15. Meredith
MEREDITH
“Hey, does this smell off to you?”
I look up from the kitchen table to find Sophie crinkling her nose and holding out a bottle of creamer. Bracing myself, I lean in for a whiff. “No, it’s good.”
She sighs in relief before returning to her coffee-making.
It’s a quiet morning at the beach house, which essentially means Richard has gone out of his way to avoid us.
“I think I’ve permanently destroyed my sense of smell.
I was bleaching so much yesterday. But the good news is you can use the restroom again without contracting any deadly diseases. ”
It’s only when she sits at the table and pushes a mug over to me that I realize she’s made two. “You’re a saint, you know that?” I take it gratefully.
“Gotta make myself useful somehow. You heading to the Shack today?”
I slightly grimace at the thought. “Yeah, I probably should. The office is a mess, but I’m still no closer to figuring anything out. I managed to finish a decade’s worth of spending reports last night, but…”
“Did he not keep track of that himself? I remember him grumbling about it all the time.”
I slap the table with my palm, pleased that someone else thought the same. At least it means I’m not crazy. “Right? That’s the weird thing; he kept receipts for everything. Like down to balloons he bought for your birthday.”
Sophie shoots me an amused look over her mug. “Not sure if that counts as a write-off.”
“The point is, there’s no reason he couldn’t have paid his taxes. Even if he was offsetting balloons, the Shack was making a profit.” At Sophie’s raised eyebrows, I quickly add. “Okay, not a huge one, but we weren’t in the red.”
She sets down her mug and pins me with a curious stare. Not a doubtful one, but more like she’s looking at a puzzle she can’t quite figure out. “But Richard said it was a money pit.”
“If you only look at the tax records, that’s true. However, that doesn’t align with the reported income and spending. So, either Dad was really bad at filing his taxes, or I’m missing something—something he’d spend thousands of dollars on each month and not keep a record of.”
There’s a flicker of something in Sophie’s eye, and she looks away.
“What?”
She shakes her head and says, “Nothing,” but it comes out too quickly, too strained.
Suspicion immediately takes root, and I’ve always been one to call it when I see it. “I thought you were supposed to be an actor.”
She shoots me a look. “It’s nothing… I just remembered something.”
“Well, go on, share with the class.” I roll my wrist in a come-out-with-it gesture.
Sophie pushes her mug to the side and tucks her blond hair behind her ears. It’s a stall tactic if I’ve ever seen one, and my conspiracy-minded brain instantly jumps to wild theories about Mafia extortion again.
“Before I left, I went to his old fishing hut. You know, the one he used to use when he was still sailing with Max and Old Pete?”
My brain screeches to a halt, and I have to mentally chastise myself. This isn’t a courtroom. I need to calm down. I need to get some more sleep. “Yeah, I remember. What were you doing out there?”
I hadn’t thought about it since we were kids. A dingy old hut that served as a catch-all storage space when Dad was still out fishing; the kind of place June and I had to dare each other to enter for fear of spiders or something worse.
“I don’t know, I guess I missed him? Things were a bit weird with June back then, and I was leaving, so I wanted to…
” Sophie’s throat dips with her harsh swallow, and then she dismisses the thought with a half-hearted eye roll, as if it weren’t important.
“Anyway, there was stuff in there, papers and things. I didn’t look too close.
I mean, I was eighteen. I can barely remember even going. ”
I weigh it up. “I mean, it’s something at least. Might be easier than trying to track down his flight records.”
“Flight records?” Her eyes narrow instantly.
“You know how he used to fly out to the West Coast for tackle?” I reel off, about to get into what Roland told me, when something else occurs. “Did you ever go?”
Sophie blinks wildly at me. “To the tackle store?”
“Yeah, it was in Malibu, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t remember,” she brushes it off with another sip of coffee. “We live out in Azuza, so it’s rare that I go anywhere but the city.”
I catch on quickly. “We?”
Sophie freezes then, but tries to act normal with a short nod. “Yeah.”
Something isn’t right here. “You and Trent?”
“Can we talk about something else?” She crosses her arms. “Please?”
I take a moment to consider her, noticing the quiet kind of assertiveness in her tone. It’s a calm reminder that our relationship is still healing and that pushing things now could undo some of our progress.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry,” I add at the end for good measure—an apology for my prying that she accepts with a small, appreciative smile.
We sit in silence for a moment, both of us lost in thought. Sophie’s hesitation to discuss her life in L.A. seems like something that will require more time to understand. I can’t just ask her to trust me again, not after everything that happened. Nor do I feel entitled to that.
But it’s undeniably sad that I’m missing out on more of her life.
“If…” Sophie finally speaks again, a furrow forming on her brow as she struggles to formulate her next words. “If Dad was keeping something from us, how…I mean, what would you do?”
“You mean, how would I feel?”
Sophie nods, her cheeks tingeing a light shade of pink.
“There’s not much we could do, is there? It’s not like we can ask him about it now.”
She shrugs, appearing nonchalant—although it’s unclear if it’s genuine or just an act to play down the situation. “I guess I’m just asking if you’re prepared to find something out that could change your opinion of him.”
I think about it for a moment. “Even when I found out the Shack had been in trouble, I still loved him. Yeah, I was confused and hurt that he’d hidden that from us, but my memory of him has always been more important.
Everyone makes mistakes, Sophie, and I’m sure being a parent just makes it that much harder when you do. ”
“Oh.” She releases a long exhale, the tension visibly leaving her shoulders.
“Hey.” I reach across the table and place my hand over hers. “It’s okay if you wanna be mad at him, you know. None of us were expecting to do this, and you have a whole life on the other side of the country. People are depending on you.”
She flinches. “No. It’s not like that, I’m just…” Her phone rings, and Sophie instantly pales as she checks the caller ID. “Sorry, Mer, I have to take this. Mom’s up if you wanna say bye before you leave.”
“Go ahead,” I say with a nod. “I’ll see if June wants to head over to the fishing hut. We can debrief later.”
She already has her phone to her ear, but she mouths a “thank you” before slipping into the next room.
Finishing my coffee with a stretch, I follow her out a moment later.
Dutifully ignoring Sophie’s voice coming from upstairs, I poke my head around the corner of the living room to find Eleanor painting the Shack sign again.
She’s been at it all week now, proudly displaying the finished, bright yellow lettering by the window, spelling out “HOLLO LOBS SHAC” to anyone who happens to walk by.
“Looking good,” I say as I approach, offering her a gentle kiss on the cheek.
She’s still in her pajamas, a light housecoat draped over her shoulders. “Almost done,” she all but sings.
“It’s going to look fantastic. I’ll see if Eddie can put it up for us tomorrow.” I pull away. “I’m heading out for a bit, but I’ll drop by later.”
She sighs contentedly at her finished K. “I’m glad all this is making you happy.”
I’m halfway to the door when I freeze.
I’ve been staying here for weeks now, and I sometimes wonder if she even notices I’m here. Not because she doesn’t care, but because her observational skills have always been lacking. She’s always been the type who can effortlessly avoid discomfort by simply ignoring the issue.
“I wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t,” I find myself saying because that much, at least, is easy to admit.
It would be harder to tell her that this is the first time in a long while that I’ve been able to handle the suffocating cloud of self-loathing that descends every morning.
I can’t remember the last time I woke up thinking of Mark or the divorce, or how none of my friends were ever really my friends.
Restoring the Shack is hard. Rebuilding my relationships with my estranged family and friends is hard. Trying to solve the mystery of Aiden Holloway is hard. But I would take this life—for as long as I can have it—over another morning in my awful apartment in Boston without question.
“You deserve to be happy,” Mom says, looking at me fondly. “I think we all do.”
“I brought gloves,” June says as I approach the seafront. Her large sunglasses hide most of her face, and her smile covers the rest of it. “And coffee.”
“You’re in a good mood.” I take both from her gratefully.
“I just got my nails done, I’m not ruining them because no one’s cleared this place out in years.” She slips her gloves on before gesturing to the hut behind her. “Shall we?”
The wood siding is sun-bleached and curling, warped from salt air and two decades of storms, but it still holds up somehow.
The padlock comes off easier than expected, and the door groans as if it resents being opened at all.
Inside, nets hang in tangled heaps, long stiffened with age, and a couple of rusted tackle boxes are stacked on a bench beneath the window.
The light slants in just enough to illuminate the cobwebs hanging in every corner.
I hear June mutter something about tetanus under her breath.
“It’s so much worse than I remember,” I whisper. It seems appropriate not to raise my voice in case the roof caves in.
“Do you think there are mice in here?” June whispers back.