Chapter 15 #2
Emma would read the texts. She’d feel the betrayal. And she’d have to face the fact that if the coach decided to take her off the team, there was actual cause, based on the pictures Emma had sent.
Would the coach do that? Kate didn’t think so, but if Emma’s teammates petitioned?
It didn’t matter. Once Emma saw those texts, she wouldn’t walk onto a volleyball court with those girls for love or money.
Pushing off the bed, Kate closed her eyes and let the kid pain—the worst pain—squeeze her throat and sting her eyes. Emma didn’t deserve this! She’d made a mistake and was sorry and her only crime was having really flaky friends and flirting with the wrong guy.
She stood at the window, looking out at the Gulf, arms crossed, trying to slow her heartbeat.
The water was emerald-green—Destin green—and the sky was cloudless.
Somewhere down on the beach, her daughter was playing with a seven-year-old, unaware that the life she’d left behind in Ithaca was still reaching for her with sharp little claws.
Then, from downstairs, she heard the front door open.
“Anybody home?”
Eli.
Kate took one breath, then another, and centered herself, letting the rollercoaster of life take her from low to high.
She went downstairs and found him in the kitchen, setting his bag on the counter, looking tired and tan and so much like home that her throat ached all over again.
“Hey,” she said.
He turned and smiled—the real one, the one that crinkled the corners of his blue eyes—and opened his arms.
She walked into them and pressed her face against his shoulder and held on, letting everything that was wrong fall away. The texts, the school, the faith, the future—all of it dissolved into the simple, solid warmth of this man’s loving arms.
“I missed you,” she murmured.
“Three days felt like a month.” He kissed the top of her head. “How’s everything here?”
She pulled back and looked up at him, adjusting her glasses. “Better now.”
“Aww. I like the sound of that, Lady Katie.”
“I like you,” she countered, speaking from the heart. “And…” Before she spilled out the request for his weekend, she stopped. Emma might need her. Emma might be broken after reading those texts.
“And…” he prompted.
“I’m glad you’re home.”
He gave her a squeeze. “It’s home now, especially with you here.”
She hung on to the sweet pronouncement and knew that date or no date, volleyball team or no volleyball team, she could figure anything out with this man by her side.
“Let’s walk after dinner,” she said, hoping she’d know more by then.
He smiled. “It’s a date.”
Emma must not have looked at her phone, Kate decided as they all cooked a “welcome home, Eli” meal together.
Well, not all. Jonah said he couldn’t spend one more minute in a kitchen and disappeared with Atlas downstairs, and Meredith texted that she’d be working late.
But Peter came over to spend the evening with Vivien and have dinner with them, and Nolie set the table with Crista’s supervision. Mom and Maggie sipped cocktails on the deck, while Eli grilled some burgers and Kate made a salad and fries.
After a long time upstairs alone, presumably showering off the beach but not crying her eyes out, Emma joined them looking remarkably…normal.
Or was she? It was hard to tell, but she seemed okay.
They all ate and talked, catching Eli up on life at the Summer House without him, enjoying a gorgeous summer night at the big table outside.
Periodically, Kate would check in with Emma, who was talking to Nolie and Crista, laughing at things Maggie said, and acting as if nothing had happened.
Maybe it hadn’t yet.
After dinner, Eli wasted no time sliding his arms around Kate from behind, nuzzling into her neck. “Don’t clean up. Let’s walk.”
“Oh, but I want to…” Talk to Emma. “Finish here first,” she said instead.
“No, I got this, Mom.” Emma appeared from…somewhere. Bright, smiling, nudging Kate to the side. “Go,” she urged, giving her a look. “Ask him!” she mouthed.
She couldn’t have read those texts yet. But it would be awkward to ignore the order, so she pressed a kiss on Emma’s cheek and left with Eli a minute later.
Almost immediately after hitting the sand, Kate felt better. They opted to go barefoot and walk in the surf, which was heavenly, taking in the sky in shades of peach and coral reflecting off the turquoise water.
Eli walked beside her, clearly relieved to be moving after spending half the day in the car.
“Emma seems great,” Eli said, unprompted.
She looked up at him, so grateful for his skills of perception. “She is now, but…”
“But?”
On a sigh, she told him everything, from the way Emma had danced out to the beach to the conversation with Matt, to the endless texts that showed enough on the screen to put two and two together and come up with…disaster.
And he reacted exactly as a father would—empathetic, dismayed, angry, and concerned.
“What can we do?” he asked.
The “we” touched her. “Wait for the bomb to detonate, I guess.”
“I mean long term, Kate. Are you going to let her face that in a few weeks? Fight with the coach to keep her place? Change schools?”
“That seems drastic,” Kate said, but she knew if given that list of options, Emma would transfer in a heartbeat. “Doesn’t that teach her to run from her problems?”
“A little,” he conceded. “And it will blow over, but…senior year. Not fair.”
She loved that he understood that.
“And…” she said, dragging the word out. “It kind of affects…us.”
He slowed his step and eyed her. “Us?” He actually sounded hopeful, as if he wanted there to be an “us” so badly—another thing she loved.
“Well, this weekend.”
“What’s this weekend?”
She sighed and stopped, looking up at him, oddly nervous—not that she thought there was any chance he’d say no. “I kind of made plans for a big…date.”
Inching back, his smile returned full force. “Tell me more.”
“Well, I was thinking of this…” She pulled out her phone, found the photo she’d saved, and held it out to him.
The image showed the historic lodge at Wakulla Springs, the Mediterranean-style hotel surrounded by towering cypress trees, with arched windows overlooking the signature waters.
Eli took the phone and studied the picture. Then he looked up at her with recognition dawning in his eyes.
“Wakulla Springs?”
“I thought we might leave early Saturday morning for a day—and night—there. Picnic, glass-bottom boat, some swimming. In fact, I made all the reservations. So, life and daughter permitting, would you like to go on this date with me?”
He laughed softly. “As if you need to ask. Kate! What a sweet thing to do.”
Wrapping her arms around his waist, she angled her head to look up into his eyes. “I want to get back to, you know, us.”
“Are you worried about us?” he asked, his tone deeply serious.
“Not worried, exactly. But I got a talking to from my sister and your sister.” She lifted a shoulder. “They reminded me that this isn’t a one-issue relationship. This is a romance and…I want to get back to that.”
He shook his head, obviously a little speechless. “I wish I’d thought of it. Wakulla? Why?”
“Remember, we went once during one of the summers here. Second to last, I think. You were in college and I was…” She closed her eyes and dropped her head back. “I was so crazy about you I couldn’t see straight.”
He kissed her exposed neck, making her shiver despite the warm air.
“I love this idea.” Another kiss. “I love this reason.” A longer one. “And I love…” He made his way to her lips. “This woman.”
She darn near melted on the sand. Then common sense returned. “But Emma…”
He backed up and nodded. “Let’s check on her. That’s most important.”
And once again, her heart swelled with love for Eli and his priorities.
“If we can’t go this weekend, maybe next. Or the one after that.”
“Tessa’s wedding,” she reminded him. “But let’s see how she’s doing. By now she must have read her phone. And she really wants us to go, so…”
“So we hope for the best.” He pulled her closer, his arm sliding around her waist. “Tell me what you’ve planned.”
“Everything.” She leaned into him, giddy in a way that felt seventeen and fifty at the same time.
“We drive up Saturday morning—it’s about two and a half hours.
I’ve booked us on the riverboat tour. You know, that beautiful cruise through cypress trees where you see alligators and manatees and every kind of bird.
Then swimming in the springs—the water’s sixty-eight degrees year-round and the clarity is unreal.
A scientist could lose her mind in water that clear. ”
“What about this scientist?”
“This scientist has already lost her heart,” she admitted. “What’s a mind at this point?”
He laughed so hard, she had to hug him and get another kiss.
“Oh, and dinner in the Edward Ball Dining Room,” she continued as they made their way back up to the boardwalk. “I snagged a great table overlooking the water. Southern cuisine, candlelight, the works. And we stay the night. I got separate rooms, too.”
He gave her an appreciative smile. “Thought of everything.”
“Vivien and Tessa were right,” she added as they walked to the house.
“We’ve been so tangled up in the hard stuff that we forgot the simple stuff.
And the simple stuff is that I love you and I want to spend a weekend with no distractions.
Just you and me and a spring where I once fell off a diving platform and you swam over to save me. ”
He threw a look at her. “I saved you?”
“It probably wasn’t the seminal moment for you that it was for me. Tessa was sick, so I guess I was the next best thing.”
He scoffed at that. “You are the only thing, Kate Wylie.”
Turning, he cupped her face in both hands and kissed her—slow and thorough. The kiss made the Gulf disappear and the sunset irrelevant and every complicated question between them fade into something that could wait.
“Let’s find Emma,” he whispered. “We’ll decide yes or no when we see how she is.”
“I’m surprised I don’t hear her wailing from here,” Kate murmured as they reached the pool and took the spiral steps to the upstairs deck.
They found her there, alone on the sofa, all the others gone. She had her head back, eyes closed.
“Hi, honey,” Kate said gently. “Are you okay?”
She straightened and blinked at them, her eyes remarkably dry. “I’m…yeah. I’m good.”
Eli and Kate exchanged a quick look, but not so quick that Emma didn’t notice.
“Why?” she asked.
They both came closer, and Emma sat next to her, while Eli took the chair across from them.
“Em, I have a confession to make. I—”
“Talked to Matt. I know. He told me you…you know about the team.” She swallowed hard, fighting emotion if not actual tears.
“Oh, honey.” She reached for her. “I’m sorry.”
Emma hugged her but didn’t dissolve. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m fine, really.”
Kate drew back and searched her face. “It’s wrong.”
“Yeah,” she said, lifting a shoulder. “But it’s just…” She let out a long, slow exhale and turned to Eli, an expectant look in her eyes. “I’ve been reading.” She put her hand on a book next to her that Kate hadn’t noticed.
Not a book. That book.
“And did that help?” Eli asked.
“It did,” she said. “Those dumb girls don’t get the final say. Sometimes things happen for a reason. A good reason.”
Eli nodded. “He works all things together for the good of those who love Him.”
Kate didn’t react, but Emma beamed at him. “I’m choosing to think something good might come of this,” she said. “And I’m not wasting tears on those mean girls.”
Kate felt her jaw drop. “Really? You’re not upset?”
“Oh, I’m upset. Next level.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “But they don’t get to win. Now, tell me. Are you two going to celebrate romance on a glass-bottom boat or what?”
Still stunned, Kate looked at Eli, who took her hand.
“We sure are,” he said.
Kate squeezed his hand, beyond grateful for this outcome. Whatever Emma had found in that book, it was holding her together in a moment that should have broken her apart. And that helped her mother’s heart.