Page 39 of So Close

“Yeah. When I was visiting Beachcrest as a kid.”

Her mouth opened. But ofcoursehe’d been here as a kid. Why hadn’t she assumed he had? “You stayed at Beachcrest?”

“A few times, a few summers, when my mom was still alive.”

“Did you like it?”

He nodded. He’d closed his eyes—remembering, she thought.

She stayed quiet, although she was desperate to ask questions. She knew if she pried, he’d clam up.

Then he opened his eyes, and there was a whole world in them.

“I got to leave everything behind. All the bullshit. And I hero-worshipped Carl then. My own dad was—”

He stopped.

“Your dad was—” she prompted.

His gaze flicked, startled, to hers. “You really want to know?”

It felt like the safe answer was probably no. But the real answer was yes, and she couldn’t bring herself, with the sea and sky all around them, wide open, to be less than honest.

“Yeah. I really want to know.”

He looked out at the ocean. Seemed to weigh a whole world of possibilities. Then took a deep breath.

“He was a drunk, and not a nice one. He never hit, but he yelled. And he flailed—broke shit, ruined shit. Couldn’t hold a job. Then he’d get into these risky schemes to try to make the money he couldn’t make nine-to-five. But my granddad … Carl … ran his own business. He bought and sold other real estate; he had this aura of being in control. He talked about what it took to run a business. You had to be gutsy and confident and cool under pressure. You had to be able to negotiate for prices and deals. You had to be careful about cash flow and you had to know the difference between earnings and profits. Hell, he taught me double-entry bookkeeping.

“So we’d come out here with both my parents and my dad would sit on the beach and drink beer and my mom would nap in the room. Brynn would read. And from the time I was little, I’d follow Carl around everywhere. He helped me set up my first business.”

“He told me that,” she said. “A lemonade stand?”

He nodded. “There were a few small ones like that—lemonade, dog-walking, leaf-raking, and then I started my yard care business—and I told you the rest. But Carl was always there to help. I didn’t see him a lot, but I always knew I could call him, if I had questions.”

“What happened?”

He looked at her blankly.

“With Carl,” she prompted. “You guys were so close back then. And he taught you all this stuff. You said you hero-worshipped him. But not anymore, huh?”

“I grew up,” Trey said, and turned away from her.

She thought he was done talking. She almost started pedaling again. But then he turned back.

“I don’t know if you knew this, but when he almost lost Beachcrest, that wasn’t the first time his investments had blown up in his face. It happened when I was a kid, too. I didn’t realize it till I was a teenager, but despite all his big talk about what it meant to be a businessman, and all the money he moved around, there was never any to spare. When I confronted him about it—years after the first time he lost big—he swore he’d learned to be more conservative. And I think for years he was … but then he almost lost the inn.”

There was frustration on his face, but also—hurt.

She drew a deep breath. “He disappointed you.”

Trey closed his eyes. “I thought he was so different from my dad, but hewasn’t. He was just like him.”

“You’re being way too hard on him,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “You don’t know anything about it.”

Abruptly, he started again, cycling way out ahead of her toward Breaker Rock. She followed, not quite ready to catch up. There were so many questions swirling in her mind. She knew there was still more to the puzzle. She could feel it.

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