“You don’t need to protect my feelings, Beverly,” she said. “I’m well aware that my son had a life I wasn’t privy to. Especially as a teenager.”
She took a deep breath. “We were… close for a while.” She kept her voice steady, though her heart had picked up its pace. “It was a long time ago.”
She nodded. “I suspected as much. I remember how he used to look at you when you both were young.” She sighed, a small sound that carried decades of regret. “Theodore and I, we weren’t… We weren’t good at seeing what was right in front of us sometimes. Or… maybe we ignored what we didn’t want to see.”
She stared at her coffee, watching the light play across its surface. “I don’t think anyone knew. We were pretty careful.”
“Because of us,” Miss Eleanor stated flatly. It wasn’t a question. “Because Theodore and I would have disapproved.”
There was no point denying it. “Yes.”
“The Whitmores and Griffins have always had certain… expectations. Theodore was even worse about it than I was. Lineage and status meant everything to him.”
She’d never heard the woman speak this candidly before. She didn’t quite know how to respond.
“I made mistakes with Cliff,” Miss Eleanor continued, her voice softer now. “Many mistakes.” She looked directly at Beverly. “We pushed him away with all our rules and expectations.”
“Miss Eleanor, I?—”
“Call me Eleanor, please. I think we’re past the formalities at this point.”
She nodded, shocked. Though the thought of calling Miss Eleanor by just her first name felt strange after all these years. “Eleanor,” she tried. The name felt foreign on her tongue.
“You were close and then… Cliff left suddenly.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“He broke your heart, didn’t he?”
The blunt question caught her off guard. The old pain rose up unexpectedly, fresh as if it had happened yesterday instead of decades ago. She wasn’t sure how much to share.
“Go on, dear. Tell me.”
She looked up at Miss Eleanor—Eleanor. “We… we were supposed to meet at the ferry. Run away together.” She hadn’t planned to share so much, but the words spilled out. “He never showed up. And then I never heard from him again. Well, until he showed up for this development of his.”
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly. “I didn’t know that part.”
“Why are you asking me about this now?”
“Because I’m trying to understand my son. The man he’s become. And I’m starting to think I never really knew the boy he was either.” She set her cup down with a finality that suggested she’d reached some kind of decision. “I’ve spent days watching him help people around town. Fixing things. Talking to people—really listening to them. It’s not the Cliff I thought I knew.”
She considered this. The Cliff who’d fixed her roof had been focused, hardworking, and surprisingly considerate, making sure to clean up after himself and disturb her business as little as possible. It wasn’t the entitled developer who’d stood up at the town meeting, insisting his high-rise was the future Magnolia Key needed.
“People change,” she offered, not sure if she believed it herself.
“Do they?” Eleanor’s face held a look of sadness. “Or do we just finally see parts of them that were there all along?”
“I think…” She hesitated, unsure if she should continue. “I think he always wanted your approval. Even when he was doing everything he could to make you angry.”
Eleanor nodded slowly. “Jonah said something similar. It’s… difficult to face these things at my age. To realize how much damage I may have done.” She straightened her shoulders slightly. “But that’s my burden to bear, not yours.”
“Why tell me all this?” she asked.
“Because whatever was between you and Cliff isn’t entirely in the past, is it?” Eleanor’s gaze was piercing again. “I see how you look at him. How he looks at you too.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “That’s not?—”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Eleanor interrupted gently. “I just thought you should know that I’m seeing my son differently these days. And perhaps it might be worth your while to do the same.”
