Chapter 30
Was it possible to feel emotionally exhausted and utterly ebullient at the same time? Apparently it was, because that was how Noah felt as he and Grace walked hand in hand down the path, toward Jacob.
He felt positively limp from telling her everything about Jem, but at the same time he felt incredulous with hope, even something resembling joy, and it didn’t feel wrong to feel it. It felt good. It felt right.
“I meant to tell you,” he told her as they neared the clearing where the guest cottages stood, “when we were playing hide and seek, Jacob laughed.”
Grace turned her head sharply. “He did? Out loud?”
Noah nodded. “A couple of giggles. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Wow,” she said softly, and for a moment she looked near tears. “That’s because of you, you know,” she told him. “Don’t even bother trying to pretend it isn’t.”
“I think it’s probably a variety of factors,” Noah replied fairly, and she laughed and shoved his shoulder.
“You have a bond with him, Noah. You know you do.” He gave a small smile of acknowledgment.
He was fond of Jacob, more so every day, and he thought the boy liked him, too.
It was a nice feeling. “And I’m so grateful for it,” Grace continued.
“He and his dad… well, as you know, that was complicated.”
“Yes.” They both had a lot of complicated going on in their lives, but right now Noah felt as if they were starting to untangle it, just a little. Maybe one day it would be a lot.
“Anyway, I’m grateful,” she said, smiling at him, and then they rounded a curve in the track and came upon the cottages.
There were four of them in total, made of brown shingle, surrounding a pool that was now a gaping maw of concrete. Noah slowed as he took in the sight—shutters askew, shingles blown off, a window or two broken, one door hanging off its hinges.
“Wow.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Twenty years is a long time for a place to be empty, I guess.” For some reason, some part of him had been expecting the cottages to look the way they once had—curtains at the windows, begonias in the window boxes and planters, loungers by the pool.
He’d spent many happy summers as a kid here, as family friends and cousins and people he couldn’t even remember stayed in the cottages, lounged by the pool, played tennis on the courts behind the cottages that were now bare of nets, weeds growing through the cracks in the concrete.
“Do you think they’re safe to go inside?” Grace asked.
“I think so?” Jacob was tugging Grace’s hand, clearly eager to explore. “Why don’t I go first?”
He opened the door to the first cottage, stepping into the great room with a stone fireplace at one end; there were still some old, charred logs in the grate.
All the furniture was gone—Isaiah must have arranged that, stored it somewhere or maybe sold it.
The air smelled musty, but the rooms were in surprisingly good shape—no peeling wallpaper or warped floorboards.
“What a nice space,” Grace murmured. “And I bet there are views of the ocean from upstairs. I’m going to go look.” She started for the first stairs, holding Jacob’s hand.
“That might be dangerous—” Noah began, feeling the need to caution her.
She tested the first step. “I think it’s fine.”
Grace headed upstairs while Noah walked around the downstairs, hazy memories of running through one of the cottages for a freeze pop or soda before hurtling back out to the pool. Easy days that weren’t tarnished by anything yet. He’d been so young.
And yet… he paused by the kitchen, a sudden memory assailing him, sharp and clear and yet he was pretty sure he’d never recalled it before.
Jem, annoyed by some kid who had been staying here, one of their dad’s business colleague’s children they had been ordered to entertain.
Jem had been difficult, stubborn in that silent way he used to have sometimes, dragging his feet and refusing to speak.
Noah had had to coax him along. He’d traded freeze pops to appease him—given him his blue raspberry and taken the cola flavor that neither of them had liked.
And Jem had known he would do it; Jem had always known he would do whatever he had to, to make him happy.
Until he hadn’t.
Strangely, the memory didn’t make him feel guilty or sad or frustrated, although at the same time he felt a little of all three. But Jem had just been a kid. A sometimes-stubborn, often quiet, weird little kid.
He hadn’t been perfect. He hadn’t been the saint that Noah realized, in his guilt, he’d been starting to venerate. He’d just been a boy. A brother. He’d annoyed Noah, and Noah had annoyed him. A lot.
Why did that realization make him feel relieved?
“You can see the ocean!” Grace called, and he smiled and headed upstairs.
Grace turned from the window to see Noah come up into the master bedroom, devoid of furniture but with an incredible view. Jacob had gone off to explore the other bedrooms, and Grace had let him; despite a few broken windows, the house seemed completely solid.
“Isn’t it incredible?” she asked, nodding at the ocean glinting in the distance, and he smiled at her without looking out the window.
“Yes. Incredible.”
Somehow Grace didn’t think he was talking about the ocean.
She turned back to look at the view, her cheeks warming, a dart of pleasure causing her stomach to dip.
“These houses are great,” she said, babbling a little in her nervousness.
She and Noah had talked a lot, but she wasn’t entirely sure where they stood.
He hadn’t said “let’s date” or even “let’s try dating.
” He’d just said he had something to give.
That could, Grace knew, mean a lot of different things.
“And solid,” she added, trying to cover the swirling nature of her thoughts.
“I thought the way you talked about them, and Becca too, that they’d be complete wrecks. Ruins, but they’re not.”
“No, they do seem pretty solid.” He sounded surprised, a little wistful. Grace wondered if coming back here had brought up memories—both good and hard.
“You could do something with them, you know,” she said suddenly, turning back to face him in something like challenge, and his eyebrows lifted.
“What? Airbnb?”
“No, nothing like that. I mean something useful. Something… real.” Noah cocked his head, clearly waiting for more. The idea had just come to her, but suddenly it seemed like a good one. A great one, even.
“You could make some kind of… center,” she explained slowly, feeling her way through the words.
“Or a camp or a retreat, I don’t know the right term, but…
it could be a place people come to heal.
They could rest and maybe do classes—yoga and watercolors, there could be therapies offered too, play therapies for children…
” She saw it unfolding in her mind’s eye—the houses refurbished, a playground by the pool, music and art rooms…
“With the ocean and the nature reserve and these houses just sitting here… and you have the money, don’t you?
” Her voice rose in her excitement. “I mean, you haven’t said, but I get the sense that you’re filthy rich. ”
He laughed at that, a bubble of sound. “Fairly filthy.”
“You could do something good here, Noah,” Grace persisted.
She felt deep inside, right down in her bones, that this idea wasn’t just some pie-in-the-sky plan, a whimsical wish.
That this could be good for others, for Noah, for the island itself.
“With this island, these memories. You could create a place where people who have suffered—from loss, from trauma, whatever—could come to recover. To heal. They could help in the nature reserve, and take classes and therapy, or just be. Just be in a beautiful place.” He didn’t reply and she couldn’t tell from his expression whether he thought it was an incredible idea or an awful one.
“That’s why I came here,” she continued in a rush.
“To recover and heal. And I have, at least I’m getting there.
And imagine if you could offer it to people like me, like you, like Jacob.
Or Jem.” She fell silent, afraid she’d gone too far, invoking his brother’s name, but he just nodded thoughtfully.
“You’d need to get some source of funding,” he said after a moment. “I could set up a trust, but I couldn’t bankroll it forever. The money would run out.”
Her insides leapt at the realization that he was considering it so seriously. “Fundraisers. Grants. Maybe charging those who can afford it. There have to be ways.”
He paused, squinting out at the view. “You’d have to get other people involved, people who were willing to live here. Therapists, specialists, an architect even…”
“It could become a community.” She thought of Becca, so lonely, and Lewis who either wanted to stay or bust out, she couldn’t tell which. Grumpy Jethro and gossipy Bab, Ned who seemed to live by his own law. “Do you think the locals would be okay with it?” she asked.
Noah scratched his jaw. “Honestly, I don’t know. But it would be a big project, Grace. A huge project, just getting these cottages habitable again, and then putting all the safeguards in place so you could house vulnerable people… plus recruiting staff, publicizing…”
At first, she thought he was throwing up obstacles, but then she heard the excitement in his voice, saw the light flare in his eyes, and she smiled.
“But you could do it,” she said softly.
“We could do it,” Noah replied, and then he crossed the room in three long strides, took her in his arms, and kissed her hard on the mouth.
It started out as a hard press, what felt like a brand, but then Grace wrapped her arms around him, and it turned into something far more passionate and they stumbled back against the wall, still kissing.
Grace could feel the thud of Noah’s heart against her own.
And even though her mind was spinning, her body tingling all over, she forced herself to break the kiss first.