That night, Emily arrived home after most of the workers had gone but found Jack standing in the center of what she thought had been her kitchen but was now mostly an unrecognizable shell of a room. The cabinets had been torn out, the appliances were gone, and the flooring had been ripped up.
They’d gutted it in a matter of hours.
“Wow,” she said, dropping her bag on the floor just outside the kitchen door. “You guys were busy today.”
“We got a lot done.”
“New cabinets and appliances will go a long way in here,” Emily said. “Though I’m not sure how I’ll function without a kitchen.”
“That’s why God invented carryout.”
“I guess.” She walked over to the wall she’d instructed them to remove. Knocking it down would open up the lower level, and Emily had no doubt an open floor plan was just what the old cottage needed. “The wall is still here.”
“I was waiting for you,” Jack said. “You sure you want to tear it out?”
She faced him. “Do you think I shouldn’t?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
He’d picked up on her decisiveness. Good. While she’d been vague at the onset, she’d come up with a pretty good plan for the renovations, feeding them to Jack one room at a time.
To his credit, the man had taken her changes and suggestions in stride.
“What can I say? When you know, you know.” She smiled.
For a split second, Jack froze. “Right,” he said after several seconds. “When you know, you know.” He bent over and picked up a giant hammer-looking thing and held it out to her.
She stared at it. “What’s that?”
“It’s a sledgehammer.”
“What would you like me to do with it?”
“Thought you might want to do the honors.” He nodded toward the wall.
She laughed. “You want me to hit the wall?”
“No,” he said. “I want you to demolish the wall.”
Emily finally reached out and took the hammer. “This is heavy.”
He only shrugged.
“How am I supposed to demolish the wall if I can’t even lift this thing? Maybe you should do it.” She tried to hand the hammer back to Jack, but he took a step away, hands up as if in surrender.
“You know,” Jack said with a sheepish grin, “this is a great way to let off steam.”
“You think I need to let off steam?”
He shrugged again. “You seem a little stressed out.”
A little anxious. A little neurotic. A little of a lot of things.
She thought of her professional disaster—of how it was highly unlikely she’d ever recover from it. Of how she didn’t have the energy to try. Of how Gladys didn’t believe in her even now, and of how she couldn’t really blame the old woman.
She didn’t believe in herself either.
Never mind that the auditions had gone well, that the cast was solid, that she’d spent the day researching costumes and sets and props, creating giant vision boards to hang in the rehearsal space.
That feeling of accomplishment was so short-lived in the shadow of such a giant mistake.
Would she ever feel confident again?
Yeah, she needed to let off steam. Demolishing a wall wasn’t something she’d tried before. What could it hurt? “What do I do?”
“Just hit it,” Jack said. “As hard as you can.”
“As hard as I can?”
“As hard as you can.” Jack chuckled. “Here, maybe this will help.” He walked over to his tool bag, pulled out a can of black spray paint, shook it, then painted a giant X on the wall.
Emily imagined it was the face of the reviewer who’d given her play the worst of all the bad reviews. She turned sideways, heaved the sledgehammer up over her shoulder, and hauled it into the wall with as much muscle as she could muster.
The hammer got stuck smack in the middle of the X, and she didn’t have the strength to pull it out. “At least I have good aim.”
Jack laughed, reached over, and tugged until the hammer came out.
“Now do it again.”
The impact had jarred her to the core, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it again.
“Come on, Muscles. If you can demo a room, you can do anything.”
“Ha.” Emily wasn’t so sure. Could demolishing a room help her put up a show in a matter of weeks? Could it erase the mistakes of her past? Could it help her get through the rest of this summer without too much pain?
She picked up the sledgehammer again and assumed the position.
“Maybe swing from your legs, use them like you would if you were lifting a heavy box.”
“I don’t lift heavy boxes,” Emily said with a smile. She heaved the hammer back and slammed it into the wall again, and again her insides were shaken like beans in a pair of maracas.
Without a word, she yanked it from the wall and did it over and over until the hammer broke through the other side of the wall.
She gasped. “I did it!”
“You did it,” Jack said.
“I need to get to the gym,” she said, out of breath.
Jack grinned.
Emily looked at the giant hole in the wall. “That was fun.”
“Well, then, keep going.”
Despite her initial concerns, Jack was a nice guy. Not a serial killer at all. It occurred to her that she still knew almost nothing about him.
“Is this really the way you wanted to spend your summer?” she asked as she picked the hammer up again.
“Beats sitting around,” he said.
“But sitting around on the beach? Does it really beat that?”
He laughed. “I’m not a do-nothing kind of guy. I like to keep busy.”
“I get that.” But she didn’t—not really. She thought about her long days before she moved back to New York to mount her play. She’d lived off her trust fund and contributed nothing at all to the world in those days, and she’d been perfectly content to do so.
Somehow, Jack’s way seemed better. Working at the arts center had already shown her the benefits of having something to do. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Those moments where ideas were firing back and forth across the table with her team—they ignited something inside her. Gave her a purpose.
For the first time in a long time, she felt like what she did mattered, and that feeling far outweighed anything she’d ever done for herself. And to be honest, she’d mounted that New York play for herself. She’d done it because she wanted to prove she could, because she wanted to be a star.
And look what had happened.
“You just had auditions, right?” Jack asked.
She was midswing, and his question caught her so off guard she lost her momentum. “You know about that?”
He sat down on a stool across the room and shrugged. “I hear things working here all day every day.”
“Right,” she said.
“Plus, people around town talk.”
She wondered who it was that Jack talked to when he wasn’t working on her house. Did he have friends? How did he spend his time?
“Do you have a family?” she asked, then swung the hammer into a different part of the wall.
“I do,” he said. “Well, I did.”
She glanced at him.
“Divorced. Two boys. They’re spending the summer with their mom.”
“Do you live near them?”
“Yeah, we see each other a lot. They’re planning to spend a week here with me in August.”
“That’s so nice,” she said. “It’s good you make time for them.” She purposefully kept the sadness out of her voice.
“What about you? Do you see your family often?”
She hit the wall—hard. “It’s just me and my grandma now. GrandPop passed away last month.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
She never knew how to respond when people apologized for her grandpa’s death. Or her mother’s. Thanks felt so out of place, so instead, she changed the subject. “And I never knew my father. He must’ve been one of those guys who wasn’t cut out for fatherhood or something.”
“Your mom never told you who he was?”
She shook her head and drew the hammer back. Jack was right—this was great for getting out your frustrations. She just didn’t know she was going to tap into a whole new set of frustrations while she was doing it.
“Wow,” he said quietly. “And your grandparents didn’t tell you either?”
“My grandma said she didn’t know who the guy was,” she said. “Whoever he was, he broke my mom’s heart enough to turn her off of love for the rest of her life. She never got married and told me if I was smart, I never would either.”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “Not sure that’s the best advice.”
She shrugged and set the heavy hammer down, stretching out her arms. “I get her point. If you open yourself up to someone, you inevitably get hurt.”
“But if you stay closed off, you miss out on everything love has to offer.”
“My mother would disagree with you,” she said with a wry smile.
“How do you know?”
“She told me,” she said.
“Weren’t you a little young to be talking about love before your mom died?”
She eyed him for a moment. Jack had been divorced—he was fooling himself if he thought love was anything more than a farce. And as usual, she wanted to prove her point.
“She didn’t tell me that before she died. She told me after.”
Jack’s face turned mysterious. “Like a séance?”
Emily laughed. “No.” She walked into the entryway and retrieved the book of letters from the table. She’d taken to placing it on the table by the front door whenever she wasn’t carrying it in her oversize bag. It seemed to be a good spot for a book that meant so much, like a place of honor or something.
When she returned, she handed the book over. “After she died, we went back to our apartment and packed up all my things, and we found this.”
Jack flipped through the pages carefully. “She wrote you letters?”
“For all the big moments in my life. Key things, you know, like—”
“‘When you feel left out.’ ‘When you feel misunderstood.’” He read as he flipped the pages.
She put her hand down on the book to stop him from turning the next page. “That’s one of my favorites.”
He read the words her mother had written on the envelope holding the letter safe. “‘When you make a mistake—a big one.’”
She reached over and took the letter out. “‘I’m not talking about wearing a pair of jeans that are out of style—I’m talking about the kind of mistakes you don’t bounce right back from. I don’t want you to be afraid of taking risks because you’re afraid of messing up. Messing up is a part of life. In some ways, I guess getting pregnant was a big mistake, but that mistake brought me the biggest blessing of my life.’” She paused, then realized Jack probably didn’t want to hear her silly letter. “Anyway, that’s how I know what my mom thinks about love. And everything else.”
She glanced up and found Jack watching her, and while he wore a quiet smile, his eyes looked glassy.
Maybe he was thinking about the mistakes he’d made. Maybe they were still fresh, like hers.
It was odd that as much as she took Mom’s letters to heart, this one hadn’t quite gotten through. At least not enough for her to move past the regret and the shame of her colossal failure.
“So you don’t think your mom would’ve changed her mind? Met someone else or maybe even reconnected with your dad?”
Emily shook her head. “Definitely not. I mean, maybe she would’ve met someone else, but she never would’ve reconnected with my dad. He left her when he found out she was pregnant. Didn’t want her. Didn’t want me. He broke her heart in so many pieces, nobody could’ve put it back together.”
She hugged the book to her chest. “So when she said, ‘Be cautious with your heart,’ she knew what she was talking about.”
“That why you’re still single?”
She laughed and set the book aside. “Probably. That and the fact that I don’t stay in any one place long enough to have a relationship with anyone.”
“On purpose?”
She picked up the sledgehammer. “Definitely on purpose.”
“What about Hollis?” Jack asked.
“Hollis McGuire?” Emily moved to the other end of the wall and squared off in front of it.
“Don’t know many guys named Hollis.”
“It’s a family name.” She laughed. “Hollis and I are just friends.”
“But you could be more,” he said. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you’re not watching.”
“Is that right?” She smacked the hammer into the wall, suddenly uncomfortable with where the perfectly pleasant conversation had gone. “How’s that?”
“Like he’s not being cautious with his heart.”
Emily hit the wall again. “I think you’re mistaken, Jack. Hollis McGuire will only ever see me as a buddy.”
Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. There had been moments between her and Hollis—moments filled with possibility, with heat. Surely she wasn’t the only one who felt it.
“Well, I’m going to pray you find someone who makes you willing to throw caution to the wind.”
She turned away, not wanting that prayer out there, just in case God really was listening. The last thing she needed was someone to make her lose her common sense in the name of love.
Jack continued, “And that he’s the kind of guy who will have the good sense to hold on to your heart and protect it like it’s a treasure to be kept.”
She looked at him.
“I wish I’d had that kind of sense when I was younger,” he said. “I had something perfect and wonderful and I blew it.”
“Your wife?”
He inhaled a slow breath, then looked away.
“Maybe it’s not too late,” Emily said. “Maybe you can still get her back?”
Jack met her eyes, his face drawn with sadness. “Sadly, that’s not possible.”
“Why not?” Emily asked, knowing she was being nosy but not feeling even a little bit sorry for it.
But Jack wasn’t so forthcoming. “I should get this out to the Dumpster.” He moved toward the debris on the ground.
“Seriously?” She laughed. “I just told you my whole life’s story, and you’re bailing at my first question.”
He picked up a large pile of plaster and tossed her an amused smile. “It’s been nice chatting with you, Miss Ackerman.”
She shook her head. “Turnabout is not fair play, Mr. Walker.” She pounded another hole in the wall. “But thanks for teaching me how to knock down a wall.”
“Of course.” He walked out of the room toward the front door, leaving Emily to contemplate the oddity of having a heart-to-heart with her contractor, but feeling like when this whole remodel was over, she’d have a big dinner party and Jack would be on the guest list.
CHAPTER 30
MID-AUGUST 1989
Even under her parents’ very watchful eyes, Isabelle found ways to see JD. She’d sneak out at night after her mom and dad had gone to bed, race down to the beach, and find him there, waiting.
She’d find reasons to visit the yacht club, where he was now working as a waiter, and they’d steal kisses in the staff locker room when no one was watching.
Their relationship turned innocent again, as if they’d never slept together. As if that was a mistake, and while it couldn’t be remedied, Isabelle didn’t believe JD had any intention of taking advantage of her. If she were to explain the situation to a friend, she would’ve said they were caught up in the moment or they thought they might never see each other again.
It didn’t m
ake it right, and it didn’t take away the fleeting bits of shame that found their way into her mind, but going back to the way they’d been before was comforting. JD felt, in every way, like a part of her. He allowed her to be more herself than anyone else.
With him, she felt like she was home. And the days when she couldn’t be home were hard.
It was strange, not doing exactly what was expected of her. Strange and . . . exhilarating.
Until it wasn’t.
Until the day she had to go to the clinic for an antibiotic and ended up getting tested for mono.
“Miss Ackerman, your blood test turned up something interesting,” the doctor said.
“I’m not dying, am I?” Isabelle half laughed.
Dr. Solstrom’s smile looked forced. The man had been treating her for years. He was her “summer doctor,” as her mother said.
“No, nothing like that,” the doctor said. “Isabelle, when was your last period?”
Isabelle didn’t keep track of these things. She should probably, but she didn’t. She tried to think back and drew a blank.
He sat down on his rolling stool and looked her in the eyes. “Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”
Isabelle’s face turned hot. Though her mother was sitting in the waiting room, she still felt like she should whisper and almost asked the doctor to do the same. She swore her mother could hear through cement walls.
“I don’t think so,” she said. Her mind spun back to the day she found out JD had been fired, the day she’d gone to see him, the day they’d slept together. “Oh no.”
The doctor let out a slight sigh and pushed back on his stool. “Should we talk about your options?”
Isabelle covered her face with her hands. “No, I know my options, but thank you.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t seventeen, pregnant, and the daughter of Alan and Eliza Ackerman.
“Do you have to tell my mom?”
The doctor inhaled, then sighed again. “I should.”
“No,” she said. “I should.”
“Do you want me to have the nurse get her from the waiting room?”
Isabelle shook her head, suddenly overcome with the need to see JD. “I have to go, Dr. Solstrom, but thanks.”
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