Page 33 of The House on Firefly Beach
“He’s helping Juliana with something. He’ll be back in just a minute,” she said, her mind in such a muddle. She needed to refocus. “I see a table full of snacks. We better get over there before Uncle Hank finishes all the cheese.” She pointed past a bunch of balloons to a table against the wall where her uncle was helping himself to a cracker with cheese. “Should we go over and see what’s on it?”
“Yes!” Robby moved through the now crowded cottage to where Uncle Hank was still standing and Sydney followed.
“Hey, bud!” Uncle Hank said, ruffling his hair.
Robby wrapped his arms around his uncle. “This is a fun party, isn’t it?” Robby said, pulling away and snagging a brownie from a platter of confections.
But before they’d been able to start any sort of conversation, Robby left them, running off toward Nate as he came into the room. Juliana settled in a chair and started making small talk with a couple that was nearby, still noticeably shaken but doing well at hiding it. The woman speaking to her clearly hadn’t noticed. Nate squatted down, saying something to Robby, and with the noise in the room, Sydney couldn’t make out what it was.
“Those two get along famously,” Uncle Hank noted, something clearly on his mind as he pointed it out. “…You know, I called Nate today.”
Sydney nodded, her head still clouded with everything she’d just taken in, remembering what Nate had said when she’d gotten home from work. “Why did you call him?” Sydney asked Uncle Hank.
“I wanted to find out which realtor he used to buy his land.”
“You mean the lot he bought?” Sydney asked.
Uncle Hank laughed. “I suppose you could call it a ‘lot’. That is, if you think fifty-seven acres of beachfront property is a ‘lot’.”
“Fifty-seven acres?” She looked over at Nate, processing this. “That’smillionsof dollars.”
“He has it, Sydney.”
With that kind of investment, Nate was most certainly planting roots here. A future with him in it was solidified in her mind now, and she scrambled for what to do. Could she handle that? Should she move back to Nashville? She didn’t want to leave—she loved it in Firefly Beach. But all his back and forth was too difficult to handle, and she just wanted to escape it. Was it so wrong to want to run away? After all, that was what he’d done.
Suddenly, the question occurred to her: “Why did you need to know his realtor?” she asked Uncle Hank.
“I have to have the best, and I knew that he’d have chosen a top agent to help him find his property.” Uncle Hank looked down at the balled napkin in his hands from his cookie. “I’m seriously considering selling Starlight Cottage.”
Aunt Clara’s smile as she waved to Sydney at the front door of the cottage flashed in Sydney’s mind, all the memories flooding her like some sort of movie reel gone haywire. Starlight Cottage was part of the Flynn family. It had seen them through thick and thin. It had seen Flynn weddings over the years, the birth of babies, and it had seen Aunt Clara through her last days; it had been her great aunt’s solace and sense of peace her entire adult life…
“I didn’t think you were serious about selling,” she said, her temples beginning to ache. She wished she could get Aunt Clara’ s opinion, at the very least, see her face—her expression would speak volumes about whether or not selling was a good idea. “There’s no dilemma too great to conquer,” Aunt Clara explained to Sydney once. “The hard part is knowing what it means exactly to ‘conquer’ it. The answer isn’t always what you want or even think should happen, but it’s what was in the cards all along. The ‘conquering’ occurs within sometimes, but everything can be conquered.”
“It won’t be the same once the public beach access is built,” Uncle Hank said, drawing Sydney out of her memory. “The Starlight Cottage that we love will be forever changed the moment the clearing begins.” He straightened his shoulders and grabbed another cookie. “Let’s talk about it later. We need to enjoy the birthday party.”
“You know what? You’re absolutely right,” she said, needing a break from everything.
On her way into the kitchen, she spotted Nate. She grabbed a cracker for herself and decided to head to the kitchen in search of a glass of wine. She couldn’t conquer the issues facing Starlight Cottage tonight or the problems surrounding her and Nate, but she could completely conquer the rift that had formed between her and Malory. It was Malory’s birthday, and she was going to celebrate with her friend.
Chapter Eleven
Sydney tipped her glass toward Malory as her friend topped it off with the last of the wine. They’d finally opened up about their feelings surrounding the break-up.
“I felt like it was all my fault for getting you two together,” Malory told her, shaking her head. “It seemed like you two were perfect for each other. You were so perfect that it never even occurred to me that you’d ever break up. After, I felt naïve, like I had my head in the clouds, when maybe I could’ve focused more on your lives and at least warned you.”
“Malory, it was my choice to date Nate. You couldn’t have foreseen this, nor was it in any way your fault,” Sydney told her. “I’m just glad I came over tonight. I should’ve come to find you sooner.”
Malory smiled. “I missed you.”
“Same.” Sydney held up her glass to toast her friend. “To us,” she said, clinking Malory’s glass.
It had been just the two of them for a while. She had no idea where Nate was and everyone else had gone home. The two women sat together on the sofa, their feet kicked up on the coffee table that was littered with streamers and scraps of wrapping paper. Uncle Hank and her mother had refused to let her leave, telling her she needed to unwind, taking Robby home and putting him in bed for her. After everyone else had gone, she and Malory had stayed up talking, neither of them worried about the fact that they both had to work the next day.
“I’m calling in sick,” Malory declared, giggling.
“I might sleep in late,” Sydney forced the words to come out evenly through the buzz of the alcohol. “I need to get home soon though, or I’m going to end up falling asleep right here.”
They both laughed. Malory snorted, only making them giggle harder.
