Page 78 of Gulfside Girls
“Maybe it’s not called Haven Beach by accident,” Faye offered.
“No, this is very sweet of you all, but this isn’t my life.”
“It sure looks like your life,” Erica said.
“And think about how mad Ted would be,” Faye added. “Oh, I need to be there when he finds out.”
Ali shook her head; she wasn’t going to stand in the way of her sisters and a huge cash windfall. No matter how much it started to feel like a dream come true.
“Holy Toledo,” Faye said as the focus shifted from their conversation to the fireball in the sky, sinking and dazzling with every inch it fell into the blue water.
The sun was setting over the water, a glowing orange ball sliding down into a creamy salmon sky with the bluest water to land in.
“Grand Finale doesn’t disappoint,” Henry said.
“No, it never does,” Ali replied.
“Man, I may never leave either,” Faye said, and they sipped their wine and watched the greatest show on Earth.
Thirty-One
Ali
They’d watched the sunset and finished the bottle of wine, and Faye had made fast friends with the locals that Ali had to admit were already like family to her now.
Ali had moved back into the Key Lime but couldn’t sleep.
The suggestion that she upend her life and stay here, to try to run this place, kept rolling around in her mind. It was ludicrous.Wasn’t it?
She longed to ask Ted his opinion. That was the irony of it. Usually, he would be her sounding board in this kind of situation.
When making any major life decision, she would talk with Ted. Change jobs. Have another baby. Refinance the house. Call hospice for Dad. Ted had been the person who helped her make those decisions.
Ted was her husband. They’d had their ups and downs. But she’d loved him. Did she still? He was a good dad. He instilled a love of reading in both kids. He supported Tye on the soccer field and Katie when she played softball. He’d cheered just as loud asAli did at every game. He was there for the kids. And that alone made her grateful to him. They shared Tye and Katie, and it was a bond that would never go away.Or would it?
Ted was there for her, too, at the big moments. He’d encouraged her to move from the hotel job to the convention center and to ask for more responsibility. He knew she could handle it.
“You’re the smartest one in the building with the most organizational skills. They’re not using you to your potential,” he’d said. She’d glowed then when he’d complimented her.
But somewhere along the line, it had gone wrong. Was it her fault that he’d found someone else? Or were they just a cliché? He was a man in his midlife, so of course he was afraid he was getting old. And there were always young women around him.
Always young women around him.
She blinked. Always young women around him. This trip down marriage memory lane unlocked something in her memory. Something she’d either forgotten about or repressed!
Five years prior, they’d had a terrible situation. Ted’s student…Amber Covell, that was her name. She’d started stalking Ali. She’d show up at Ali’s work, she would call on the phone and hang up, and eventually, Ali had to block the girl’s phone number.
Ted had said that Amber was mentally unstable and just was fixated on their family. Ted had said she was jealous of Ali. Ali wondered now, what was the source of that jealousy?
It was like a missing piece of the puzzle of their lives just clicked into place.
Ali opened her phone settings and clicked on Call Blocking and Identification. She had only blocked one or two spam numbers in her life. She scrolled down.
There it was. A 419-area-code. Amber.
It was 10 p.m., not too late, but who cared. Ali had gone down a rabbit hole, and she wasn’t going to let it go. She couldn’t.
She dialed the number.
