Page 9 of The Bet
With three days to go until the wedding, Izzy made sure to keep Jacob occupied. He was a bundle of energy, and while she didn’t have a hard time keeping an eye on him, she could see why Savannah had asked her to come along.
They spent the rest of the morning building sandcastles and playing in the sea. After lunch, Tobias suggested they could explore the island.
“Alone?” asked Savannah, looking horrified.
“It’s safe enough, Savannah,” said Tobias, reassuring her.
“But it’s so big. What if he gets lost?”
“It’s an island. He’s not going to go far, and it’s only us here.”
Izzy listened, keenly aware of Savannah’s fear. She had forgotten that time, when she had found a scared looking Jacob in the shopping mall, but she realized that the fear was never going to leave Savannah.
“Can we go there?” Jacob, pointed behind in the distance.
Savannah gasped. “To the waterfall? No. No way. Unless we all go, and I’m not feeling up to it right now. Do you mind waiting, honey? We could go tomorrow?”
“I can take him,” said Izzy, stepping forward. Jacob wasn’t the type of child to jump up and down and throw a tantrum. He listened to his mother and went along with anything she or Tobias said. His downcast face, and his silence, had been enough to move her. “I’d like to explore the island, and the waterfall doesn’t look so far away”
“They can take the jeep,” Tobias offered. “But it’s not far. I’ll go with them, if it puts your mind at ease.”
“We’ll be fine,” Izzy insisted, knowing that they needed time to unwind before their big day.
“They will be, Savannah.” Tobias held his fiancée’s hand. “One of my men will go with them.” And that seemed to satisfy Savannah. “You’ll need to wear sneakers, Jacob. It’s rocky around the waterfall. Be careful.”
They spent hours exploring the other end of the island, walking along the velvety, golden beaches fringed by palm trees and lush vegetation.
She couldn’t wait to tell Cara and wished she had her cell phone with her, but one of Tobias’s bodyguards had taken it from her as soon as they had arrived.
“Mommy wasn’t sure that you were going to come with us,” said Jacob as they walked along.
“She wasn’t?” Izzy slipped her hands into the back pockets of her denim shorts.
“Didn’t you want to look after me?”
“Huh? No. That’s not the reason I wasn’t sure about coming here, Jacob.” She stopped, and turned to him, then bent down to his level, glad that they had both changed into their sneakers.
“I have college, and I didn’t want to miss too many lessons, that’s all.”
The boy looked up at her, his expression more relaxed now, as if the news had cleared some notion he’d had. “So it wasn’t because of me?”
“No! Why would you think it’s because of you? You’re pretty cool, and I’m super excited to be here with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They walked along the beach, and could see, set much further inland, lush vegetation—giant ferns and huge towering trees swaying majestically in the soft breeze. Jacob announced that they were mango, coconut and breadfruit trees.
They talked about school, and his friends and his favorite Marvel movies and superheroes. Every so often, they would stop, while Jacob examined shells along the seashore, or chased after one of the tiny crabs which zig-zagged along the sand.
“It is a cool place, isn’t it?” she said, looking around. “We have to make the most of it, before everyone else gets here.” It was going to be painful having to share the island with everyone.
Savannah had told her that the wedding was small, around a hundred people.
Small?
Some guests would start arriving tomorrow, both of their families and a few close friends. It would mainly be the same people who had come to the engagement party. At least she knew what to expect.
