Page 121 of Ten Beach Road

She listened numbly, unsure what was coming next.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t come to you until I had a job and some way to pay off our bills. I couldn’t bear not being able to take care of you all.”

She shook her head. “I need a partner, Steve, not a parent. You don’t have to ‘take care of me.’ You just have to be ‘present.’ ” She might not have known it before she came here, but she did now.

“I know. I’ve seen just how strong you are. You’ve been amazing. But I needed to contribute. I just didn’t see how I could face you again until I’d found a job.” He smiled, and she saw a flash of the old confidence, the thing that had drawn her to him all those years ago.

“You have a new job?” she asked, surprised.

“Not exactly,” he conceded. “But I’ve got a good shot at being the new territory manager for Perimeter Capital. I made the top five.”

She saw a tiny pinprick of light in the dark tunnel of loss, a small ray of possibility. She swallowed. “That’s great.” But still she wasn’t sure what came next or how exactly she should respond.

Steve raised her hand and brushed his lips across the knuckle before looking back into her eyes. “I’m sorry, too, for allowing my mother to treat you the way she did. I couldn’t believe it when I realized she’d been calling you Melinda all these years.” His smile turned wry. “That was, as Andrew pointed out, completely lame. Edna and I agreed that she’d work on getting it straight.”

A smile found its way to her lips. “I think it had become almost habit with her. I doubt . . .”

“I took her up to North Carolina because her sister couldn’t live alone anymore and neither could my mother. They’ll be good for each other.”

“You mean she’s not just visiting?” Maddie asked.

Steve shook his head. “Maybe we can invite them both for the holidays or whatever we feel makes sense, but the move is permanent. She’ll be better off up there.”

Maddie smiled intentionally this time. It had taken him far longer than she had hoped or wanted, but her husband was here. He’d apologized and was doing his best to make amends. She could hold on to her anger and disappointment, or she could choose to let it go. She drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. “I love you,” she said, meaning it. “But I’ve gotten used to relying on myself. I’m good at a lot more than I realized. Things won’t be exactly like they were.”

“You’ve always been good at a lot more than you realized,” he said simply. “I can live with change. As long as we’re together.”

He lifted his hands to bracket her face and stared into her eyes long and hard before he kissed her. As they headed back to Ten Beach Road, she felt the pull of new beginnings and possibility. She only wished the same could be true for Bella Flora.

Admitting defeat hurt. Which was, Avery thought, sort of like saying a bullet to the heart was kind of painful. Regardless of how it felt, they just couldn’t seem to find any way around it: Bella Flora was going to have to be sold “as is,” assuming anyone was going to be interested in a derelict teardown on a stretch of beach that had just been pounded by a hormonal hurricane. Or they were going to have to find the money to tear her down themselves. They’d come full circle.

Avery, Deirdre, Maddie and her husband, Steve, Nikki, and Chase sat around John Franklin’s conference table hashing it out, trying once again to add two and two and come up with something other than four.

“We already owe Chase everything he’s put out to his subs and to purchase materials. We don’t have the money,” Avery said. “There’s just no way.” It was hard to push the words out past her disappointment, but pretending was equally painful.

“But Dyer’s in custody; you’re bound to get at least some portion of what your father left you,” Deirdre argued. “And so will Maddie and Nikki. You could rebuild.” She turned to the others looking for agreement. No one met her eye.

“That could take years, and we have no way of knowing how much anyone will be awarded,” Avery said for what seemed like the millionth time. She didn’t understand how this had happened, but somewhere along the way she had surrendered to the harsh realities while Deirdre seemed to have purchased her very own ticket to never-never land.

“Insurance will have to cover some of the expense, won’t it?” Steve Singer asked.

Avery watched the way he took Maddie’s hand and looked at her with love and relief and appreciation all sort of rolled up together. At least something seemed to be ending happily.

“But not enough and probably not anytime soon given the amount of damage Charlene did up and down the Florida coast,” Maddie said. “We only had flood insurance because it was transferable. We couldn’t afford wind or homeowner’s policies. We’re just lucky the things the designers put in for the show house were underwritten separately.”

“And Bella Flora hadn’t been reappraised yet,” Nikki pointed out. “That was supposed to happen next week. The maximum we could collect is two hundred fifty thousand dollars.” She stole a glance at her cell phone, which she’d placed on the table.

Avery drew in a deep breath; she could barely stand to think about Bella Flora’s condition and their situation. Talking about it was even worse.

Nicole’s phone rang.

“Sorry.” She reached for the phone and looked down at the screen. “I’m sorry,” she said again, standing and moving toward the door. “But I need to take this.”

Nikki hurried from the conference room and went outside.

Avery could see her through the office picture window the phone to her ear, pacing back and forth out on the sidewalk. She and Maddie exchanged glances. Deirdre raised her eyebrow.

“Maybe we could try to raise the money somehow,” Deirdre said. “Do a telethon, look for a wealthy backer of some kind. We know exactly what we’re doing now. We could renovate much faster and more efficiently this time.”

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