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“It was a pretty dumb thing to do—to give up on myself. I may be a little late to the party, but I need to invest in me for a while.”
She picked up a brochure about a tour of the Machu Picchu area; another one was for the Galápagos Islands, and yet another one was for a three-week meditation cruise.
“I want to do these things,” she said. “I want to travel and find myself again. But I won’t be able to do that if my future is decided for me day in and day out right here at the Forsyth Galloway Inn. This place is a prison.”
Gigi sat in her seat looking as if she’d been slapped in the face.
“What are you suggesting, Zelda? That we sell the place? That we throw six generations of history out like it was yesterday’s garbage?”
Gigi didn’t give Zelda a chance to answer. She got up and walked out of the room. Zelda and Gigi were prone to disagreeing, but they had never arrived at an impasse like this one.
Elle was at a loss for how she would fix this rift.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Elle’s phone rang as she was getting out of the shower. She wrapped herself in a towel and answered.
“Hello?”
“What’s this I hear about you and Daniel Quindlin?”
It was her older sister, Jane. Elle realized with a sinking stomach that she should’ve called her after all that had transpired last night. It wasn’t necessary though, because Kate had most likely called Jane on her way home, leaving a message if Jane had still been working. She could picture Kate saying, “Call me. Call me as soon as you get off work. I don’t care how late it is.” Because she was that eager to slide into the juicy gossip-palooza mud.
“Good morning, Jane. What exactly did you hear?”
“Don’t be coy, Elle. Kate said you’re in love with Daniel Quindlin. Do I need to come down there and hold an intervention?”
Her stomach twisted. She wished she could rewind and take back the words, because they were premature. Once they’d fallen out of her mouth, like a wad of gum she shouldn’t have been chewing, she had regretted them. Regretted them to the point that all night she’d kept waking up, hearing herself saying I think I’m falling in love with Daniel Quindlin.
She didn’t know what she wanted. Because she didn’t want to stop seeing him. But the big fat L-word made her feel like she’d jumped out of the open door of an airplane without a parachute and was free-falling toward a hard impact.
Her head was spinning, and she didn’t want to have this conversation with Jane right now.
“If it will make you come home, sure, knock yourself out, come hold an intervention.”
“But Daniel Quindlin, Elle? What kind of an alternate universe did I wake up in this morning?”
Elle seized the opportunity to change the subject. “Speaking of, what are you doing up this early? You’ve only had about four hours of sleep.”
“I’m calling to see if you’ve lost your mind. Daniel Quindlin? What the hell?”
She said his name like he was garbage and even though she knew her big sister thought she had her best interest at heart, it irked her.
“No, my mind is right where I left it.” She pulled the phone away to check the time. It was just before 7:00. Daniel and Chloe were due to arrive at 8:00; she still had to dry her hair and she could use a cup of coffee—or two. “Could you please hear me out before you jump to conclusions?”
Jane was quiet, but Elle could virtually hear her mind trying to reconcile the details of the conversation she’d overheard before the wedding with a plausible explanation of how Elle could even stand to be in the same room with Daniel, much less entertain romantic notions.
For the second time in as many days, she heard herself telling the story of seeing Daniel jogging in the park and him showing up at the inn.
“I suppose Kate told you that Mom and Gigi hired him to fix the old hurricane damage as well as do some renovations?”
“Yeah, apparently you’ve all had a drink of the Daniel Kool-Aid.”
“Before you crucify them, you need to hear the facts. Look, the bottom line is what happened between Roger and me really isn’t Daniel’s fault. I appreciate you circling the wagons, but Roger cheated on me. Apparently, it had been going on for a while—like the whole time we were apart in college and even as recent as the night before the wedding. I didn’t want to hear the gory details, but I’m guessing that it was bad enough for Daniel to nudge Roger, and Roger—whether it was in a moment of conscience or he was just being true to his cowardly ways—ran. Daniel didn’t kidnap him. Roger ran. Jane, as humiliating as it was to be left at the altar, I believe Daniel saved me from a really bad marriage.”
