know what finally worked for me? It wasn’t drill sessions or workbooks. It was finding ways to learn without realizing I was learning. I figured out how to read and write because I wanted to do more of the things I loved—not because I wanted to be good at school.”
Crista nodded slowly, getting that.
“And, you know, I do take this little favor I’m doing very seriously. For one thing, I’ve been through it and my…my teacher was brilliant. He knew that I did better when I didn’t focus, so he let the learning happen organically.”
“But she?—”
“And since it’s been a few years,” she continued, “I did some research. Every expert—and by every expert, yes, I mean Dr. Internet—says that movement, multi-sensory activity, and hands-on learning is far better than trying to beat it into her.”
“I’ve heard that, too, but there’s no movement when she takes the test to determine if she can go to third grade or not.”
“Crista, listen. She’s going to learn best when the pressure is off. When it’s fun. When it’s woven into her everyday life. If we force it, she’s just going to shut down. I honestly know that from experience. And that kid?” Tessa laughed. “Little Figsworth is a breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed to inhale. What an awesome daughter you have.”
Crista drew back, totally not expecting the compliment or the genuine warmth it shot through her.
“Oh,” she said on a whisper. “Yes, thank you. She’s…special.”
“Smart as a whip, too, which isn’t unusual for our kind.” Tessa winked. “It’s easy to write off a dyslexic person as slow, but we’re not. Although it’s fun to disarm people who don’t give us enough credit.”
She was absolutely right. Nolie was bright, and she did learn better without pressure, and nothing had worked, really. And hadn’t Crista come here to try something different?
She let out a slow breath. “Okay. Fine. Do it your way. But please— please —help her.”
Tessa smiled. “Relax, Mom. We got this.” With that, she put two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle that would make a football coach proud. “Lacey! Nolie! Ladies of Tessa Wylie Events! Let’s go, we’ve got a bridal salon to launch!”
The girls came bounding back, and Crista watched as Tessa seamlessly guided the conversation back to their event. But this time, Crista saw something different. She saw how Tessa treated Nolie—not as a struggling kid, but as someone with real ideas, valuable thoughts.
Someone to be taken seriously.
“So about the ribbon wands,” Tessa said, circling back. “You think we should have different colors or try and match the dress?”
Nolie lit up just being asked her opinion. “Match the dress for sure! I hope it’s pink.”
“Me too,” Tessa said, pointing to the board. “Write down ‘ribbons that match pink dress’ so we don’t forget.”
Nolie grabbed the marker, while Crista felt her whole body tense.
With what appeared to be a whole new confidence, she marched to the whiteboard and finished the word “ribbons.”
Written not quite flawlessly, but the Bs faced the right direction.
She wrote all of it, every word, exactly as Tessa said and her P in pink was perfect. Crista’s breath caught. Her eyes burned. Okay. Maybe it’s working.
Before she could process it fully, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, praying it was Anthony and she could tell him. But her screen lit up with one word, four letters, and…horror.
Mama
“I better take this,” she murmured, throwing a look at Lacey. “It’s Maggie.”
Her niece winced, then mouthed, “Good luck.”
As Crista climbed the stairs, she kept her gaze on the scene below—Nolie writing and Tessa watching her carefully.
She knew, in that moment, that nothing— not even her mother —was going to get in the way of this.
* * *
Crista stepped into the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her. She let out a slow breath, pressing her back against the door before glancing at the screen of her phone. The picture of her mother, taken on her seventy-fifth birthday, stared at her from the tiny circle, a smile on her face…but it didn’t reach her eyes.
Why was she calling from the Netherlands?
Crista had no idea, but she thanked the good Lord that Maggie hadn’t quite figured out how to work FaceTime without help.
She pushed off the door, steeling herself, and finally pressed the button.
“Mama, hi! I’m so glad you got a chance to call. How’s your trip?”
“Lovely, Crista. Just beyond my wildest dreams.” Her cool, barely-there Georgia accent should have filled Crista with warmth and love. Instead, she felt nothing but dread.
“Tell me about it,” she said, hoping her brightness didn’t sound fake.
“Oh, the very first day, we went to the oldest botanical gardens in the world in Amsterdam. I loved it, but of course, Martha complained about walking so much. I don’t know why she’d take a tour and not walk.”
“But it’s pretty there?”
“Gorgeous. We did a canal tour the second night and then we spent a whole day at the Keukenhof—castle, gardens, the whole thing.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Crista said vaguely, perching on the end of the bed, aware of her heart rate kicking up with every passing second.
How could she tell her mother where she was? And why? And?—
“I always knew it would be glorious to see the floral blooms in Europe in the spring, but it’s outdoing even my expectations. Which were high.”
Crista smiled tightly, plucking at a thread on the comforter. “Aren’t they always?” she teased lightly, hoping to keep the conversation easy.
“Yes, well, despite the fact that my phone is mostly useless unless I’m connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, and even that is spotty, I’m having the most wonderful time,” Maggie continued. “You would die if you saw the tulips in Keukenhof. The colors! The sheer expanse of it all! I swear I could spend weeks wandering these gardens and still not see every last bloom.”
“I’m so glad to hear that, Mama. I knew it would be a beautiful trip,” Crista said, gripping the phone just a little tighter. If she could just keep her mother talking about the trip, maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about?—
“But I had to call and follow up on our upsetting conversation on the way to the airport,” Maggie interjected, her voice shifting slightly. “Did you talk to Eli and Vivien? Do they still want to keep the house that would have you all secure for your futures? And, good heavens, did they have any more contact with… them ?”
Well…one of them was downstairs this very minute teaching Nolie how to read and write. And brainstorm.
Crista tensed, fisting the comforter, her palms damp. How could she tell her?
“Uh, yeah, well… I did talk to them,” she said carefully. “In person, actually.”
“You went down? Like I suggested?”
That was a suggestion? Please. Maggie Lawson didn’t know the meaning of the word suggestion .
“Mm-hmm, yes,” Crista said.
“And told them to stay away from the Wylies, I hope,” her mother said, her voice sharp enough to slice glass.
Crista swallowed, her pulse hammering. From downstairs, she could still hear the faint sounds of Nolie’s laughter—the light, free, musical bubble that she hadn’t heard in weeks.
“Yes, that’s…what I told them,” she said, forcing the words out. “I told them you said that.” Not a lie. Not even a tiny white lie.
Maggie exhaled approvingly. “Good. And I do hope they have the financial common sense to recognize that house was meant to be sold, not turned into some ridiculous shrine to a childhood that ended decades ago.”
Crista stayed silent, practically chewing a hole on the inside of her cheek, silent for three, four, five rapid heartbeats and a few loud barks from a very worked up Yorkie.
“Crista? Are you okay?” Maggie’s voice softened, but it wasn’t concern—Crista knew that tone. It was suspicion.
“Yes, I’m fine, just in the middle of it with…Nolie. Trying a new tutor.” That was the truth. Sort of.
“Oh, please, all that tutoring,” Maggie scoffed. “There is nothing wrong with that child that a little Grandma time won’t fix. Is that Pittypat I hear? How’s my baby?”
“She’s fine. She’s…walking a lot.” Again, not a lie. Except she was walking on sand, not sidewalk.
“I knew Nolie would take care of her,” Maggie said. “She’s bright as can be.”
“That’s exactly what her new tutor just said. Said she’s a…breath of fresh air.” She closed her eyes and remembered Tessa’s expression when she talked about Nolie.
“I’m telling you she doesn’t need a special tutor,” her mother said.
Crista pressed her fingers against her temple, silent. There was no point arguing with her mother.
Maggie let out a long sigh, as if she were the one who was exhausted from the conversation. “So, you just stayed the one night in Destin, I presume? Are Vivien and Eli back in Atlanta now, too?”
Crista froze, her heart stuttering in her chest. She knew this moment was coming, knew she’d have to lie. If she told her mother she was here, she’d want to know why she took Nolie out of school and for how long.
It was better she didn’t know. Or only found out after Nolie passed the test—and she wouldn’t have to tell her who the new tutor was.
If she knew it was Tessa Wylie, she would lose her mind. It would be a betrayal too deep for Maggie to forgive.
Crista took a breath. “Yep, I’m back in Atlanta. I haven’t seen Vivien and Eli.” At least not since that morning…on the deck of the Summer House.
The lie felt thick on her tongue, but she pushed the words out, forcing a small, tight smile even though no one could see her. “Anyway, I’ve got to run, Mama. You should rest up before your next big outing.”
“Okay, then, goodbye, sweetheart. Kiss Nolie for me. And Pittypat.”
“I will. Bye!”
Crista ended the call, dropping her cell phone onto the bed beside her. She stared at the ceiling, her heart thumping from the raw, unfettered guilt . But as much as it twisted in her gut, making her literally feel sick to her stomach, she knew one thing with certainty.
Maggie could not mess this up. Not if it was going to change everything for Nolie.
She took a deep breath, rubbing her hands over her face before sitting up. Downstairs, she could hear the muffled sounds of laughter, of conversation.
She pictured Nolie’s precious face, the way her smile lit up the room and her eyes sparked with pure, unfiltered bliss. It had been so long since she’d seen that kind of joy on her baby’s face.
If the cost of that joy was Maggie’s approval? She might have to pay that bill.