Chapter 49 Hailey
Hailey
“That is so crazy that our grandmothers just, like, made up today after, like, a fight they had seventy years ago?” Hailey
said, holding Jack’s hand as they walked from Innisfree down the starlit road toward the point. Everyone else had headed to
bed, but Hailey was too wrought up to sleep, and she’d wanted to hang out with Jack a little longer. Even after they’d spent
most of the last two days together, it seemed there was still so much to talk about. (What if you were a writer and not a lawyer? Jack had asked her when they’d had a minute of privacy at a pitstop on the drive back from Eastport today, and she’d been
thinking ever since about the answers that had come to her as easily as breathing: I’d feel like myself; I’d stop trying to please everybody and be perfect; I’d live at Innisfree.) “I didn’t know they’d ever been friends.”
“I didn’t, either,” Jack said with a tiny smile.
She squeezed his hand and sighed. Forty-eight hours ago, she would not have been able to convince herself that anything, let alone everything, was going to be okay.
Now her dad was back. Her mom seemed happy, if still a bit miffed.
Her brothers had offered to go to Portland to grab Hailey’s stuff from Noah’s apartment so she wouldn’t even have to see him again.
And her parents had agreed to sit down with her tomorrow to figure out the best way to divide and conquer duties to cancel what could be canceled of the wedding—and possibly refashion the rest of it.
None of it felt easy, but it did pretty much feel right.
Which, given everything that had been turned upside down this past week, was basically a miracle.
At the campground this afternoon, Hailey’d had enough of waiting at the entrance gate. With Jack in agreement in the passenger
seat, she’d started up the Protegé and set off down the winding road through the tall trees toward the campsite where the
ranger had said her dad was. The joy and relief of having found him was already wearing through to anger underneath. She had
been planning to get married, and he’d just gone camping, without even bothering to let anyone know?
As she drove up to the site, she saw her mom’s Volvo parked behind her dad’s Subaru. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. Jack said
he’d wait in the car, and when she got out, there were her parents, walking up through the trees, holding hands.
She ran for them, hugged her dad, and immediately started to cry. He smelled earthy and sweaty after days out in the woods.
“You’ve been gone for a million years!” she scolded. She was embarrassed to sound so childish, but she couldn’t seem to stop
herself. “We didn’t know where you were!”
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said, and she pulled back. She’d never seen him with a beard before, but his eyes were jarringly
familiar. She had really thought she might never see him again. The lawyer father she was used to, the Cranston father. And,
yes, they’d gone hiking and camping many times. But it was still so strange to see him here in the woods in his dirty T-shirt,
his beard.
Would he be mad at her about the wedding? She didn’t want to wait to find out. “I’m sorry, too! I’m not getting married,”
she blurted.
He smiled sadly. The familiar eyes went soft. “That’s okay, honey,” he said. “Your mom told me. We just want you to be happy.”
Yes, it was really him, she had thought then, and there was much more to say, but for that moment, Hailey had let it all go and hugged him again,
while her mom had stood by—and the world, which had been tilted off its axis for these seven interminable, excruciating days,
had begun to right itself again.
In the hours since, her dad, regarding the problem of canceling her non-refundable wedding, had had the idea to invite her
grandparents’ friends from away, the ones who’d been told not to come to the anniversary party, to come for a lobster bake
at the wedding venue instead. If Grandpa had a good day, like Greta said he’d had today, maybe he could even join in. Noah’s
family and friends would, of course, be disinvited, but Hailey’s dad said that, since they couldn’t get their money back,
they might as well have a great party. (Hailey’s mom had nudged him and said maybe they could invite the people who’d missed
seeing him at his birthday party, too, and it was hard to tell if she was teasing or simmering underneath her little smile.
But he’d put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head, and Hailey and her brothers and sister had exchanged happy
rolls of their eyes. Then Emma had called Reese, right there in the middle of all of them in the living room at Innisfree,
to tell her that, thanks to her, they’d found their dad because they’d known to search at lighthouses, and maybe she could
come up next weekend again, and they could start over?)
And not only did it seem like all this stuff was working out almost better than it would have if everything had gone according to plan, but now—thanks to the weird reconciliation between Hailey’s grandma and Jack’s, whatever that had been about—they were also going to get to keep Innisfree!
Hailey wasn’t sure what would happen with her grandparents, but she’d seen her grandma pull her mom aside just as everyone was heading to bed and say she had something to tell her in the morning, so maybe Grandma had changed her mind about moving to Florida.
Hailey hoped so—but, if she hadn’t, then lots of visits were in everybody’s future.
Either way, when it was time for Hailey to have the family that she hoped to have someday, her kids—and her brothers’ and
sister’s kids, too, if they had them—would get to grow up at Summerland Cove, just like she and her mom and her grandma had.
“God, it’s so amazing of your grandma to loan my parents the money so we can keep Innisfree in the family,” she told Jack,
for maybe the twelfth time, but it truly was. “Isn’t that wild, too, about my grandma deleting that staticky message last
Saturday?” Greta had remembered it when Lindy and David had told everybody about the message David had left. They’d assumed
maybe Tom had deleted it and forgotten about it, when in fact, Greta said, it must’ve been her. She’d explained how there’d
been no voice discernible in the message, and she’d assumed it was someone calling about the party who didn’t know their cell
phone wasn’t working. (In fact, that had been true—she just hadn’t dreamed it might be the guest of honor.) “I mean, if the
call had come through, if we’d gotten the message from my dad that he was heading Downeast to camp, like, none of this would’ve
happened.”
Hailey and Jack had reached the point and stopped, looking out to where the moon was reflected on the black water rolling
gently in. The night was warm and pleasant, and the soft breeze ruffled Hailey’s hair.
“I hate to say it, Hales,” Jack said, with another little smile, “but I’m glad the call was staticky.”
“You are?” she said, because even though it seemed like everything was going to work out for the best, it had still been the
most painful week of her life, and it was hard not to think that somehow all that pain would’ve been best avoided. “Seriously?
How can you be—”
“Because this,” he said, and he leaned down and kissed her, and though it had been seven years since she’d last kissed him,
it seemed suddenly as if no time had passed, and yet everything was brand new.