by Sophie Moss
“No,” Annie said, her voice flat.
“The rest of the story is already written. It’s ready to go to press. All I need is a quote from you.”
“No.” Annie shook her head. “We moved here to get away from that. I won’t subject Taylor to reporters again. I won’t have them coming here, to this island, to our home.”
“It’s too late for that,” Grace said. “This story is going to break whether you like it or not. Reporters are going to come here. They are going to ask you questions. They are going to ask Taylor questions. You can either speak now, as one of us, or you can let them wear you down until you say something you don’t mean to say.”
“They won’t wear me down.”
“They will wear you down. I can guarantee that. And when you do finally say something in the heat of the moment, they’ll run with it, twisting your words in a hundred different directions on a dozen different news sources. All I need is one quote, Annie. We can get through this together. I know what I’m doing. I’m on your side. You need to let me do this.”
Annie opened the door. “The only thing I need to do right now is talk to my daughter.
“Annie—”
“Find another way.” She walked inside, slamming the door in Grace’s face.
“I’m going to run the article,” Grace said an hour later as she and Becca sat at a picnic table on the deck outside Rusty’s, nursing a couple of beers. “With or without a quote from Annie.”
“I know,” Becca said, looking out at the water. A cold front was moving in, and dark clouds were already starting to gather along the horizon. White caps chopped over the surface of the Bay, and the few remaining fishing boats would be driven in soon by the rain.
“I’ll wait another hour, in case she changes her mind,” Grace said, “but I have to file the story soon before anyone else finds out about it. My editor’s already sent three emails asking for it.”
Becca nodded, wrapping the sides of her sweater tighter around her midsection to ward off the chill. She could hear the voices of her friends and neighbors inside the bar. Almost every islander had come into Rusty’s after work to find out what was happening.
Everyone except Annie.
“I feel terrible,” Becca said. “I should have told Annie as soon as I found out. I should never have kept this from her.”
“She’ll understand,” Grace said. “Just give her some time. She’s still getting used to the news. Everyone is.”
Becca knew Grace was right, but it still didn’t make her feel any better. She would never forget the look on Annie’s face when she’d found out that two of her closest friends had hidden the news from her.
“By the way,” Grace said. “I looked into Lydia Vanzant’s public activities over the past several years, and I haven’t found anything that would discredit her professionally. Her record is squeaky clean.”
Becca picked at the label on the beverage she’d hardly touched at all over the past hour, slowly peeling it off the bottle. She thought about how upset Colin had been when he’d come to her house on Sunday. She still didn’t know what had happened between him and his mother, but whatever it was, it had hurt him a lot. “Did you see Colin when you went to Annapolis yesterday?”
Grace nodded.
“How did he seem to you?”
Grace took a sip of her beer. “Fine. Why?”
“Did he say anything to you about meeting with his mother over the weekend?”
Grace shook her head. “No. Nothing.”
Becca looked back out at the water. “He went to her house on Easter to talk about the school and it didn’t go well. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but he said they’re not close and he seemed really upset afterwards. I thought he might have mentioned something to you about it.”
Grace shook her head again. “Where did you run into him on Easter? I didn’t see him at the café.”
“He came over that night.”
“To your house?”
Becca nodded.
Grace looked at her curiously. “I didn’t realize you two were that close.”
“We’re not,” Becca said quickly. “I mean, we weren’t, until recently. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the past week trying to figure out what to do about the school. That’s why he stopped by—to talk about the school.”
Grace leaned back, studying her. “Fair enough,” she said finally, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if Colin decided to stop by my house to talk about the school either.”
Becca paused, her beer bottle halfway to her lips. “What?”
“Come on, Becca” Grace said, laughing. “That man is seriously hot. I don’t care if you are engaged, you’d have to be blind not to notice.”
“Well, sure,” Becca said, taking a long sip of her beer to quench the sudden dryness in her throat. “He’s…hot.”
“He’s gorgeous,” Grace said. “I’d ask him out myself if he didn’t turn every conversation we had into some question about you.”
Becca almost choked on her beer.
Grace laughed again and handed her a napkin. “I think he has a crush on you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Becca scoffed. She grabbed the napkin from Grace and wiped off the bottle, refusing to meet her friend’s eyes. The last thing she wanted was for Grace to know how she felt about Colin. If her friend thought there was even a chance she might be interested in someone else, she’d do everything in her power to convince her to call off the wedding.
An alarm dinged on Grace’s phone and her friend checked the screen for whatever message had popped up. It probably had something to do with work, because she snapped up the device and typed out a hurried message before setting it back down and turning her attention back to Becca.
“That was my editor,” she said, and Becca breathed a sigh of relief at the change in subject. “She wants me to cover some event at the Smithsonian on Saturday. Do you think we can push the practice run at the salon back a few hours?”
Becca blinked. The practice run at the salon? “Is that this Saturday?”
Grace nodded. “We’ll be two weeks away from the wedding on Saturday.”
Two weeks, Becca thought, fighting back the urge to panic. How had it snuck up on her so fast? She’d been so focused on the school, she’d hardly even had time to think about it. She still needed to sew the ring bearer pillow, pick out a suit for her father, rearrange the seating chart again—because Tom had added another two guests to the list this morning—and finish writing her vows.
She looked down at her hands, which were filled with tiny pieces of paper from the napkin she hadn’t even realized she’d been shredding. She shoved the pieces into the pockets of her sweater, trying to get a grip. “It’s just a hair appointment. You don’t have to be there.”
“I’m your Maid of Honor,” Grace reminded her. “I’m supposed to be there for everything. Besides, what if she tries to give you one of those slicked back up-do’s that make it look like your hair is shellacked to your head? I need to be there to intervene.”
Becca curled her fingers around the pieces of paper in her pockets. How could Grace act so lighthearted at a time like this? “It feels wrong to spend an entire evening in a hair salon when so many of our friends are worried about losing their jobs.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not wrong. This is your wedding, Becca. You’ve been looking forward to this day for years. No matter what else is happening on the island, we’re all going to be there for you. We’re all going to drink too much champagne and eat too much cake and dance until the generator runs out of gas. I’m as upset about the thought of the school closing as you are, but life goes on. If anything, your wedding will probably be a welcome distraction for a lot of people—a way for them to forget their troubles for a night.”
Becca nodded, gazing down at a thin crack in the wooden table. Deep down, she knew Grace was right. But for some reason, it didn’t feel right. It did
n’t feel right at all.
“Becca,” Grace said gently. “We both know that I haven’t always been a huge fan of Tom. I’ve always been honest with you about how I felt about him, but I promised to put aside my own feelings after you got engaged—for the wedding and for our friendship. But I need to ask…is everything all right with you two?”
“It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
“I’m sure.”
The boats in the marina rocked against the pilings, a restless creak of rubber on wood. Grace waited several beats, then asked, “Have you told Tom about the school?”
Becca nodded.
“What did he say?”
Becca slowly withdrew her hands from her pockets, opening her palms on the table and letting the wind catch the pieces of paper, swirling them up into the air. “He said it didn’t matter because I was leaving anyway.”
By the time Becca left Rusty’s, it was dark and the first splattering of raindrops were beginning to fall. A few people had offered her a ride home, but she’d declined, wanting to take some time alone to think about what Grace had said out on the deck—that life went on.
It was true, she thought. Even if they couldn’t save the school, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Her friends would lose their jobs, but they would find new ones eventually. Taylor and the rest of the kids would have to go to a different school, but kids were resilient. They would find a way to adjust.
The wind shook white petals from the branches of the wild pear trees lining the sidewalk. The flowers rained down around her shoulders, some getting stuck in her clothes before falling to the ground.
The online version of Grace’s story had posted two hours ago without a quote from Annie, which meant they’d lost their one big chance of drawing on the public’s sympathy. Most of the spin over the next few days would focus on the debate between the governor and his ex-wife, rather than the issue of Taylor and the islanders losing their school.
Brushing her fingers lightly over her bare wrist, where her mother’s charm bracelet had been for so many years, she wished she could hear it. Just for a moment, she wished she could hear it again and feel that same sense of comfort she’d felt when she’d worn it every day.
Sometimes, when she was at work, teaching in the same classroom where her mother had taught, she swore she could feel her presence, as if she were still there, watching over her.
There were so few pieces of her mother she had left to hold on to, what would happen if the school closed and the county decided to tear down the building? Would she lose that connection, too?
Turning onto her street, she looked up at the dark clouds blotting the stars from the sky. Grace had said she should focus on the wedding, on giving her friends and neighbors a reason to celebrate and forget their troubles for a night.
But what about her troubles?
What if, instead of being a welcome distraction from everything that was happening, the wedding was one of the reasons why she couldn’t sleep anymore?
What if she was starting to have second thoughts?
Stepping over a puddle, she walked slowly up the path to her house. This was supposed to be the fun part. This was supposed to be the part when she and her friends gossiped and drank too much wine while they tested out hairstyles and makeup and finalized the plans for the happiest day of her life.
She should be spending all her free time daydreaming of kissing Tom under an arch of wildflowers in front of all their friends and family after they both said, ‘I do’. Instead, all she could think about was how badly she’d wanted to kiss a different man the night before—a man who was not her fiancé.
And she knew, without a doubt, there was something very wrong with that.
She climbed the steps to her porch, not even noticing the dark figure sitting on her swing. The metal hinges squeaked and she jumped, almost dropping her keys when she saw the man push slowly to his feet.
She stared, blinking rainwater out of her lashes as his face registered in the darkness. “Tom?”
He walked over to her. “You’re all wet,” he said, running an affectionate hand over her hair.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, baffled. He hadn’t come down to the island in months. It was so strange to see him here. It was…almost as if he didn’t belong.
“I came to apologize,” he said quietly. He was still dressed in his suit, his tie loosened at the collar, his shirt wrinkled from a long day at work. There were circles under his eyes and lines of exhaustion framing his mouth. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. I know today was hard for you. I wanted to be here. I’m sorry if I was abrupt on the phone the other day. I know what I said came out wrong. I know how much that school means to you.”
His blue-green eyes were so earnest and genuine, she felt herself softening. He leaned down and she tilted her face up, as she had so many times before, and met his lips with hers. It was so easy, so familiar, so normal.
And she felt…absolutely nothing.
He eased back, taking her hand and leading her over to the porch swing. When they were sitting, he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders to keep her warm. “I saw Grace’s article. Tell me everything I don’t already know.”
Becca let out a breath. It was so unexpected to see him here, to see him acting like this—so attentive, so caring—the way he had acted so many years before, back when they were teenagers and everything in their lives had fallen apart. He had been her rock then, and she had been desperate to get that person back for so long.
She had been so worried that the old Tom had disappeared completely. But maybe he was still in there. Maybe they were just going through a rough patch, like she’d hoped. Settling back into the curve of his arm, she told him everything.
He listened, asking a few questions, but mostly he just listened like he had so many times when they were younger. When she finished, he pulled her close, wrapping both arms around her, and they sat there for a long time, listening to the sound of the rain.
It felt safe. Secure. Comfortable.
Exactly the way it should feel.
She thought about the way Colin made her feel whenever he was around—nervous, jumpy, edgy, confused. Yes, she was attracted to him. But, as Grace had mentioned earlier at Rusty’s, who wasn’t? It was just lust, she told herself. Nothing more.
“I have something for you,” Tom said finally.
She looked up at him.
“I was going to wait until the night of the wedding to give it to you, but I thought you could use a pick-me-up today.” He pulled a small turquoise jewelry box out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Becca took the box, surprised. He had never given her jewelry before.
“Open it,” he urged.
Prying the top open, she stared down at the Tiffany’s charm bracelet lying in a bed of white silk.
“I know it’ll never replace your mother’s,” he said, lifting the bracelet out of the box and fastening it around her wrist. “But I wanted you to have it.”
Touched, Becca looked down at the gleaming silver heart dangling from the shiny chain. There was nothing to be afraid of. No matter what happened, they would find a way to come through it together. They had weathered hard times before. They could do it again.
Besides, you didn’t second-guess a fifteen-year relationship just because you didn’t want to leave your home.
Home was wherever the heart was, right?
She laid her head on his shoulder, trying not to notice that the new weight on her wrist felt foreign, unwelcome. She stared down at the heavy silver heart dangling from the thick shiny links. Slowly, very slowly, she lifted her arm and shook her wrist, as she had so many times before when she’d still worn her mother’s bracelet, when she’d needed to hear the sound of the delicate, lightweight charms to bring her comfort.
She thought for a second, fleetingly, that she could hear it, as she had the night before when Colin had been at her house—
the faint tinkling sound drifting over the flower-scented wind. But it vanished as quickly as it had come. And, then, all she could hear was the hollow clink of silver on silver, the steady beat of the rain against the roof, and the sound of the wind tearing petals off the wild pear trees.
Will Dozier woke to the sound of dripping. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in his house on the military base in Virginia Beach and one of the faucets was leaking again. Then he heard the wind chimes singing outside and felt the woman in his arms stir, and he smiled.
Pulling her close, he listened to the pitter-patter of rainwater falling from the leaves of the trees around the café. He wasn’t thrilled with the circumstances that had brought him back to the island on such short notice, but as soon as Annie had called him yesterday and told him what was happening, he’d arranged to take a few days off.
If any reporters decided to come to the island to try to talk to Annie or Taylor, they would have to answer to him first.
Wrapping his arms tighter around his fiancée, he wished he didn’t have to drive back to Virginia Beach on Friday. He wished he could stay through the weekend, to be here for Annie if she needed him. But he still had a few weeks of work left before he could move home for good, before he could wake up beside this woman every morning for the rest of his life.
When the phone on his nightstand buzzed, he reluctantly rolled away from her and reached for it. There was a text message on the screen from Ryan Callahan, his best friend from childhood.
I’m outside. You better get down here.
Slipping out of bed, he pulled on a pair of jeans and dragged a T-shirt over his head. When one of the wooden floorboards creaked under his weight, Annie opened her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up immediately.
“Nothing.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost five.”
She pushed the covers back, exposing a pair of long, lean legs. She’d worn one of his old flannel shirts to bed and the plaid material fell halfway down her slim thighs when she stood. He paused for a moment, watching her gather her thick red hair into a low ponytail, and felt a fierce swell of protectiveness toward this woman who had given him back the one thing he’d thought he’d lost forever—a family.
