“Can you fill me in now?” He sounded genuinely concerned and interested, which spurred her on.
Turning to him, she gently launched into a quick but honest version of her daughter’s woeful tale, not surprised that Eli listened intently to every word—from the boy at the yacht club to the picture to the betrayal of trust and the fallout.
When she finished, Eli stayed quiet, one hand cradling Atlas’s back, the other resting on the sofa’s armrest. His gaze shifted from her to the water, processing the story with slight tension in his jaw, his thumb moving absently against the baby’s shoulder.
The silence stretched, and Kate felt her chest tighten.
Some reactions were hardwired into men when they heard about a teenage girl being compromised in any way. Anger, disappointment, the need to fix or punish…someone.
Kate steeled herself for the flinch, the flash of judgment, the subtle shift in how he thought about her daughter.
None of that happened, but she wouldn’t mention the possibility of Emma talking to him until she determined where he stood on the whole thing.
“How is she right now?” he finally asked. “Is she still upset? She seemed more fragile than I remember, and now I understand why. But how is she handling it and is she okay?”
Kate exhaled, deeply grateful for the question and all it said about Eli’s priorities.
“She’s mad at herself and the kid. She’s terrified of going back to Ithaca. She barely ate for the first week. She’s a little better here—we had a good talk yesterday in Seaside—but she’s carrying so much shame, Eli. It’s crushing her.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “She’s seventeen. In general, it feels like the whole world can see the most vulnerable side of you. And in this case, it’s true.”
“Yep.”
Atlas shifted against Eli’s chest, making a small, congested snuffle, and Eli adjusted him with that effortless, one-handed competence that Kate never tired of watching. The baby sighed and settled deeper, his breathing evening out.
“She made a bad choice,” Eli said. “A real one, with real consequences. But Kate—that’s not who she is. I can tell that and I hardly know her. And one regrettable decision doesn’t define a person. Not at seventeen, or any age.”
Her heart tumbled around as she felt her whole being fall a little more deeply in love with this man.
“Her father blew a gasket,” Kate told him. “It was so bad, she ran away from his house and came to mine.”
“What would she have done if you’d been here?” he asked, the question throwing her. She hadn’t considered that—but Eli did.
“I didn’t have to find out, but the state she was in that night? I’m so glad I was in Ithaca.”
“Protected,” he murmured, leaning forward as if to test just how deeply asleep the baby was. Very deeply.
In one smooth move, he set Atlas in the bouncy seat on the table in front of them, careful not to wake him as each buckle fastened the child in securely.
“What do you mean—protected?” Kate asked.
“God protected her, and you. That’s why he had you go back to New York.”
She felt her features form her usual scowl, but forced herself to be as non-judgmental as he was. In Eli’s mind, God did protect her. In Kate’s? A happy coincidence.
With his arms free, Eli turned to her and took her hands. “Would it be too much if I talked to her?” he asked.
The question nearly took her breath away, but she gave a soft laugh. “That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you to do.”
“Really?” His blue eyes brightened. “Thank you for that trust. I will be gentle, I promise, but candid.”
“I expect that.”
“I might be, uh…Christian.”
She smiled. “I expect that, too. But she won’t, so go easy.”
“I just want to tell her what I told you—that she’s more than this. And that making a mistake with someone she trusted doesn’t mean she was wrong to trust. It means she needs to choose boys more wisely. She can learn a lot from this, you know.”
