Is It Any Wonder (Nantucket Love Story #2) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,122

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,