The Lighthouse Chapter 18

Chapter EIGHTEEN:

Eloise basked in the late April sunshine, the rush of the waves crashing against the shore, and the pull of the tide going back out. Robin had always been an excellent party planner, and she directed Duke and her girls to put the two coolers where she wanted them, set up the chairs, put up the shades and umbrellas.

Alice had turned into everyone’s rich aunt at the store, buying beach chairs, umbrellas, life jackets, floaties, sunscreen, and anything anyone wanted to put in the cart. She’d gotten a football, a Frisbee, sand toys, the whole nine yards.

“Charlie will want this,” Alice had said at least three items, and Eloise wasn’t sure if she’d been telling the truth or not. Her kids hadn’t arrived yet, and Alice had set her chair facing the parking lot instead of the water so she’d see them when they did.

Eloise felt like doing the same thing, because Aaron hadn’t arrived yet either. He’d called to ask if he should bring the girls or get a sitter, and Eloise had told him to make that decision himself. She was fine to meet them, she’d said.

But now, her nerves boiled in her stomach and chest, but she absolutely refused to watch the parking lot.

Eloise watched a lot of other things, and she knew Alice had something festering just beneath the surface. She knew Robin was tired and stressed and determined not to show it. Just the way she collapsed into her beach chair with a sigh as loud as the ocean waves said that. Eloise wondered if Duke heard it, if he knew how hard Robin worked to make sure his home was a place he wanted to spend time. The long hours she dedicated to his children, to being his wife, to supporting him—and everyone around her. She wondered if Duke knew what a treasure he’d gotten in Robin, and Eloise sure hoped so.

Because she saw it all.

She’d observed a change in Kelli after she’d scurried inside the lighthouse to talk to her husband, but Eloise didn’t quite know what to say to her. She sat in the chair next to Robin, always just one step away from the epicenter of what was happening. Eloise knew exactly how that felt, because she’d done the same thing for a lot of years of her life.

“They’re here,” Alice said, launching herself out of her chair. “Hello,” she called, waving as if her father and children wouldn’t be able to find them. They weren’t the only group at the beach that day, but they were the biggest.

Eloise turned and watched as Alice hugged two teenagers, the sight something Eloise hadn’t been able to imagine. At least not with the Alice she’d spent the last several days with. But she turned and led her family toward their group, and Eloise got out of her chair for the introductions.

“My twins,” Alice said. “Charlie is six minutes older than Ginny. And you guys remember my father. He married Della about ten years ago.” She beamed at them like she was just so, so happy about the marriage.

Eloise saw it all. She smiled, though, and she shook Connor Williams’s hand, as well as his wife, Della’s. She grinned at the kids while Robin called her girls over from where they’d started to build sand sculptures.

“How old are you two?” she asked, but Eloise suspected she already knew.

“Fourteen,” Ginny said.

“We’ll be fifteen on Wednesday,” Charlie added.

“That’s right,” Alice said brightly. “We’re having a party.”

“Where?” Robin asked.

Alice looked at her, and then Eloise, but Eloise didn’t know how to answer the question either. “Probably Rocky Ridge.” She glanced at her dad. “Could we have it at your place, Dad?”

“Sure,” he said.

Jamie and Mandie arrived, and Robin put her arm around her oldest. “These are my girls,” she said. “Mandie is fifteen, and Jamie is twelve. These are Alice’s twins. Charlie and Ginny.”

To Robin’s credit, she didn’t suggest they play together or anything, and Alice turned her chair around to face the water. Her twins took a moment to pick a chair, drape the new towels Alice had bought over them, and face the water.

Jamie and Mandie walked back toward their sand castles, giggling. Eloise was sure those giggles belonged to Charlie, who was a cute fourteen-year-old boy. Almost fifteen. He pulled his shirt over his head and jogged down the sand toward the girls, and they made room for him near their sand city.

Alice settled into a conversation with her family on the other side of Eloise. Kelli and Robin chatted, while Duke floated out in the water on a boogie board. Eloise felt like an island, surrounded by beautiful things; the same beautiful things that wore her down, eroding her strength one particle at a time.

Not that Alice or Robin eroded Eloise. If anything, they built her up, made her feel like she was the same Eloise Hall that had boarded a plane in Boston, the same Professor Hall who knew her material inside and out, the same friend they’d loved in high school.

“Eloise,” Robin said, and she blinked away from the glinting blue water to look at her.

“What?”

“Aaron’s here with his kids.” She jerked her head back toward the parking lot, and Eloise twisted and looked. “Do not jump up,” Robin hissed, her voice barely louder than the wind and surf. “What did he tell his kids?”

“I have no idea,” Eloise said, turning back to face forward.

“So play it cool. He might not introduce you as his girlfriend.”

Eloise sucked in a breath. How did she want him to introduce her? She was leaving in a week, and she and Aaron hadn’t talked about what happened after that. Not even once.

“Aaron, hey,” Robin said as she stood up. “Let us help you with that. Eloise, could you come help?”

“I’m going to kill her,” Eloise said under her breath. Foolishness heated her face, and she stubbornly stayed in her seat. She looked at Kelli and AJ, both of whom were watching her. She shook her head, and they both dissolved into giggles.

“I can help,” Kelli said, standing up. She took a few steps while Eloise stared straight ahead, her nerves morphing into beads of anger that shot through her body like pellets. A chair landed in the sand next to her, and Kelli set it up.

Aaron came around to the front of it, and Eloise looked up at him. He wore a smile on his face, and with his hair lit up by the sun, he seemed made of silver and gold. Eloise couldn’t help the way her heart turned to marshmallow, and Aaron looked away.

“Girls,” he said. “These are daddy’s friends. Robin, Kelli, AJ, and Eloise.” The two girls came to stand next to him. “Alice is down there with her dad and Della.” He turned his head and looked at the teenagers down the beach a bit. “And look, Robin brought her kids. Billie, you’d probably like to go see what they’re doing.”

The taller of the two girls looked up at him. “Can I?”

“Sure,” Aaron said easily. “You can too, Grace, if you’d like.”

Billie and Grace. Eloise took them in, seeing pieces of Aaron in the shape of Grace’s nose, and the dark color of Billie’s hair.

“We’ll go together,” Billie said, taking Grace’s hand. The two of them went down to the spot where the water sometimes ran up on the sand when a big wave crashed into shore.

Aaron exhaled as he sat in the chair next to Eloise’s, and she felt more like a zoo exhibit now than ever before. Six pairs of eyes watched her and Aaron, and if he felt it, he didn’t show it.

Eloise had no idea what to say, and exactly what she’d feared—having to babysit him and entertain him—bloomed to life. Finally, Alice said something to her father, and AJ got up to dig the football out of one of the shopping bags.

“You want to throw it back and forth?” she asked, and Eloise sent her a special kind of glare. She’d warned AJ not to even look at Aaron, and she was definitely looking at him right now.

“I will,” Alice’s dad said, and Duke came jogging up the beach, dripping wet.

“Are you playing?” he asked, tossing the boogie board on the sand several feet in front of them. “I’ll do it.”

The three of them walked away from the group, and Eloise relaxed. Alice’s conversation had halted though, and Robin had fallen silent too.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Eloise asked, and Aaron practically shot to his feet.

“Sure.” He extended his hand toward Eloise, and she let him pull her out of her chair. She left her sandals next to her seat, and she settled her sunglasses into place. Aaron turned to Robin and asked, “Can you keep an eye on them?”

“Of course, go,” Robin said, smiling. “They’ll be fine.”

Aaron flashed her a smile before facing Eloise. He didn’t try to take her hand, and they didn’t speak until Eloise couldn’t hear anything but the breeze.

“Sorry that was so awkward,” she said. “It’s just that…I didn’t know what was going to happen, and…” Eloise stopped walking and faced Aaron. “We need to talk about what happens next Monday.”

Aaron blinked at her and then nodded. “All right. What do you want to have happen next Monday?”

“I don’t know. I mean, in a perfect world, you’ll call me to see if I got home okay, and you’ll ask me what my plans are for the week, and…” Eloise paused and thought for a moment. “And you’ll ask me to look at my calendar and see when I can get back to the island to see you.”

Aaron’s smile grew and grew and grew until he burst out laughing. He took Eloise’s hand in his, all the awkwardness between them gone. They kept walking, and Aaron repeated what she said. “So I’m going to call, and ask if you got home okay, ask what you’re doing that week, and if you can maybe sit down and look at your calendar and we’ll find a time we can spend some time together.”

Eloise smiled at the horizon. “Sounds right.”

“And that’s your perfect world?”

“Pretty close,” she said.

He took several steps in silence before he said, “I’m sorry for the weird introduction. I didn’t really know where we were.”

“Your girls are cute.”

“Thanks. I kinda like them.” He carried so much happiness in his voice, and Eloise wanted to have his sunshine in her life all the time. She realized where her thoughts were taking her, and she pulled back on the reins.

She’d felt like this before too, and she’d married Wes after rushing into the I-do. Aaron Sherman had come back into her life six days ago, and Eloise wasn’t going to go too fast this time.

“You haven’t said anything about your wife. Ex-wife.” She watched him, because while Robin was very good at seeing things, she didn’t corner the market on being observant.

“Yeah.” He drew in a deep breath and pushed it out, their feet squishing through the sand for another minute before he said, “You know how you sometimes make a mistake, and you know you’re making it, but you do it anyway?”

“Like the potato chips I stress-ate while waiting for you to show up?” Eloise grinned, hoping he’d laugh at her attempt to lighten the mood.

He did, and his hand in hers tightened. “Yeah, kind of like that.”

“Or running on the beach with an unleashed dog.”

“Hey, now,” he said, still chuckling. “But yeah. I met Carol, and I fell in love with her like, instantly. We dated for a while, and I knew we didn’t really get along. But well, I loved her. I thought maybe that would be enough.” He shook his head, and Eloise wished his sunglasses would allow her to see his face. “And you know, life tip, but if there are any maybe’s anywhere in your mind about a marriage, you shouldn’t say the I-do.” He glanced at her, and Eloise looked steadily back.

“That’s a good one,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You married Wesley Daniels, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Eloise said, a squirrel of shame moving through her. “It only lasted a couple of years. There were plenty of maybe’s there too.” She nudged him with her hip. “I could’ve used your life tip twenty years ago.”

“You and me both.” Aaron smiled. “So I don’t know, Eloise. I don’t know exactly what happens after next Monday, but I know, right now, I don’t have any maybe’s about you.”

Eloise warmed on the inside, though this stroll through loose sand already had her starting to sweat. “I feel the same, Aaron.”

He paused and leaned toward her, and Eloise tipped her head back to kiss him. He kept the kiss sweet, because they were in public, and Eloise wouldn’t put it past Robin to use the binoculars she’d brought to bird-watch to spy on Eloise.

She broke the kiss and tucked herself into his chest. “Aaron?”

“Hmm?”

“Before I go, I need to go to Sanctuary Island and do something.” She stepped back to put a few inches between them so she could look at him. “It’s something I don’t really want to do. Would you go with me?”

“What is it?” he asked. “Something with your mother?”

“No,” Eloise said. “Though I probably should stop by at least once more before I go back to Boston.” She wished she’d brought a water bottle with her, because her throat was suddenly so dry. “It’s a building I own. My mother doesn’t know about it, actually.” She swallowed, trying to work up enough saliva to keep talking. “It’s something I bought a long time ago, and I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to do something with it.”

“All right,” he said. “Let me look at my schedule for the week, and we’ll make a plan.”

Eloise nodded, and they continued their walk. She hadn’t been to the Cliffside Inn in far too long, and she hoped there wasn’t a mold issue or water damage, broken windows or vandalism.

The inn sat near the top of the cliffs on Sanctuary Island, and Eloise had bought it from the bank after they’d repossessed it following her father’s death. She’d told no one about it, not her brother; not her mother; not Robin, or Alice, or AJ, or Kelli, or Kristen.

Her heart skipped a beat as she thought about telling Aaron, sharing the space with him, explaining why she’d bought it and what she hoped to do with it someday.

But she’d gone to Pearl Island with him, and that had turned out radically different than the first time she’d tried that. So maybe this would be different too. Maybe she was different, and maybe she was ready.

In that moment, she realized how many maybe’s she had in her life surrounding the inn. At least they weren’t about Aaron, and Eloise made a decision right then to enjoy the rest of the day with him and his girls.