Chapter 18

Cal watched Sierra throw a few snacks together and call it a lunch. He hadn’t gotten up and showered, the way he usually did. “Grandma will be here after school.”

His break-up with Lisa had happened on Saturday night, and he’d barely made it through Sunday without burning his house to the ground. So cooking was out. So was socializing. And parenting. And apparently, working.

“You’ve told me four times,” Sierra said.

“I’ll be back on Thursday.”

“Yep,” she said. “Going around to Lightning Point, so you’re not that far away. Fishing boat. Hut in the rain forest. Got it.” She flashed him a smile that still let him know she was frustrated with him.

He was frustrated with himself too. “Okay.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and added, “Be safe. Love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.” Sierra hitched her backpack over her shoulder and hesitated.

“What?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to say something, and then shook her head. “Nothing. See you Thursday.”

Before he could call her back, she walked out the door, leaving Cal in the house alone. He actually loved being alone, and he was practically running away from his life for a few days. To fish alone. Make solo meals. Sleep alone. Live in the rainforest alone.

But before all of that, he needed to shower, pack, and attend a grief meeting. He’d attended the support group for several months after Jo’s death, but he hadn’t been to a meeting in a while.

Too long.

He hadn’t even been sure where they were meeting anymore, but he’d looked it up online, and they had a meeting at noon today. He could attend, drive around the island to Lightning Point, and try to find some peace before returning on Thursday.

When he walked into the meeting, his nerves struck like lightning. When he’d been coming before, he knew all of the faces in the group. Now, he only recognized one.

Chief of Police, Wyatt Gardner.

Surprise moved through Cal, because Wyatt’s wife had died years ago too. Their eyes met, and Wyatt stood up. Cal moved in his direction and shook the Chief’s hand. “Hey,” he said, accepting the quick embrace and pat on the back. “You’re still coming to these?”

“It’s good to see you here,” Wyatt said. “I don’t know anyone here.”

“So you haven’t been coming.”

“It’s my second meeting in a long time,” he said.

Cal wanted to ask him why he’d come back, but his own reason was personal, and he didn’t feel like sharing it.

“My first,” Cal said.

“Yeah,” the Chief said, clearing his throat. “I want to ask out this woman, but…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like maybe I still need some closure.”

Cal looked at Wyatt. “I just broke up with my girlfriend. Well, she broke up with me.” The words actually scraped his throat. “She said I wasn’t ready to be dating, and well…” He shrugged too. “She’s right.”

“But you want to be ready,” Wyatt said.

“Here I am.” Cal flashed his old friend a smile, glad he was still able to do so. When he’d first started coming to these grief meetings, he’d barely been able to sit in the chair and focus. Wyatt Gardner had been there, in the corner seat in the last row. He was Cal’s age, and he’d lost his wife to the same cancer that had taken Jo.

Cal had felt in Wyatt a kindred spirit from the moment he’d sat next to him, barely able to say his own name and who he was grieving.

“Jen’s married now,” Wyatt said, sighing. “The house is empty without her there.”

“I’m sorry,” Cal said, though he should be saying congratulations. But he would be in the same position as Wyatt in just a few short years.

“It’s a good thing,” Wyatt said, smiling. “But seeing my daughter so excited to spend her life with Aaron, watching her at the ceremony…” He shrugged in a very vulnerable way, and Cal saw beneath the tough police exterior Wyatt usually kept in place. “I decided I could at least try to find someone else to spend the rest of my life with. I mean, I’m only forty-six.”

“I’ll be forty in January,” Cal said.

“Plenty of time,” Wyatt said. “Did you like the girlfriend?” He looked at Cal with questions in his eyes.

“I…yeah,” Cal said, wishing the simple words didn’t make his heart come to a full stop. When it started beating again, it actually thumped in his throat. He flashed another smile at his friend, glad when someone stood up and said it was time to begin the meeting.

Lisa had said to call him when he was ready to date again, and he really wanted to be ready. So he sat in the meeting, completely present. He listened, and his heart hurt for those whose loved ones had passed away so recently.

He supposed it didn’t matter how much time had passed since a death, as his own pain indicated. As Wyatt’s presence next to him testified.

At one grief meeting years ago, Cal had learned that he didn’t need to forget about Jo. He could love her forever. He could think about her and miss her and talk to her, and that was normal. Expected, even.

But he’d forgotten that his life didn’t have to be wrapped up in her death. As he looked around at the other people in the meeting, he saw them in different stages of grief. Some so new and so fresh to the pain of loss. Some working their way through it. Some on the outer cusp, like him and Wyatt.

But he wasn’t completely free from it, and he wasn’t sure he ever would be. Peace descended on him, almost like Jo coming to sit beside him. He actually looked to the seat next to him, expecting her to be there.

Of course she wasn’t, but he could hear her voice for those few brief moments when she’d made him promise to find someone else to share his life with.

Meet someone new, Cal. Mingle.

His emotions choked him, and he hurried to cross his arms, hoping that physical act would contain the emotional turmoil. Wyatt glanced over at him, and Cal managed a shaky smile. Wyatt patted Cal’s shoulder, and Cal appreciated their friendship so much.

The meeting ended, and Cal stood with several others. His first instinct was to rush out the door. His bags were packed, the truck fully gassed up. He needed a few days to find his center again, figure out where he was going, and how he wanted to get there. Who he wanted to be with on the journey and at the destination.

Mingle.

He stayed and chatted with the Chief, learned his daughter was moving completely off-island, and that Wyatt was ready to be out of the public spotlight. They’d migrated over to the refreshment table, and Cal introduced himself to a younger man named Stephen Morgan.

His longer hair and dark circles under his eyes indicated that his loss had been quite recently. “Who is your loved one?”

Stephen looked at him. “You said is. Not was.” His eyes started to water, and Cal wanted to grab the man in a tight hug and tell him everything would be okay. But he’d never liked it when people told him that.

“Of course,” Cal said, glancing at Wyatt. He really wasn’t good at this kind of emotional stuff. “Your loved one is still with you. You don’t forget about them because they’re gone physically. They don’t just disappear from our lives.”

“Your wife?” Wyatt asked.

Stephen nodded, his chin shaking. “Just a few weeks ago.”

“Any kids?”

“No, thank goodness.”

Cal almost flinched, and something must’ve shown on his face, because horror crossed Stephen’s. “I’m sorry. You have kids.”

“We both do,” Wyatt said easily. “Daughters.” He sounded so proud of that fact, and Cal suddenly was proud to be Sierra’s father. He’d done the best he could with raising her, and in that moment, he knew he’d done enough so far. He’d keep checking on the clothes she wore, and insisting he know who she spent her time with. He’d keep asking Jo for help, and he’d keep doing the very best he could.

***

Cal sat on the front porch of the tiny cabin he owned in the middle of the rainforest. He and Jo had bought the place in the first year of their marriage, and they’d kept it up so they could enjoy vacations to this side of the island. The beach was a short half-mile walk through the trees and seemed to open up to the sprawling ocean in an instant.

He loved the peace here. The way the birds chirped in the morning. The sense of heavy humidity in the air. He’d planned to get one of his father’s fishing boats out of the storage shed and hit the water the moment he arrived, but he’d been rocking on the porch for a couple of hours now.

He was only thirty-nine, but he felt decades older. At least right now. He didn’t want to go fishing. He was perfectly happy to sit here and think.

His mind wandered through Jo, Sierra, the men on his crew, and finally to Lisa. He appreciated the things and people he had in his life. He loved the business he’d been able to build for himself. He loved his crew, his daughter.

Everything surrounding those parts of his life were crystal clear.

When he got to Lisa, everything became a bit muddied.

“Where do I start?” he asked the palm trees surrounding him. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

It was always best to start at the beginning, and his memory cleared enough to remember the pretty blonde who’d approached him at the pool party on the twenty-sixth floor of the Sweet Breeze Resort and Spa.

She’d finished his drink, which he found odd but also extremely attractive.

She’d asked him to dance—something they still hadn’t done.

Something he still really wanted to do—and that told him so much. That desire told him he was willing to mingle. Willing to do whatever it took to get on the same path with Lisa.

He could only hope that by the time he found his way to that path, that she would be still available and willing to dance with him.