Page 57 of Ten Beach Road

“Can’t you come home?” he asked in a voice she hadn’t heard in years.

“No.” This was the truth as far as it went. The part she kept to herself was that she was relieved that she couldn’t. She just couldn’t deal with one more thing. “At the moment this house is our best hope. And the more hands we have working on it, the faster we can put it on the market.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, and she pictured her son not as the strapping six-footer he’d become, but as the small sweet boy who’d worshipped his father and gone so out of his way to please.

“Look, Drew, your father’s going to have to find a way back to himself. I’ve been trying to push and pull him there, but it doesn’t work that way. I’d like him to get some professional help, but I can’t even get him to admit he needs it.” And, of course, they’d have to come up with the money to pay for it.

“Well, it’s not up to me,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I just want to go to the beach like everybody else.”

Part of her wanted to tell him it would be okay, that she’d somehow find the money and that things would get better soon. But everything wasn’t okay and this was not the time to coddle him. Her mother-in-law’s love for Steve had always felt far too fervent to Maddie. After his father’s death, Steve had become the center of his mother’s universe; but worship didn’t necessarily build backbone. Andrew was no longer a child and she needed his help.

She stood and walked with the phone to the edge of the seawall. Though she looked out over the Gulf and breathed in the warm salt air, in her mind she saw her son holding on to his childhood as tightly as he could. She shoved the image away.

“You’re an adult now, Andrew, and your family needs you. You’re going to oversee the repairs at Grandma’s and when her house is ready, I want you to call our neighbor Mrs. Richmond and tell her we want to list the house for sale. I’ll email you the details.”

“No. I’m going to the beach,” he said. “I want . . .”

“What we each want doesn’t matter anymore,” Maddie said. “Our family’s in trouble and it’s up to all of us to pitch in.” She felt the pinprick of tears again and she shoved those away, too. Her hurt and anger blended into a potent cocktail; she wasn’t prepared to play the Little Red Hen a moment longer. She had a family and they needed to step up to the plate. “What defines us isn’t how we behave when things are good, Andrew, but how we respond when they aren’t.”

“Where’d you get that?” he sneered. “Off a frickin’ fortune cookie?” Then he hung up on her, leaving her staring out over Shell Key with no idea of what he would or wouldn’t do.

Maddie walked back to the pool deck and handed the phone to Kyra.

“Is everything okay at home?” Kyra asked.

Maddie looked at her daughter with her ripening body and her gray eyes clouded with uncertainty. How had everything changed so unexpectedly? She felt as if her family had been standing on a fault line all along and only discovered it when the earth began to tremble beneath their feet.

“No,” Maddie said. “Of course not. But it’s as okay as it’s going to be for a while.”

Kyra carried the phone back inside. Madeline and Avery forced themselves to their feet, turned on the pressure washer, and took aim at the outbuilding. Madeline watched the grime of close to a century wash down the stucco and soak into the ground; too bad a life couldn’t be pressure washed as easily.

They worked without speaking, and after a while Maddie lost herself in the whoosh of the spray and the hum of the machine’s motor, going back to just a year ago when everything had seemed so promising, so normal.

“Oh, my God, Maddie. Stop!” Avery grabbed her hand and tried to redirect it even as a small hole began to appear in the wall. “The psi is too strong to hold it in one spot like that.”

There were short beeps of what turned out to be a boat horn, and they whirled toward the sound, sending a spray of soapy water arcing over the seawall toward the sleek black boat floating beside it.

“Hey!” Chase Hardin shouted as the spray hit the water beside him, shoving the boat away from the wall and kicking a spray of seawater on Chase. Josh and Jason ducked. His father laughed out loud.

“Oh!” Madeline didn’t know how to turn off the wand.

Avery grabbed Maddie’s arm and the spray hit Chase in the shoulder before she could redirect it. Avery aimed her wand at a patch of scrub grass beyond the house, which was quickly blasted to smithereens.

Josh and Jason stayed down. Jeff Hardin was still smiling, but he moved out of the line of fire.

“Hey, cut it out!” Chase yelled from the boat. “Turn it off!”

Avery aimed both wands out over the seawall but away from the boat. Her gaze stayed on Chase, who sputtered and glared back.

“I don’t know,” Avery said to Maddie. “I’ve been dying to wash his mouth out with soap from the first day he started calling me Vanna. But I guess we don’t want to put a hole in him like we did the garage.” She threw Maddie a hopeful glance. “Do we?”

“We do not,” Maddie said. She took the wands and waited for Avery to turn them and the pressure washer off.

They walked, still dripping, to the edge of the seawall. The boat idled a few feet out, its side coated with soap. Chase was wiping his face with a beach towel. His T-shirt was plastered to his body. “Good shot,” he said dryly. “Thanks for the wash.”

“Sorry,” Avery said, though she didn’t sound the least bit regretful. “My hand slipped.”

“Right.” He rubbed his hair and dropped the sopping towel on the deck while the boys tried to mask their laughter. He nosed the boat closer.

---