Chapter 1 #2
“Speaking of your kids,” Vivien said. “Emma was a surprise last night. Didn’t Matt want to tag along and spend the rest of his summer in Destin?”
Kate shook her head. “He’s happy at Jeffrey’s,” she said, referring to her ex-husband. “But Emma. Yeah. She’s…here.”
“Did you get any time with Eli last night?” Vivien asked, maybe misconstruing the wistful note in Kate’s voice.
She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and considered how much truth to offer on a day that was supposed to be about Tessa’s happiness.
“Briefly,” she said. “But it was so late last night because of the layover delay. But I’ve missed him and I…think he’s missed me.”
“No thinking about it,” Vivien assured her. “The word pining comes to mind. My poor dear brother has looked a little lost since you left, although he’s kept himself busy trying to land a big project.”
“Lakeside.” Kate remembered discussing the local master-planned community development that would be a coup for Eli’s Atlanta-based company, Acacia Architecture.
“Have you been pining?” Vivien pressed.
“I’m not really a pining type, but if you’re asking me if I love him, the answer is yes.”
Vivien chuckled, probably at the directness of the declaration. Why not? It was true. “Pull that old diary out, Viv, and you’ll see, like you and Peter, some dreams die hard.”
Vivien laughed at the line from the diary they’d read. “Well, Peter and I are together now. Rock solid. But you and Eli?”
“Maybe not so rock solid,” Kate admitted, setting down her coffee and staring out to the street for a moment.
“Because of the distance?” Vivien asked when Kate didn’t elaborate.
“Yes, but, believe it or not, I don’t think our distance is going to keep us from making this work. We’re smart and people move or adjust. The real issue might be…squishier.”
Vivien lifted a knowing brow. “His faith.” It wasn’t a question.
Kate nodded. “Eli’s Christianity isn’t casual, Viv. It’s not Sunday mornings and Christmas carols.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” Vivien confirmed. “It’s how my brother makes decisions, how he sees the world, how he…processes everything.”
“I realize that,” Kate said. “And I respect that. I genuinely do. But I’m a scientist and have been my entire adult life.
I look at the world through data and evidence and peer-reviewed research, and when he talks about faith and God’s plan, I…
” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I don’t see what he sees. I can’t.”
“You’ve talked about it?” Vivien asked.
“Yes, we’ve talked about it. We’ve talked around it. We’ve had the gentle version and the not-so-gentle version of the conversation.”
“And?”
“And…he doesn’t try to convert me, and I don’t try to argue him out of it.
We’re both very civilized and very respectful and it’s—” She pulled off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“It’s exhausting, to be honest. Because respect doesn’t change the fact that we see life in fundamentally different ways, and at some point, those different opinions will collide.
I don’t know when or how, but I know they will. ”
Vivien was quiet, turning her cup slowly on the table. “I won’t pretend I understand Eli’s level of belief,” she said carefully. “He didn’t grow up with it.”
“He needed a crutch for the pain after his wife was killed in a plane crash,” Kate said matter-of-factly. There couldn’t be a question as to why Eli leaned into God.
But Vivien angled her head in doubt. “I’m not sure if it’s that simple. He and Melissa were exploring Christianity when she died. She might have been further along than he was, since she’d confided to me that she wanted to get baptized.”
Kate winced slightly. That’s the woman Eli would want—a baptized woman. Something she would never be.
“Look, Kate. I’ve seen you two together and it’s real.” Vivien reached across the table with a comforting hand. “The universe went to a lot of trouble to put you back in each other’s paths for a reason.”
Kate wanted to argue that “the universe” didn’t orchestrate anything and it certainly had no “reason” for the timing or trouble. Nothing but coincidence and geography and a series of family events had put them in the same zip code.
She let it go, though. The fact was, the Eli situation was not the biggest thing keeping her up at night, nor was it the reason she’d wanted to have coffee.
She needed to get something off her chest with another mother. As she considered how to share the story, Kate felt the whole weight of the last few weeks press down on her shoulders. She’d been carrying this alone because Emma had begged her to.
A seventeen-year-old’s shame was a sacred and terrible thing, and Kate would do anything to protect her child, including swallow her own rage and fear and helplessness until she choked on it.
But she was choking.
“I have a, um, situation with Emma,” she finally said.
Vivien straightened. “Is she okay?”
“Physically, yes. Emotionally…” Kate sighed. “She was working as a lifeguard at the country club this summer, you know.”
“I do. She was adamant about not joining you in Destin this summer because of the job. I assume it’s over now?”
“Oh, it’s over, but not the way she wanted.” Kate sighed. “She met a boy.”
She watched Vivien’s face shift from concern to careful attention. They were both mothers of beautiful girls. They both knew that “she met a boy” could go in a lot of different directions, and the tone in Kate’s voice left no doubt which one this was. South.
“He was a member’s son. A year older than her. Charming, apparently, in the way that boys who know they’re good-looking are charming.” Kate’s jaw tightened. “He convinced her to send him some…pictures.”
She didn’t have to say what kind. Vivien’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Kate.”
“Yeah. Not a nude, but…bad enough. And the jackass shared them.” The words tasted like metal. “He sent them around to all the other kids who work at the club, the other members’ kids. Then somehow one of the pictures ended up in a group chat that half her school is on.”
Vivien closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were bright with the particular fury that only another mother could summon. “That’s criminal. That’s—she’s a minor, Kate. That is the distribution of—”
“I know what it is.” Kate’s voice came out harder than she intended. “Believe me, I know. But right now, the legal questions are secondary to the fact that my daughter can barely look at herself in the mirror.”
She paused, remembering Emma’s face when she’d confessed what happened. The way her sweet daughter had curled on the bathroom floor, a shattering, sobbing seventeen-year-old.
“She can’t go anywhere in Ithaca without feeling like everyone’s seen it,” Kate continued, steadier now.
“The country club fired her, which is insane. She’s the one who was exploited and she’s the one who lost her job.
School starts in September and she’s told me flat out she’s not going back.
And honestly, Viv, I don’t know how to make her. ”
“What about Jeffrey?”
“Jeffrey found out before I did,” she replied.
“Someone at the club called him. And his response was typical of my ex-husband. He completely lost it. Screamed at Emma about judgment and reputation and how could she be so stupid.” She dug her thumbnail into the side of her paper cup.
“He didn’t ask if she was okay. He didn’t ask how she was feeling.
He went straight to what she’d done wrong and stayed there, and Emma—”
She had to stop and breathe.
“What happened?” Kate pressed.
“Emma had been spending the summer with him, as you know, so she packed a bag and took an Uber to my house at eleven at night and said she was never going back to her father’s. And when I looked at her face, Viv, I didn’t argue. I just let her cry.”
Vivien gave a sympathetic moan. “She’s seventeen. You remember what we were like at that age.”
“Riding bikes and watching weddings? We didn’t have…pictures on the internet.”
“But it doesn’t change the confusion and mistakes.”
Kate huffed out a breath. “But ours don’t have a permanent record, unless you count your diaries.”
“And if one word about Peter had ended up as public knowledge?” Vivien looked skyward. “Oh, that poor girl. I’m so glad you brought her.”
“She practically flung herself on the plane.”
Vivien smiled. “Good. Now she’s surrounded by people who won’t judge her.”
“If she’ll let down her walls,” Kate said. “She doesn’t know anyone except Grandma Jo Ellen and her Aunt Tessa, who’s a little busy at the moment.”
“She’ll sink into the Summer House,” Vivien assured her.
Kate hoped so. Since they’d arrived last night, Emma had spoken maybe fifteen words. She’d gone straight upstairs to the room they were sharing and put in her earbuds and turned her face to the wall.
“Have you talked to Eli about this?” Kate asked.
“No,” Kate said. “She’s dealt with her dad’s fury. I don’t know what another man’s opinion will accomplish.”
“Eli isn’t just ‘another man,’” Vivien reminded her. “He doesn’t know the meaning of fury. He’s steady, and he’s not her father, which right now is actually an advantage. He’ll listen to her without losing his temper and without making it about himself.”
“Viv, Eli and I have our own issues to deal with. I’m not going to dump my daughter’s crisis on him.”
“You’re not dumping. You’re letting someone who cares about you help. And I’m telling you—not that you don’t know this—Eli is the kind of man who shows up when things are hard. That’s who he is. It’s the best part of who he is.”
Kate considered that, thinking about Eli in the kitchen last night, the careful way he’d carried Emma’s bag upstairs without being asked, along with a quick stolen kiss for Kate and a quiet, “Glad you’re here.”
He hadn’t pushed or tried to corner her into a conversation. He’d just been there, solid and warm, like a lighthouse you could see from a distance even when you weren’t sure you wanted to come ashore.
Oh, for God’s sake, Kate. A light house? You have completely lost the plot.
“Maybe I’ll talk to him,” she conceded. “Let me think about it.”
“Of course,” Vivien said with a little wry doubt in her voice.
“What?” Kate asked.
“Just remember that sometimes thinking is your way of avoiding feeling.”
Kate opened her mouth to argue and closed it again, because Vivien was right and they both knew it. She’d spent her whole adult life thinking her way out of feeling.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, picking up her glasses to slide them back into place. “Maybe I’ll talk to him.”
Vivien nodded, satisfied, and leaned back in her chair. “I still can’t believe our Tessa is married and nary a white rose or lantern in sight.”
Kate laughed at the reference to the diary. “Well, she got what she needed,” she said. “The legal piece, for Olive. But she should have the real wedding, too.”
“I have an idea,” Vivien said with a shot of excitement in her voice. “Let’s throw her a wedding! Maybe not the extravaganza from my diary, but…something beautiful. On the beach, with the family, with—”
“Yes!” Kate instantly loved the idea. “We can do that before the summer ends. A ceremony at sunset, the whole family, all of it. Dusty has a lot of friends in Destin, and she deserves a real wedding. One that she doesn’t insist on planning herself.”
“Well, she is an event planner, but with Lacey gone, I think she’ll let us take over,” Vivien said. “Could we? Would you?”
“Without a second’s hesitation.”
“What about work? Are you going back soon?”
Kate gave her a look as they hit the last big snag in her life. “My grant got killed,” she said, referring to the government review that had been the reason she’d gone back to Ithaca a month ago. “The lab is closed—temporarily, I hope. But for now, I have no real work.”
“Really? How can they just close your lab?”
“Welcome to academia,” Kate said dryly. “Budget cuts are the official line, but really, I think the new review committee just didn’t prioritize our research.
Guess what? Experiments on lithium-sulfur battery capacitor for electric cars aren’t the priority they used to be.
” She rolled her eyes, thinking of the precious tests that used to keep her in the lab until midnight.
“The whole program is essentially on hold. There’s nothing for me to do there right now. ”
“No teaching?”
“I have some graduate students I work with who can do everything online. I don’t need to be back at Cornell for a while.”
Maybe ever, but she didn’t add that or Vivien would be planning her wedding.
“Oh, Kate. That’s rough.”
Rough was one way to describe it. Kate had spent a decade building that lab, fighting for funding, publishing papers that nobody outside her field would ever read.
She’d poured herself into the work the way she’d once poured herself into her marriage—completely, methodically, at the expense of almost everything else.
And now the work was paused and the marriage was over and her daughter was falling apart and the man she loved lived in a world she couldn’t fully enter.
Quite the list, Dr. Wylie.
“So I’ll stay,” she said, straightening in her chair as they finished their drinks. “Emma needs to be away from Ithaca. I need time to figure things out with Eli. And Tessa is going to have a real wedding if I have to drag her down the aisle myself.”
Vivien smiled at her. “I think Destin is exactly where you’re supposed to be right now.”
Kate wanted to say that she didn’t believe in “supposed to be.” That the universe was an expanding cosmos, not a conscious force arranging people’s lives like furniture.
Then she thought about Tessa’s face at the courthouse, radiant and certain. She thought about Eli in the kitchen, with his whispered warmth. She thought about Emma, who was somewhere in the Summer House right now, probably still curled up with her earbuds in, hiding and paying for a dumb mistake.
Maybe “supposed to be” was just another way of saying “out of options.”
“All right,” Kate said, picking up her coffee. “But I would like a favor from you.”
“Anything,” Vivien said without hesitation, which touched Kate.
She leaned in with a smile that felt coy, but was genuine. “Can I read more of that diary? The one from when we were seventeen? It might give me insight on another seventeen-year-old girl I love.”
“Of course! It’s yours. And when you finish that, there’s one more, from the last summer.”
“Oof.” She dropped back on the chair. “Let’s do seventeen first. I liked that summer.”
Vivien gave her a sly look. “You’ll like this one, too.”
She hoped so. Her life couldn’t get much messier.