He pulled his hand away and leaned back in the chair, frustrated that her words were burrowing into his soul.
“Well, I have something to say about that, kiddo.”
He looked over at her, hungry for something—anything—that might release him from this prison of guilt.
“As many times as you wish you could change that night, that’s as many times as your father would do the exact same thing for you.”
His eyes clouded. “What?” The word came out a whisper.
“It’s like Jesus. Do you think he wanted to die? He knelt in that garden begging God for a different way, but he knew his sacrifice meant the rest of us could live.”
“But my dad didn’t have to die, Maggie. He only died because of me.”
“He did have to die in order for you to live. Don’t you see?” She coughed, but when he leaned forward to offer help, she held up a hand to stop him. Finally she cleared her throat and met his eyes. “It was his choice—and he would do it all over again in a heartbeat if given the chance. Don’t take away the power of the sacrifice he made by doubting it or wishing it away. The alternative means that you don’t get the life your father died for you to have. You owe it to him to live it big and full. Not to stay stuck here in shame and guilt.”
The words hung there between them, filling the dark house with the faint glow of light, of promise, of forgiveness.
Maggie leaned forward this time, taking both of his hands in her own. “Forgive yourself the same way you forgave Louisa. What happened was nobody’s fault. Not hers. Not yours. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get on with your life.”
He hadn’t come here for this. Still, he mulled over her words for several seconds, unsure how to move on, how to get past this when he was still so sorry for all the pain he’d caused.
Had this shame been keeping him from moving forward? Was that the real reason he never got close to anyone—was he afraid of losing them, or was he afraid of being the reason they were lost?
The door opened and Louisa rushed in. “Sorry I’m late. I have dinner.” She stopped in the doorway, and her face fell. “What’s going on? Are you guys okay?”
Cody glanced at Maggie. “Yeah, we’re good.”
Maggie winked at him, then leaned back in her chair. “We’re starving. What took you so long?”
Louisa glanced from Maggie to Cody and back again. “Sorry; I got held up with the Tacione family.” She opened the brown paper bag and pulled out Centre Street Bistro to-go containers as she talked. “Mrs. Tacione brought her five sisters to the island for the first time, and you know they aren’t super wealthy, but I promised her we would make them feel like they were.” Louisa was beaming now. “You should’ve seen their faces when they walked into their rental cottage. I got them an amazing deal with my friend Leo and—” She stopped and met Cody’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”
He smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “Just admiring how good you are at what you do.”
Her mouth spread into a slow smile, her lips soft pink and utterly kissable. He tossed Maggie a glance and saw that the old woman had dozed off again, so he stood, wrapped his arms around Louisa, and kissed her right there in the middle of Maggie’s living room.
Kissing her had become his favorite thing to do, but there was something different about it now, as if something inside him had shifted in the moments before she arrived.
A single word kept running through his mind—a word that carried more weight to it than he’d expected, a word that filled him up like an overflowing pool. A word that summed up everything he’d been searching for since the day his family left Nantucket all those years ago.
Forgiven.
He wanted that. He’d given it to Louisa—it was time to give it to himself. And to accept the forgiveness of a God who offered grace for mistakes like his.
As the kiss melted into a deep embrace, he prayed for the strength to follow through.
It’s what his father would’ve wanted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SOMEHOW, AFTER THAT NIGHT IN MAGGIE’S HOUSE, Louisa felt like she and Cody grew even closer, as if every barrier that had been keeping them apart had suddenly fallen away.
She’d spent her life wishing for his forgiveness, but she had no idea how freeing it would actually be to have it.
They spent less time talking about the memorial and their parents and everything that had been broken between them before and more time focusing on what was in front of them now. How much better it was to have something to look forward to, instead of always being focused on what had come before.
Some nights, he showed up just as she was finishing her work and stood in the doorway of her office, watching her. It made working impossible. He’d never been much of a talker, but he was an observer, and being the object of that observation turned her insides wobbly.
If he had the day off, she adjusted her schedule so she could spend it with him. They ate picnics at the beach and went hiking and swimming and strolling on the cobblestone streets of the island they had both grown to love.
Today, only two days before Maggie’s party, she’d cleared the morning so they would have some time together before his next shift the following day. They ate breakfast on the patio at Island Kitchen and were now strolling hand in hand down Main Street, looking in shops and smiling at the tourists taking in the island, maybe for the first time. Louisa was almost jealous of them—to still have so much of Nantucket to explore and discover would be such a gift—and yet, knowing that she knew all the island’s secrets quickly erased any feelings of envy. She vacillated between wanting to share everything she knew about the island and wanting to keep it to herself.
She resisted the urge to tell each person all the things she thought they should do—touristy things like eating ice cream at the Juice Bar or taking a stroll through the Whaling Museum and non-touristy things like renting a bike and exploring off the beaten path.
Cody let go of her hand to look at something in the window of Mitchell’s Book Corner, her favorite bookstore, at the intersection of Main and Orange Streets. She reached in her bag for a bottle of water, uncapped it, and took a drink, but as she scanned the people across the street, she was struck by a woman, standing on the opposite corner, staring right at her.
It had been a dozen years, but she would’ve recognized Marissa Boggs anywhere. The woman was stunningly beautiful then, and she was stunningly beautiful now. It was a wonder her own mother had ever befriended Marissa. JoEllen liked to be the prettiest one in the room.
“Lou, we should go to this,” Cody called from behind her. “The Boston Pops concert—remember we used to listen from down the beach?”
He stood directly behind her now, but she hadn’t moved—couldn’t move. Her eyes were glued to his mother, who was watching them with a broken expression on her face.
“You didn’t tell her about us.” Louisa exhaled the realization.
“What?” Cody followed her gaze across the street, and the second he spotted his mom, he sighed. “She’s early.” He lifted a hand in a wave, but Marissa turned, dragged her suitcase behind her, and walked off in the other direction.