24. Eli
E li actually loved the idea of keeping the house in the family, and hoped Maggie might see the real benefit of it. She wanted them to be happy—any mother would. And if having a luxurious beach house that they shared made them happier than extra money in the bank, then surely Maggie would agree they should keep it.
Frankly, whether they kept it or sold really should make no difference to her.
But her issues with the Wylies ran deep—deeper than the house or she would have sold the property years ago.
That’s what kept Eli awake all night—whatever Maggie hated about Artie and Jo Ellen, would it affect his relationship with Kate? Because, if he was being completely honest, that relationship, whatever it was or could be, had become one of the most important things to him, if not the most important thing.
He thought about Kate day and night and wanted to talk to her constantly. If she felt the same way, there had to be a solution. There had to be a future. There had to be hope.
But he wanted to get the Maggie roadblock out of the way—or at least get to the bottom of it.
So he felt strongly that they had to tell Crista that the Wylie girls had been here, which he knew she would report to their mother. And then, he hoped, Maggie would at least tell Crista why she had an issue with a family she hadn’t seen in thirty years.
If he knew why, he could solve the problem. He hoped.
“You ready?” Vivien asked, tucking her legs under her on the seat across from him, the morning light pouring over the patio deck.
“I’m ready.” He picked up his phone and tapped Crista’s name. While it connected, he quietly closed his eyes to pray for God’s help on this.
She answered on the first ring, of course. Perfectionist Crista was always on top of every aspect of her life.
“I’m leaving in an hour,” she told them after a quick greeting and some light small talk. “Mom’s flight doesn’t take off until three, but the gardening group is getting to the airport four hours ahead of time.” She laughed, sounding a little lighter than usual. “I can’t imagine their poor tour guide when they get to the Netherlands with four septuagenarians who want to see every tulip in Holland.”
“And what are you going to do for a month without Maggie?” Vivien asked.
“A lot less,” Crista said. “Not that she’s difficult, of course, but just having one less person in the house makes my life easier. Nolie will miss her desperately, but Mom has appointed her little namesake as the keeper of Aunt Pittypat, so I guess Nolie will be sleeping with a dog for a month.”
“Well, maybe you could bring Nolie and Aunt Pittypat down here for a visit,” he said. “I’d like you to see the house.”
“Oh…I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I could…”
Eli and Vivien shared a look, knowing the rest of that sentence. If Maggie didn’t go, then Crista wouldn’t, either.
“You need to come down,” Vivien said.
“Oh, please don’t tell me there’s some weird government problem,” Crista said. “Ever since Mom told us about this, I’m dreading that a federal agent is going to show up and take it away from us.”
“I’ve worried about that myself,” Eli said. “But it’s not happening. It’s ours and, uh, that’s what Vivien and I want to talk to you about.”
“Mmm?” She sounded surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Crista, we think we should keep this house and have it as a family gathering place,” he said. “All of us would own it and have full access to it. You and Anthony could bring Nolie down every summer and she could have that same magical childhood we did.”
That was met with dead silence, and Vivien dropped back on the sofa, closing her eyes.
“That’s why you need to see the place,” Eli said quickly. “And hear us out. Yes, it’s a lot of cash, but this house is spectacular, and we could make so many memories here. Nolie would love the beach.”
Again, long silence.
“Destin’s changed, of course,” he said. “But this beach has the same magic it always did.”
“I’m not opposed.”
Vivien gasped and covered her mouth with two hands.
“Really?” Eli asked, feeling a huge smile form.
“I’m not convinced, either,” Crista said. “But I could see the appeal of having a beach house. It’s worth talking about with Anthony, I suppose. And weighing what we’d be giving up financially.”
“You’ll love it here,” Eli said. “We’ve really been enjoying it. The Wylies have, too.”
“The what ?” She barked the word. “What did you say? Have you been in touch with them?”
Eli’s eyes shuttered. “Actually, Kate and Tessa have been here?—”
“Are you out of your ever-lovin’ minds?”
“Crista.” Vivien shot forward. “How can we hate a family when we don’t know what they did? You—and Mom—are hanging on to thirty-year-old grudges like we’re the Hatfields and McCoys or something! Why should we hate them?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, lowering her voice. “But Mom does, and we need to respect that.”
Eli didn’t need to respect it. And Crista needed to see the house and meet Tessa. Kate, too, if he could get her down here, even for a weekend.
“Why don’t you just visit?” he asked. “Let’s plan a long weekend while Mom’s away—all of you come and just see what this is all about. Then we’ll make a decision.”
She was quiet again, but it didn’t sound like that furious silence. This was way better than he could have hoped—not the flat-out rejection he’d been dreading.
In the background, he heard a loud squeal.
“Nolie? Nolie, are you okay? Did something break? Magnolia Merritt!” On a noisy grunt, they heard movement on Crista’s end. “I have to go. Let me…”
“Think about it?” Vivien asked.
“Yeah. I’ll call you guys. I have to go.”
With that, the call ended, leaving Eli and Vivien staring at each other before they both broke into wide grins.
“She doesn’t hate the idea!” Vivien practically squealed.
He wasn’t quite so optimistic, but he felt better than he had before he made the call. “I don’t know. Maggie could snuff this out with one breath, and we may never know why.”
Vivien sat back, thinking. “Maybe they did have affairs. Maybe they swapped.”
“Stop it.” He shot her a vile look.
“Well, what made things get that messy?”
He huffed out a breath. “Maybe it’ll come to light now.”
“How?”
“Crista will tell her in…” He looked at his watch. “Five, four, three…”
Vivien shook her head. “You really think Crista has the nerve to mention that the Wylies have been here?”
“Yes,” he said. “And, if we’re lucky, that will be enough for us to get some information about that big breakup.”
She stood as someone knocked on the front door. “The carpenter is here to install the built-ins. What are you doing today?”
“First? Calling Kate.” He smiled. “Then after that…”
“Nothing else matters,” she joked as she walked to the door.
She wasn’t wrong.
The minute she was gone, he called Kate, pathetically desperate to hear her voice.
“Well, hello, there,” she answered, and he could instantly see her smile, and it lifted his heart.
“There’s the sound I needed to hear,” he said softly, not caring if they weren’t there yet—he was crazy about her, and she needed to know it. “What are you doing, Lady Katie?”
She trilled a laugh. “Well, I’m under fluorescent lights on a snow-encrusted day testing the stability of the new capacitor design.”
“You had me at fluorescent,” he joked. “Because the sun is blinding here at the Summer House and the only thing missing is you.”
“Stop, you’re killing me.” She sighed. “Maybe I’ll get back this summer.”
“Or sooner. And Christmas. And Easter. And…the year after that, and the year after that…”
“What are you talking about, Eli?” she asked.
“We—Vivien and I and maybe Crista—are thinking about keeping the house in our family. And, anytime you want to visit and stay, your family, too.”
All he heard was the soft intake of her breath.
“How does that sound?”
“Incredible,” she said on a light laugh. “But…I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Have you talked to Jo Ellen about Maggie?” he asked. “Did you tell her what the Cavallaris told us—regardless of their discrepancies?”
“I haven’t,” she said. “She’s struggling with her hurt ankle and seems as down as she’s been since my dad died. I haven’t had the heart to bring her lower. I told her about all of you, though, and how awesome you are. Especially you.” She chuckled. “I’m guilty of talking about you a lot.”
“I’m guilty of thinking about you a lot.”
There was a stretch of silence on the line, adding to Eli’s physical ache to just reach out and hold this woman.
“So will you come back…sometime?” he asked.
“I’m thinking this summer,” she promised. “With my kids, although I don’t know where we’ll stay.”
“Jonah and I will finish the apartment above the garage so it’s done by the end of May. It’s two bedrooms, so they can stay there. You can be in your old room.”
“It’s not my room,” she said. “I happen to know that Lacey moved in there with Tessa’s help yesterday.”
“It will be yours in my mind, every time I pass it. I swear I can smell your perfume.”
He heard her laugh. “Come here and you could get a whiff of eau de capacitor.”
“I’d take it, Kate. Want me to visit Ithaca?”
She didn’t answer right away, and he squeezed his eyes, hoping he hadn’t pushed this too far, too fast.
“Kate?” he whispered after way too much time ticked by.
“Oh, how I wish you made sense,” she finally said.
“Can I be clearer? I’d like to come and see you.”
“Not that kind of sense,” she said. “The logical kind. The math kind. The provable hypothesis based on facts that fit together.”
“This is the illogical kind,” he said. “The impossible dream of two people who fit together…perfectly.”
She gave the sweetest little grunt that just made his heart ache more. “I don’t know where we go from here, Eli, but…”
He waited for her to complete the thought.
“But I don’t want to give up,” she said. “I’ve got a crush on you that’s thirty-some years old and it isn’t going anywhere.”
He punched his fist into the air, biting his lip to keep from letting out a hoot of victory.
“That’s all I needed to know, Lady Katie.”
She chuckled.
“Do you remember when you got that name?”
She sighed softly. “The Summer House Keep,” she said. “I remember the sandcastle. I remember…everything.”
He closed his eyes and squeezed the phone, as gone as a man could be. “I’ll call you soon,” he said. “And I’ll text. A lot.”
“Good. I’ll overthink every message.”
Laughing, they said goodbye, leaving him far happier and more hopeful than he’d been since she left.
He got up to find Jonah—they had to start on that apartment. Kate would be coming back, with her kids. And he couldn’t wait.
Eli and Jonah started that same day by reviewing the blueprints for the apartment and the project tasks—drywall, hardwood, fixtures, electric, paint, flooring, and finishings. Jonah was invested enough to volunteer to go to Home Depot by himself with a list a mile long.
In the afternoon, Eli met with Don, his general contractor, and finalized the last financial draw, happy to be completely finished building this house. There was one final inspection, a rubber-stamp closing on the project, and the house was done.
And after dinner, he took a walk by himself and texted Kate three different pictures of the sunset.
When he walked into the house, he was greeted by the familiar sight of Lacey and Tessa, papers sprawled over the dining room table, chattering about some marketing plan they were cooking up.
Lacey always did the fine-print stuff, he noticed, and Tessa handled the big-picture ideas. The two of them were slowly becoming a well-oiled machine and he had high hopes for their little business.
Vivien was at the counter, talking to Jonah. Even after a full day of work on the apartment project and making them a delicious dinner, Jonah had decided to tackle a hollandaise sauce that he promised they could have on eggs Benedict tomorrow morning.
“I’m the official taster now,” Vivien told Eli, taking a spoon Jonah offered. “I’m no Kate, but I’ll have to do.”
For now, Eli thought. Because Kate was coming back. He clung to that hope with two hands.
“Ooh, tasty.” Vivien smacked her lips. “Perfect consistency, too, Jonah.”
Watching the interaction, Eli closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of gratitude for the peace in this home. It permeated every corner, and he didn’t want that to change. He felt the warmth, the goodness, and, yes, the magic of Destin.
“Where’s my phone?” Tessa said, looking around and touching her watch. An electronic beep echoed from upstairs. “Oh, I left it in Kate’s room while I was helping you move in there, Lacey. Yes, we shall forever call it Kate’s room.” She winked at Eli as she stood and jogged toward the stairs. “So, let’s get her back!”
Eli chuckled at the echo of his own thoughts, his attention pulled by headlights that suddenly beamed through the front window.
“Who’s here at this time of night?” Vivien asked, leaning back from her seat at the bar to peer out the window.
“Maybe Kate came back,” Lacey teased.
With a jolt of hope he knew was ridiculous, he went straight to the front door. As he got there, he heard a car door slam outside.
He touched the switch to pour light over the person coming up the stairs, squinting through the side panel.
What the heck?
For a moment, he just froze, unable to believe what he saw. She was here already?
“Crista?” he croaked the name as he flipped the latch on the door.
“What?” Vivien’s barstool scraped the floor. “Did you say Crista?”
He opened the door before his youngest sister could even knock. “Yes!”
“I have to talk to you,” she said, her ebony eyes flashing as she stepped right into the entry. “I have to talk to you and Vivien and it’s really important.”
“I’m right here.” Vivien rushed into the entryway, arms out. “What a wonderful surprise! I can’t believe it!”
But Crista didn’t hug her sister. She just held up both hands, a little breathless. “What you are not going to believe is what Mama told me this morning.”
She sailed past both of them, tossing a handbag on the entry table without even looking around. Then she came to a dead stop and gasped.
“ Jonah ? What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Aunt Crista,” he said, coming around the island. “I’m living here now.”
“Me, too.” Lacey rushed closer. “It’s great to have you here. Did you bring Nolie?”
She looked from one to the other, her expression slightly frantic. “ All of you are here? The whole…” She shook her head. “Never mind. That shouldn’t surprise me. What is it about this town that makes me the family pariah?”
“No!” Vivien exclaimed. “We’re so happy?—”
“You won’t be,” she interjected. “When I tell you what I drove five hours and fifteen minutes to say to your faces, you will not be happy. You might abandon the idea of keeping this house and you will, I assure you, never lay eyes on anyone with the last name of Wylie ever again.”
Eli jerked back. “What?”
“Didn’t you say you’d seen them? Wylies? That they’d been here? You have no idea what that family did to us, Eli.”
“Crista, stop,” he said, praying Tessa didn’t hear that. “Whatever you are about to?—”
“You need to know this!” she insisted. “You need to know that if it weren’t for Arthur Wylie, our father would still be alive. He would never have gone to jail, only to die alone in his cell.”
All of them just stared at her, shocked into silence.
“It’s true,” she said. “Some ethics professor, huh? Our dear ‘Uncle Artie’ totally stabbed his best friend in the back, and we would still have a father if it wasn’t for that snake. Now do you want to talk to anyone named Wylie?”
“This can’t be true,” Eli said.
“Oh, it’s true. Mama told me today. It’s why she doesn’t want to come here and why they never spoke again after that. But when I told her you said you saw those Wylie girls, she exploded. She called them the devil’s daughters.”
“Excuse me?”
Every single one of them turned to the landing where Tessa stood. Her face was bloodless, her lips quivering, her eyes fierce and golden like a lioness about to strike.
Crista gasped, her jaw dropping. “Are you…who I think you are?”
Tessa managed a shaky breath. “I’m the woman who’s going to kill you if you speak one more word against my father.”
“Tessa.” Crista hissed the word, stepping back as if in fear. “I…I can’t talk to you. I’m sorry, but I think you should leave. I don’t…you shouldn’t be here. You need to leave this minute.”
Jonah took a step and closed his fingers firmly around Crista’s arm. “And you need to chill the hell out, Aunt Crista.”
She wrenched free. “I will not chill. I can’t be in the same room as a Wylie.”
Eli held up both hands. “Will you please be reasonable, Crista?”
She brushed him off, her dark eyes wild, “Reasonable? Her father basically killed our father !”
“He did not!” Tessa lunged forward but Jonah shot in front of her. “He did no such thing!”
Separated by Jonah and Eli, Crista crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Tessa. They stared each other down, the peace of the room shattered by the crackle of tension.
“I have the facts,” Crista ground out. “And you probably know it’s true! Why would you come here? How could anyone in your family have the nerve to even speak to a Lawson after what that…that… traitor did?”
Tessa closed her eyes, looking like she couldn’t even breathe at that moment. And Eli knew exactly how that felt because every word his sister spoke was an unbearable weight on his chest.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Crista continued, fighting for calm, “your whole family has blood on its hands. You are not welcome here.”
Instantly, Lacey came to stand next to Tessa, a supportive arm around her friend. “She is so welcome here.”
“Lacey!” Crista exclaimed. “Did you hear what I said?”
“The whole beach heard you,” Lacey said. “But that doesn’t make it true.”
“It’s not…” Tessa rasped. “It can’t be. He’d never…my father didn’t have a disloyal bone in his body.”
“Really? Well, that’s not what I heard this morning.”
“He’s not here to defend himself,” Tessa said, putting her fingers to her temples as if she could not process what was happening. None of them could. “He’s dead and you can’t talk about him like this! He’s dead!” Her voice cracked and she looked like she might buckle if Lacey hadn’t been holding her.
“I’m sorry for you,” Crista said. “Sadly, we know how hard it is to lose your father. But, under the circumstances, I think it’s best if you leave our house.”
“Crista!” Vivien glared at her. “You don’t even know this woman. You’re just doing what you always do—parroting Maggie.”
“I don’t want to,” Crista insisted, glancing from one to the other. “I know you all think I’m Maggie two-point-oh, but it’s not true. This is not a rumor or gossip or a memory. He was the reason Dad went to jail… where he died .”
Still pale, Tessa held up a trembling finger and pointed it directly at Crista. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. My father was a paragon of virtue and integrity. No finer man ever lived. And yours?” She gave a mirthless laugh. “A common criminal convicted of fraud, embezzlement, and theft.”
Eli felt the words smack him.
Tessa looked at him, her face crumpling in sorrow. “I’m sorry, Eli, I know that hurts you. But…but…” She held up both hands, taking a step backwards. “Never mind. I don’t want to do this. I don’t…I can’t…” She took another step. “You win. The Lawsons win. I’ll leave now.”
She turned and strode to the back of the house.
“Tessa!” Lacey ran after her, leaving the rest of them in shocked silence.
Vivien stared at Crista. Jonah looked like he’d been kicked in the solar plexus.
And Eli… could barely breathe.
Shaking, he walked out of the room to the deck, sucking in salt air so he could think and pray and figure out how to fix this impossible knotted mess.
What if betrayal was at the root of the decades-old feud? What if —
“Eli.” Vivien came out behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Crista’s always been a drama queen. Although, even for her? This was a lot.”
He looked at his sister, knowing there were tears in his eyes. “This could…end everything.”
Vivien shook her head. “No, no, it can’t. We can’t let history repeat itself, Eli.”
“I think it just did.” He looked past her into the living room where Jonah spoke softly with Crista.
“We’ll change her mind,” Vivien insisted. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. We will not roll over and die over our mother’s thirty-year-old allegations. We’ve never heard anything like this before. She could have just pulled it out of her imagination because she heard we talked to the Wylies.”
He closed his eyes but all he could see was Kate. Her smile. Her eyes. Her damn missing glasses.
“I love her,” he whispered, the revelation shocking him—sort of. He’d already known he loved her, he just hadn’t acknowledged it. If he didn’t love her completely, he knew he could. And he wanted to.
“But I love my mother, too,” he said. “And I don’t want to have to choose sides with my own family.”
“Then don’t,” she said. “You’re an architect. Bring the two sandcastles back together before the tides wash it all away.”
“How?”
She looked hard at him, her eyes swimming in tears. “Build a bridge. You did it once before and you can do it again.”
He closed his eyes on a grunt. She was right…but could he do that? Could they survive this? He had no idea, but he had to try.
Because he would not let life break their hearts or steal memories they hadn’t even made yet. He would not let his father rise up from the grave and take his joy again.
He would not lose this house, this family, or the woman he loved.
Don't miss The Summer We Danced , the next book in The Destin Diaries series!