“I knew it!” His mother jabbed a finger at her underhanded ex-husband. “I knew the growth pattern had nothing to do with optimal sunlight on your side of the fence.”
His father flashed a sheepish smile. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t buy that excuse. You’re too smart for that.”
The compliment seemed to mollify her slightly. “Then why even attempt it? Why go through all the trouble of pruning the tree in the first place? You don’t even like lemons that much.”
His father hung his head.
Jayce cut the engine, and the chain saw rumbled to a stop.Come on, Dad. Fess up. Tell her you still care.
After a long pause, his father lifted his head, meeting his mother’s gaze. “Do you remember when we got this tree?”
“Of course,” she said with unexpected softness. “You bought me a sapling for our fourth anniversary, since the traditional fourth anniversary gift is fruit. You said, as our love grows and bears fruit, so will our tree.”
His father nodded. “I really believed that. After four years of marriage, my love for you had only grown stronger. I thought it always would.”
“But it didn’t, did it?” The pain in her voice sounded as sharp and poignant as the day they’d announced their divorce.
Jayce wanted to look away, to give them privacy as they hashed out their broken relationship from across their two porches. But he couldn’t. He needed to know what happened.
His father released a deep, guttural sigh, his entire body sagging with the force of his exhale. “That’s what I told myself. I didn’t know how else to explain the disconnect, why our marriage fell apart. Except that you’d stopped loving me.”
“Me?” His mother flinched in surprise. “You’re the one who stopped loving me.”
“What? No.” His father shook his head, as if the motion might shift the fractured pieces of his memory back into place. “That’s not what happened. You must have forgotten.”
“Forgotten?” His mother’s voice warbled with emotion. “How could I forget the worst moment in my life? When you said you wanted a divorce—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I asked if you thought weshouldget a divorce.”
“Because you wanted one,” she fired back.
“Because I thoughtyouwanted one.”
His parents stared at each other in stunned silence as the walls of their misconceptions came crashing down around them.
Jayce’s heart squeezed, compressed by the crushing weight of grief. So much misery. Decades of heartache. All because two people didn’t know how to communicate. Or weren’t willing to try.
He couldn’t help wondering, if everyone in the world compiled a list of their regrets, would more people regret the things they said? Or the things theydidn’tsay?
He knew which way he’d land.
Luckily, he’d get a second chance to say all the things he should’ve said long ago.
He just prayed it wasn’t too late.
Chapter Thirty-Six
CECE
Throughout her morningshift at the café, CeCe struggled to keep her mind on work. Why did Jayce want to meet at the cove? Was it simply to have a picnic lunch on the beach like old times? Or did he have something else in mind?
Only one thing served to calm her erratic thoughts: her father’s help in the kitchen. He’d arrived early, wearing the white linen apron she recalled from her childhood—the one he claimed belonged to a distant relative who’d worked as amaître pâtissier, or master pastry chef, in France in the 1800s.
She’d smiled when she spotted the familiar stains on the bib. He had a colorful story explaining each one, and although she remembered them, she’d asked him to repeat the imaginative tales while they baked.
Together, they made chouquettes and pain au chocolat, and CeCe updated her father on major milestones he’d missed, including the recent situation with Jayce. While the kitchen flooded with sweet memories and the comforting scent of warm, sugary dough, her heart started to mend.
To her great surprise, her father offered to cover the last hour of her shift so she could leave early to change. She acceptedgratefully, and spent a little extra time getting ready for her lunch date—was it a date?—with Jayce.
