Page 35

Magnolia Sebring

My world used to be so small.

Small like trailer walls and too-loud silence.

Small like the way people in my hometown talked behind your back loud enough for it to land on your front porch.

I believed big dreams belonged to other girls—girls who got picked up from school on time.

Girls with daddies in the picture and mamas who didn’t forget their birthdays.

But now I understand what big dreams are.

Snow falling against a glass ceiling in the woods of Sweden, my husband’s hands warm against my skin as the sky turned violet overhead.

Standing on the edge of a cliff in the Scottish Highlands, wind in my hair, Alex behind me, his arms wrapped tightly around me.

Dancing in Paris with rosé on our tongues and Monet in our hearts.

Gelato kisses in Italy, sunlight on my shoulders, and laughter spilling down cobbled streets.

Alex gave me the perfect honeymoon. Every week was a revelation.

I’ve always wanted to travel, always dreamed of it, but I never imagined my first real taste of the world would come wrapped in four weeks of uninterrupted joy with him.

He didn’t give me a honeymoon. He gave me pieces of the world and pieces of himself.

But eventually, all honeymoons must come to an end.

Mornings in Sydney start early for us.

Alex leaves before the sun has even thought about showing up, rugby gear slung over his shoulder, hair still damp from the shower, a kiss pressed to my cheek before I’m fully awake.

His schedule is brutal: strength training, strategy meetings, on-field drills that stretch from morning to afternoon. But he never complains. Not once.

He loves it. The discipline. The grind. The team.

And I love seeing him in that space, doing what he was made to do, chasing a purpose that burns hot and loud. It works for us.

Because while he’s chasing glory on the field, I’m chasing a legacy at Sebring Hotels.

My days start a little slower—coffee from the little cafe on the corner where the barista already knows my name and my order.

There’s a stack of fabric swatches on my desk fanned out like a painter’s palette—muted velvets, cool-toned linens, rich textured neutrals that make my heart flutter in a way only design can.

Beside them, my design boards—part vision, part obsession—lean against the wall, covered in clippings and hand-drawn notes, annotated in ink and instinct. Candle burning. Music low. Mood set.

This is my rhythm now.

I’m more than choosing tile and textiles. I’m shaping a place that will outlive me. One that says I was here. A space my children might one day walk through and be proud that their mama helped build.

And that keeps me going… even when Alex is gone twelve-plus hours a day.

Especially then.

I’m in the middle of a full-scale renovation of one of Sebring Hotels’ oldest properties, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. High stakes. Creative control. Endless opportunity to take something faded and turn it into something unforgettable.

I walk job sites in heels and hard hats, and speak fluent contractor and interior architect. I send late-night emails with detailed mood boards and annotate lighting-fixture orders at midnight.

This is the life I imagined in all those quiet, lonely years when I didn’t know if I’d ever outrun the past. This is the dream I clung to while my classmates whispered about my mother’s latest scandal and my clothes that never quite fit right.

I wanted more—more than surviving. More than small-town shame.

And now? I’m building it––brick by damn brick.

Not for me but for what’s coming. For the family Alex and I will have one day.

For the life we’ll hand down. And perhaps that’s why I’m not lonely when he’s not here.

Because we’re not disconnected. We’re aligned––two people running hard toward the same future from different angles. Rooted in the same love.

And when he walks back through the door, sweaty and exhausted, and drops his gym bag by the door before kissing me? It’s everything. But tonight, his kiss will have to wait.

Because while Alex is suiting up for some formal team dinner that probably involves one too many speeches and barely enough wine to keep it bearable, I have somewhere else to be.

Somewhere softer. And sweeter.

The box sits beside me on the passenger seat, wrapped in cream linen and tied with a silk ribbon the color of rosewater. Tucked beneath the bow is a handwritten note—small, simple, heartfelt. The kind you write when the gift itself says the rest.

I picked it out weeks ago. A baby quilt, hand-stitched by an artist in Tasmania.

It’s soft as a sigh, embroidered with a sleepy fawn curled beneath a tree, surrounded by forest friends—a rabbit, a fox, a pair of curious birds.

A gift meant to be passed down, such as lullabies and bedtime stories. Like love stitched into cloth.

Krishna and Kye’s daughter was born before we got home. Vivian. Eight pounds of perfection if the pictures are anything to go by. Jet-black hair, skin the color of warm cream, her little mouth always puckered in sleep or mid yawn. Every time Krishna sends a photo, I stop what I’m doing and smile.

Tonight, I get to meet her.

I pull up to their house just as the sun sinks, the sky blushing gold and lavender. A wind chime tinkles near the porch. And through the glass, I see Krishna with that new-mama softness—slow and luminous and completely transformed.

Krishna beams, her hair pulled into a soft braid, her eyes glowing in a way only new mothers seem to manage when they’re bone-deep exhausted but wholly at peace all at once.

“Come in, Magnolia,” she says, and before I can answer, she’s pulling me into a warm hug that smells of milk and vanilla and something soft I can’t name.

I smile against her shoulder. “You are glowing.”

She snorts, waving me inside. “I look like a sleep-deprived cow.”

“No, you look like someone who just created the most perfect thing in the world.”

And then I see her. Sweet Vivian.

Swaddled in a pale mauve blanket, nestled against Kye’s chest, her tiny hand curling against his shirt collar.

She has a full head of black hair, wild and soft and beautiful.

Kye stands and eases Vivian into Krishna’s arms with the quiet adoration of someone who hasn’t stopped falling in love since the moment he first saw her.

Krishna looks at me. “Wanna hold her?”

Panic flutters in my chest. “Oh. Um—I don’t want to wake her. She looks so peaceful.”

Krishna laughs. “She sleeps through her dad playing guitar, my sister vacuuming, and the neighbor’s dog barking at every moving leaf. Trust me, you won’t wake her.”

I hesitate, but my feet carry me forward.

Krishna places her in my arms. And something shifts in an instant.

She fits. Not in a literal way but in a soul-deep, this-means-something way. And I forget how to breathe because this is something I never expected.

Not now. Not yet. But a blooming begins, and it grows deeper and wider with every second I hold her.

I glide my thumb across her temple. “She’s perfect,” I whisper.

Krishna sits beside me, watching with that knowing smile only women who’ve crossed through the veil of motherhood seem to wear. “She’s identical to Kye, which is so unfair. I’m the one who was miserable. She could’ve at least come out looking a little like me.”

I glance up, smiling. “What about her lips?”

We both laugh and simultaneously say, “No.”

We sit in that hush for a while, the only sounds the soft whoosh of a white noise machine and the delicate breaths of a baby who doesn’t know her very existence is undoing me.

And it could be that’s what motherhood does.

Perhaps it unravels you in the quietest, most unexpected places—only to knit you back together into something stronger. Something softer. Something new.

I brush my thumb along the ridge of her tiny nose and wonder what it would be like to have one of our own.

But what do I know about being a mother?

Robin was chaos in lipstick and cheap perfume—fickle and beautiful and forever chasing a man or a feeling or both. Charlene was harder.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m stitched with too much of them.

I swallow hard and glance down at Vivian again. Her lashes flutter but don’t open. She sleeps like she trusts the world. I never had that kind of sleep as a kid. But my children will if I’m careful and do things differently from Robin and Charlene.

It hits me like a quiet hurricane––I want this.

It terrifies me, but it also makes something ache in my chest in a way I didn’t know was possible until now.

I press a soft kiss to Vivian’s hair and close my eyes for a moment, breathing her in.

Maybe this restlessness will fade after I leave and I become preoccupied by other things.

Or maybe a seed has been planted and is already growing roots.

I hand Vivian back to Krishna, my arms reluctant to let go. The baby stirs but doesn’t wake—her tiny face nestled against her mother’s chest as if she knows she’s home.

I smooth a hand over her soft hair one last time. “Bye, beautiful girl.”

Krishna beams, her eyes flicking between me and Vivian before settling on me. “You looked natural with her,” she says, her voice light but laced with meaning.

I laugh under my breath, trying to make it breezy. “That’s just because she didn’t cry.”

Krishna raises a brow but doesn’t press, just hugs me one-armed, careful not to jostle Vivian. “Come back soon. I think she already loves you.”

My throat tightens as I nod. “I will.”

The wind chime sings again as I step off the porch, and I swear the air is different—lighter and heavier all at once. Like I walked in as one version of myself and walked out carrying something I didn’t arrive with.

Not in my hands but in my heart.

And that thing I thought was just a moment? It’s still there. Still whispering. Still growing.

Streetlights flicker past in a blur, soft gold against the shadows, and for once I don’t fill the silence with music. I just sit with my thoughts.

The quiet. The weight of what’s going through my heart and head. The wondering.

It’ll pass. That’s what I tell myself.

It’s just the new baby smell and soft onesies and Krishna glowing with that new-mama energy. It’s the way Kye looked at both of them as if they were his whole world wrapped in flannel and sleepy smiles. It’s the sweetness of it all.

Yet, I’m certain a shift has happened inside me. Holding Vivian has cracked open a part of me I’d been keeping sealed.

I’ve spent so long clawing my way out of what I came from.

Building something worthy. Chasing softness when I was taught survival.

And now, for the first time, I’m wondering what it might mean to give that to someone else.

To build someone from scratch and teach them love before they ever have to unlearn fear.

This feeling’s probably nothing. Just hormones and nostalgia and the echo of a baby’s breath against my collarbone.

But I know better. As I walk toward the door of our house, I sense it. Something’s begun.

A seed in my soul is whispering.