by Vivian Wood
Alex pulled on some clean clothes for another dinner at the inn where Faith would pretend he didn’t exist. “Shit,” he said. There was a tear in his shirt and a button was missing. How the hell did that happen? There was no way Mama would let “such riffraff” at her formal dining table.
By the time he’d changed and raced across the lawn to the inn, everybody was seated and waiting for him. Gwen arched one of those perfectly shaped brows at him while she put down the last pot but didn’t say anything.
“Thought you’d plumb forgot,” Mama said. She whipped the cloth napkin open and settled it on her lap—a cue for everyone else to follow suit.
The only seat was between Faith and Mama. “Sorry, ma’am,” he mumbled to her. Faith didn’t even look up. She busied herself with complimenting Gwen and Mama on the spread.
“Care to lead us in grace?” Mama asked Alex pointedly.
He sucked in his breath through his teeth and took Mama’s hand. Faith didn’t readily offer hers up, so he grabbed it harshly and held it on his thigh. Even as he went through the familiar prayer, eyes closed, he was well aware of the heat of her body against his. Her hand is just so soft. He was tempted to squeeze it, do something to let her know he was onto her, but by the time the amens rang through the dining room, he’d lost his nerve.
“That was lovely, thank you,” Mama said. He knew it had been rushed, but he’d take any compliment Mama would dole out at this point.
“Grits at dinner, my favorite,” Caleb said.
Gwen circled behind him and swatted his hand as he reached too far for the dish. “Manners,” she said. “Y’all act like you’s raised by wolves and not your fine mama.”
“Thank you, Gwen,” Mama said.
“So you were saying?” Faith asked Caleb. “Earlier, about the scuba? I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t, coming from Southern California and all,” Caleb said. Finally, Matt passed him the grits topped with golden cheese, and he piled his plate high.
“My cousins were really into it for a little bit, but at the time I was studying for the LSAT all the time.” Faith sunk her fork into the pork shoulder, which fell off the bone like butter. “Amazing, Gwen. Mama,” she said.
“Well, if you’re interested, I can get you started,” Caleb said. He dug into the grits with gusto. “I’m technically able to certify new divers, but it’s been a while.”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .”
“Nonsense, baby. Caleb’s a good teacher. Great diver. He’d be happy to take you out.”
Was it just Alex’s imagination, or did Mama have a certain tone with the “take you out?” Is she trying to push Faith and Caleb together? Mad as hell, he tucked into his own plate full of just pork and the steamed broccoli Gwen made on the side just for him. Everyone else happily ladled the buttered, creamy blend of vegetables onto their plates.
“It does sound fun,” Faith said with a smile. “But I don’t know. I have a lot of work to do on the property still. I swear, it’s like Craig thinks I’m part of his crew now. Well,” she paused. “Part of his crew that doesn’t even know how to hold a hammer right.”
“Well, the offer’s open,” Caleb said. “Anytime. If you think the island’s pretty as is, you won’t believe what’s underneath the water.”
Alex stole a look at her from the corner of his eye. Really, maybe Faith was the same as always. Polite and cordial, even when his brothers flirted with her. Maybe she wasn’t so mad after all.
Like most dinners at Mama’s table, there were long stretches of silence. “Sure sign of a good supper,” Mama and Gwen always said. They were right. Even through his discomfort and worry about Faith, Alex couldn’t help but lose himself in the rich flavors of Gwen’s pork.
When their plates had been thoroughly cleaned, Gwen came in with her staple cinnamon peach pie. “I couldn’t,” Faith said as she cradled her flat belly.
“You can and you will,” Gwen admonished. “After all, you helped make it.”
“You did, Faith?” Mama asked. “Well, now we’ve all got to try a piece.”
Gwen knew not to push Alex for a slice of carbs and sugar. He was the only one who ever got away with turning down dessert. But when Gwen sidled by this time, he touched her arm lightly. “Just a little piece,” he said.
Gwen didn’t change her expression or even meet his gaze. But she did cut the smallest of pieces and slide it onto a dessert plate for him.
Alex didn’t know if it was because it’d been so long since he’d had dessert, or if the pie really was that good, but every bite tasted like heaven. Every mouthful had a piece of Faith in it.
“Let me help you wash up,” Faith said when they finished. Surprisingly, Mama didn’t argue. The two women picked up the dishes and went into the kitchen. Lee and Matt followed with their own plates smeared with sweet peach curd.
“Guess we should help,” Caleb said uncertainly. Alex shrugged. The two of them picked up the remaining unused flatware and the vessels scraped clean of the comfort food.
In the kitchen, Alex watched how Faith interacted with Mama—with all of them, actually. She was a natural fit, like she’d always been there.
“A shark?” she asked Caleb. “Don’t tell me anymore! If you thought that would entice me to go scuba diving with you, you’re dead wrong.”
“It was a little shark!” he said. “I swear, ma’am. If you went with me, you’d be totally safe.”
“A shark is still a shark, doesn’t matter the size!”
“What is that? Some kind of Dr. Seuss logic?” Lee asked.
Faith let out a laugh. Alex smiled with his back to the rest of them. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed that laugh until that moment.
“Caleb,” Mama said. “You best be telling Faith the good things about scuba if you want her to go.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s see. There are fish, colors like you’ve never seen before. Bright neon, and big, too.”
“I like fish,” Faith conceded. “But I don’t know if I like them enough to risk my life. I mean, there are aquariums.”
“You don’t get it,” Caleb said with a shake of his head. “It’s different. Down there. And the white sand on the beach? It’s like another world down there.”
“How so?” Faith asked as she helped Mama load the dishwasher.
“Quiet,” Caleb said. Something in his voice made everyone slow down and listen. “It’s just quiet, you know? Like you’ve never experienced before. But then it’s not. The sound of the ocean, your own breath, it’s like another world.”
“It sounds like magic,” Faith said.
“It kinda is, ma’am,” Caleb said. “It’s an escape, I guess? Like this secret place where it’s just you and all these bright creatures.”
“I can see why you go,” Faith said quietly.
Alex kind of could, too.
After they’d done all they could, and Gwen shooed them out of the kitchen, he saw Faith pick up her steaming cup of nightly tea and head to the porch. He hung around the inn for a bit, uncertain if he was up to walking past her in silence toward his cabin.
Usually, Mama would join Faith for their evening tea on the porch. But this time, she made a show of being tired. “I think I’m just Gonna head to bed. Y’all all right?” she asked the boys. “You need anything?”
“Nah, Mama,” Caleb said. “You go on. You work too hard.”
“Really?” Mama said. “Glad to know somebody finally noticed.”
Caleb rolled his eyes at Alex. “Think I’ll hit the shower before bed,” he said. “Don’t know if I’ll be up for it with that five in the morning wake-up call.”
“Five?” Matt asked.
“Fishin’,” Caleb said and pretended to cast and reel in a line. “Me and Lee both.”
“Ah,” Matt said. He’d already curled up into his favorite leather chair in the sitting room with a thick book.
Soon enough, Alex was left alone on the first floo
r with just the occasional flick of the page from Matt in the corner.
“Headin’ out,” he told Matt. He saw Matt’s hand raise in farewell.
As soon as he stepped onto the porch, he saw Faith with bare feet perched on the rail. She slouched back into the swing and swayed herself slowly. Faith looked at him with big open eyes but didn’t say a thing. Instead, she took a long sip of her tea.
“Hey,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Hey? That’s what I have to say to her.
“Hey,” she repeated.
“You know,” he began. Alex searched for words as he approached her. He thought if he stood over her, he’d have some leverage, but he might as well have been on his knees. “About the other day . . . women, they don’t understand what they want.” Instantly, he knew the words came out wrong, but he couldn’t suck them back in.
“No,” she said and put down the mug. “You don’t get to turn this around on me.”
“I’m not—”
“I’m not interested in continuing this conversation,” she said. Faith removed her feet from the rail. “I’ll be real with you. I think you’re hot. Okay? I mean, I’m not going to deny that,” she said with a laugh.
Alex felt red creep up his neck. She thinks I’m hot?
“But I’m not here to get a shit show of emotions dumped on me. Especially when they have nothing to do with me.”
Alex clamped his mouth shut. She was right, of course, but how could he admit that to her? “I don’t know what—”
“Yeah, you don’t know,” she said. “That’s the problem. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not the one who has problems understanding what I want.”
“I never asked for any of this.” That wasn’t what he’d wanted to come out, had expected to come out, but there it was.
Faith looked down at her lap and nodded. Her expression was set in stone. “I’m not even going to validate that with a response,” she said. “But all of this? Your attitude and everything? That’s you. Projecting onto me. And I’m not going to allow it.”
He was stunned into silence. Faith stood up and walked right past him into the house. The scent of her perfume lingered around him long after the door clicked shut.
A woman had never spoken to him like that before. He’d grown used to Rebecca’s manipulative crying fits and yelling, but not this.
Is Faith right? Is he really dragging all of his crap with Rebecca around with him now?
Chapter 19
Faith
Faith couldn’t get last night’s conversation on the porch out of her head. If you could even call it a conversation, she thought. She shook her head and dug into a sugary bowl of cereal. She knew she’d get a look from Mama for foregoing breakfast made from scratch in favor of Cap’n Crunch. But sometimes a girl needs her comfort food, she thought, even as the rough cereal scratched the roof of her mouth.
“I see you got started early,” Mama said as she breezed into the kitchen. One brow was raised in question at the bowl.
“Sorry, Mama,” Faith said. “I just had a craving.”
“I remember those,” Mama said with a sigh. “Brace yourself. They just get worse after a certain age.” Mama put on a fresh kettle and wrapped her morning robe tighter around her. “What are y’all’s plans for the day?”
“Oh, um, Alex and I are going into Savannah to meet up with Craig in his office.” Faith hated how Alex’s name felt in her mouth. But she was staying in his mama’s house, so she at least had to put on a front of nonchalance.
“Uh huh,” Mama said. “Think y’all will have time to go to that bakery I like? I’m running low.”
“Of course, Mama,” Faith said with a smile. A box or two of chocolates might do her some good, too.
As Mama went off in search of Jessie, Faith lifted the sugary bowl of milk to her lips and drank with abandon. Screw manners, she thought.
“Thirsty?” Alex’s voice broke through the drone of the kettle hard at work.
Faith set the bowl down with a thud and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Parched,” she replied without a look in his direction.
Alex got two of his little, hard, low-carb slices of “bread” out of the cupboard and popped them in the toaster. As if on cue, Caleb came into the kitchen armed with plenty of crap to talk about Alex’s diet. “Mmm, whip me up some o’ them cardboard toast coasters,” Caleb said.
“Yeah, you could use some,” Alex said and pretended to inspect Caleb’s biceps.
Caleb laughed. “Don’t need no fake toast crap when you actually put in a full day’s worth of manual labor. Check these babies out,” he said. Although he presented his flexed biceps to Alex, Faith saw him as he stole a glance in her direction.
“I’ll pass,” Alex said. “By the way,” he called to Faith, “Caleb and Matt are coming with us to Savannah.”
“Oh!” Faith said. “Great, great.” It drove her mad that he acted like nothing had changed. Like they hadn’t had the best mind-blowing sex of her life just a few days ago. Is he just playing it cool in front of his family? Even if he didn’t feel anything for her beyond lust, how could he act like everything was the same as it was when she had arrived?
Or maybe he just doesn’t care, she told herself. That was one possibility she didn’t want to linger on for long.
“We got some business ourselves out that way,” Caleb told her. He sat down at the table with the leftover grits from last night, cold.
“Ew,” Faith said as she wrinkled her nose. “You eat them cold?”
“It’s like pizza,” he said. “I like all toppings, hot, cold, whatever. It’s all good.”
“Right,” Faith said. “I think I’ll stick with pizza.”
“I’ll come get y’all in about thirty,” Alex said. He grabbed his toast to go, wrapped it in tinfoil, and headed back to the cabin.
“Things movin’ forward with the property then?” Caleb asked. He ate like a little boy, full of gusto and without a care for how it came off.
Faith smiled at him. “I guess,” she said. “I don’t have any context, so I can’t say if it’s on schedule or not.”
“Ah, it’ll be fine,” he said.
Matt walked into the kitchen in a light-gray suit perfectly pressed. “Wow, fancy,” she said. For the first time, Faith really looked at him. Matt was handsome in his own way. Even dressed as a typical attorney, which she’d been surrounded by for so many years, there was something about him that was different. A softness, maybe a sort of southern charm, that wasn’t in California lawyers.
Matt shrugged. “Sometimes I can clean up okay.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Faith said softly. In the few weeks since she’d been here, she’d figured out Matt liked to cover his insecurities with sarcasm.
“Thanks,” Matt said. He picked through the bowl of fruit on the table for the ripest apple to slice into his oats.
“You’re not dressing up?” Faith asked Caleb.
“Me? Hell no,” he said. “Matt’s got the brains and the corporate looks. All I got to bring is the brawn.”
“Nice,” Matt said. He rolled his eyes as he sat down with them.
“Guess Gwen an’ Mama’s skipping the grand breakfast spread today,” Caleb said with disappointment.
“I think it’s because of me,” Faith said. “I told her this morning Alex and I were headed out. Maybe she knew y’all were joining us.”
“I like that southern accent on you, ma’am,” Caleb said with a wink.
Faith blushed. She didn’t mean to pick up their slang and accents, but she heard it as it slipped in occasionally.
“Y’all still eating?” Alex called from the front porch. “Hurry up! We don’t got all day.”
Caleb let out a huff and raised his eyes at Faith. “The timekeeper’s upset,” he said.
They arrived at the dock just as the ferry was about to set off. “Close call, y’all,” the ticket taker said.
The breeze was warm and the water just as gorgeous as a
lways. Today, it was exceptionally crowded for the small ferry. “Market weekend,” Caleb told her. “Whole island heads to the mainland to stock up for the rest of summer. And to sell their goods,” he added.
Faith looked around. There did seem to be an inordinate number of bins and boxes on board.
For the entire ride, Alex stayed a few steps away from them. Faith watched him gaze into the distance and commanded herself to forget him.
If he is going to act like a brat, why should I get dragged down with him?
“So what kind of business are you guys going to Savannah for?” Faith asked. She pushed her sunglasses up her nose.
Caleb glanced at Matt. “Oh, just, you know. Property stuff ourselves.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Mama prefers us to handle estate planning and management at this point,” he said. “She oversees the paperwork from the inn.”
“Estate planning?” Faith was worried. Is Mama ill?
“It’s nothing,” Matt assured her. “Just precautionary, is all. When you have the kind of assets Mama does, you can’t be too careful. Plus, with the tourism industry exploding nearby, the value of her property is always changing.”
“Exploding?” Faith said with a laugh. “It’s rare if we cross another car on the roads on Saint Rose!”
“Yeah, well, you can’t imagine what it was like even five years ago,” Matt said. He shook his head sadly. “There was a time you knew the name o’ every person you passed. Every car. Heck, even every horse. But now?” He chewed his lip. “It’s just like anywhere else.”
“Did you, I mean did either of you ever meet Lydia?” she asked. Behind their sunglasses, Faith couldn’t read their expressions.
“I think I met her once,” Caleb said. “Yeah, ʼbout ten years ago? Lee and I used to manage a produce stand at a market on the island that’s defunct now. I think she bought some strawberries from us.”
“You think?” Faith asked. This wasn’t exactly the kind of insight she was looking for.
“Maybe it was blueberries?” Caleb asked.
“Right,” she said.
“I never met her,” Matt said.
“Big surprise,” Caleb said. “You’ve always had your nose buried in a book too deep to notice anyone else.”