I don’t know why that almost made me cry, but it did. Because everyone else had been so frustrated, so quick to point out everything I had done wrong, and he was the only one who seemed to understand that I already knew.
I think that’s Eli’s superpower—not just fixing things, although he does that too, but knowing exactly how much weight someone can carry and refusing to add a single ounce more.
Nothing ever really gets under his skin the way it does for the rest of us, and somehow he makes it feel like it doesn’t have to.
Anyway, I am grounded from driving for the foreseeable future, which is probably fair.
Love,
Viv
Seaside, Florida, looked like someone had built a town inside a snow globe and then replaced the snow with sunshine.
Driving Meredith’s compact hatchback, Kate took in the pastel cottages with their white picket fences, the narrow streets canopied by live oaks, the pavilions rising from the dunes like sculptures.
Everything was immaculate and charming and faintly unreal. “Why do I feel like I’m in a movie set?” she mused.
“Because you are!” Emma’s voice rose with the most excitement Kate had heard in a while, her attention split between the scenery and her phone. “This is where they filmedThe Truman Show!” She waved her phone as if it held irrefutable proof of that. “Jim Carrey, you know! Like, the whole place is the set.”
“Well, that’s cool,” Kate said, eyeing the precious town with renewed respect.
They’d spent the morning cruising from Destin down the picturesque road known as 30A, stopping when the spirit moved or a cute shop beckoned.
Kate’s goal had been merely to get Emma out of the Summer House guest room where she’d been curled on the bed most of the time. She’d hoped that this little one-day vacation would break into the protective cocoon her daughter had spun around herself since they’d left Ithaca.
And it was working, at least on the surface. She was almost Emma again, shopping with the focus and fun of a teenager, eyeing herself in the mirror without self-criticism, cracking up over the little things—like a bandana-wearing dachshund named Peppermint Patty at one of the boutiques—and happily sucking down her iced latte with vanilla cream.
“Oh, there’s that Daytrader café you saw online,” Kate said, passing a Key West-style restaurant painted the color of orange sherbet. “Want to try it for lunch?”
“Absotively,” Emma replied, with more enthusiasm to warm Kate’s heart.
It took a few passes to find parking, but they did, and soon they were happily seated outside in wicker chairs with ferns hanging overhead as they perused mouthwatering offerings.
“I like the sesame tuna,” Kate said, scanning her own menu.
“I’m going hard on a Smash Burger,” Emma replied. “Don’t judge.”
“I never judge,” Kate replied with a smile at the server who brought them iced water.
After they ordered and looked around, Emma let out a sigh of the deepest contentment Kate could remember.
“Mom?” she asked, her gaze moving toward the water in the distance. “Can we move here?”
Kate laughed. “Here? To Seaside?”
“Anywhere…like this.” She gestured at the pastel streetscape, and the pavilion on the beach beyond it. “It’s like the perfect escape.”
“Which makes it ideal for vacation,” Kate replied. “Not life.”
Emma made a face that said she didn’t want life, she wanted permanent vacation.
While they waited, Kate let the conversation drift. With purpose, she avoided any and all elephants in the room.
No lecture about running away from problems. No logical dismantling of the vacation vibe. Just agreement, because Emma’s eyes had light in them for the first time in weeks, and Kate would protect that with everything she had.
Their food arrived—the Smash Burger had been a great call—and they ate in a comfortable quiet that would have been impossible three days ago. The breeze carried the faint salty smell of the Gulf, and the murmur of other patrons around them.
Kate thought about Vivien’s diary entry—the one she’d read last night, curled up in the bedroom while Emma slept. Not only had she been impressed with the recounting of Eli’s calm management of a crisis, but she thought a lot about the mother-daughter dynamic woven between the lines of Vivien’s girlish writing.
