20. Kate
K ate accompanied Eli on a few errands around Destin, the two of them laughing and talking and enjoying the day before they finally got down to the business of driving to an older neighborhood in Santa Rosa Beach, about a half hour east of Destin.
They rumbled along in his truck, taking the scenic route along the water as far as they could, and as they turned inland to get back on the main highway, a text from Jonah buzzed her phone. After she read it, she let out a little groan.
“Don’t tell me,” Eli guessed, glancing from the traffic to look at her. “Your mom needs you home…tomorrow.”
She almost smiled at the bit of dread and disappointment in his voice. Not that she wished either on this dear man, but she knew it meant he didn’t want her to leave, and that touched her.
“No, this was from your son.” She held up the phone. “Hitting brick walls on the culinary arts search.”
His brows lifted. “Really? What’s the issue?”
“Well, he’s only found three decent programs anywhere near Destin,” she said, glancing at Jonah’s text. “There are some cooking classes in the area, but the only real degree he can find is at Pensacola State, and that’s a haul for daily drives. Plus, it’s a year-long program and he’ll want to get back to California before his baby is born in six months.”
“Words I never thought I’d hear,” he said softly. “But that does present a challenge for him, especially if he wants to work while he goes to school.”
“He has to,” Kate said, leaving no room for argument. At Eli’s look, she added, “He wants to earn this himself, Eli. Not mooch money from you. Respect that.”
“Oh, I do. And I respect that he wants a legit degree. But Pensacola State is far. There’s nothing else anywhere nearby?”
She re-read the text, seeing the subtext even more than the actual words. “He’s frustrated.”
“And that’s when he gives up,” Eli said on a sigh. “I’m praying God opens a door, and fast.”
She eyed him for a moment, used to his references to God and faith by now, but still not entirely comfortable with them. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
She cleared her throat, not wanting to be condescending or disrespectful, but she had to know. “Do you really believe there’s a man up in the sky looking down and worrying about Jonah’s degree?”
He gave in to a slow smile, looking like he’d expected the question or at least was used to it.
“In a word, yes. I don’t think He’s in the ‘sky,’ but I do think He is the Highest Power, and I have a good relationship with Him.” He let out a slow breath before continuing. “I have built my entire life on Him, Kate, and that will never change.”
The power of the statement rocked her. “Oh, well. Huh. I’m a scientist, so I don’t believe in…that.”
“I know.”
“And that will never change,” she added.
“If you’re worried about me cornering you and forcing you to read the Bible, you can stop. My faith is private and I’m not very good at evangelizing, sadly. But I do try to live with complete trust that God has the steps planned.”
She thought about that. “I can only imagine how broken you must have been after Melissa died…”
“And you think my faith was a crutch to get me through the pain.”
She nodded, hoping that wasn’t offensive.
But he just smiled. “Actually, she had become what they call ‘Christian curious’ about six months before she died. We both began exploring the concepts together, reading books but we hadn’t given ourselves to Christ. Then…then…yeah, then she was gone.”
She heard the rasp of pain in his voice, surprisingly fresh. “I’m so sorry, Eli,” she said, putting her hand over his on the console. “For your loss, of course, and for the question. I don’t mean to belittle something so important to you.”
“You didn’t,” he assured her. “I understand doubts more than I understand faith, to be honest. It’s a lot easier to doubt or simply refuse to believe.”
She considered that, trying—and failing—to understand such, well, ridiculous beliefs. “I just want you to know that I built my life on science, and it doesn’t co-exist with faith.”
“I’m not sure I agree, but…” He smiled and threaded his fingers through hers. “Why don’t you stick around for a long time, and we can discuss it?”
She took in a slow breath, allowing herself to just feel the gentle thrill of his touch and the sentiment.
“I wish I could,” she said just as the dashboard lit up with a call from Meredith Lawson.
“Do you mind if I take my daughter’s call?” He gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m kind of enjoying our conversation.”
“So am I, but yes, talk to her. She’s basically running your company and you’re…”
“Having fun with a beautiful woman.” He winked, then pressed a button on the steering wheel. “Hey, Mer.”
“Hi, Dad. How are you?”
“I’m with Kate Wylie and you’re on speaker,” he said.
She gasped softly. “Oh, wow. A Wylie girl! I feel like I’m meeting a secret celebrity I’ve only heard whispers about.”
Kate laughed at that. “Not a girl, not a secret, and certainly not a celebrity. Hello, Meredith.”
They chatted about the house and some business, then he filled her in on Jonah’s decision to stay, the excitement in his voice palpable as he told her the news.
“Wow!” Meredith exclaimed. “This is huge, Dad! I’m stunned. Culinary school? Does that mean he’d go back to California?”
“He wants to stay here so he can do some work on the house, but it seems the closest good program is at Pensacola State,” Eli said. “And that’s well over an hour away, closer to two with traffic.”
In a few seconds of quiet, Kate could hear a keyboard clattering on the other end.
“Let me do some poking around,” Meredith said. “If I know Jonah, he hit one obstacle and gave up.”
Eli chuckled. “Not quite, but…yeah. Can you work some of that Meredith Magic? I want him to stay. It’s honestly the best thing that’s happened in a long time.” He slid Kate a look and smiled. “Well, one of them.”
The words warmed her as much as the sun beating on the windshield from a sky so blue, it hurt to look at. A sky and a man she would miss very much when she got on that plane to Ithaca.
“She sounds amazing,” Kate said after they’d said goodbye to Meredith, thinking of all Eli had told her about his high-energy, overachieving daughter. “And she obviously loves Jonah.”
“She does, but they’ve had plenty of conflict over the years,” he said, peering at the GPS on his phone. “We turn up here into what looks like a small community. Hope it’s not gated.”
“If we get in, do you think we should knock on the door?” she asked. “I don’t want to give them a heart attack. They could be old or sick or…not remember us.”
“I hope they do, and I really hope they remember what happened that year,” Eli said as he turned off the main road into a residential area. “It’s become more important, actually.”
“Why?”
He blew out a breath. “It could affect…things,” he said. “I mean, I don’t like the idea of my mother having an issue with…you.”
“Or Tessa,” she added.
He gave her a look. “Don’t be coy, Dr. Wylie.”
“Coy? Me?” She laughed, aware of a tendril of heat curling through her chest, a longing she’d first felt as a teenager, hoping that Eli Lawson would someday kiss her.
“Oh, we’re here.” He slowed at a small brick one-story with impeccable landscaping and a cheery red door.
“And there’s someone.” Eli pointed to an old man coming around the side of the house in a giant sunhat, overalls, and with a shovel in his hand. Eli stopped the truck and stared at the man. “Think that’s Frank?”
“I do,” she said. “Just much, much older.”
He put the truck in Park and turned off the ignition. With one silent look at each other, they opened their doors and climbed out.
“Can I help you?” Frank croaked the question, stabbing his shovel into the earth and leaning on it.
“Frank Cavallari?” Eli asked as he met Kate at the front of the truck.
“What’s it to you, son?”
Eli smiled and came closer, extending his hand. “My name’s Eli Lawson. This is Kate Wylie. I believe you?—”
“No!” For a moment, he did look like he might fall over. “Not a chance you’re those young teenagers from Destin all those years ago.”
He remembered! Kate beamed at him while he and Eli shook hands first.
“Not teenagers anymore,” Eli said, sounding as happy as she felt. “But it’s good to see you, Mr. Cavallari.”
“You, too, young man.” He pushed back his straw hat and squinted at Eli, then Kate, then back to Eli. “Holy smokes, you’re the spittin’ image of Roger.”
She could have sworn Eli blanched. She knew him well enough by now to know he did not enjoy comparisons to his father.
“It’s good to see you, sir,” he said. “I hope we’re not intruding on you and, uh, Mrs. Cavallari. Is she here?”
“She better be or we’re all in trouble. She promised me ice-cold limoncello if I turned over her garden bed. It’s my own homemade. Come on in and have some, now.” He ushered them toward a side door, taking a moment to study Kate. “Artie and Jo Ellen’s girl, huh? You had a twin sister, right? Li’l wild thing, if I recall correctly.”
Kate laughed. “She still is. Tessa. How nice that you remember our families.”
He reached for the kitchen door, looking from one to the other. “We lost touch, you know. And it ’bout broke Betty’s heart. I think she’ll be very glad to see you. Come on in. Betty! Brace yourself, woman. Don’t keel over from a heart attack. The Lawsons and the Wylies are back.”
Kate and Eli shared a look, both of them laughing softly when a woman squealed like a teenage girl, nothing but delight in her voice.
For some reason, Kate sensed this was going to go very well.
The limoncello was cold—and strong—and so were the opinions of two people who might have been married for sixty years, but had extremely different memories of the past.
Betty thought the Summer House property had been on the old Scenic Highway; Frank remembered it as right off Henderson Beach. They were both wrong.
Betty recalled a night they went to AJ’s and Maggie had too much to drink and lost a shoe in the harbor. Frank insisted it was a different restaurant and it was Artie who got food poisoning that night. But they did agree it was fun and they all drank too much.
Betty was especially animated when she talked about meeting Jo Ellen when the family had first come shopping in Frank’s Italian Deli in Destin. Betty had hit it off with her because the Wylies were from New York.
“We just liked each other right away,” she said, her smile revealing yellowed teeth. “She was a good woman, and a fine mother.”
“She still is,” Kate said.
“That’s not how we met them,” Frank interjected. “It was Maggie. She came swooping into the deli like a true Southern belle looking for something ‘Eye-talian’ and I let her have her first taste of prosciutto. ” He pronounced it ‘pro-jute’ and gave a soft hoot. “Oh, she was a fan after that. That Georgia peach never had good Italian cold cuts.”
Betty gave him a side-eye. “That is not how we met them, Frank. That was another time. Oh, what does it matter? We were friends way back in the day and we had a lot of fun going out together those summers.”
Frank’s bushy brows moved. “We, uh, heard Roger had some problems in the end.”
Eli shifted uncomfortably. “He did, but we all like to remember him as you do, Frank. A man in his prime, a good father, and a loving husband.”
Frank lifted a brow as if that last one might have not hit quite right. And he shared a look with Betty who Kate could have sworn gave an infinitesimal shake to her head.
“Oh, Roger,” she said on a sigh. “He was always so…” Her voice trailed off.
“So…what?” Kate asked, leaning forward and sensing they’d just hit the gold they’d come to mine.
The older couple looked at each other again, this time with a question behind both sets of bifocals.
“It’s not important,” Frank finally said.
“It is to us,” Eli replied, bracing his elbows on his knees and leaning to look hard at them. “Our mothers are still alive, but they haven’t spoken to each other in thirty years, and they won’t say why. Kate and I—and our siblings—are trying to figure out what happened to cause that falling out. We were honestly hoping you’d shed some light on it.”
Betty huffed a breath and stood up, moving remarkably well for a woman deep in her eighties. “I need something in the kitchen.”
Kate stood and followed her in, sensing she might get more from a woman-to-woman chat.
“I think I left the shed unlocked.” Frank pushed up. “I better check. Come with me, son.”
When the door closed behind the two men, Betty turned and let out a long sigh. “I knew it would come to this someday,” she said. “People have to pay the piper.”
“What do you mean?” Kate asked, a sickening sensation crawling through her. “Please, Betty, tell me what happened.”
She thought for a moment, then her shoulders sank as if they couldn’t stand the weight of this anymore.
“I don’t know how far it went,” she said. “I don’t know if it got, you know, physical, but…”
Kate tried to swallow, already knowing she was going to hate this. “But what?”
“He’s dead and I don’t want it to change your opinion of your father, dear?—”
“Tell me,” she said through gritted teeth, bracing for…she didn’t know what.
“It was Maggie!” she said. “She had…power. She was beautiful, of course, but she could just reel a man in with one little finger. Have you ever met anyone like that?”
Yeah , she thought. My twin sister . “What did she do?”
“She made Artie love her!” Betty announced. “He fell so hard for that woman, he…he couldn’t see straight.”
And neither could Kate right then. Her father… loved Maggie ? She felt every drop of blood drain from her face.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure of course. I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday let alone what happened thirty years ago, but…” She tsked repeatedly, shaking her head. “I’m sure that’s why Roger bought Maggie that house, which they never told us about. But it would be like him to try to win her back after it all came out.”
“So…everyone knew about…this?”
“I don’t remember who knew what. Honestly, I don’t want to gossip, but I never liked Maggie Lawson and couldn’t imagine what Artie saw in her. I couldn’t find common ground with her like I could with your sweet mother. Tell me more about how Jo Ellen is, dear.”
Kate blinked at her, not sure she could make small talk after that…revelation.
Her father loved Maggie? And that caused the breakup? Her parents hadn’t ever given her any indication that there was a rift like that in their marriage, and they often spoke of the Lawsons without rancor.
But they never did speak to the Lawsons again, did they?
“She’s…all right,” Kate finally said, barely remembering what Betty had asked. “Sad, though. She misses my dad.”
“I’m sure she does. She was a sweet soul, so much kinder than Maggie, as I recall. But then…” She gave a dry laugh. “I’m eighty-six and I don’t recall all that well.”
The back door opened, and Eli came in first, his face as pale as Kate’s must have been. So Frank had told him this dark news, too.
“We better let these people get on with their lives,” Eli said, bringing the reunion to an abrupt halt. “I need to get back to Destin.”
She nodded, beyond grateful and anxious to leave.
After a rather rushed goodbye, some light hugs and quick waves, Eli and Kate hustled to the truck, climbing in, silent.
He turned on the ignition but didn’t move, staring straight ahead.
“He told you?” she guessed. “My dad and your mother.”
“What?” His head whipped to the side to look at her. “What are you talking about?”
She stared at him. “Betty said that my father fell for…Maggie. He was in love with her.”
He looked stunned. “Frank said that my father had an affair with Jo Ellen. And that he bought my mother the house as a consolation prize because she was so mad, she threatened divorce.”
She inched back, frowning. “No, not Roger and Jo Ellen. It was…Artie and Maggie.”
He shook his head. “Frank was clear. Roger wooed Jo Ellen hard, and Maggie went ballistic when she found out.”
They stared at each other and then, without really thinking about it, they both gave quick, short laughs.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Eli said. “Neither one of them can agree on a thing.”
“I’m not sure they remember any of it,” Kate said, the hurt that had her heart in a vise-grip loosening a little bit. “She doesn’t like Maggie, and this could have been in her imagination. Oh, I hope so.”
He nodded, letting out a breath it seemed like he’d been holding since they left the kitchen. “Frank despised my father. Honestly, if anyone had a little crush on Maggie, I think it was him and he made up the whole thing.”
“I’d like to think that,” Kate said. “Otherwise, one of them might be recalling correctly.”
“But there was a falling out,” Eli reminded her. “There’s no denying that. Or the fact that we don’t know any more than we did when we got here.”
“No, we don’t. Some doubts, some questions, and the same dearth of information we came with.” She reached into her bag for her phone as he drove down the street. “Let’s see if Jonah responded.”
“That’s funny,” Eli said. “You’re waiting for a text from my son.”
She smiled. “We have a nice connection, Jonah and me. We— Oh.” She stared at the message on the screen and her poor heart fell again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Mom took a tumble. Nothing serious, but her ankle is sore. My daughter is staying with her but…” She dropped the phone on her lap and closed her eyes.
“Really? Are you sure she’s okay?”
“Yes, but…you know what it means.”
He let out a grunt of disappointment. “You have to go back.”
“I do. I’m sorry, but…”
“Hey, you do what you have to do. I…I just…” He struggled for the right words then reached over and took her hand. “I’ll miss you so much.”
She clutched his hand, fighting tears that made no sense at all. Of course, this was Eli, who sent her logic flying away, replaced by confusion and longing and…faith.
“I could use some of those prayers of yours,” she said with a smile. “Even if I don’t believe in them.”
“You don’t have to.” He lifted her hand to put a soft kiss on her knuckles. “Because I do, and I’ll be saying the prayers.”
“For what?”
“That you stay in my life.”
She leaned her head back and smiled, letting a tear roll down her cheek. That was a prayer she hoped was answered.