Page 78 of Love At The Shore
“I get it. I really do.” She nodded. “How do you feel now?”
“Like I did my best, like maybe that’s enough.” Nick’s gaze shifted to his lap. “Sounds stupid, right?”
“No,” Jenna said, pausing to wait until he met her gaze again. “But it does sound a lot like someone we know.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“It wasn’t his fault, Mom. Lucas didn’t tell me to do it.” Nick blew out a breath.
Jenna stood and lingered once again in the doorway. They’d said what they needed to say. Hopefully, Nick would talk to her next time he wanted to prove something to himself and she’d do her best to understand.
But as far as Lucas was concerned, she wasn’t budging.
“I’m sorry, bud. But I don’t want to talk about our neighbor anymore, okay?” She leaned against the doorframe and did her best to ignore the rebellious flutter in her belly at the thought of him.
“But he leaves tomorrow,” Nick implored.
As if she could forget. She’d been glancing at the clock all day, wondering what he was doing on the other side of the fence. Folding his clothes and putting them his suitcase? Packing food, treats and toys for Tank?
She smiled to herself at the thought of them together, and then she remembered the terrible thing she’d said to him on the beach earlier this morning.
A weight settled on her heart. Maybe that was just the price of being safe.
“Then I guess we only have one more day to get through,” she said. Nick didn’t look convinced. Maybe a little chocolate with rainbow sprinkles would do the trick. “Come on, let’s get a cupcake before your sister eats them all.”
It was worth a try.
The next morning, Jenna slipped into yoga pants and a tank top for her last walk on the beach with Maureen. But before she dropped off Nick and Ally for their final day at summer camp, she whipped up one last batch of homemade beach pancakes.
Unfortunately, Ally was going to have to make do with the plain old-fashioned buttermilk variety, because there wasn’t a morsel of chocolate left in the pantry. Summertime was truly coming to an end.
Jenna poured a ladle of batter into the pan she’d used nearly every morning for the past five weeks and looked around the now-familiar kitchen. Its beach glass hues were still so soothing. Next year, they’d have to stay at a different house. She couldn’t take going back to being just Lucas’s neighbor again.
She’d miss this place, she realized. Even after all that had happened, all the mistakes she’d made and all the tiny pieces of her heart she felt like she was leaving behind. Scattered like seashells.
She took a deep breath and turned to face her laptop, sitting open on the kitchen counter opposite the stove. Her draft email that she’d written to her publisher, Stan, was ready and waiting to be sent. The first draft of her manuscript was already attached. All she had to do was click the send button.
Her cursor lingered, and the same frustrating doubts swirled in her mind. What if the story wasn’t as good as her first novel? What if Stan hated it? Would the publishing company give her another chance, or would they cancel her contract and call it a day?
Maybe she should read through the manuscript one more time.
But then she sighed and closed her eyes and thought about her conversation with Nick yesterday.
I don’t want to be afraid of failure anymore.
Neither did Jenna. Nor did she want the harrowing experience at Doran’s Cove to be forgotten. It had to count for something, didn’t it?
If her eleven-year-old son could figure out how to be happy with his best efforts, despite the results, couldn’t she? Shouldn’t she at least try and let go, just this once?
She opened her eyes, moved the cursor over the send button and clicked.
There. It was done. She’d come to the beach with a goal to finish her book and meet her deadline, and she’d made it happen. She should be thrilled.
For reasons she didn’t want to contemplate, she felt only a nagging sense of emptiness. So she closed the laptop and turned back to her pancakes before they burned.
She flipped each one over with a turn of her spatula as Ally and Nick thundered up the stairs and dropped into stools at the kitchen counter behind her.
“Hey, Mom. Can we go outside and play for a bit?” Nick said.
