“So I’ve heard. Kate gave me a full lecture on superstition and statistics. She’s very…logical. There is no such thing as supernatural to Kate Wylie.”
Meredith nodded slowly, not giving much credence to his curse, but the subtext was very interesting, and not something she’d heard from Dad.
“So she’s…not into faith.”
“Nope,” Jonah said. “All science, all the time. Meanwhile…” He threw her a look that said he was following her train of thought. “Dad’ll want to put a prayer bench on the beach before the house is completely finished.”
That probably wasn’t even that much of an exaggeration.
“How does that work with them?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess they sort of orbit each other on that one. I don’t really know.”
“It seems pretty fundamental to a relationship,” she mused. “Dad can’t love someone who doesn’t believe.”
“Yeah, he can. Kate’s smart. Maybe she’ll make him see that there isn’t much to that stuff.”
She bristled, because she might not be a church-going, Bible-reading believer like her father, but over the years she had grown to understand his faith and had never met anyone from his church she didn’t like.
She went with him on enough Sundays to appreciate the whole thing, and to know Dadcouldn’tlove someone who didn’t share his beliefs or at least deeply respect them.
“If that’s true, then she isn’t right for Dad.”
Jonah shot her a look. “Don’t try to break them up, Mer,” he said, all humor gone from his voice. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to him.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I just want him to have his eyes wide open.” But as soon as she said the words, she realized what a hypocrite that made her. Talk about going blind into a relationship. She’d kind of forgot to ask Trevor ifhe was married.
“And how about you?” Jonah asked, pulling her back to the moment.
“Me? What about me? I go to church with Dad sometimes but…”
“No, I mean…you look kind of, I don’t know, different.”
Pregnant, she thought, biting her lip. “I’m just tired,” she said. “It’s been crazy at work. In fact, I’m the one who should be checking my phone endlessly.”
“You’re right,” he said, standing up. “Let’s go back. I miss Atlas.”
Jonah proved that by talking endlessly about the baby, and when they got back to the Summer House, he practically sprinted into the entryway.
“Where’s my kid?” he called.
Kate responded from upstairs. “He’s on the deck! With your dad!”
Jonah disappeared around the corner, bolting through the kitchen to the open sliding glass doors.
Meredith wandered after him, in time to see him scoop up Atlas with a reverent kind of joy. He held him close, whispered to him, kissed his fuzzy little head. Meredith could feel the reunion ripple off him like heat from the sun.
Wow. Would she feel like that about her baby?
She stood in the doorway and watched her brother with his son, feeling the sting of tears for the four billionth time this week.
“You look tired from all that shopping,” her father said, walking up to her.
“I am, Dad,” she admitted. “I’m going to lay down until I go out with Lacey tonight.”
He inched back, a frown threatening. “I don’t think I’ve ever known you to nap.”
She managed a casual shrug. “Well, you always talk about the magic of Destin. Maybe the magic is that it slows me down.”
