Page 58 of An Island Summer
Pensively, Toby followed, taking them outside and setting them onto the table. He went back in and returned with their drinks. Charlie followed him out, finding a spot in the setting sun on the patio.
“I’ve been waiting for this since we got to Hatteras Island!” Tess said, serving Rupert a plate while the old man looked on, beaming and seeming completely content as he scooped up a forkful of his dinner.
The ocean breeze, the setting sun, and the wide-open house cooled the patio, and Tess had lit the tiki torches and candles, the surround lighting clicking on—all of it offering the most glorious of settings. Tess went in and got Rupert a glass of water.
“It’s been entirely too long since I’ve had your cooking, Hester,” Rupert said, digging in. “I’ve missed it so much.” He took another bite, his eyes dancing in the light of the candles.
“She really should cook more often, shouldn’t she?” Tess asked him with a wink at Meghan, as she came back outside.
Rupert’s eyebrows bobbed up and down happily. “I’d take her cooking any day.”
Meghan couldn’t help but beam, Rupert’s delight warming her. Despite the fact that he wasn’t really with them mentally, she felt an unspoken bond with him that she couldn’t shake. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said, meaning it.
“I’ve said it before,” Rupert said, taking the glass from Tess and sipping a small drink of his water, “you’ve picked the wrong line of work with the acting. You should’ve been a chef like your father.”
Meghan became still as she regarded Rupert with utter surprise.Hester’s father was a chef?
Tess’s eyes rounded at Rupert’s comment, a smile twitching at her lips.
Toby leaned over and whispered in Meghan’s ear, sending tingles down her arm, “Maybe you’re more like Hester than you think?” He gave her a wink.
“Tell Tess and Toby about my father,” Meghan said to Rupert, as she filled her fork from the steaming dish in front of her.
“Hester’s father was a very well-known chef in Dallas, Texas,” Rupert told them. “He had dreams of going to New York and making it big, but instead, he put his own dreams aside to further Hester’s career. He was such a selfless man…”
Meghan thought about how, even now, her own dreams of being a chef had been put on hold while Hester took center stage. Ever since Hester had entered Meghan’s life, it had been as though the woman had been right there with her, still, in death, larger than life.
“It’s much more rewarding to help someone else,” she said, her mind on helping Rupert more than the subject of Hester’s father. She suddenly wondered if Hester had never had a chance to figure that out about herself. She’d been so wrapped up in her own life that she hadn’t been able to experience the feeling of doing things for others. Perhaps she’d have been less troubled if she had…
“You should open a restaurant or something,” Toby suggested, nearly half his dinner already gone, giving her a thrill of accomplishment. “Think about how many people you could help.”
“How would that help anyone?” she asked, hearing the rattling of the last bit of change in her bank account. There was no way she could ever open a restaurant. And what she hadn’t admitted until now was that something about it just didn’t feel right, which only made her more confused.
“You’d give them a big table and good food—the necessary ingredients for making memories.”
Rupert looked on with awe. “Are you seriously considering this, Hester?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Rupert’s face dropped and he took another bite as a seagull squawked overhead.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You spend so much time proving yourself—toyourself—and spinning your wheels. The fame doesn’t make you feel any better about who you are. You have to find it in here.” He tapped his chest with an unsteady hand. “You’re a talented actress, but you know what? You’re talented at anything you put your mind to. What you have to find out is what will make your heart soar. And I’m not so sure it’s acting.”
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t make my dreams happen,” Meghan said, forgetting for a moment that Rupert didn’t really know who he was talking to. “So many things get in the way and I don’t know how to take the first step.”
Rupert broke into a wide grin. “Ah, my dear. That part’s easy! Take any step as long as it’s the first one. And then take another one after that. The time will pass, whether you do it or not. Wouldn’t you rather spend your days walking than sitting still?”
“That sounds like something my pappy would say,” Meghan said to Tess, considering the old man’s advice.
Rupert’s eyes clouded over at her comment, his confusion clear.
Just then, Meghan’s ringtone inside interrupted them. She set her napkin on the table, scooting her chair out to get the phone. “I’ll be right back.”
After finishing the call, she returned, sitting back down. “The electrician asked if I could completely clean out the closet in my room so he can access the back of the house. They’ll begin repairs at around ten in the morning tomorrow.”
“I can help,” Tess said. “Why don’t we do it before work, on the way?”
