He nodded slowly. “You think it’s going to work? Getting the others out?”
“I think there’s a real chance,” I said. “Some of them were already nervous after the protest. The vandalism didn’t help the optics for anyone. Nobody wants to be the face of a story about rich outsiders destroying a beloved coastal community. That’s a bad look in any industry.”
“It’s a bad look because that’s what it is,” he said.
“Yes sir,” I said. “It is.”
He looked at me like he was trying to decide if he believed me. I didn’t flinch.
“I don’t blame you personally,” he said finally. “I know how these things go. Someone finds an opportunity and they run right over it. They don’t always stop to look at what’s underneath their feet while they’re running.” He paused. “But I’m glad you stopped.”
“So am I,” I said.
Becca appeared at the sliding door with a fresh pitcher and refilled everyone’s drinks. She dropped back into her chair. The conversation shifted to easier things. Gideon asked about the Anderson ranch in Texas, something I could talk about all day. I told him about the land and the way it looked in the earlymorning before the heat baked everything and everyone. The cattle. The Texas sky at sunset.
“Summer’s mother loved the idea of Texas,” he said. He smiled at whatever memory had surfaced. “She never went. We always talked about taking a road trip. San Francisco to Austin, see everything in between.” He shook his head, still smiling. “We had a list as long as my arm of things we were going to do someday.”
“Dad,” Summer said softly.
“No, it’s alright.” He looked at her with a tender smile. “I like talking about her. She’d be furious if we all sat around being sad.” He looked out toward the water. “She planted herself in front of this beach like a wall. Any time someone came around with a big idea about development under the guise of improving things, she was the first one on the phone. The first one at the meeting. She would fight anyone.”
He paused, his thumb moving along the rim of his glass as he smiled down at the liquid.
“She used to say the beach doesn’t belong to whoever has the most money. It belongs to whoever loves it the most.” He chuckled quietly. “She meant it literally. She would have stood on that sand and argued the point with God himself if she had to.”
“She would have,” Becca agreed.
I looked at Summer. I couldn’t help it. She was beautiful, but her eyes were saying,see, like I had to understand where her fight came from.
And I did. I wanted to be a part of her fight.
CHAPTER 29
SUMMER
Dinner was over but I didn’t want him to go. Not yet. My family had accepted him. I was pretty sure my dad liked him. But my dad liked most people. Dad took River and Ocean for a walk on the beach. Becca decided she was going to go with them, something she rarely did. They were purposely leaving us alone.
That left me and Colt standing at the kitchen sink together. He rinsed the dishes while I loaded them in the dishwasher. It felt dangerously domestic. It felt like something I could get used to, which was exactly the kind of thinking I had promised myself I wasn’t going to do.
“You don’t have to help,” I said. “You’re our guest. You don’t have to do the dishes.”
“I know. I want to.”
He handed me the next dish. “Your dad is something else,” he said.
“He really is.”
“He loves this place the way I should have been loving it.” He handed me a few forks.
“It was something he and my mother had in common,” I said. “She planted everything in this yard. Every single thing. Sheused to say a yard without flowers was just a yard. A yard with flowers was a home.”
“She sounds like she was extraordinary.”
“She was.” I smiled thinking about her. “She was the loudest person in any room and somehow also the most calming. I never understood how she managed both at once.”
He leaned against the counter beside me, drying cloth in hand, waiting for me to continue.
“She taught me to surf,” I said. “Everyone assumes it was my dad because he was a beach bum in his day. But it was her.” I closed the dishwasher. “She was surfing before it was fashionable for women to surf. Before people really took it seriously as a sport for anyone who wasn’t a teenage boy.” I leaned my hip against the counter and looked at him. “She was so graceful out there. Born to be on the water.”