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It was an easy thing, plotting this escape with Wayne. Unlike Sean, Wayne was mesmerized with the idea of traveling alongside Elise and open to all the wild and frantic natures of travel, the idea of keeping it loose and being spontaneous. As Sean had been an accountant, spontaneity had slowly trickled out of Elise’s life and left it dull and predictable and brittle. No longer.
On the morning of their departure, Elise hovered over her suitcase and watched as Wayne stuffed his with button-down shirts, jeans, undershirts, boxers. Slowly, she had grown more and more accustomed to his things, a process that filled her with more longing.
“You say it’s chillier in Berkley?” he asked. There was just the slightest twinge of fear to his voice.
“The weather’s pretty different than LA,” Elise said. “And always changing.”
“I’m from Michigan. Our weather is the least trustworthy thing we’ve got. I can handle this Berkley weather like nobody’s business.”
Elise chuckled as her phone buzzed to the side of her suitcase. The number was nothing she recognized, but it had a now-familiar Mackinac area code. 906.
“Who’s that?” Wayne asked as she lifted it.
“Not sure.” She clicked her screen and said a bright, “Hello? This is Elise Darby speaking.”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening. Elise placed a hand on her hip and gave Wayne a perplexed look.
“Who is it?” he whispered.
That moment, someone on the other line grunted, muttered to himself, then finally uttered, “Hey Elise. It’s um. It’s Alex. Alex Swartz.”
Elise’s heart quickened to a rabbit’s pace. She turned around and headed out of the bedroom to collapse on the couch. Her knees knocked together as Wayne hustled in after her with worry etched across his face.
“Alex. Hi.”
What the heck is he calling me for?
He tried to get me kicked off the island.
And he tried to ruin Wayne and I’s relationship when Matt came to the island.
I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since all that.
What does he want?
“How can I help you?” she asked finally when Alex still hadn’t drummed up any response.
“I heard a rumor you were headed off the island for a bit,” he said.
“A dream come true, isn’t it?”
Oops. I didn’t mean that. Not really.
Alex ignored her snark. Instead, he asked, “I wondered if you might meet me for a walk. It’s a beautiful autumn day, and I have a few things I need to say. Please.”
Elise bit hard on her lower lip. We have to leave this afternoon. I don’t know if it’ll work. I don’t know if I want any kind of relationship with you.
Instead, she said, “Sure. We have to make it quick, I’m afraid. Mind if we meet right away?”
“I’ll meet you in front of The Grind,” Alex affirmed. “Fifteen minutes?”
“On this island? You can get anywhere in ten.”
**
ELISE’S NERVES SHOT through her like electricity. She stabbed her hands into her coat pockets the moment she spotted him outside The Grind, there with two cups of coffee in his gloved hands. His eyes met hers, and he tried his very first smile. It hardly worked. It seemed to melt off his face.
“Hey there,” Elise said. She, too, didn’t have the strength to make her voice bright.
“I got you this.” He extended out a paper cup, which had the now-familiar The Grind logo across the side.
“Thanks a lot,” Elise said. “Did Michael give you any grief in there?”
Alex drew up a little crooked grin. “He never misses a chance to do that.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“And some girl’s in there with him. Southern accent...”
Elise chuckled. “That’s Margot. She chased him here from Texas.”
Alex pondered this for a moment, then said, “Seems you’re already more a part of the family than me.”
This wiped the smile directly from Elise’s cheeks. She cleared her throat, sipped the piping-hot coffee, and then asked, “Shall we walk down by the docks?”
For a long while, they walked side-by-side in silence. My only brother in the world, and we can’t figure out a single word to say to one another. Great. Lucky me.
“You know, I heard the good news,” Alex said as they slowed near to Wayne’s boat, the Tara.
“I see.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Alex affirmed. “Just a bit overwhelmed with it all. Maybe that was obvious when we first met each other. That I couldn’t really handle new things.”
Is he making a joke?
“To put it lightly,” he added.
He just made a joke.
“It’s a lot to process. For all of us,” Elise whispered. Her voice caught in the whipping October winds and nearly disappeared.
“My father—our father, I mean—came to speak with me about it. He tried to explain it all. I tried to explain where his head had been. It’s difficult for me to even process that. I mean, I’m forty-five, but I haven’t had a lot of love in my life. Not in the romantic sense, that is. I always struggled with it. A brief fling here and there. But my family and the business, they always came first. Now that I’m forty-five, I have to admit; I have more than a few regrets.”
Elise strung a strand of hair behind her ear. “I hope you know that I didn’t come here to hurt anyone. I only came because I worried if I didn’t, I would have all kinds of regrets, as well. I’m forty-two, and I was terrified of starting over after my husband left me.”
Alex’s eyes shimmered suddenly, as though something within his mind had clicked into place. “I didn’t realize that happened to you.”
Elise gave a light shrug. “You never asked.”
“I guess it stands to reason that we’ve all had a great deal of pain,” he said. “Losing my mother a few years ago nearly destroyed me.”
“I know that feeling all too well,” Elise whispered. “My mother was my everything.”
“Mine was, too. She was with me through every stage of my cancer. As a kid, I didn’t have that many friends because I was always sick. She was my friend. We played cards together. We laughed at TV shows together. We bickered and fought, sure, but it wasn’t the way a normal mother and son bickered and fought. We had something special. And when I got well again—really well—she told me it was because we’d be together for the rest of our lives.” He paused.
“When she died a few years ago, it was so sudden. I had no time to prepare. Actually, I was off the island for a business meeting, only to arrive a few hours later to discover she wasn’t here anymore. The emptiness I felt after that is difficult to describe.” Alex paused for a moment and then added, “Although I guess I don’t have to describe it to you.”
“Not even a little bit,” Elise murmured.
The boats shifted against the docks, and the wooden boards creaked. Elise sipped again at her coffee, which had dropped its heat quickly, like a child losing her glove in the snow.
“I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few days,” Alex said. “After Dad explained everything, you know what I realized?”
Elise shook her head tenderly as she looked up at him.
“I realized that your mother sacrificed one of the great loves of her life. She sacrificed you having a father, all for the betterment of my family. All because I was sick,” he said. “That kind of compassion and love of family is a rare thing indeed. If she hadn’t done that, my life would have looked very, very different. Heck. Maybe I wouldn’t have lived through all the treatments; maybe Mom wouldn’t have had the strength to sit there next to me because she would have had to take care of the two girls. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
A tear trailed down Alex’s cheek, but he quickly brushed it away.
“We don’t know what might have happened,” Elise said. Her voice was so tight that it was difficult to speak.
“I know that,” Alex returned. “But I think it’s better to operate with generosity and love. It’s what our mothers would have wanted. Don’t you think?”
Elise nodded. “More than anything.”
Alex caught his breath as a big gust of wind rushed through them. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Dad’s birthday is on Halloween. I think I want to plan something—something big. There’s so much to celebrate. If you can make it back in time from California, I hope you’ll come.”
“Halloween, huh? I think I can make that happen. But do you mind if I bring over a few guests? I have a feeling they’ll want to meet their grandfather and their uncle and aunts. Once they learn you all exist, that is.”
Alex smiled at Elise then and replied with a smile. “I’d really like that.”