“I wouldn’t have lived to the age of ten in this house if I did,” I muttered.
Molly smiled. “So very, very true.”
“You know her best,” I said. “Do I get your stamp of approval?”
Molly sighed, finally giving me a slow nod. “You do.”
“Then it looks like I have to go,” I told her, tapping her on the top of the head when I passed. She swatted at my hand. “Gotta get the water working for the party.”
My mom quirked an eyebrow before I left the room, and I paused to give her a quick hug.
“You didn’t sneak up there to commit water heater sabotage, did you?” I asked.
She smiled innocently. “I’d never do such a thing.”
As I left the kitchen to grab my bag, I wasn’t sure whose disbelieving snort was louder, mine or Molly’s.
Adaline
The Ward family beach house was one of my favorite places on earth. When Logan and Paige celebrated their twentieth anniversary, they purchased it as a gift for the entire family. Nestled on a gorgeous five-acre plot on Camano Island, the house had six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and about a million windows facing out to Puget Sound. It was the place they spent holidays and birthdays and summer weekends together, where the grandchildren built sandcastles on the pristine stretch of sand in front of the big white house.
Over the years, between working for Molly and organizing their gatherings, I’d spent my fair share of nights in the house. If the entire family was there, I rarely stayed overnight, making the two-hour trip back down to Seattle when my work was finished. But when it was a smaller group, I always claimed the light-green bedroom in the basement—there were double doors leading out to the back patio and from the queen-sized bed, I could sit and have my coffee in a fuzzy white chair with a perfect view of green grass and blue water and towering trees. It was just down the hall from where the kids slept, and after dropping off my overnight bag, I stopped by the room with the blue bunk beds, missing my little hellions with a fierce pang.
Something about it, as I moved from room to room, reminded me of how alone I’d felt when I was at the masquerade. Not because I was lonely at the house—there were too many good memories there for me to feel sad—but it was more like I felt the absence of the people who were meant to be there with me.
Luna fell and skinned her knee on the patio outside the green bedroom, and she wanted to sleep with me that night because she couldn’t stop crying.
Asher and I used to cuddle in the big gray chair upstairs by the fireplace, reading his favorite graphic novel books, where he insisted over and over and over that I read it in the funny voices.
Molly cried to Paige and me in the hot tub, admitting that she’d had a miscarriage after Luna, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what color eyes he or she would’ve had. Or what they might have named it.
And it was in the kitchen where Emmett and I shared a glass of wine after everyone went to sleep. He told me stories about his least favorite professor at Stanford, built a house out of coffee mugs, dinner plates, and a cookie sheet, and when he made me laugh so hard that I wiped tears from my eyes, it was the first time he looked at me like he might want to kiss me.
I didn’t know how to be in any home where he’d been without thinking of him.
And I wasn’t sure what that meant for my future. Would I pine for Emmett Ward for the rest of my freaking life? It didn’t sound like any way to live.
But it wasn’t like I could place unreasonable demands on the man either.
He was in his life.
I was in mine.
And for the time being, those two did not overlap.
Which was why I took a deep breath, kept my head down, and focused on the task at hand. Which was the house. And the mile-long list of things I had to do before they arrived in about twenty-four hours.