Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
Tom had stayed too long at the lunch with Louisa, neglecting to check the time and spending more than thirty minutes. Now, he was juggling multiple calls from board members and wishing his driver would hurry up and get him back to the office so he could start the meeting that he was already late for.
Once back in the offices, though, Tom discovered that he was having a hard time staying on task. Someone was showing him a slideshow with various architectural drawings and proposals for the design of his new complex, but they all looked the same to him. Nick was seated across from him at the glass-topped conference table, asking all sorts of questions about the name recognition of each architect, whether the complex would attract photographers and influencers, and the specific costs associated with the various types of steel and rebar required by the various projects.
Tom knew he should be paying attention, but all he could think of was Louisa. He had always dreamed of seeing her again, and it broke his heart that their first conversation was an argument. How frustrating that the woman he wanted to reunite with was actually one of the activists causing no end of headaches for this project. Tom had spent the last few months wishing those people would just shut up and disappear, strategizing with Palmco’s lawyers about how best to get them off his back, and tossing back nice whiskey with Nick after long days of irritating nonsense.
But there was more to Louisa than someone who didn’t understand business and just wanted the world to work exactly her way. Tom remembered her as brilliant and funny, friendly and generous. She had been polite to his friends even when they were being boneheads on spring break, and she had welcomed him to her town, showing him around to her favorite spots. To this day, Tom had never had a tastier plate of fish and chips than the one Louisa treated him to at Fins ’n’ Fishes.
As Nick reeled off a list of concerns about window reflections and whether residents would complain about birds flying into the clear glass, Tom found himself wondering whether he still had any photographs from that spring break week he’d spent in La Vega. Tilting his laptop slightly closer toward himself, he pulled open the photo storage on his cloud server, searching by date.
Sure enough, there was a folder labeled SPRING BREAK IN FLORIDA. Smiling, Tom double-clicked, scrolling through the images.
There he was, grinning with his arms around Nick and Kevin and Jason, posing with their flashy rental car. There was a blurry image of Nick trying to spray Kevin in the face with sunscreen. Tom kept scrolling, waiting for the pictures of Louisa to appear.
Sure enough, there were some photos of the turtle nest he had found, the perfectly round white eggs nestled in the sand. The images were somewhat blown out from the bright sun, and he doubted they would ever make it into any sort of nature publication, but he appreciated the memory. Then there was Louisa, her younger self, wearing that giant floppy sun hat and squinting with a smile. He found some pictures they had taken on the dunes together, when Louisa took him to her favorite spot and laid out a blanket for them to watch the sun rise.
Tom sighed, feeling wistful at the memories of that happier, simpler time.
“Do you have a question, Mr. Palmer?”
Tom looked up, startled. He hadn’t been listening at all, but apparently his sigh had been misinterpreted as a response to something being displayed on one of the slides.
“No, no questions,” Tom said quickly, trying to get his bearings. “Please, continue.”
The meeting droned on, and Tom figured that Nick could handle it. He kept poking through the photos, smiling when he came across the ones from the beach cleanup. There he was with Louisa, pulling an exaggeratedly disgusted face at a particularly shredded piece of garbage. There were even photos from the night of the party, where Nick’s bright red sunburn was visible even in the dim light of the beach house, his arm nearly identical in color to the red plastic cups everyone was drinking out of.
That party. That rental house. Of course there were no images of the most important thing that had happened there, his night of tender lovemaking with Louisa. Not only had it been one of the best nights of his life, but Tom had also just found out that it had led to a child.
A daughter. A little girl. Rei. Louisa had told him that she was brilliant, and Tom could certainly believe that. She must take after her mother. Tom wondered what she looked like.
All these years—years Tom had spent feeling alone and believing that his only accomplishment was his work—and he was actually a father.
The meeting wrapped up and Tom ducked back into his office, closing the frosted glass door before anyone could follow him inside. Nick usually wanted to chat after meetings like this, doing something he called a debriefing, but Tom didn’t feel up to that sort of conversation. He had another obligation within a few minutes, and he needed this short amount of personal time to figure out what to do next.
If he was honest with himself, and he tried to be as much as possible, he felt bad about how things had gone between him and Louisa. It wasn’t his fault that she was vilifying him and blaming him for the basics of how businesses had to be run, but he still wished that he had been more generous with his time and heard more about her life and her daughter.
Resolve built within Tom, and he knew he had to do something about what had happened. Of course he couldn’t give her everything she wanted—there was no way he could cancel this development project without risking his entire career and the future of his company—but he at least could step up and be around for his daughter. He wanted to support Louisa and Rei as much as he could, even if he couldn’t change the world for them.
Remembering how Louisa had swindled her way into the meeting to begin with, Tom stopped by the front desk on his way out to his next meeting and asked his secretary for the phone number of the woman who had called about the environmental impact reports. She seemed worried, asking him whether things had been sorted out at the meeting as promised.
Tom assured her that everything was fine, but that the woman had been so helpful when it came to county-related paperwork that he wanted to send over some flowers, and he needed her contact information.
She handed it over happily, and Tom pocketed the little slip of paper with Louisa’s phone number on it. He knew that although the rest of his day was packed full of meetings, he would continue to have a hard time focusing and instead be thinking about what to say when he called.