Chapter 22
The boardwalk looked like something out of a bridal magazine. Eli stood near the top, holding his coffee, taking in the beehive of activity transforming the Summer House into the perfect setting for Tessa Wylie’s wedding day.
White lace and linen fabric swooped over the railings. Mason jars filled with sea glass and wildflowers hung from shepherd’s hooks every few feet, catching the morning sun and scattering prisms across the weathered wood.
At the end of the boardwalk where the planks gave way to sand, a team was laying a white cotton runner leading out to an arch made of driftwood and covered in eucalyptus and white roses.
The wedding venue stood against a view of the Gulf that looked like God had painted it exclusively for this spectacular day.
Which, Eli knew, He had.
God’s plan for Tessa certainly wasn’t what anyone expected, but wasn’t that His greatest trick? The fun-loving dynamo who’d spent her life in search of the ever-elusive high of a good time had finally fallen into the arms of a man who’d once been an equally untethered teenager.
Now, more than thirty years later, both of them were grounded, loving, settled, and ready to be first-time parents to an adopted daughter.
Eli chuckled to himself, always in awe of the way his Father took the most unlikely people and guided them in His will. He squinted toward the sky, silently praying for Tessa and Dusty and thanking God for this day and this life…even if it wasn’t going quite the way he wanted.
Nodding at an electrician setting up a speaker, Eli ventured down the boardwalk to the sand, mulling the fact that he and Kate had barely talked since he came back from Atlanta.
They were quite cordial when others were around—she congratulated Meredith on the win over Vance and continued to shower Atlas with her love.
He tried to be “normal,” trusting that he and Kate weren’t the types to turn their heartache into household drama. He didn’t know how well she’d handled their breakup, but he sure felt an ache all week long.
Holding his coffee, he slipped past a florist weaving baby’s breath over the railing and let his bare feet hit the sand.
His mind drifted back to last night, after an impromptu “rehearsal” dinner, when he and Kate found themselves alone for a few moments in the kitchen.
The distance and tension was so real and so sad.
He had no idea how that would unfold later today when Kate stood next to her sister and he sat in the front row watching the nuptials.
“Eli?”
He turned to find Emma hustling toward him, sidestepping the electrician as she rushed closer. Her strawberry-blond hair swung free, still damp from a shower, and she wore shorts and a T-shirt she’d change out of later.
She was clutching something against her chest.
“Talk to you?” she called.
“Sure.” He waited for her, taking in the determined set of her jaw, which, of course, reminded him of her mother. “Walk with me?” he suggested.
“Yeah, yeah.” She popped onto the sand, also barefoot, still grasping what looked like a notebook. “Before everything starts and everyone’s around and I can’t get you alone,” she added as she joined him.
“Okay.” He took a sip of cooled coffee and studied her over the rim. “What’s going on?”
She held out the book. “I found this on Mom’s nightstand. It’s one of Vivien’s diaries from a hundred years ago.”
“A hundred?” He laughed. “That makes me feel old. How’d it end up in your room?”
“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at the spiral-bound notebook. “But no one said these were secret diaries, so I hope I don’t get in trouble for reading one. Aunt Vivien was seventeen when she wrote this.”
He nodded. That would have been…1994, he figured after some quick math.
“It’s so cool that she still has them,” she said.
“I found a box of those diaries when we demo’d the original cottage,” he told her.
“How they ended up in the rafters of the garage, I’ll never know, but I gave them to Vivien as their rightful owner.
No one will be mad that you read it. Your Aunt Tessa has treated us to a few hilarious readings this summer. ”
“It not all hilarious,” Emma said, her voice serious. “Some of it is kind of sad. And some, a little…prophetic.”
He threw her a look, fighting a smile. “Prophetic?”
“Not like the Bible prophetic,” she replied with a laugh. “But…I don’t know. I guess history does repeat itself.”
He slowed his step, mostly at the tone in her voice. “How so?”
She flipped open to lined journal pages, filled with feminine handwriting. “May I?”
“Doesn’t seem like anyone’s going to stop you,” he teased.
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head and taking his coffee cup, replacing it with the notebook. “You read it.”
“The whole thing?”
“This page. This entry. Right here.” She pointed to handwritten words. “Out loud, so I can hear it.”
He gave a soft laugh and played along, holding the book a few inches away since he didn’t have reading glasses with him.
“‘I watched Kate watch Eli. And it broke my heart a little. She thinks no one notices, but I notice everything. Kate is the smartest, kindest, most real person I know, and she would love Eli Lawson with her whole soul if he’d let her. But he won’t, because he’s blinded by Tessa.
Why is he so dumb?’” He snorted a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Excellent question, Viv.”
“Keep reading.”
He sighed and continued. “‘Kate just stands in the shadow, pretending the light doesn’t matter to her, when anyone with eyes can see she was made for it.’”
Eli closed the diary, his voice strained on the last line.
The words settled over him like a weight on his shoulder. Seventeen-year-old Vivien, with her teenage wisdom and her diary and her fierce love for the people around her, had seen what he’d been too young and, yes, too dumb, to see.
Kate was made for the light.
“My mom’s been in love with you since she was seventeen,” Emma said, her voice making it clear this was a major revelation. “And you’ve been in love with her since…” She searched his face. “When?”
“Since the moment I saw her again in the spring,” he said honestly. “She thought I was the landscaper and I thought she was…an angel.”
“Then how can you let her go?”
The question was so simple, so direct, so purely Emma—Kate’s evidence-based daughter, who’d spent a month learning that some things couldn’t be proven in a lab.
“It’s not about letting her go. It’s about what I can’t let go of.”
“Your faith.”
“My faith.” He started walking again, forgetting the coffee as he held Vivien’s diary.
They passed the arch being assembled on the beach, and the rows of chairs being lined up for later.
“I do not get this,” she murmured.
That made two of them. But he owed her an explanation and had no idea how much Kate had shared.
“What your mother is asking me to do is deny something as fundamental to me as breathing. I can’t stop that, even for her. Or I would.”
“I get it,” Emma said quietly. “And every day I understand that a little more and, honestly? I think it’s what makes you the man you are.”
He knew that was a compliment, but he also knew where the praise belonged. “That’s God’s doing,” he said softly. “But your mother sees it differently.”
“She’s blind, too, like you were,” she said softly, keeping the slow stride with him. “And I feel so responsible, Eli.”
“You?”
“Yes! You took me to that youth group, and it changed my perspective on everything. But it also ended things between you and Mom, and I hate that.”
“That’s not on you, Emma. Not even a little bit. You cannot take blame or feel guilt or anything.”
“I can and I do.”
“Don’t,” he said. “What happened between your mother and me was building long before that night. The youth group was just when we both had to stop pretending the gap between us could be papered over with love.”
Emma was quiet, the sounds of wedding preparation now distant and secondary to the waves and water.
“Can I ask you something about God?” she said.
“Always.”
“Is this His plan? You and Mom not being together?”
Eli took a breath. “I don’t always know God’s plan, just that He has one. I trust it, even when I can’t see where it’s leading or stand how much it hurts.”
She cringed and made a low grunt. “I hate that you’re both hurting. And it’s so avoidable! To quote the great Destin Diary, ‘Why is he so dumb?’”
He cracked up at that. “So dumb,” he agreed, giving her a little elbow jab.
As she looked up at him, he regarded her face in the sun, the resemblance to her mother overwhelming. Not just the eyes and the freckles, but that inquisitive expression of a person always, always seeking answers.
“I want you to know something,” she said. “I’m not all the way there yet. With God, I mean. I’m not, like, ready to be baptized or anything. I’m still struggling with the whole Jesus thing. Like, I know He was real, but was He just a good guy? A great teacher? A prophet? A liar? A crazy guy?”
“All commonly asked questions,” he said.
He knew that was the journey for many people—sure, there’s a God, but Jesus as savior? He also knew that reading the Bible and spending time with believers would eventually take her to Jesus, but it wasn’t his timing, it was God’s.
“But everything I’ve read and thought about and talked about with those kids at youth group—it makes sense to me,” she continued. “It makes more sense than anything else in my life right now. And that’s because of you.”
His throat tightened. “No,” he said roughly. “Not me.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t push it on me and I appreciate that. And you don’t push it on Mom, either.”
“It’s not up to me, and she has free will,” he reminded her.
“But if only you could prove to her that you’re right.” Emma’s voice took on the particular urgency of a teenager who believed that every problem had a solution if she just pushed hard enough. “My mom needs evidence, Eli. That’s how her brain works. She needs proof.”
“Faith isn’t always empirical.”