“It’s a she,” Harry or Walt said. Wait, Walt had the hat, so it had to be Harry. “Her name is Louisa.”
“How can you even tell with turtles?” Polly countered. “Plus, I once had a boy dog named Daisy.”
Eliana whispered to her grandma, “Should I jump in or…”
Grandma shook her head and whispered, “They can ask Logan about how to determine turtle gender next time they see him, if they really care to know.”
“Cam.” She crouched beside her brother’s chair. “Want to come with me to take Louisa for a walk?”
He blinked his vision away from the tablet, and locked eyes on Louisa. He loved Louisa. He stuck two of his fingers into the container, just like she’d taught him, and Louisa scooched toward his hand until her nose touched his finger. He giggled.
“I’m just saying that you can name an animal whatever you want. A friend of mine had a cat named Blender,” Harry said.
“That’s a terrible name,” Don—the strong-looking one—said. Cameron was sitting right beside him and repeated “name” after Don said it.
“Have you talked to Julia?” Grandma asked Eliana as the argument continued. “Your mom said she was panicking about the cake earlier.”
“What happened with the cake?” Eliana’s fingers turned white against the edge of the table.
“I don’t know. Something about the bakery being closed for appliance updates the week of the wedding …”
Great. Planning a last-minute wedding was proving to be a major challenge, and it had been tricky to find a baker willing to squeeze them in with so little notice. “I’ll message her.” After she did a search of other local bakeries so they could have a back-up plan in place.
“Ready?” she asked Cameron.
“Let’s go!” he said.
She squirted some hand sanitizer into his palms and he rubbed it in, knowing the drill after touching Louisa.
He held her hand as they walked slowly down the beach. It was one of those perfect summer days, with a light wind coming off the ocean. Waves crashed around their feet and ankles.
Diamond Cove had to be one of the most gorgeous places on the planet. And this beach? Divine.
“Bathroom?” Cameron said suddenly, signing to her.
Uh oh. When Cameron said he needed to go to the bathroom, that generally meant you didn’t have very long to find him one before it became an emergency.
They’d wandered nearly to the edge of The Palms private beach, and Asher’s bungalow was only twenty feet away. She debated for only a moment before she tugged Cameron toward the bungalow, looking both ways first. No one in sight. “You can’t tell anyone we were here,” she warned him.
He was more concerned with getting to a bathroom than promising to keep secrets, which told her they needed to walk even faster.
She opened the door and showed him to the bathroom, then continued down the hallway to her bedroom. She pulled Louisa out of the plastic container and put her into her home, set on a stack of boxes that were functioning as a nightstand, and gently scratched her shell. She’d been surprised to learn that turtles have nerves on their shells, and Louisa loved a good shell scratch.
Cameron could sometimes take a while in the bathroom, so Eliana headed to the kitchen to wash her hands and the container thoroughly. Turtles could carry salmonella, and though the risk was minimal, she never wanted to take any chances.
She rapped her knuckles on the bathroom door when she finished. “You okay in there?”
He laughed, which usually meant yes. Or it meant he was getting into something he shouldn’t. She opted to believe the first, and went into her bedroom to sit on her newly-acquired air mattress and check her email.
She heard the bath water turn on, and groaned. “Cammmm,” she yelled. “We need to head back to Grandma’s house in a minute.” He loved taking baths and didn’t care whose house he was at.
She returned a couple of texts, one from Giselle.
Giselle: HER DRINK BRAND WAS PULLED.
Eliana’s stomach sank. Sienna had worked so hard to make her energy drink a reality, and now she was losing it due to one impulsive decision. Was drinking one caffeinated drink so bad? Only if your entire platform is about how you don’t, she supposed. No one liked a hypocrite.
But Sienna wasn’t a hypocrite. She was a genuine and loving person. Eliana opened her video message app.
