“Of course not, Mom,” Cody said.
“I know you think you love Louisa, Cody.”
“This is not about Louisa.”
She held up a hand to silence him. “But you will never understand what I went through after your father died. He left us with almost nothing. And when I went to Warren—your father’s closest friend—to ask for help, he said no.”
“Dad had a plan—”
“Well, it didn’t work. Life doesn’t go the way we plan.”
“Mom, do you regret what Dad did that night?” Cody’s voice broke, but he quickly recovered. “Do you regret that he saved me?”
Her face went pale. “Of course not—I couldn’t have lived a single day if something happened to you.”
“Then maybe you should be grateful to him. Maybe we should be grateful instead of angry. Maybe we should be looking for ways to honor him with our lives, instead of letting the past hold us prisoner like it has.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“We’ve got to let it go,” he said. “We’ve got to move on.”
She brought her eyes to his. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Cody felt like he was a tire and someone had just slashed him. She wasn’t listening. He wasn’t getting through to her. Did she know what it was doing to him to be apart from Louisa? Did she know that this wasn’t the kind of sacrifice his father wanted them to make—at least not for these reasons?
He saw her body turn rigid as she returned to the pot on the stove. He saw her jaw tense as she reflected on their exchange. He saw what anger could do to a person once it turned bitter.
And he wanted no part of it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
A FEW DAYS AFTER MR. HOLBROOK dropped his money bomb on Cody and Louisa, she finally found the courage to cash the check.
She’d been mulling over the lawyer’s words to her—“Maggie said you’d know just what to do with it.”
Louisa wondered how. How would she know what to do with it? Maggie had left no instruction in her letter, as if she trusted that Louisa would figure it out on her own. She’d spent hours thinking about it every day, and while most people would probably want to celebrate with a great trip somewhere, Louisa already lived in a vacation destination—she didn’t need to escape Nantucket.
Unless it meant escaping the haunting ghost of a nonexistent Cody Boggs.
While she would never admit it, she’d tried to put herself in the places she knew he might go—Bartlett’s Farm (he loved their sandwiches), the Handlebar Café (he loved their coffee), the beach by his father’s memorial. Twice she’d even found legitimate reasons to visit the station at Brant Point.
She hadn’t run into him once. She was beginning to think he’d vanished again. The thought of it made mincemeat of her already-broken heart.
When she finished cleaning out Maggie’s house, she texted him to let him know. He never responded. The silence was worse the second time around. What would she do if she had to wait another decade to see him again?
Now, sitting in her office, she tried to focus on whatever Ally was talking about—a client wanted to add a few events to her family’s vacation itinerary, and she needed help. On a normal day, Louisa would be excited by the challenge, but as she peered at her phone—and its taunting lack of new text messages or phone calls—she felt anything but excited.
“You’re doing it again,” Ally said dryly, closing her notebook and giving Louisa a pointed look.
Louisa glanced up from her phone.
“Why don’t you just call him?”
“I can’t,” she said.
“I’m sure he would love to hear from you.”
Ally didn’t understand. After what Louisa’s father had admitted, she was certain any chance of taking back her original request to “pause” their relationship was out of the question. If he wanted to see her, he would’ve seen her by now. The end of their relationship was as plain to her as the lighthouse at the edge of the island.
“Louisa, I need to ask you a question.” Ally folded her hands in her lap.
Louisa stiffened. Her friend was often serious—it was what made her so good at her job—but she still found it unnerving. “Okay . . . ?”
“Are you going to give up the business now that you don’t need the money?”
Louisa snapped back to reality. “No way.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Ally said. “It wouldn’t be unheard of. People who come into money don’t need to work. You have money. You don’t need to work.”
“But I like this work,” Louisa said.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said. “Because I don’t have money. And I like the work too.”
Louisa tossed her an amused look. “But your part of this business is so boring.”
“I’ve always been better with numbers than with people,” Ally said. Then, after a pause, “So what are you going to do with the money?”
Louisa shrugged. “I can’t decide. Maybe just leave it in the bank for a while?”
But she knew it was meant for more than that. She didn’t care about being rich or wearing designer clothes. She didn’t even care about having a big, fancy house or eating in the poshest restaurants on the island. She loved her work because she loved making other people happy.
“Ally?”
Her friend glanced up from her phone. “Hm?”
“I just got an idea.”
If anyone had told Louisa a month ago that she’d be welcoming McKenzie Palmer into her office with open arms, she would’ve laughed. But McKenzie, like her or not, was an influencer—and right now Louisa needed an influencer.
She knew she couldn’t change the past. She knew her mistakes had been forgiven. She even knew that the broken parts of her family would eventually heal. Her parents were in counseling, and her father was finally free of the shame of what he’d done, making arrangements to pay back the money he’d borrowed from Daniel. It was all behind her now, and dwelling on it wouldn’t help anyone.
Instead, she’d decided to focus her attention on what she could do in the present. She asked herself hard questions about what she wanted the future to look like, and all of it—every single bit—revolved around what her life had always revolved around: making as much magic as possible for other people.
With that, she’d gotten the idea for her nonprofit, not unlike the one Maggie used to talk about starting. The Good Life would expand to include a branch that would grant wishes to families in need. Vacations for local heroes, cancer patients and survivors, single parents—people who could never afford the island on their own would be spoiled for days. She’d partner with local businesses to bring slivers of goodness to her clients, and those clients wouldn’t have to pay a dime.
She contacted Make-A-Wish and organizations that specialized in helping abused women rebuild their lives. She reached out to other nonprofits and shared her plans with them. And now, sitting at her desk across from Ally and McKenzie, she laid the whole thing out for one of the island’s most influential bloggers.