Chapter 22 #3
Pulling it out, he read it under the table. No secret message from a loved one, but a text from Marcus Webb, who managed the environmental status of all open Acacia job sites.
M. Webb: Boss - heads up. Tropical Depression off Lesser Antilles just upgraded to Tropical Storm.
Expected to pass southern tip of Florida and into Gulf at hurricane status.
Current models show probable track is a direct hit to the Panhandle, possibly Destin area, likely a cat 3 or 4.
Projected landfall 7-10 days. Will send updates.
We need to address site prep for Lakeside and any coastal projects. This will be significant.
Eli stared at the screen. The music played. The lanterns flickered. Tessa was pulling Dusty onto the dance floor, laughing.
A hurricane…heading for Destin, for the Summer House, for Lakeside, for everything he’d built on this stretch of coast. There’d been a few storms to hit Destin in the last couple of decades, but nothing like Opal, in 1995. That hurricane had changed the coastline forever.
Homes destroyed, beaches reshaped, lives upended. That had been the families’ last summer. They’d never come back, and not just because of the storm—Roger’s arrest, the silence imposed on two mothers who loved each other, thirty years of broken bonds.
And now, thirty years later, the families had finally healed. And a storm was coming to test the foundation again.
He pocketed the phone. Not now. Not tonight. Tonight was Tessa’s.
The trio played something slow, and Vivien nudged him with her elbow.
“Go ask Kate to dance,” she whispered.
“Viv—”
“Go.” Her eyes were fierce with the particular love of a sister who’d watched her brother lose too much already. “Don’t be dumb.”
He smiled, the words from her old diary entry echoing. “You’ve accused me of that before.”
“Frequently.” Her smile softened. “Whatever’s happening between you two, you deserve one dance.”
He stood, straightened his jacket, and crossed the deck to where Kate sat alone at her mother’s table, Jo Ellen having been pulled into a conversation with Maggie and Crista.
“Dance with me?” he asked, extending his hand.
She looked up at him, and the war on her face—the wanting and the knowing and the pain of both—nearly undid him.
“We probably shouldn’t.”
“Probably not. Dance with me anyway.”
She took his hand and let him lead her to the edge of the dance floor, away from the center where Tessa and Dusty swayed and Lacey and Roman held each other close.
The trio played something soft and aching, and Eli pulled Kate against him and felt her settle there like she’d been designed for the space between his arms.
“I need to tell you something,” he said quietly.
“That sounds ominous for a wedding.”
“It is,” he confirmed. “There’s a tropical storm building in the Caribbean. It’s expected to become a major hurricane. The models show it could make landfall somewhere along the Panhandle in about a week or so.”
Kate pulled back and looked at him. “How bad?”
“Could be significant.”
Her eyes widened in horror.
“I know.” He held her gaze. “The Summer House is built to withstand a lot, but a direct hit from a major hurricane—I don’t know.
And Lakeside is wide open. All the framed houses are vulnerable to being wiped out.
And there are a lot of people here that will have to evacuate—we need to find a place for everyone. ”
He watched her process this—the scientist running calculations, the mother thinking about safety, the woman who loved this house and everyone in it putting all the variables into an equation.
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
“Kate, you should head back to Ithaca tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “No, I can help. Emma doesn’t start school for a few weeks, and, despite the brave face, she’d love to delay the inevitable.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’m not leaving before a hurricane, Eli. I’ll stay until it passes and we assess the damage.”
The relief that flooded through him was so intense he had to close his eyes for a moment. She was staying.
“Thank you,” he said. After a pause, he turned her slowly to the music. “But since you’re going to be here for another week or two…can I suggest something?”
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Don’t be. It’s right up your alley.” He looked down at her, and the words came out with a clarity that surprised him. “While you’re here, waiting out the storm—do some research. Real research, the kind you do better than anyone I know. Investigate it.”
A frown formed. “Investigate what?”
“God. Faith. The Bible. Everything you think is wrong with what I believe.” He watched her eyes sharpen.
“Go find hard evidence to prove me wrong. Read the skeptics, the scientists, the atheist philosophers. Build your case. And if you can prove to me—with data and logic and the kind of evidence that would stand up in a peer-reviewed journal—that there’s no God, I’ll listen. ”
She stared at him. “You want me to disprove God.”
“I want you to try. Honestly and thoroughly, the way you’d approach any hypothesis.” He pulled her closer. “I’m not afraid of what you’ll find, Kate. I’m actually curious.”
He wanted to add that many people who’d done that research had ended up somewhere other than they’d expected, but he didn’t want to scare her off the idea.
She studied his face with the focused intensity he loved—a look that meant her mind was fully engaged and running at capacity.
“What gave you this idea?” she asked.
“Not what, who. Your daughter.”
Her whole expression softened. “She wants me to research it?”
“She’s searching for the truth, too,” he said. “And who knows? You might get a book out of it and find your next career.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. Not a smile—not yet—but the precursor to one. “If I prove you wrong—”
“I’ll respect your findings,” he said. “And if you don’t, I expect the same.”
She held his gaze, swaying together, lost and close and deeply together in that moment. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he felt her breathe—one long, slow exhale that carried the tension of weeks with it.
“Is that a yes?” he asked. “You’ll do the research?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with eyes that were bright and complicated and, beneath everything, still full of a love she couldn’t argue away no matter how hard she tried.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The trio finished their song, and before the last note faded, Tessa’s voice rang across the deck.
“Okay, people! Enough with the slow stuff. It’s time for the real music!” She grabbed the wireless microphone from the trio’s stand and grinned at Kate and Vivien with the incandescent joy of a bride who’d waited fifty years for this moment. “Ladies? You know what time it is.”
The opening notes hit like sunlight…well, sunshine. And like old times, they were walking on it.
Tessa let out a loud “Woot!” and Kate laughed—a real laugh, the first one Eli had heard from her in days—and Vivien shrieked and flew across the dance floor.
The three of them belted out the iconic opening line of “Walking On Sunshine,” linking arms and singing the words to the song that had been their anthem since 1989.
Emma appeared from somewhere, sliding in beside her mother, singing every word. Lacey joined them, hips moving, Crista swayed with her baby bump, Nolie spun in circles around them all. Even Olive joined in, her tiny feet jumping up and down.
Jo Ellen and Maggie stood at the edge, clapping and singing along, proving that they knew the words, too.
Peter came to stand beside Eli at the railing, drinking in the spectacle with a grin that came from somewhere deep and content.
“Those are our girls,” Peter said, taking Eli back three decades when the two of them tried to act cool in the face of these crazy ladies they loved so much.
“Some things never change,” Eli said on a sigh, but then he remembered the storm.
Sometimes they did change. With that thought, he pulled out his phone and showed Peter the text from his employee. Peter read it, his expression sobering.
“That’s what the sheriff’s alerts have been for the past hour,” Peter said. “A direct hit could be Opal all over again.”
Eli looked at the Summer House rising behind them—the house he’d designed and built on a foundation that went deeper than any engineer had recommended, because he’d known that anything worth building had to be able to withstand the worst. The lights were on in every window, glowing warm against the darkening sky, and the music bringing everything to life.
“Could be,” Eli agreed. “But we’ve weathered worse storms.”
Peter nodded, and the two men turned back to the dance floor, where now almost every guest had joined in to sing about walking on sunshine and meaning every word.
The celebration rose up to the night sky—the music and the laughter and the family and the faith and the storm that was coming and the love that would have to be strong enough to survive it.
And Eli Lawson, who’d spent his whole life building things that lasted, looked at Kate Wylie dancing in the lantern light, and trusted—the way he’d always trusted, with his whole imperfect, believing heart—that the foundation would hold.
It had to.
Don't miss the next book in the Destin Diaries series, The Summer We Sailed Away. As a hurricane bears down on the Panhandle, Kate has to undertake the toughest experiment in her life.
Jonah falls hard for Pepper, but learns she carries a secret that means she can never give him her heart, while Dusty and Tessa face a roadblock that could cost them the family they’ve dreamed of building.
But in the catastrophic aftermath of the storm, it will be Maggie who must find strength and optimism…and they’ll come from the most unlikely source.
When the winds blow over Destin, the families come together like never before to save their home, their memories, and everything they hold dear. You don’t want to miss a single page of The Destin Diaries!