Elizabeth returned to the shop around 5 in the evening to find Jack, James and Rey huddled around the counter playing cards and laughing.
"There's no way that was her idea, you're lying?" Rey accused Jack.
"Honest to God. We all agreed to the bet." Jack affirmed.
"Who lost?" James asked.
"Who do you think?" Jack asked looking down his nose at the boy.
"Get out!" Rey exclaimed.
"What's going on here, guys?" Elizabeth asked from the doorway, dropping her stuff on the ground.
Rey rose and ran to her, laughing wildly. "Mom, you really went streaking down the docks during the maritime festival?"
"Jack." Elizabeth scolded. "What the hell?"
"What? It's true. You don't want them to know the truth?" He asked pointedly.
"Mom, Jack's gonna take us sailing tomorrow." James interrupted the intense stare shared between the two of them.
"He is?" She looked to her son.
"Only if it's okay with you." Jack amended.
"Please mom, please?" James pleaded.
"Come on, mom. Close the shop for a day. We'll survive. Let's have some fun." Rey said, pulling on her mom's arm.
"We'll play it by ear." She answered.
"Which means 'no'." Rey and James said at the same time. Jack had to laugh at that.
"What are you doing here, Rey? I thought you were at Eric's" Elizabeth asked, her tone flat.
"Eric is a butt munch." Rey echoed James' previous remark, looking back to Jack who nodded back in approval.
"Okay. Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?" Elizabeth asked, suspiciously.
"It's still me. Jack made a compelling argument against him." Rey answered with a shrug.
"I think I remember making a compelling argument against him as well." Elizabeth added in defense.
"You did?" Rey smirked in that way that always made Elizabeth's insides turn to liquid. "Hm, can't say I recall."
They are so alike, Elizabeth thought, unable to keep her focus on any one thing.
"Do you need help unpacking the truck?" Jack asked sensing Elizabeth's uneasiness.
"Sure."
"Get a head start?" Jack prompted James who grabbed Rey's hand and pulled her out the front of the store. "About that talk?" He said to her once the kids had gone.
"Not now. I can't…I don't even…" She spoke frantically.
"Lizzie?" He said standing up, moving toward her.
"No, don't you dare call me that." She yelled at him.
"Elizabeth." He said her name in that tone of voice that still haunted her sleep.
Tears started spilling freely from beneath her shut eyelids. "I prayed for you to come back every night, every night for years. I thought maybe you'd at least come for the funeral, and when you didn't show…I gave up all hope of ever seeing you again, and now you're here and…it's like it was all a bad dream, but it happened, it was real, Jack, and you can't make me forget that. You won't." She was shaking.
"Lizzie, that's not…I'm not…" He said wrapping her in his arms. "I just came for you." He said at last.
"Fifteen years too late." She said wiping her eyes with her sleeve, pulling away from his grasp, turning her back to him.
"If you'd have told me, I would have been on the first flight back here. In a fucking heartbeat." He said softly at her back.
She turned back to him, eyes wide with terror. Of course he knew. She was the spitting image of him. She opened her mouth about to speak when James and Rey came in, arms full of diving equipment.
"Were you guys gonna come out and help or are you just going to stand there staring at each other all night?" Rey asked, walking in between them.
"Right." Jack said, walking passed Elizabeth and placing a gentle hand on her shoulder before heading out to the truck.
Elizabeth stood in the foyer, hugging herself, staring blankly into the void.
"Mom." Rey urged, grabbing her attention. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, honey." She put on a fake smile. The one she wore for Will in the first few years of their marriage. Elizabeth put her arm around Rey and they walked out of the store together. "I'm glad you decided to stick around." She added.
"Me too." Rey smiled.
They got out to the truck and Jack was hauling empty tanks under each arm while James carried the rest. "Sorry, ladies, but there's nothing left. Me and the young sir grabbed the rest."
"That was lucky." Elizabeth whispered to her daughter.
"Open the door, dear?" Jack asked through a few large puffs of breath as he heaved the tanks along.
"Do you want me to grab one?" Elizabeth offered.
"Not. Necessary. I. Got. It." He barely stumbled through the door, when he dropped the tanks on the floor.
"You know those aren't indestructible? And they cost a fair amount of money." She said crossing her arms as the tanks rolled across the floor.
"If it turns out I broke any of them, I promise I'll reimburse you." He stood, shaking out his arms.
"Alright, everyone grab something, let's get this place cleaned up." Elizabeth ordered.
The four of them started picking up various pieces of equipment: tanks, wet suits, snorkels, flippers and the like and putting them into their proper places. Rey and James noticed Jack and Elizabeth dancing around each other, looking at one when the other wasn't looking and giving each other awkward half smiles when they were.
"Something's going on." Rey whispered to James.
"Duh." James rolled his eyes.
"What do you think it is?" She asked.
"I think it has to do with him not living here anymore."
"What are you two whispering about over there?" Elizabeth asked from across the room.
"Nothing." They answered in sing-song unison.
"We're all finished with the wet suits." James exclaimed happily.
"All done here as well." Jack said wiping his hands on his pants.
"Great. Let's lock up and get outta here." Elizabeth said ushering all of them out through the front door. She turned and locked it, and the foursome stood out on the sidewalk in an awkward silence for a few minutes.
"I'll…uh…get out of your hair." Jack said scratching his head.
"Ask him to come over for dinner." Rey whispered just behind her mother's back. Elizabeth gave her a pointed look.
"Yeah, he should come over for dinner!" James said loudly.
Rey brought her palm to her forehead. "Be quiet, dummy." She shushed her brother.
"It is the least I can do for all your help today." Elizabeth shrugged.
"Really, I don't want to intrude."
"I'll make tacos." She taunted.
"Lobster tacos?" He questioned hopefully like a little kid at Christmas. Elizabeth made the best lobster tacos in all of Maine. Jack made her cook them almost everyday of the summer when they were younger.
"Mom's famous lobster tacos." Rey and James said together, salivating as they let the words drip off of their tongues.
"'Tis the season." Elizabeth smiled.
"You know I could never say no to lobster tacos."
"Then you should probably have dinner with us." Rey piped in.
"Come on Jack." James begged him, coming up to pull on his pant leg.
"Alright, I'm convinced. Tacos it is."
"Yes!" James exclaimed.
"Awesome." Rey beamed.
"Tacos!" The two yelled in unison before running up ahead to the car.
"Sorry." She whispered. "They're excitable."
"They're fun." He half smiled as they walked side by side, staring at their feet. "I think I'd still like to have that talk. A little later." He whispered, looking up at her.
She nodded silently and they continued to her car.
—
They drove up the long dirt road that led to her house. It was her father's house. Her and Will had taken over the estate after her father passed.
"You still live in the same house?" Jack joked.
"We only just moved in last year, after Dad died. He left us the house and a boat load of debt."
"Kindly man, even in death." Jack jeered.
"Jack." She scolded as they got out of the car.
"Your grandpa didn't care for me very much. Didn't fancy having a fisherman's son hanging about his daughter." He said addressing James and Rey as they carried groceries up the drive.
"Grandpa hated you for being a fisherman's son?" James asked curiously.
"No, he hated him for being a delinquent and having a questionable influence on me." Elizabeth corrected.
"Admit it, Liz. He was way too over protective of you."
"I admit nothing." She said through gritted teeth, making eyes at the kids who were hanging on their every word.
"I'm going to enjoy hearing more about mom's delinquency, I think." Rey said with a smirk.
"I was not the delinquent, he was." Elizabeth defended. Rey and Jack exchanged a knowing look, the same look, and it made Elizabeth shudder. Rey would find out the truth sooner or later, how would she explain it to her, or to James? "In the house, everyone." She said in frustration. The two kids went into the house and Elizabeth put up a hand to stop Jack. He looked at her questioningly.
"Please, it's hard enough to keep control of her without filling her head with stories of all the bonehead things we used to do."
"Bonehead things? Lizzie, they were adventures and great ones at that." He laughed
"Regardless, let's cool it with the Black Lizzie stuff okay?"
"Ok I have to know, who the hell is Black Lizzie?" Rey said from the doorway, hands propped up inside the frame.
"Black Lizzie, was what your mom turned into after the sun went down."
"Ok. That's enough of that." Elizabeth pushed Jack through the doorway with a sigh.
"The public wants what it wants, Lizzie." He said in between laughs.
—
"You started that fire, Jack!" She yelled from over the stove.
"How dare you? I was not the one who put an oil lantern on top of the propane tank." He said from the island in the center of the kitchen, cutting vegetables.
"And whose brilliant idea was it to bring an oil lantern into a barn in the first place?"
"Will forgot the flashlights, it was all I could find in the tool shed." He said waving the knife around haphazardly
"You were the ones who burned down the Johnson's farm?" Rey asked incredulously.
"I wouldn't say burned down, more like exploded upward in a ball of fire."
"And Jack did it." Elizabeth argued.
"Taking that version to the grave, huh? And you wonder why your dad hated me."
"There's no wondering, you were the easy scape goat. You didn't need my help getting into trouble."
"Shall I remind you why we were at the Johnson's barn in the first place?"
Elizabeth whipped around with a menacing glare, live lobster in hand, locking eyes with Jack who raised his eyebrows at her. "NO!" She commanded.
"Come on, Mom!"
"Sorry, that is not a story for sharing." She said turning back to the stove, dropping the lobster into the boiling water. The poor critter let out an ear piercing cry.
"Better listen to your mom on this one" Jack suggested with a wink while Rey and James laughed in the background.
"So, Jack." Rey said over enunciating his name. "You design sailboats?" She asked, leaning forward, scrutinizing his every move.
"Yup." He answered as he continued the required prep work.
"Do you ever build custom ships for famous people?"
"A few. I mostly do work for wealthy millionaires who want something unique no one else has."
"So you travel a lot?" She questioned more intensely, as if she were interrogating him.
"More than not." He looked up, hearing her tone.
"Where've you been?"
"All over."
"Where was your favorite?"
He paused thinking for a moment, eyebrows furrowed. "Bermuda."
"Why?" She asked.
"Why?" He echoed, puzzled.
"Why?" She insisted.
"The Crystal Caves, Rum Cake, and Goslings. In that order." He answered quickly.
"What's a goslings?" James interrupted the fast paced exchange with piqued curiosity.
"It's rum." He grinned.
"Oh." James answered with sincere disappointment.
"One day, when you're older…"
"Much Older." Elizabeth chimed in over him.
"Much older" He echoed, "Rum will sound interesting to you."
"Where do you live now?" Rey continued her long line of questioning.
"Hilton Head"
"South Carolina?" Elizabeth asked.
"Lot of boat business in the Sea Islands of South Carolina. The weather's nice and the town is quiet 8 months out of the year."
"Sounds like here. Except the part about the weather." Rey added. "Are you seeing anyone?"
"Rey." Elizabeth scolded.
"What? It's a valid question."
"The answer is no. Anymore questions?"
"Nope. I'm good." Rey said satisfied.
"Good."
"No, wait. I have one more."
"How did mom get the nickname Black Lizzie?" Rey asked with a mischievous grin.
"Ok, no more questions. Rey, take your brother upstairs and get cleaned up for dinner."
"Tsk" Rey clucked. "Come on, James. This is the part of the evening when adults share secrets they don't want the kids to hear."
"I'm not going to…" She yelled after them, defending herself, but they'd already disappeared into the hallway "what the hell does it matter?"
"Why are you hiding yourself from them?" Jack laughed at her frustration
"I'm not hiding myself from them. I buried as many of those memories as I could. It hurt less, forgetting that any of it happened." She began to crack the lobsters over the sink, dropping the meat into a separate bowl.
"Surely your legend lives on in the community?" He teased.
She turned toward him. "I'll have you know, I'm a well respected history teacher who now runs a dive shop during the summer seasons. Black Lizzie is dead, and her stories died with her." She turned back toward the sink.
"Shame. I liked Black Lizzie." He said leaning against the island behind her.
"Not enough to take her with you." She muttered under her breath.
"Save that kind of talk for later, ok? They don't need to walk in on any of that." He said seriously.
Elizabeth snorted at him. "As if you know what's best for them, or for us."
"I'm just trying to keep things light." He put his hands up in defense.
"God forbid you take anything seriously." She said, cracking more lobster.
"Do you wanna do this now?" He said grabbing her shoulder and turning her to face him.
"No. You're right. I'm sorry. I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around you being here, in my kitchen, helping me make dinner, telling stories to my kids." She paused and turned away from him. "It's what I always wanted, but I didn't imagine it quite like this." She said in barely a whisper, a single tear running down her cheek as she wiped her hands on a nearby dish towel.
She gasped when he slipped behind her, gathering her into his arms from behind, holding her against his chest. He pressed a gentle kiss to where the tear had started making its descent down her face. She exhaled, relaxing against him.
"You don't know how sorry I am for the way things turned out." He whispered in her ear.
"Yes, I do." She said, leaning her cheek against his. "I've missed you beyond reasoning." She said turning in his arms to face him. "Now you're here and I feel 18 again, but we've grown so old" She ran her hands over his face.
"We're not old, Lizzie. We're just not kids anymore."
"We're strangers, Jack. I haven't seen in you seven years, fifteen years since we had a real conversation."
"Come on" He said pushing her back by the shoulders. "Let's finish dinner. We can continue this later." He put a hand to her cheek. "Smile for me, love." He demanded, with an exaggerated grin.
She did so and he laughed. "Since I'm making lobster tacos, you know what needs to happen don't you?"
He looked at her with a leer.
"Not that?! You have to make salsa."
"As you wish." He said with a bow.