Page 67 of The House on Firefly Beach
“I wish I could go back to that day…” He shook his head once and closed his eyes, as if to hurl the thought from his mind. “Everything I do pushes you away. I just wish I could show you how much you mean to me. I wish you could know howIsee you.”
What did he mean that he wished he could go back to that day? His motives had been pretty clear. Sydney recounted everything that had been burned in her memory that day: how he wouldn’t even look at her, the way he brushed her off, telling her there was more to life than Firefly Beach, how he never once looked back. She wanted to believe that he was sincere, but the fact that he was on the board kept coming back into her mind, challenging her feelings and screaming at her to use her head. She opened her mouth to confront him about it, but Logan was waiting and with the roll of thunder and the biting wind from the storm that was coming, it was time to call it a night. She needed to get back, and nothing they said right now could alter reality.
“I need to get back,” she said, her tone softer now. Despite her anger it hurt her to see him in pain.
She didn’t only need to get back to Logan, she needed to get out of the past and back to her life. And she had to make the decision to separate her feelings from the boy she once loved and the man right in front of her now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What in the world are you doing?” Sydney called out her bedroom window. In the light of early morning, Uncle Hank was on the beach, banging away on some sort of wood contraption. Her head still pounding from the emotion of last night, she squeezed her eyes shut with anotherbang.
With the rush of the tide, and a boat going by, he didn’t hear her, so she shut her window, slipped on her flip-flops, and went out in her pajamas to see what exactly it was that he was doing. He’d woken her up from a sound sleep and she didn’t want him to wake up Robby and the rest of the house.
“What are you making?” she asked, hopping over a piece of driftwood to get to Uncle Hank.
The occasional blowing clouds made the lighthouse behind him look as though it were swaying. The storm had gone as quickly as it had arrived last night, leaving a crisp blue sky behind scattered hazy clouds that drifted past now and again.
“I’m making a birdhouse,” he said with another slam of his hammer. He’d constructed an enormous box of wood and he was nailing the last piece onto the front. It had holes drilled in it to fit against the grid of wood that he’d built inside. “Clara had always wanted one and I’d never gotten around to building it for her.” He picked up another nail and lined it up, with focused determination.
“How come you aren’t building this in the woodshed?” she asked.
He looked up, out of breath slightly from bending over, small beads of sweat on his forehead. “Your Aunt Clara used to draw out her designs while sitting on this beach, so I wanted to build it out here where she could give me inspiration. I did the cuts in the woodshed but then I carried it all out to the sand—this was her place.”
She couldn’t help herself. “And why are you deciding to build it now?”
“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, his voice heavy. “At all. The bed felt emptier than it has in a long time. I’m failing her by giving up Starlight Cottage.” He lifted the large box and set it upright. “This is old wood from when we had the gazebo built all those years ago. It had been the one place in the house she and I designed together, and, through the years, it was there that we went whenever we wanted to talk. I wanted to put it up out there, so the birds would fill it.” Uncle Hank stood back and took a look at the birdhouse, brushing a bit of sand off the top. “She loved the sound of birds in the morning. Putting this up would bring life to the gazebo again. When I sit out there, it’s so quiet now. Her humming is gone. Her little chatter about whatever was on her mind is absent.”
Sydney could hear Aunt Clara now. She’d told her once, “The birds singing are a constant reminder of life outside our walls, of a whole world out there, and the peace it can have if we all slow down enough to recognize our strengths. You’ll never find an anxious bird, worried about where its next worm will come from. They just get up every morning singing and then do what they do best. And they’re always fed. That’s really all any of us should do.”
“If I fill the silence with birds, then I won’t feel so alone. I’m hoping to feel like she’s with me.”
Sydney looked out at the end of the pier where the gazebo sat as if it were suspended above the water. It was the place she’d first found a broken Uncle Hank a year ago, when they’d all arrived to finish carrying out Aunt Clara’s wishes. Now it made sense as to why he’d been out there that day.
“So you’ve made the decision to sell?” she asked, fear swimming around as she waited for the answer.
“It’s not a decision,” he said, frowning. “My hand has been forced. If I stay, I’ll be staring at a parking lot. All the property between us and the main road has now been bought up—the rezoning signs are posted. I saw them this morning on my walk. It’s happening whether we like it or not.” He peered down at one of the boards and inspected where it met another. “I want to hang it up in the gazebo and then take it with me when I move so that wherever I go, I’ll have something left of Starlight Cottage.”
“Where will we go?” she asked, feeling the emotion rising in her throat.
“I’m going to ask Nate about his land,” he said.
She still hadn’t told Uncle Hank about Nate’s involvement in all this. “I need to talk to you about something,” she said, taking a deep breath, steeling herself.
Uncle Hank’s hands stilled and he turned to her.
“You might not want to live on Nate’s land, once you hear this. Why don’t we go over and sit down on the pier… Nate’s on the board of supervisors,” she said once they’d reached it. “He’s also the one who bought all the lots surrounding the public beach access. I’m wondering if it was because he had more money than the county to offer the sellers. He wanted to make it a sure thing.”
Disbelief slid across Uncle Hank’s face as he sat on the edge of the pier, needing to steady himself. He looked wounded by the news rather than angry, his gaze submitting to the hurt and dropping to his folded hands in his lap.
“My guess is that Nate’s moved back to Firefly Beach to invest in all those shops that are going up around the public beach access.”
“He’s not a developer,” Uncle Hank said, clearly trying to make sense of this.
“No, but he grew up here. Who was his childhood best friend? Do you remember?”
“Colin Ferguson.” Uncle Hank’s eyes grew round. “The contractor who built the new waterfront hotel down the road.”
“Yep.” The whole thing gave her a bad taste in her mouth. She’d have never thought that he’d stoop this low. “I’m thinking he’s offering us a spot on his land to relocate us so he can get us out of the way to build with Colin. I don’t know for sure, of course, and I plan to give him a piece of my mind and find out what’s going on, from his mouth, but I can’t see any other reason for him to do this.”
