Page 6 of Footprints in the Sand
Meghan furrowed her brow. “Honey, you know it’s risky. What if you miss it?”
“I want to stay, too,” Theo said, sticking up for his sister. “It’s a good party, and it isn’t even dark yet.”
“Yeah, maybe the twenty-somethings want to hang out a little while,” Samantha piped in. “There’s no reason they can’t hang out on the veranda and crash on the living room floor. I don’t mind at all!”
Rachelle beamed at Eva and Theo. “You want to make a night of it?”
“We’d love it!” Eva cried a little too enthusiastically.
Her cousin Ava poured Eva another glass of wine, and they laughed at how similar their names were. “They couldn’t have known!” they said of their parents, who’d been living separate lives.
“It means we’re more related than everyone else,” Ava suggested with a wink.
“That’s right,” Eva said.
Theo grabbed a beer and suggested they head toward the beach for a little while to put their feet in the sand. The heat of the day was dying out, but they still glistened with leftover sweat. Everyone thought it was a great idea, especially because the private beach out here was a mile away from the nearest house.Darcy left her baby with Samantha and grabbed a speaker from the house. “We’ll need some tunes!”
Eva smiled, knowing that Darcy was probably excited about this extra time. She was usually busy with her baby, tending to every conceivable need and never to her own.
As they walked along the sand, Darcy strung her arm through Eva’s and asked, “What’s been going on, Eva? I haven’t seen you in ages!”
And for some reason, out here as the evening sky faded to a violet color and her cousins’ voices celebrated life and everything in it, Eva couldn’t take it anymore. She burst into tears.
Before she could stop herself, Eva let out the whole story or everything she knew thus far. Theo looked at her in abject horror, but the others in their family listened intently and didn’t give away what they were feeling, at least not too much.
But at the end of the story, Theo said, “I’m going to kill him.”
“Theo,” their cousin Alex said with a sigh, “don’t joke about murder.”
Theo flared his nostrils. “I just can’t believe Finn would do this. Finn’s, like, a part of the family. We’ve celebrated Christmas with him every year since, what?”
It had been eight years of Christmases, eight years of Thanksgivings, eight years of thinking she knew someone down to his bones. Eva had been so wrong about it.
The cousins sat on the beach in a circle. Nobody knew what to say. Darcy put on soft electro music that didn’t feel too harsh. Eva was grateful that her tears had dried out, but she wished she hadn’t made such a scene.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said to the sand.
Rachelle shook her head. “He’s the one who needs to be embarrassed, not you. He broke your trust. He broke everything.”
Darcy nodded furiously. “Do you want to see him again?”
Eva hadn’t gotten that far in her own thought process. She wasn’t sure how to digest it. “I guess there are things we need to talk about.”
“I’m just worried he’ll force you to rationalize what he did,” Rachelle said. “But there’s no making sense of it. He stole from you. It’s the worst thing a partner can do.”
“It’s like cheating,” Theo muttered. “Is it worse than cheating?”
The cousins shrugged. Eva thought she was going to start crying again. She bit her thumb and imagined what Finn was doing back at home. Maybe he’d already found a way to make all their money back? Perhaps he’d figured out it was a fluke?
Don’t give him an ounce of credit. He’ll only disappoint you, she thought.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I feel so lost.”
“Let me think. Let me think.” Rachelle scrunched her face and stared at the horizon.
Eva couldn’t fathom what Rachelle could do for her and her dying relationship. Rachelle lived in another country, for goodness’ sake.
“You don’t want to stick around here this summer, I guess?” Rachelle asked.
