A line in the sand, p.23
A Line in the Sand, page 23
“Would you two stop, or am I going to have to pretend to have another medical crisis? Go ahead and try me. I can fake a mean aneurysm.” Opal let out a mighty sigh. “You two are clearly crazy about each other. Take it from an old lady who has the benefit of hindsight on her side—you’re both acting like children. I don’t understand why you insist on arguing over something of so little importance.”
Max frowned. “With all due respect—”
Molly finished for him. “—the grant was vitally important. Without it the aquarium might have to close its doors in just a few months.”
Opal narrowed her gaze at Max. “What’s she talking about? I told you the aquarium would be just fine. Numerous times.”
“Yes, you did.” Max nodded. “And I want to believe that, too. But we need to consider the facts.”
“I am considering the facts. I’m considering my bank account, which has more than enough zeros to keep the aquarium going for years. Maybe even decades.” Opal shrugged, the perfect picture of nonchalance.
A cold chill skittered through Molly. She wished she’d hung onto Max’s tuxedo jacket. “What are you talking about, Opal?”
“I’m rich, but I try not to tell anyone. I like to keep it a secret.” Opal pressed a finger to her lips.
“Mission accomplished,” Max muttered.
“You can’t donate all your money to the aquarium,” Molly said. Even if it was true, didn’t Opal need that money to live on? Where did it all come from, anyway? Opal was a retired school teacher.
“It’s a done deal. I’ve already talked to my lawyer and we’ve scheduled the wire transfer. Four million dollars will land in the aquarium’s bank account first thing tomorrow.” Opal shrugged. “I was planning on telling both of you tonight at the end of the Under the Sea Ball, but…”
Max glanced at Molly, and the sadness in his eyes was palpable. “But we got bad news and let it ruin the entire evening.”
An oversimplified version of the events, but true nonetheless.
“Bingo,” Opal said. Turtle Beach’s favorite word.
Max moved closer and sat on the edge of the hospital bed. “Are you absolutely sure about this, Opal? I don’t want you to feel at all pressured to fund the aquarium. I’ll figure things out.”
Molly tried to not dwell on the fact that he’d just said I instead of we. After all, she’d tendered her resignation. She was, once again, an unemployed mermaid. At least it had been by choice this time.
Then why do you feel even more crushed than you did when you got fired?
“I’m totally sure. Four million isn’t even half the money in my bank account. It belonged to my mother, who inherited it from her mother, who inherited it from her mother. My great-great-grandmother was minor royalty.” Opal shrugged. “Same old story.”
Max’s lips twitched into a grin as he snuck a look at Molly. Molly made a mental note to get Opal a tiara for her next birthday.
“Anyway, the money just keeps getting passed around from generation to generation. No one ever spends it. Who am I supposed to leave it to? I don’t have children, and if I did, I’d still want to give it to the aquarium. My goal is to die a broke woman. It’s going to take some work.” She sighed. “Max, if I fail and I’m still a millionaire when I kick the bucket, the aquarium and sea turtle hospital are welcome to whatever is left after I’m gone. It’s already all written up in my last will and testament.”
“Noted.” Max winked at her as he stood up. “But let’s not worry about that for a long, long time, okay?”
“No more heart attacks,” Molly said. “Real, fake, or any other variety.”
“You two are really bossy, you know that? Sheesh.” Opal swung her legs over the side of the bed, prepared to head back to the island now that she’d said her piece. “This whole episode could have been avoided if either of you had paid attention to me all those times I said the aquarium and sea turtle hospital would be okay. You have only yourselves to blame.”
Max’s gaze locked with Molly’s again. And this time, the loss she felt when she looked at him seemed like it might swallow her whole.
What had she done? How had she allowed things to spiral so quickly out of control?
Opal was right. Whether Molly wanted to admit it or not, there was plenty of blame to go around.
Chapter 21
It took Molly two days to muster up the courage to call her parents and tell them everything that happened—two full days of alternating between wallowing on the sofa in front of an entire season of her baking show and trying to keep Ursula from sneaking out onto the deck so she could spy on Max’s house next door.
Molly wasn’t even sure if Max had been out there all those times Ursula had shoved her tiny face into the narrow spaces between the wooden slats of the railing, angling for the best view of her favorite hot professor. She wasn’t about to take any chances, though.
Their discussion with Opal in the emergency room had been the last time Molly had seen him. Max had promised the doctor he’d give Opal a ride back to the island, and once he’d loaded the patient into his Jeep, Molly announced she’d be riding home with Violet, who’d made a beeline up to Wilmington to pick up the other senior citizens and their accompanying mobility devices in her cupcake truck.
Max had clearly been expecting Molly to climb right into the Jeep, even though it would have been a rather tight squeeze. He might have even hoped that Molly would reconsider her resignation and show up for work the next day in her clamshell bustier and fish tail. He’d looked at her as if he’d just lost his best friend when she told him she was staying back to wait for Violet and her Airstream with the pink spinning cupcake on top.
That couldn’t have been right, though. Molly was not Max’s best friend, and she definitely wasn’t his girlfriend or whatever she’d thought she might have been on the night of the Under the Sea Ball. Relationships—real relationships—were built on mutual respect and honesty. Max had all but admitted that encouraging her to start the dog-training program and write the grant proposal herself had been a mistake. He’d never truly believed in her or taken her seriously.
Just like The Tourist, who’d lied to her face for an entire year.
Just like her mom and dad, who couldn’t stop dropping hints for her to go to grad school.
Just like Molly herself, every time she looked in the mirror lately.
The worst part about wallowing was that she couldn’t seem to stop replaying the most painful parts of her confrontation with Max at the Under the Sea Ball in her head. The memories would hit her out of the blue. One minute Molly would be watching a young British college student assemble a Battenberg cake, and the next she’d hear her own voice echoing in her head.
Are you trying to say that you let charm override your good judgment?
The question hadn’t been remotely fair. Max had been joking around about his uncle manipulating him into all those nutty activities at the senior center the first time he’d used that phrase. And then, in the heat of the moment, she’d turned those same words back on him. In a moment of hurt and shame, she’d twisted his silly little comment and tried to make it into something unkind.
But Max had taken that ball and run with it, hadn’t he?
Yes, I guess I am saying that.
“Ugh, no.” Molly clamped her hands over her ears. She couldn’t stand thinking about it for one more minute. She’d rather face the music and fill her parents in on the mess she’d made of her life than keep dwelling on exactly how she’d done it.
Ursula blinked her big eyes at the sound of the word no, and Molly felt infinitely worse.
She gathered the puppy into her arms and whispered into her fur, “That wasn’t directed at you, I swear.”
Ursula licked the tip of Molly’s nose, all forgiven.
Molly was officially out of excuses. She grabbed her cell phone and tapped the contact information for her parents’ landline before she could chicken out.
Her dad answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Dad. It’s me.”
“Hi, honey. It’s great to hear from you. Your mother will be sorry she missed you. She’s out getting her hair done.”
That explained why he’d answered the phone. Molly’s mother usually answered on the first ring. “That’s okay. I actually kind of wanted to talk to you, Dad.”
“What a nice surprise. Might this be about your grant proposal?”
Here we go.
“Actually, yes.” Molly bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Why was this so difficult? “I messed up. We didn’t get it.”
“I don’t understand. How did you mess up?” he asked.
Had he missed the part about not getting the grant? “We didn’t win the grant. I failed.”
She held her breath and waited for him to tell her that she should have deferred to Max and his PhD.
To her complete and utter shock, he didn’t. “Honey, just because you didn’t win the grant doesn’t mean you failed. Quite the opposite.”
“How so?”
“You put yourself out there. You had a vision and you worked hard to make it happen. Just because the grant committee didn’t choose you as the winner doesn’t mean you failed.”
Who was this man, and what had he done with her father? “You remember my vision included dogs, right?”
“I do, but dogs obviously make you happy.” He laughed under his breath. “And I’ll admit your little Ursula isn’t so bad.”
Molly wasn’t sure why this surprised her so much. Ursula was an excellent canine ambassador. “On our last night of training, all five of the dogs alerted to the sea turtle scent. It was kind of amazing.”
Funny how she’d forgotten how wonderful that night had been. Or maybe she just hadn’t let herself remember.
“Let me ask you a question, honey—do you have any idea why I’m always encouraging you to consider graduate school?”
Molly rattled off several answers, mostly related to salary, tenure, and job security, but one by one, he shot them down.
“I give up. Why?” she finally said.
“Because for a long time now, it’s like you’ve just been going through the motions. I know you’ve been hurt, honey. But since your breakup last year, you just haven’t been yourself.” Her dad’s voice went soft—softer than she’d heard it in years. “These past few weeks, you’ve seemed more alive than I’ve seen you in a long, long time. You did a good thing.”
Molly’s throat closed. He was right, and now here she was, hiding in her beach cottage again…alone. And she was more miserable than ever.
“You put yourself out there, kiddo. You got out of your comfort zone, and that’s the most important thing. I wish you would have gotten your grant, but the fact that you didn’t doesn’t mean the process was a waste of time. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you failed. Your mother and I just want you to have a full life, and it doesn’t have to be on our terms.” He sighed. “I’m sorry if I made it sound otherwise.”
Molly sniffed. She really didn’t want to cry again. She’d practically sobbed herself dehydrated in recent days. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I think I do,” he said, and the tenderness in his tone almost broke her.
But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the tear in her heart needed to be fully ripped apart before she could put herself back together.
“Oh, Dad. There’s so much I need to tell you.” Molly tucked her legs up under her, and Ursula stretched out beside her with her little head on her paws, settling in for the long haul.
On the other end of the line, her father’s favorite La-Z-Boy groaned into recline position. “I’m all ears.”
***
“King me.” Uncle Henry aimed a triumphant grin at Max as he slid one of his red checkers into place on the game board that lay between them on a table in the senior center’s lobby.
Max had exactly one black checker left on the board, as opposed to Henry’s half a dozen double-stacked kings. Henry could have put the entire game to bed six moves ago, but he kept pushing his game pieces around in seemingly random moves.
Max inched his lone checker forward to a spot where Henry could jump him from three different directions. His uncle’s fingertips lingered in the vicinity and then veered to the other end of the checkerboard where he moved one of his kings to a lonely, insignificant corner.
Max narrowed his gaze at Henry, but his uncle didn’t look up. He just picked at a piece of nonexistent lint on his cardigan.
For the first time in the two days that had passed since the Under the Sea Ball, Max consciously let himself think about the moments at the dance before everything had gone so horribly wrong—the laughter in Molly’s eyes, the way her dress shimmered like starlight, the tantalizing curve of her neck beneath her upswept hair…the things she’d said.
Since that utterly disastrous night, Max had done what he always did when life got messy—he’d thrown himself into his work. With Opal’s donation in the bank, he had more than enough to keep him busy. It was a win–win situation—great for the aquarium and great for Max.
Or it should have been. But somehow, the more he tried not to think about Molly, the more the memories kept tormenting him. And they were never the good memories—never thoughts of her sunshine scent or her candy-floss hair or the way her smile alone could save a man from drowning…never the sublime warmth of her kiss.
Instead, all Max saw when he closed his eyes were the tears that had streamed down her face. He’d made the woman he loved cry.
And he definitely loved her. He’d fallen for Molly, head over heels. But he’d realized it just a beat too late.
His chest burned with the hot sting of regret. He needed to get back to the aquarium, back to his office where things were clear and logical and less likely to leave him feeling like he had an aching, gaping wound in the place where his heart used to be.
Max sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Uncle Henry, are you losing this game on purpose so I’ll stick around and spend more time with you?”
Henry froze.
Well, look at that. Max came closer to smiling than he had in days. Molly was right.
“You could have simply asked, you know,” Max said.
“Really?” Henry snorted even louder than Bingo the pug did whenever his flat snout got within sneezing distance of the sand. “Kind of like all the times I invited you to come to the island for holidays or vacations?”
The hole in Max’s chest felt like it was caving it on itself. “That was completely different.”
“How so? You were too busy working to make the trip back then, and since the day you arrived in Turtle Beach, all you want to talk about is the aquarium. Seems about the same to me.” Uncle Henry reached out, grabbed one of his kings and jumped over Max’s last checker.
Boom. Game over.
“But you brought me here to save it,” Max countered.
Henry let out a laugh. “Is that what you think?”
Of course he did. Henry had told him that very thing at their first yoga class. Hadn’t he?
“Son, the aquarium has been running on a shoestring for years. Did I think you’d be able to turn things around? Of course I did. But that’s not why I asked you to take over as director,” Henry said.
Max was at a loss. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d started resetting the checkerboard for another game.
“You know how proud of you I am, Max. I love you, son, but you’ve turned into a total workaholic. I’m guessing it has something to do with your parents and how hard things were for you after they divorced, but take it from an old man. It’s no way to live.” Henry pushed a red checker from one square to the next, making the first move. “When you got passed over for the director position in Baltimore, I knew it was time to make my move. I didn’t ask you to come to Turtle Beach so you could save the aquarium. I asked you to come back here so the aquarium could save you.”
Max went very still.
Uncle Henry cocked an eyebrow. “It was working, wasn’t it?”
Yes…yes, it was.
Max thought about the turtles recuperating in the tanks at the sea turtle hospital, Silver’s baby seahorses, and gently lowering Crush back into the ocean while the entire town clapped and cheered. He thought about newborn turtle hatchlings crawling their way to the water, and the look on Molly’s face when the last dog at her training class finally alerted to the scent of sea turtle eggs. Max couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything so hands-on back in Baltimore. But in Turtle Beach, Max got his hands sandy on a regular basis. He didn’t have to wonder if the aquarium was making a difference in the community and the ecology of the island. He could see it…every single day.
But most of all, he’d felt it. Max had opened up and allowed himself to feel more in the past month than he had for the rest of his adult life.
“Yes,” Max said quietly. “Yes, it was.”
“And sure, maybe I did force you into trying some new things. But I had to. How else were you going to learn how to have fun again?” Uncle Henry waved a hand at the checkerboard.
“Point taken. And yes, I like the volleyball league and the Scrabble tournaments. The pancake breakfast was great. I’ve even gotten pretty into yoga.” Max glanced down at the checkers. “But I’m not enjoying this checkers bloodbath in the slightest.”
“That’s because ever since Molly broke your heart, you’re falling back into your same old routine.” Henry sighed. “You’re sitting right here in front of me, and I’m missing you like you still live over four hundred miles away.”
Ouch. It was a painful assessment, but his uncle wasn’t wrong…
Except for one important detail.
“Molly didn’t break my heart.” Max looked at Uncle Henry—really looked—taking in the lines in his face that hadn’t been there the last time Max had been on the island, the whiter shade of his hair. Henry wouldn’t be around forever, but Max was here now. He was home. It wasn’t too late to really live…to really love. “I broke Molly’s.”
