“Where’s Uncle Ty?” Addie asked. “We have to show him all this.”
Betsy dumped the pile of wet towels in the laundry room, then noticed the remains of Ty’s dinner—or maybe a late lunch—in the sink. The TV was on in the living room, tuned to the Weather Channel. Ty didn’t usually trust “the big boys,” as he called them, much preferring the local meteorologists. She peered out the window toward the barn. All the lights were blazing, Carlos’s and Roger’s trucks parked in the grassy lot by the barn.
When she opened the fridge to find some dinner, she saw his note pinned to the door with a smiling cow magnet.
Working on the back fence. I’ll be in as soon as I can. Please wait up.
“I think he’s still going to be a while,” Betsy said.
While she pulled together a quick meal for the girls, they organized their shells into piles—big ones and small ones, pale and bright, smooth and bumpy. They instructed her to leave the piles on the table so Ty could see them when he came in. “Don’t even move them an inch,” Addie directed. “They might break.”
“You got it,” Betsy said. “But you’ll have to help me move them tomorrow. We’ll need our table back.”
“Yeah, before the storm comes for sure. I’ll need to put them somewhere really safe then.”
Betsy nodded, surprised. She didn’t know the tension brought on by the approaching Ingrid had trickled down to Addie and Walsh. What else had they picked up on when the adults around them thought they didn’t understand?
After dinner and a quick bath, she put the girls to bed. Fatigue from the full day in the sun hit her as she closed their bedroom door behind her. A shower perked her up enough to head back downstairs and grab the laundry basket full of the girls’ clean clothes. She paused by the kitchen window, straining her eyes to see whether the guys’ trucks were still parked in the dark driveway. It was hard to tell, but she assumed they were still hard at work preparing the fences and property. Regardless of where on the coast Ingrid made landfall, they were all in for high winds and heavy rain at the very least.
On her way out of the kitchen, she spied a bottle of wine left over from her birthday party. She wasn’t afraid to choose a bottle of wine for its label, and this one featured a shoreline, a setting sun, and a set of footprints in the sand. She smiled, poured herself a glass, and took it upstairs with the laundry basket.
She’d just set the basket down on the floor when her phone lying on the dresser buzzed with a text. Thinking it’d be Ty giving her an update on when he’d be finished, she grabbed it and opened up her messages. She froze, wineglass halfway to her lips. Jenna.
Just a few words and her world shifted beneath her like sand.
Half an hour later, the porch door opened downstairs. She heard Ty drop his boots by the back door, then climb the stairs. He pushed open the bedroom door and stopped in the doorway, taking in the small stacks of folded clothes, the girls’ duffel bag on the floor, partially filled.
Confusion crossed his face. “What are you doing?”
“Jenna’s coming back,” she said quietly.
He exhaled and pushed the door closed behind him. Crossing the room toward her, he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Are you okay?”
She set down a stack of shirts and turned to face him. “I’m good.”
He stared hard, not speaking.
“Really. I’m good. It’s okay, it’s time.” Then with no request made or permission given, the tears came. She covered her face with her hands and he wrapped his arms around her.
“I’m sorry for going behind your back and talking to the school. I went too far.” With her face buried in his chest, her voice came out muffled, but she knew he heard because his arms around her tightened. “My head has been turned around for so long, and I know I haven’t treated you very well. I’m the one who pulled away, not you. You’ve been standing in the same place, waiting for me to come back. And I’ve missed you so much.”
Fresh tears fell as he ran his hand down her hair, rested his cheek against hers. “I’ve missed you too,” he whispered.
She pulled back and looked in his face. “You are such a good man. You’re more than enough for me, more than I could ever deserve.”
He shrugged. “Well, you have me. Can’t do much about that.” A corner of his mouth pulled up and she brushed her thumb over that little half smile. “I’m sorry too. Not for being mad, but I overreacted. It was childish of me not to come back and talk to you about it after the party. I just . . . I didn’t have the words. I didn’t know what to say.”
“I know. I don’t blame you. Not about anything. Let’s just . . . Can we start over? Start from right here, tonight?”
When she kissed him, his response was immediate. His lips on her face, his hands on her back, his body melding to hers was all she knew. Together, the two of them were more than enough.
Afterward, they lay next to each other, still and quiet, her cheek against the soft place just below his shoulder, their legs intertwined. Outside the window, a barn owl hooted somewhere in the darkness. After a moment, a second call answered it. Back and forth the calls went, a mysterious language she would never understand. She found Ty’s hand on his chest and covered it with hers. He lifted his fingers and curled them around hers, wrapping her hand tight.
thirty-six
Jenna
Halcyon was whisper quiet the next morning as Jenna
