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Some things you can’t take back....
Kit pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and swallowed hard, her teeth digging into her skin. She dropped her hand and reached out as Viv backed away. “No, I . . .”
Viv stumbled. Beau wrapped his arm around her shoulders, turned her around, and led her down the driveway to the road, enfolding her sagging frame against his brawny one, supporting her weight.
“Viv,” Kit called out. “Please come back.”
Neither of them turned around, and Kit sagged onto the bottom porch step, the late morning sun warm on her skin, but an icy pain chilling her to the bone.
CHAPTER4
“How’d it go?”
Beau dumped the contents of a mesh cage onto a wooden culling table and flexed his gloved hands. The pile of oysters resembled a mound of muddy stones. Most were nicely rounded, with deep cups, but a few thin shells resembling fingers caught his eye. He sifted out three small oysters and returned them to the mesh-bag cage at his feet.
“That bad, huh?” Nate, who stood opposite Beau on a floating dock located behind the Sutton home, near the oyster cages, sorted through the oysters on the table, removed several with deep cups, then dropped them in a nearby bucket.
“It was . . .” Beau continued sifting as he searched for the right word to describe Sylvie’s funeral and Viv and Kit’s altercation.Painful? Soul-searing?“Nightmarish.” He dug deeper into the mound of oysters, the steady clank of shells against buckets loosening the knot at the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t recognize Royal if you saw him. He’s lost at least ten pounds of muscle, grown a full beard, and looks like he’s working hard at wasting into nothing.”
Nate’s hands slowed among the oysters. “Losing a woman you love will do that.”
Beau met Nate’s eyes, the sad half smile on his father’s face having stilled his own hands as he recalled the shape he and Cal had been in when they’d returned to Hope Creek after Evelyn’s death three years ago.
The details of their arrival escaped him—Beau had moved in a fog of grief and uncertainty for weeks after Evelyn had passed—but one memory still remained fresh in his mind. He had woken up late one afternoon, after another hard night of drinking and wallowing, and hadn’t been able to find Cal. His son hadn’t been in his room or on the Sutton grounds, and Beau had searched for almost an hour when he’d stumbled upon Cal sitting on the beach with Nate’s arm around him, sobbing. Cal had looked so much younger than twelve as he’d huddled into Nate on the empty beach, a cool winter wind carrying his desperate cries.
The scene had been gut-wrenching, and Nate’s question afterward, even more so.
“You love your wife more than your son?” Beau had been pouring another shot of whiskey when Nate had confronted him with a hard glare that same night. “You’re not just killing yourself—you’re killing that boy, too.”
It had occurred to Beau then what would’ve happened years ago, when his own mother had packed up, left Hope Creek, and abandoned her husband and son for another man, if Nate had given up. If his father hadn’t packed away his grief and anger, doubled down, and forged a path forward for himself and Beau both.
Beau had put away the shot, gotten his first night of decent sleep in months, and dragged himself out of bed early the next morning to put a plate of hot eggs and bacon in front of Cal as soon he sat at the kitchen table. They’d hit the creek an hour later and undertaken the first steps in establishing Pearl Tide Oyster Company.
He glanced to his right, where Cal stood at the edge of the dock, unloading oyster cages from a bay boat. Most days were still hard without Evelyn, but at least the pain had eased.
Cal looked over his shoulder, the small smile on his face not quite reaching his eyes, but a massive improvement over his grief-stricken demeanor three years ago. “This is the last of the first line. You want me to bring in another?”
Beau shook his head. “Nah. We’ve got plenty to go through for now. But how ’bout you help us out over here? Keep us company?”
Cal’s smile widened. “Yes, sir.”
“How’s Viv holding up?” Nate asked as Cal grabbed a set of gloves and joined them at the culling table.
“Not good,” Beau said. “She was asleep when I left the house.”
And he felt guilty for leaving her, but there was work to be done, and Nate and Cal had shouldered the burden more often than was fair over the past few days. At least one local restaurant and Hope Creek Resort expected a delivery of singles by Monday morning. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to add another successful harvest to Pearl Tide Oyster Company’s record before his presentation at the Hope Creek Community Center Monday night.
“I didn’t know she had a twin,” Cal said, tugging on a pair of gloves. “How come Ms. Viv doesn’t talk about her?”
Beau resumed separating deep-cup oysters from the smaller ones: three inches or more in the bucket, less than three back in the cage. “They haven’t seen each other in a while, and they’re not getting along too well.”
He winced. That was an understatement to say the least.
“How come?” Curiosity gleamed in Cal’s eyes.
“Well, they . . .” Beau weighed a large oyster in his hand and cringed as he recalled the insults both Viv and Kit had hurled at each other. “They had a falling-out a long time ago and still don’t see eye to eye.”
“About what?” Cal asked.
