Kate pushed her glasses up her nose. “I am,” she admitted.
He liked that there were no games with her, but he’d need more than that to feel better.
“Is it the lab?” he asked.
Kate exhaled slowly, and just that sound told him it was serious. “Our grant—and every penny of funding—is officially pulled.”
He froze mid-step. “Kate. I thought they were still deciding.”
“They decided.” She nudged his arm. “Walk. It’s easier to talk about terrible things when you’re in motion.”
He resumed, staying close. “And there’s no chance they’d change their mind? What happened?”
“Financial cuts. Or politics. Or both. The new review committee announced that our research isn’t a priority anymore.” She said it with the controlled tone of a scientist reporting data, but he could hear the crack beneath it. “Cornell canceled the battery lab projects. The program I’ve spent the last seven years building is now…defunct. Goodness,I hate that word.”
His heart hurt for her. Losing that lab wasn’t just a career setback. It had to feel like someone had turned off the lights in the room where she felt most like herself. She glowed when she talked about her byzantine experiments, her team of seasoned chemists, and her high hopes for a battery that would extend the life of EVs.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s a real loss, Kate.”
She glanced at him, and something in her expression softened. “Thank you for calling it that. Everyone else keeps saying ‘it’ll work out’ or ‘a better project will come along.’ Which is nice but also makes me want to throw something.”
“I won’t say either of those things.”
She looked up at him. “I know I can count on you to say the right thing.”
“No pressure or anything,” he joked, making her laugh, which always made her even prettier to him.
“What about teaching?” But even as he asked it, he knew that the professorial aspect of her job was always a much lower priority than the lab work.
Her father, a law professor at the same university, had loved teaching. Kate loved academics and research, describing herself as happiest in a lab with goggles on.
“My grad students can handle everything online. I don’t need to be at Cornell right now.” She paused, looking out at the horizon. “Which is strange to say, considering I’ve needed to be at Cornell for…ever.”
He heard the ache in her voice. She might as well have said she’d been physically unmoored from a life that had anchored her—a job that had been her plumb line after her divorce, then her father’s death.
“Does that mean you’re staying in Destin?” he asked. “Because…silver lining.”
She smiled. “I’m staying for a while,” she said. “Emma needs to be…away from Ithaca. I need to figure some things out,” she added quickly, as if she didn’t want to elaborate on Emma. “And Vivien and I decided that Tessa’s getting a real wedding before summer ends whether she likes it or not, so apparently, I have a job.”
“You and Vivien are planning that? Tessa’s the event planner.”
“She’s got Olive and a house renovation, plus a real job, so Vivien and I will handle it.” She gestured back to the Summer House. “We have a venue and a vision that, oddly enough, came from one of Viv’s old diaries.”
Laughing at that, he reached for her hand. When her fingers laced through his, the month apart compressed into nothing.
“I’m selfishly glad you’re here, even if the reason is lousy.”
“The reasonislousy,” she agreed. “But being here isn’t.”
They walked for a while, hand in hand, content and quiet.
A family with little kids worked furiously on a sandcastle near the shore, the father patiently rebuilding a turret every time the smallest child knocked it over. Kate watched them with an expression Eli couldn’t quite read.
“I’ve missed you,” she said quietly, not looking at him. “More than I expected to. More than I wanted to, honestly.”
His chest tightened at the subtext in that last admission. “You did leave in a hurry, Kate.”
“Don’t read too much into that, Eli. I knew deep down this grant review could end badly. But, yeah, you and I were moving fast and that was…scary.”
