“You’re not a project I want to take on.”
“Might be the most rewarding though.”
“Doubtful.” She sips from her glass.
“Can you at least pretend that you tolerate me?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole night?”
“Busting my balls and making me beg for more.”
She smirks and then pats my hand. “Good boy.”
I let out a wallop of a laugh, and she surprisingly joins me.
“How did you spend your summers in Cape Meril?” I ask before taking another scoop of peach cobbler. When she said it’s shareable and the best dessert on the menu, I didn’t even thinktwice. And right now, it’s taking everything in me not to shovel the whole thing into my mouth.
Renley wipes at her mouth with her napkin and says, “Well, growing up here was kind of tough because we didn’t have a lot of money so I couldn’t do some of the things that other kids were doing, like going out sailing. But my friend Rosalie and I would spend our time biking the nature trail and playing out in the woods. We would bring these little animal figurines that Dad got me from the thrift store. We would make animal villages out of dirt, sticks, and rocks. Some of my best memories were those summers where we would spend almost all day out there.”
“That’s so not what I thought you were going to say.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Well, you live by the beach. I thought it was going to be something ocean related.”
She shakes her head. “No, it was rare we went to the beach during tourist season. It was always so crowded. Although, there is a secret cove that the locals would go to on occasion if we needed the beach fix.”
“Was it a cove for kids or adults?”
“A mixture—let’s say kids during the day, adults at night.”
“Got it. So do you and Rosalie ever go back on the trail for memory’s sake?”
She shakes her head. “No. Rosalie moved when I was in sixth grade. It was pretty tough honestly, because she was my only real friend. After that, I spent the weekends helping my dad.” Her lips purse as if she’s not happy that she just divulged that.
“What would you help him with?” I ask, not wanting to pry, but also not wanting to let it go when she’s finally opening up to me.
She scoops up some cobbler, chews, and then says, “On the weekends, he’d take a metal detector and comb the beach. I’d help him.” She clears her throat. “It was…humiliating. I hated it.Dad would bring his findings to a pawn shop and that’s how he’d bring in extra money. The town thought he was nuts, pathetic, and desperate. I kept helping him because they wouldn’t chirp mean things to him when I was around.”
“Jesus,” I say, thinking how loathsome that is. “I’m sorry, Renley. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
She shrugs. “It sucked, but Ira, who owned the candy store, he was the only one who was nice to us. We’d go into the store and he’d ask us if we found anything good. We’d laugh about all the phones and watches—a lot of Rolexes—we discovered. The candy shop was a bit of a safe haven for us.”
“And that’s why you want to bring it back to life,” I say, everything coming full circle.
“I want others to find comfort in the store.” She sets her fork down and stares out at the water. “The shitty thing is, the town is waiting for me to mess it up. They don’t want me to succeed.”
“Why wouldn’t they want that?” I ask.
“Because there are laws within the town that say any business that has been established before a certain time, I want to say before the 1960s, must be put through town review to find a new owner to continue its legacy. They see it as a historic thing. But if they can’t find an owner that will take over the business or it fails, then the storefront is put up for auction, meaning anyone can put in a bid to start a new business.”
“Really?”
She nods. “When Rudder’s was going up for bid applications, I had the crazy idea to try to bring it back to life, but we had to have the capital for it. Aunt Kitty said she had it, but she didn’t. It was a whole miscommunication thing. Anyway, the business society was betting on the fact, given my family’s history in town, that if they put me in charge, I was going to mess it up and then they could bring the storefront to auction. Apparently, there is abig chain that wants to come into town and offer a lot of money to do so.”
“So they thought, give it to you, let you screw up, and then they can give the storefront away.”
She slowly nods.
