The day dawned warm and salt-kissed, the kind of summer morning Eli Lawson once took for granted—until he was reminded that God could sure throw a curve ball when it was least expected.
Still reeling from the shock of his son’s—and grandson’s—arrival, Eli stood barefoot on the back deck of the Summer House, a mug of coffee cooling in his hand. As far as the eye could see, the Gulf slowly transformed from teal to turquoise, the light turning Destin’s sand the sugary white that made this stretch of Florida famous.
A pair of pelicans soared past, riding the breeze along the beach, soundless but for the whoosh of their wings.
Eli let the beauty of the world settle over him, his heart sliding into a comforting morning prayer. He’d obviously skipped church this Sunday morning, but the Lord was present. So, Eli asked for peace, for wisdom, for all the right things to happen to these two families who, as they had thirty years ago, shared a home on this beach.
But in the 1990s, they’d been teenagers and thought they were immortal and invincible and that life was simple.
He could hear God laughing and winding up the next pitch.
He sensed there were more surprises in store, challenges and some clouds. None of what he’d expected when he decided to spend some time at the Summer House, hoping to develop a deeper relationship with Kate Wylie, the woman he’d rediscovered a few months ago.
From the kitchen just inside the beach house, he could hear her soft laughter right now. Kate was chuckling with his sister, Vivien.
The two of them—women who hadn’t had babies in their arms for many years—were elbows deep into ChatGPT trying to figure out how to sterilize bottles and safely warm formula.
Eli closed his eyes for a moment, trying to process it all. His son, Jonah, had arrived on their doorstep like a wounded animal seeking shelter. Clutching Atlas, his newborn baby, Jonah looked as broken, ravaged, and wrecked as Eli had ever seen him.
And he’d seen that boy pretty far gone a few times in his life.
In halting words, Jonah had explained that Carly, the baby’s mother and his on again-off again girlfriend, had gone out for diapers and never come home. She’d been killed in a collision with a truck when she’d run a red light—a sleep-deprived nursing mother who, Jonah insisted, should not have been driving.
Eli could practically feel the incalculable guilt, grief, isolation, and panic that ricocheted through Jonah’s almost thirty-year-old body. The kid had suffered more pain than most old men had endured in a lifetime.
Which was no doubt why Jonah kept repeating the same thing over and over.
I’m cursed. I’m cursed.
Eli could still hear Jonah’s dark pronouncement. He understood the sentiment, no matter how much he profoundly disagreed with it. Eli’s wife had died in a private plane crash, andthe loss of his mother had destroyed teenaged Jonah. Now the mother of Jonah’s son was tragically killed fifteen years later.
Eli well remembered the sense that Melissa’s death was somehow his fault, or that he should have been the one taken so Jonah and Meredith had a mother. Nothing made sense in the early days, and he could all too easily imagine the depth of his son’s pain.
No, Jonah and Carly hadn’t been married, but they had a child—three-week-old Atlas. And that baby, Eli knew, would be the reason Jonah would recover.
But it would take time.
It would also take something else that Eli had found in those dark days—the solace and comfort of knowing the Lord. Jonah had no faith, sadly. But he’d have to findsomethingto help him handle this new and complicated life. In the meantime, Eli would do whatever he could for Jonah.
“Hey, Grandpa.”
He turned, unable to keep from smiling despite the heaviness in his heart. How could he not at the sight of Kate Wylie? She was the first woman in fifteen years of solitude to make him feel something that had to be love.
She was such a source of comfort. A beautiful, bespectacled, logical, lovely source of comfort and joy.
“Grandpa,” he scoffed. “Yep, I guess that’s what they call me now.” He lifted his arms in invitation. “Come join me, Lady Katie.”
Smiling at the name, she walked to him, sliding into his embrace, giving him a gentle whiff of lavender and…baby formula? He wasn’t sure, but he adored it, and her.
He kissed the top of her head. “Have you checked on him—on them?”
“Both asleep at the moment.” She eased back and reached for his coffee cup. “Is this hot?”
“Lukewarm at best.”
She took it anyway, sipping and wrinkling her nose as she pushed her glasses up and over her dark hair, fluttering her bangs.
“Yeah, awful. We made a fresh pot but somehow it didn’t last five minutes. Tessa and Lacey filled up and started a ‘baby shopping list’ they’re taking to Target the minute it opens. Vivien and I are driving Matt and Emma to the airport, then she wants to do some nursery shopping. Crib, changing table, the works.”
