"No. If she knew something, she never told me about it." He sets his beer down and looks at me hard. "Why are you asking all this? You think the kid is yours?" The grating tone he uses triggers my sensitive temper, and on a subject that I have such little patience for already. But I bite it back and try not to let it bother me.
"Emily told me she's six and a half. But a guy on my crew said she's seven, and she's in school already… Those two things don't add up."
Dad doesn't respond to that. He stares at the table for a while, turning his beer bottle round and around, and I can tell he's somewhere else in his head. It's like he lost the thread of ourconversation or something. He's stuck in his own thoughts and they come out in a slur when he speaks again.
"When your mother died, I tried to reach you. I called that number they gave us and left messages every day for two weeks." This isn't helpful to me. I want to move into my future and it feels like he's wanting to stay stuck in the past.
I might have a kid, and all he cares about is how I didn’t come home. Doesn’t anyone see how wrong this is? Sure, I didn't call or show up, but that's a little different given my extenuating circumstances. Hiding a child from me is way worse.
"I got the messages, Dad, but there was no way to exit the mission without blowing it."
Dad finishes his beer and pushes back from the table, setting the empty bottle on the counter by the sink. He stands there for a second with his back to me, one hand on the counter, not saying anything. Then he straightens up.
"If you think that girl is yours, get proof before you do anything stupid. Don't go making accusations you can't back up." He walks toward the hallway and pauses at the door. "Goodnight, Son."
"Night, Dad."
His bedroom door closes, and I'm alone in the kitchen with my beer and the low murmur of the television. I sit there for a while, not thinking about much of anything, just tired, staring at the stack of mail on the table. Most of it has been handled by now, but there's an envelope near the bottom that I don't remember seeing before. It's from the county clerk's office, thick, with a red stamp across the front.
I pull it out and open it. The letter inside is dated a few days ago—something new. The county's initiating foreclosure proceedings on 114 Marsh Lane due to nonpayment of property taxes for two consecutive fiscal years. There's a hearing scheduled for July and a list of steps to contest the action and a phone number to call.
The house I grew up in is at risk of being taken from us, and Dad is still lost somewhere in something that happened years ago. I'm not sure what to think about that or how to process it. Coming home wasn't at all what I thought it would be. And every day I'm here, I feel like it's getting worse.
I fold the letter back into the envelope and set it on the table where Dad will see it in the morning. Then I finish my beer and sit there in the quiet kitchen, staring at the wall, trying to figure out how everything my parents spent their lives building is coming apart at the same time and what I'm supposed to do about any of it.
14
EMILY
Isit in the back row of the town hall with Leah on one side and Dad on the other, my hands folded tightly in my lap. The room is already filling up fast, and judging from the expressions on people's faces, no one is quite happy about what's happening. We came here tonight because a handful of business owners along the boardwalk asked us to speak up. Not a single person here—even those who have already started negotiating terms—wants to sell. Just like me, it's their lives and livelihoods on the line.
When Langford started leaning hard, the first few people who agreed to sell were the only ones who really wanted to. The rest of them were slowly pressured into caving—or threatened. And with only three businesses standing firm, we all stand to lose if someone doesn't put a stop to this.
Leah leans over and bumps my shoulder. “You good?”
"Yeah," I mumble, not really trusting myself to say more. My stomach has been in knots since we walked in and saw Roger and Jaxon sitting front and center. Roger looks like he's alreadyhad a few drinks. Jaxon sits beside him in a clean button-down, looking like he is ready for a fight. I haven't spoken more than a few words to him since he cornered me in my office, and I want to keep it that way.
I lied to him and I feel really guilty about it, but if I had told him the truth, that Mercy is over seven years old, he'd have known immediately that she belongs to him. And if he finds that out, my entire world implodes and self-destructs.
"You look like you're gonna throw up." Lean chuckles, but when I look at her sternly, she stops. "Sorry… You just look tense. I know this is so stressful." Her hand rests on my wrist and I sigh.
"I'm fine. I just want to get this over with." Forcing a smile, I turn and look at Dad, who's buried in the meeting itinerary handed to him at the door. He's here for moral support, though I need a lot more than emotional backup to fight this fight.
The meeting starts, and after the usual announcements, the chairman calls on Roger. He stands up slowly, gripping the edge of the podium. His voice comes out a little thick, but he knows how to work a room even when he's had too much to drink.
“Cole and Son’s has stood on this waterfront for forty-eight years,” he says, his voice carrying that familiar slur from too many beers. “My father built the first shed with his own two hands, and every business along this boardwalk did the same. We didn’t just show up for tourist season. We kept this town alive through hurricanes and recessions. You tear us down for condos and you rip the soul clean out of Beaufort. These aren’t buildings. They’re history.”
The place is slow to react, like they're trying to decide whether backing a drunk is a good idea. But one person applauds, and itleaks across the auditorium slowly in a swell before it subsides. When he walks back to his chair, his boots squeak on the floor and then Jaxon rises.
My chest clenches and I look down at my hands, wringing in my lap. I didn't realize he planned to speak tonight too, though it's not surprising. Someone has to show that Cole and Son's isn't just a drunken, grief-stricken old man barely holding it together. I try not to get too tense because Jaxon has every right to speak on behalf of his father's business. I just don't want him to think just because he's come back to town, he has any right to control me.
“I’m not much for speeches,” he says, his voice even. “But I grew up working on this boardwalk. My dad taught me how to frame a wall right over there at Cole and Son’s when I was a kid. We’ve fixed half the buildings along here at one time or another. These places stay open through the slow months when the tourists are gone. They pay local people year-round, not just in the summer. Langford’s condos might look nice on paper, but they won’t keep the same folks working once they’re built. We all know how that goes. I say we keep what we already have instead of tearing it down for something that might not last.”
That earns a hearty applause and a few whistles, but it makes Langford scowl. Somehow, he's managed to get his own little seat right on the main table with the council members like he's part of the committee or something. When it's his turn to speak, he manages to rile this crowd up so easily with promises about economic growth and city expansion. All I hear are warnings about crime rising and the city being bespeckled with graffiti and litter.
I don't have the nerve to speak, and Dad doesn't say much, but when it's over, I'm sufficiently upset by how it did not go my way.I could've stood and protested the invasive inspections, but what good would that do? I really need to fix that stuff up, anyway. I'm just having to dig into Mercy's college fund to do them.
When the meeting is over, I say goodbye to Leah and Dad guides me out the door toward the parking lot. I'm acutely aware of Jaxon being ever so present behind me, but with my head down and my steps brisk, I pray I can get to the truck and not have to interact. But he manages to catch up before we're even halfway across the parking lot and I grimace as I hear my name.
