Page 6 of Rebuilding Friendship Inn

Another message came in, and Kristen started typing again. This text would settle things once and for all, and nervous excitement fluttered through her stomach.

ChapterThree

Kelli Webb hated packing up her son and shipping him across the water to the mainland. Her ex-husband, Julian, would meet him in the airport, but her son had never made the trip alone. Last year, Julian had flown to Five Island Cove to get him, but this year, they’d agreed that Parker could fly by himself.

It was an hour at most, and the airline provided a flight attendant to watch over him. Still, Kelli sniffled as she folded one of her ten-year-old’s T-shirts, rolled it, and stuffed it in his suitcase. She could go in and help him through security, so she could get the bag checked. Julian would be there to make sure they picked up the right bag.

Parker would be eleven soon, and he had grown about four inches this year alone. He acted more and more grown up all the time, and Kelli suspected he was secretly thrilled to be able to fly by himself.

She couldn’t help worrying about him. He was her only child, and she’d been incredibly lucky to get him. She hadn’t been able to get pregnant again, and in a lot of ways, Parker was her whole life. In others, he was only a small part of it.

She owned a yoga and nutrition bar in her childhood home on Bell Island, and she had plenty to do there this summer. She’d “barely miss him,” as Julian had texted when Kelli had said she didn’t know how to fill the hours without Parker.

Sending him to New Jersey every summer felt unfair, but she’d done it because she had to follow the custody agreement. It just felt like it would be nice to share the splendor of the cove with Parker during the best months of the year. When the skies were blue for endless days, and it felt like she could tip her head back and disappear into it simply by closing her eyes.

Right now, she wasn’t doing any disappearing nor relaxing. She folded a pair of shorts she’d just taken from the dryer and crammed them into the suitcase too.

“Here are the socks,” Parker said as he brought in an armful of balled socks. “Dad said he’d buy me new shoes, so I’m not going to take any.”

Kelli looked down to his feet, but he wasn’t currently wearing shoes. “What are you going to wear on the plane?”

“My tennis shoes.” He dropped the socks on top of the suitcase, letting them bounce and scatter wherever they may.

Irritation hinted through Kelli’s bloodstream, but she said nothing. She’d rearrange everything anyway, probably twice, before she deemed the packing done. Then, they had to take the ferry to Diamond Island, where they’d meet Shad for lunch at a new restaurant that had just come to the cove, and then Parker had a late afternoon flight to the mainland.

“You don’t want to take any flip flops?” she asked. “It’s summertime.”

“He said he’d buy me new shoes.”

“Yes, but are they going to be flip flops? Or something you can wear to the pool?”

Her son looked at her, and she didn’t have to look as far down. He wore the same frustration in his expression that she felt firing through her. “Do you want me to take flip flops?”

“Yes,” she said. “You have no idea what or when your father will do something.”

Parker rolled his eyes, but he left her bedroom to go retrieve his flip flops from the room next door. Kelli pressed her lips together and kept folding laundry. She’d much rather be sitting on the patio out front, smelling the sweet fragrance of the flowers as they grew and listening to the dull roar of the waves in the distance. Since the townhome where she and Shad and Parker lived sat up on one of the highest points of Pearl Island, she could see the ocean from her front patio.

She liked looking at the water but not so much going near it or in it. Her memories flashed to only a couple of weeks ago, when she’d gone out purposefully into a bad storm to rescue Jean and her Seafaring girls. She’d gone over a railing she would’ve never even approached as a teenager, and a new sense of strength filled Kelli.

Yes, sending Parker to New Jersey for the summer wasn’t her favorite thing to do. But he was safe and cared for there, and she wouldn’t have to worry about trying to fill the long summer hours with activities the way other moms did.

Her son returned with a pair of flip flops, and Kelli said, “Thank you, baby.”

“Is Jean going to be at lunch?”

Kelli shook her head. “Nope. She and Reuben have a meeting today.”

“About a baby?”

“I’m not sure,” Kelli said, giving her son a glance out of the corner of her eye. “She didn’t say. She just said she couldn’t make it.” She tossed a pair of folded shorts on top of the pile in the suitcase and turned away from the laundry. “She gave me this to give to you.”

She moved over to her dresser and pulled a slim, blue-paper-wrapped package from the top of her dresser. “She said you could open it on the day you left.” Kelli handed him the package and sat on the end of her bed.

He joined her and started peeling back the tape. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.” Kelli had gotten the gift a few days ago, when she’d gone to Diamond Island to visit Jean. She always took the ferry from Pearl to Bell to work, and more days than she didn’t, Kelli then continued to Diamond Island to pick up her son from school. They’d stop by Shad’s office in the city buildings, and sometimes Kelli would take Parker to the lighthouse.

He loved the lighthouse, but most of all, he loved Jean. Kelli found the world so unfair sometimes, and the fact that Jean couldn’t have a baby was one of those wholly unjust things. She’d be such a great mother, and Kelli’s heart beat out a thump of sadness for her.

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