Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tyler was no stranger to tiring days. His job often meant a lot of holding his arms overhead for extended periods, leaving aches in his shoulders that took hours to fade.
There had been the day Izzy was born too, when Cadence had been in labor for what had felt like a million hours…
and that was just from his perspective as the supportive husband, not the person actually doing all the work!
Then there had been those time-warp hours with baby Isabelle, rocking her into the night, certain he’d been at it for ages and ages only to glance at a clock and realize that, nope, it had only been about twenty minutes.
Despite all these experiences, Tyler felt that the morning of the cove outing was one of the most exhausting days that he’d ever experienced.
Not that he wasn’t having fun.
He was having a blast, honestly. He wouldn’t have traded the time with his daughter for anything, for one. More than once he’d caught her bragging to one of her friends that both her parents were here today, and wasn’t that just so awesome?
Her classmates, being of an age with Izzy and therefore not yet too cool to want to be seen with their parents, agreed that it was, in fact, so awesome.
The other kids themselves were fun too. They were energetic and curious and extremely funny. He’d been practically in stitches when they had started an impromptu competition to see who could do the best crab walk, to extremely variable results.
But darn if those kids didn’t have endless energy!
After several hours of ferrying them to and from water games and other group activities, of making sure that nobody strayed too far down the beach or out of the designated section of the water, and of hearing cries of, “Hey, watch this, Mr. Meadows!” and racing off to interrupt some doubtlessly extremely dangerous action…
Well, Tyler was beat.
He was looking forward to lunch more than anything.
“Daddy! Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, come sit with me and Mommy!”
Isabelle appeared out of nowhere to snatch his hand. These kids were fast too.
Tyler was all but helpless to follow behind her, although he did pause when he came into view of Cadence, who was watching this with an expression he couldn’t quite read pasted across her face.
Part of this was because he kept forcing himself not to look too closely.
Cadence looked heart-wrenchingly beautiful in her beach clothes, simple though they were.
A blue and white striped t-shirt. A pair of cuffed denim jeans that he knew she’d had for years and years.
And a big, broad-brimmed sun hat that he had bought for her on one long-gone beach excursion when she had lamented forgetting to pack one, fretting that she was going to burn.
There was so much familiarity in her look, and yet there was difference too. Her hair had never been as short as it was now, and though he knew that her experience with getting a perm had started out not so well, whatever she’d done to it now certainly suited her.
But the peace between them felt very fragile, and staring was definitely not on the list of things he should be doing. It was bad enough that he couldn’t tell at all if she meant it when she gave him a little jerk of her head to indicate that he should, in fact, join her and Isabelle for lunch.
“Okay, okay, Izzy,” he said with a laugh as his daughter dug her feet into the sand, trying to bodily drag him forward. “I’m coming. Hold your horses.”
“I don’t have any horses!” she answered, as she always did. Another flicker of happiness shot through him. It just felt so good to fall into routine with his family, even if it was only for a little while.
“Yeah, yeah, clever girl,” he teased, ruffling her hair with his free hand. “Let’s have lunch.”
They all settled in at the table, an air of strange politeness hovering over the space. Isabelle chewed noisily on some carrot sticks, kicking her feet happily where they dangled above the sand.
Tyler took a long, much needed sip of a bottle of Gatorade that he’d been carrying around.
He’d drank a few such bottles already from the fortunately robust supply in the coolers that Miss Elsa had directed the parents to unload.
The day was hot, and the last thing they needed was for someone to suffer from dehydration.
The cold liquid was a balm after the hours in the blazing sun.
“Where’s your lunch, Daddy?” Isabelle asked through a mouthful of carrot.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, please,” he corrected automatically. “And I left it… in my car,” he finished, frowning as he realized it.
Cadence let out a little snort of laughter that she hid hastily behind a hand.
Suddenly, Tyler didn’t mind forgetting his lunch so much, not if it made Cadence laugh.
“Yeah, yeah,” he teased her. “Laugh it up.”
“It’s just…” She bit her lip and he fought the urge to reach out and tug it from between her teeth. “How many times a week do you leave the house only to realize that you left your phone or your keys or your wallet inside?”
He pretended to think. “Well, there are seven days in a week, so… seven.”
She grinned. Gosh, she was so beautiful when she smiled unguarded like that. He’d nearly forgotten, that’s how long it had been since he’d seen it.
“I hope you packed something that’s going to withstand the heat,” she said. “Otherwise you’re going to have a, um, fragrant few drives coming your way.”
He laughed. “You mean like that time when we were in college that we left the doggy bag of sushi in the car overnight?” She wrinkled her nose and nodded, now fighting off a smile. “No, fortunately today was just a peanut butter sandwich.”
“Oh, that might even… smell kind of nice?” she said, optimistic but still clearly doubtful.
“It’s going to be something,” he agreed, shaking his head.
“Mommy, can I go play with Susie?” Isabelle asked. She was not paying the least bit of attention to her parents’ conversation and that, as well as the teasing, made Tyler feel like this was old times in a sort of bittersweet way.
“Sure, honey.” The words were barely out of Cadence’s mouth before Izzy was gone to frolic in the sand with her friend.
“And just like that, we are old news,” Tyler joked.
“Ah, but this is good news for you,” Cadence said. She pulled a wrapped bundle from the insulated lunch bag at her side. Tyler unwrapped it to find a sandwich… with one bite already taken out of it.
“Izzy already sampled it?” he asked with a chuckle.
“You know it.”
Tyler had been a father for too many years to be bothered by sharing germs with his daughter. He took a bite of the sandwich.
“Mm, peanut butter and banana,” he said.
“The Isabelle Meadows special,” Cadence confirmed. “That’s her second sandwich, by the way—so have at it. She already ate a whole one, so she’s all good.”
Tyler didn’t need a second invitation. He took another hearty bite, relishing the sweetness. Why did the sandwich taste better just because Cadence had made it?
“Do you remember,” he asked when he’d washed down a bite of the sticky sandwich with his Gatorade, “that phase Izzy went through where she only wanted our food? Never mind that she had the exact same stuff on her plate.”
“Do I ever,” she said with a laugh. “She used to call it ‘Mommy style’ and ‘Daddy style.’ ‘Can I have a Mommy style sandwich, please?’” She gently mimicked a toddler voice.
“Only she pronounced it ‘peas,’” Tyler recalled.
“Yes!”
They were both laughing now, and even though the memory of Isabelle was between them, Tyler could not help but be acutely aware that this was the first one-on-one conversation that he and Cadence had had in… ages.
He watched her watching Isabelle, a softly nostalgic look on her face. Something about that look made him feel brave, like he would regret it if he didn’t speak.
“Cadence,” he said. “I just… I want you to know that I know what I let slip away, okay? Just in case you don’t think I hate every minute of this.
I miss spending time as a family. I miss spending time with just you.
And… I don’t know, I guess little moments like this just brings that all back into perspective, you know? ”
The words poured out of him, heartfelt and true down to his soul.
For a moment, Cadence looked back at him and he saw that they were on the exact same page.
And, in some ways, wasn’t that the feeling he’d missed more than anything else?
That moment of connection with Cadence, where they felt like a team.
For the span of a single breath, it was back, like it had never left.
Then her eyes darted away.
He didn’t blame her for her hesitation, not with the gulf of pain between them. He didn’t blame her, but he really, really hated it.
“I know,” she said quietly. “But it’s not that simple.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said… though he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. What if it just became that simple? After all, what mattered more than the two of them, together?
He accepted that this wasn’t the place or time to have this conversation, however, not in the least because Miss Elsa was summoning the students to give them their directives for afternoon activities.
The parents were similarly summoned, and Cadence and Tyler found themselves directed to different parts of the cove.
It was only in the last hour, when most of the kids were too tired to do anything but play in the sand, that the three Meadows found themselves back in the same area.
“Hey, Daddy, can we go to that far spot?” Izzy asked, swinging her hand where it was clasped in Cadence’s.
Sometimes, when Isabelle said something that was clearly incomprehensible but he comprehended it anyway, it made Tyler feel like he was truly kicking butt at all this fatherhood stuff. Right now, he could really use that win.
“The spot where we saw the family of crabs that time?” he asked.
“Yeah!”