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Chapter Seven
“It went much betterthan expected,” Elise announced from the driver’s seat of the BMW the following morning as she, Brad, and Wayne headed back to Calabasas.
“All the color drained from her face for about an hour,” Bradley recounted from the back seat. “She only recovered because Wayne ordered that milkshake for himself. She drank the whole thing!”
“To be honest, I got the milkshake because I was stressed myself,” Wayne said with a laugh. “I could tell she wasn’t the kind of girl to take things lightly.”
“She obviously has a flair for the dramatic,” Bradley said. “I’m the calm twin.”
“But once she heard everything and learned about the birthday party, she totally changed,” Elise interjected. “She asked good questions about her grandfather, about what we know about Mom’s past, and also about her cousins. All I ever wanted was sisters and brothers and a big family to call my own! Now, we have that. And they’ve opened their arms to us.”
“So we’re all headed to Mackinac for Halloween, then?” Bradley asked. “Should I get a costume ready?”
“As long as it’s warm,” Wayne joked. “Many, many layers. It’s not a rare thing for it to snow up there this time of year.”
“Snow? On Halloween? What kind of world have you put up with all this time?” Bradley joked.
“You’re telling me. Imagine being a kid who wants badly to dress up like Spiderman. The costume hits a little differently when you have a huge winter coat over it,” Wayne said.
Bradley laughed. “I imagine Spiderman himself wouldn’t have wanted to be weighed down by something like that.”
The drive back to Calabasas took much longer this time, as Elise insisted on stopping at various secret beaches along the coast, where they picnicked and put their feet in the ocean up to their ankles and shivered with the chill of the Pacific. Each time she and Wayne made eye contact, she felt his growing love for her in her very bones.
Once, when Brad headed into the gas station to grab a soda, Wayne turned his eyes toward Elise as he said, “I don’t know if Penny took to me the way Brad did.”
“She already senses how happy you make me, I think,” Elise whispered. “I know beyond anything that she wants me to be happy. She just has trouble articulating it.”
“I guess that’s something we all struggle with,” Wayne affirmed.
Back in Calabasas, Brad drove his little red car back to his university and left Wayne and Elise alone in the dark shadows of a house she now said was “entirely too big.” She and Wayne stayed inside that Saturday night: cooking pesto pasta and garlic bread and drinking wine out on the patio.
“You really think you could leave this place?” Wayne asked her. His eyebrows lowered as he swirled the glass of wine in his hand.
“I think it’s good to be brave in the face of change,” Elise said. “I always clung to the past in a way my mother never did. Mackinac Island is a new beginning for me. For us. And California will always be here when I need it.”
Over the next days, Wayne helped Elise with the last of packing up her mother’s house. Strangely, maybe because of all that had happened—all the trauma she’d uncovered—it wasn’t as difficult to go through it, pick out the things she wanted to keep and the things that could go on to find another life. In only a few days, Elise was on the phone with a realtor; the very house in which she had grown up would soon belong to someone else.
And Elise was grateful again to find that weight removed from her shoulders.
Wayne stood with his arm across her shoulders as they prepared to lock up the door for the final time and deliver the key to the realtor.
“You saw so much of me over the past few days,” Elise said softly. “All those photographs from my teenage years. Those hideous wedding pictures of me and Sean. That prom dress that really should have been burned a long time ago...”
Wayne chuckled gently. “I guess I could show you the bits and pieces of my past life, the stuff that’s leftover, that is. I think Sarah has a lot more of it than I do. She’s better at sentimentality.”
Elise placed her head on Wayne’s chest and listened to the dull, soft beat of his heart beneath his ribcage. Tenderly, he kissed her head and waited as long as she needed before turning back toward the front door and latching it behind them.
“You never think about saying goodbye to the house you grew up in,” Elise whispered. “It all happened too fast.”
**
THE NIGHT BEFORE ELISE, Wayne, Penny, and Bradley planned to trek on back to Mackinac Island, Elise had Haley, Haley’s husband, Rob, and Mia, along with her new boyfriend, Max, over to the house to meet Wayne and catch up.
Throughout the hours leading up to their arrival, Elise roamed around the house anxiously—roasting a chicken and vegetables, mashing up garlic potatoes, drinking a little too much wine. At times, Wayne stopped her, pressed her against the counter, and dotted little kisses down her neck.
“Sorry. I’m just so nervous for some reason,” she said. “I took off without a word, basically, and I know they’re mad.”
Haley and Rob arrived first. Haley leaped out of her husband’s Lamborghini. Her heels clicked across the pavement as she hustled forward and wrapped her arms around Elise without a single word.
