Page 1 of Five Summer Wishes

HARPER

T he last time I’d stood on this street, I was wearing a black dress two sizes smaller and promising myself I’d never come back.

And yet here I was again; car tires crunching over the gravel drive, coastal wind lifting the hem of my silk blouse, the same sinking feeling in my stomach I used to get every time we pulled into this town.

The house hadn’t changed much. The paint was still that faded sea-glass blue, chipped in places where the salt air had gotten to it.

The wraparound porch dipped slightly on the left side, like it was sighing under the weight of a long winter.

One shutter hung crooked on the second story, and the garden—if you could call it that—was mostly crabgrass and the brittle remains of whatever flowers our grandmother had last planted.

It looked smaller than I remembered. But then again, I wasn’t a girl anymore.

I took a deep breath, grabbed my overnight bag from the passenger seat, and stepped out into the wind. The air smelled like brine and pine needles and something sweet I couldn’t quite place. Honeysuckle maybe. Or memory.

The front steps creaked beneath my heels. A loose floorboard near the porch swing wobbled beneath my foot, same as always. Iris had promised for years she’d get someone out to fix it. Of course, she never had.

I slid the key into the lock, and the door gave way with a soft groan. The sound of my childhood.

Inside, everything was quiet. Dim sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, catching dust in the air like suspended fireflies. The scent of lavender and old paper hit me instantly. And lemon polish, always lemon polish. Iris had loved her rituals.

I set my bag by the door and stood there for a moment, unsure where to go. I didn’t really belong here anymore, but I didn’t belong anywhere else either. Not since Daniel and I split up.

Not that I’d told anyone that part yet.

The kitchen was just as I remembered it; white cabinets with mismatched knobs, a chipped farmhouse sink, and a clutter of teacups along the windowsill.

I ran my fingers across the worn table and imagined the three of us—Willa, June, me—arguing over cereal boxes and borrowed sweaters. Back when we were still a we .

The sound of a car pulling into the drive snapped me out of it.

I moved back to the porch and watched as a dusty SUV came to a stop behind mine. The door opened, and June stepped out, her dark blond hair pulled into a low twist, her daughter Lily climbing out of the back seat before the engine had even gone quiet.

June looked tired. The kind of tired that went deeper than sleep. She smiled when she saw me, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Hey,” she said, squinting up at the house. “It’s even more crooked than I remember.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Same.”

She came up the steps slowly, Lily trailing behind with a stuffed unicorn tucked under one arm.

“Did you go inside yet?” June asked.

“Just now.”

She nodded, then glanced toward the road. “Is Willa here yet?”

“Not yet. Classic.”

June let out a breath. “Well. That gives us time to unpack and prepare for whatever chaos she brings with her.”

We stood there for a beat, the breeze tugging at our clothes, the silence settling between us like dust on old wood. I didn’t know what to say to her. Or maybe I did, but none of it would come out right.

So instead, I said, “Come on. I’ll show you your room.”

June followed me inside, her suitcase wheels thumping against the floorboards. Lily wandered in behind her, already halfway through a granola bar, the wrapper crinkling in her small hand.

“Still smells like Iris,” June murmured. She walked into the living room and ran her palm over the back of the sofa like she was petting a sleeping animal. “Lavender, mothballs, and something lemony.”

“She always used that spray polish. She said the house should shine even if she didn’t.” I didn’t add that toward the end, nothing had shined much at all.

Lily tiptoed to the fireplace, where a worn armchair sat angled toward the window. She climbed into it like she belonged there. “Is this where Grandma Iris read all her books?”

“Probably,” June said, placing a tote bag on the coffee table. “She read everything she could get her hands on. Remember the summer she tried to teach us Greek mythology?”

“And Willa kept making up her own versions?” I let a small laugh escape. “Pretty sure Icarus survived and opened a kite shop.”

June smiled, but then her eyes flicked away. It hit me, again, how little I really knew about her life these days. She’d become… compact. Like someone who kept everything folded inside.

I led her upstairs, my hand grazing the old wooden banister. It had always been loose near the top. Another thing Iris had planned to fix and never did.

“The front room’s yours,” I said, pushing the door open. Sunlight spilled in through lace curtains, casting soft patterns over the antique bedspread. “It still gets the best light.”

June stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “I haven’t slept in this room since I was seventeen.”

“You haven’t been here since you were seventeen.”

She didn’t respond, just set her bag down and walked to the window.

I stepped back into the hallway. My old room across the hall was smaller than I remembered. I dropped my overnight bag by the foot of the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. The springs creaked in a familiar way, like they remembered me. Like the house was holding its breath.

I reached for my phone and hovered over Daniel’s name.

We made it. The house is still standing.

I didn’t hit send. I deleted the message, tossed the phone aside, and lay back, staring at the water-stained ceiling. I’d told myself I didn’t need to explain everything to my sisters—not yet. But if Willa and June found out from anyone else first…

A small voice called up the stairs.

“Aunt Harper!”

I pushed up onto my elbows. “Yeah, sweetie?”

“I found a treasure!”

That could mean anything from a dead moth to a rock with sparkles in it, but I went downstairs anyway. Lily stood by the baseboard heater near the kitchen, holding something in both hands like it might flutter away.

It was a butterfly pin. Gold and enamel, with tiny blue stones set in the wings. Old, but beautiful.

“Where did you find this?”

“In the floor!” she said. “It was hiding, but I found it. I think it’s from Grandma Iris. I think she left it for me.”

I looked down at her, that pin gleaming in her little hands like a secret. I hadn’t seen it in years, but I remembered it. Iris used to wear it every Sunday, pinned to the neckline of her cardigans.

“I think you might be right,” I said softly. “It’s perfect for you.”

She beamed.

June came into the kitchen just as Lily darted outside, pin in hand. “She’s already turning this into a fairy tale.”

“She has Iris’s imagination,” I said.

June gave a tired smile, then gestured to the table. “There’s an envelope here. Says To My Girls. Legal stationery. I think it’s from her attorney.”

Of course. Iris wouldn’t have been able to resist one last surprise.

I picked it up. The flap had already been sliced open, probably mailed weeks ago. Inside was a single typed page on the letterhead of a local law firm. Iris’s attorney, Henry Boyd, had been her neighbor for years and probably knew her better than any of us.

To my beloved granddaughters,

You’re standing in the house where you became sisters. Where you learned to fight, to dream, to belong to one another.

I know things haven’t been easy between you. I’m partly to blame for that. I was better at cleaning house than mending hearts. But I believe in the three of you, more than you know.

So here is my final wish:

I’ve left the house to you equally. But before you can sell it or keep it or do whatever you please… you must live here, together, for one summer.

And you must complete five challenges. Five “summer wishes,” as I’ve named them. The details are in the box beneath the window seat in the library.

Consider it my final attempt at getting you three to sit down at the same table again. I hope you’ll honor it. I hope you’ll let yourselves come home.

With love (and mischief),

Iris

I folded the letter slowly. “She really did it,” I said.

June leaned against the counter, eyes closed. “She’s not even cold in the ground, and she’s still pulling strings.”

“I guess we should have expected that.”

“Do you want to do it?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “Do you?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know either.”

The sound of a car engine cut through the silence, followed by the screech of tires on gravel.

June groaned. “Right on cue.”

A door slammed. Then another. And then?—

“Hellooo, my favorite people! I’m here! Don’t everyone faint at once!”

Willa.

She swept through the front door like a hurricane with good hair, floral suitcase in one hand, a canvas satchel in the other, sunglasses perched on her head like a crown.

She looked exactly the same and entirely different.

Wild, beautiful, effortless. The kind of person who didn’t worry about matching socks or rent payments.

“God, it smells like lavender and ghosts in here,” she said. “Isn’t it amazing?”

June and I just stared at her.

Willa dropped her bags and held her arms out like a game show host. “Come on. Don’t be shy. Let’s get this awkward reunion over with. I’ll even go first.”

I didn’t move.

June didn’t either.

Willa rolled her eyes and stepped forward, throwing an arm around each of us before we had a chance to duck away. She squeezed tight, then leaned back.

“There,” she said. “Was that so hard?”

We settled in the kitchen, reluctantly, unevenly, like we were auditioning for a play none of us remembered agreeing to.

June stood by the counter with a mug of tea, Willa perched cross-legged on one of the wicker chairs like she was at a café in Paris, and I leaned against the pantry door with my arms crossed, trying not to look like I was bracing for impact.

“So,” Willa said, nodding at the envelope still sitting on the table. “I see the old girl left us her version of a scavenger hunt.”

“It’s more than that,” June said quietly. “She wants us to stay the summer. Together.”

Willa whistled. “She really did go full Hallmark on us, huh?”

I tapped the envelope against my palm. “She means it. We can’t sell or split the house unless we do what she asked.”

“And what exactly are these little ‘wishes’ of hers?” Willa asked, lifting one eyebrow. “I mean, is it build a sandcastle? Paint our feelings?”

June glanced at me. I nodded toward the hallway. “Library. She left a box.”

The three of us drifted into the library, still dim and dusty with its worn rug, tall bookshelves, and overstuffed reading chairs that smelled faintly of cedar and old newsprint.

The window seat, built into the bay window overlooking the backyard, had always been Iris’s favorite spot.

She used to read there in the mornings with a cup of black coffee and the sound of gulls outside.

Willa crouched beside it and pulled open the base panel. Sure enough, a shallow wooden box sat nestled inside like it had been waiting for us.

“Ta-da,” she said, lifting it out. “The Mystery of the Matriarch’s Final Wishes.”

“Just open it,” I muttered.

Inside were five folded cards, each tied with a satin ribbon in a different color. A sticky note on top read:

No peeking all at once. Open one at a time, when you’re ready. Start with the pink one. xo, Iris.

Willa held it up between two fingers. “Color-coded emotional manipulation. She really thought this through.”

June took the pink ribbon card and opened it slowly, like she was afraid it might crumble.

Wish One: Cook a meal together. And invite someone new to join you. Bonus points if no one ends up crying.

I let out a dry laugh. “So basically, a recipe for disaster.”

“She’s starting easy,” June said. “Trying to nudge us.”

“Trying to trap us,” Willa replied, but not unkindly.

We stood there for a long moment. The afternoon light had shifted, casting long lines of gold across the floorboards. Somewhere outside, Lily’s laughter rang out. It echoed faintly through the screen door like something from a memory.

June closed the card and slid it back into the box. “Iris wanted us to have a chance.”

Willa rose to her feet and dusted her hands on her jeans. “Well, I’m here. Might as well make the most of it. I don’t have a gallery deadline until September, and my last mural got painted over by a Dunkin’ Donuts billboard, so it’s not like I’m leaving behind a thriving empire.”

June looked at me. “What about you?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Willa made a face. “You came all the way here, Harper. Just say you’re staying. We can try it. If we fail, we fail. It’s not like there’s a ghost clause in the will.”

I didn’t answer right away.

Because the truth was I wanted to leave. Or at least, I wanted to want to leave. I wanted to go back to Boston and my polished office and my carefully organized life, where I could pretend everything was fine. That I was still married. That I was still the sister who kept everything together.

But standing in that room, with the dust motes dancing and the air thick with Iris’s impossible expectations, something in me cracked.

“I’ll stay for now,” I said.

Willa grinned. “Excellent. Let the games begin.”

June smiled faintly, but I could see the worry in her eyes. The need for it to be real, not just another false start between us.

“I’ll unpack,” she said softly, heading upstairs.

Willa wandered out to find Lily, and I was left alone with the old house humming around me like it was breathing.

I walked out onto the porch and sat on the swing, testing it first before easing into the familiar creak of wood and chain. The sun was sinking over the water, casting streaks of amber and rose across the sky.

The last time I’d sat here, Iris had been beside me, wearing her cardigan with the butterfly pin and sipping peppermint tea.

“You girls will come back someday,” she’d said. “Even if it’s just to bury me.”

I hadn’t laughed then. I didn’t laugh now.

The wind was picking up, carrying the scent of salt and lilacs. I pulled my cardigan tighter and let the silence wrap around me.

Behind me, the house stood tall and tired, full of history and heartbreak.

In front of me, the summer stretched out like a dare.