Page 14 of Five Summer Wishes

JUNE

L ily’s backpack exploded across the kitchen table like a glitter bomb of construction paper, pipe cleaners, and slightly sticky glue sticks. She was working on a “family roots” project for her summer enrichment class, which was somehow both adorable and emotionally destabilizing.

“Can I use this picture of Iris?” she asked, holding up a faded photo with peanut butter on the corner.

I nodded, gently rescuing it. “Let’s wipe that off first.”

She grinned, completely unbothered.

“Are you going to include Harper and Willa?”

“Duh. They’re roots and branches.”

I smiled. “What about your dad?”

Lily hesitated. “He’s kind of a weed.”

I laughed. “You don’t have to include him if you don’t want to.”

She went back to her gluing. “I want to make a new kind of family tree. One with people who actually help it grow.”

I stared at her for a long second. “That’s really beautiful, Lily.”

She shrugged. “It’s just true.”

We spent the morning cutting out leaves and taping down old photos.

I found one of me from college—wide-eyed, paint-stained, wearing jeans with holes that weren’t there to be cute .

It felt like looking at a different person.

A version of me who still believed she had time to want something more than what was expected.

I tucked it into the tree near Lily’s.

Grant came by around noon with a box of fresh produce and a container of scones.

“Are these a peace offering?” I asked.

“No,” he said, brushing flour off his shirt. “They’re an experiment. You’re the control group.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re testing baked goods on me?”

“Only the good ones.”

He followed me into the kitchen, eyes scanning the table.

“School project?”

“Family roots,” I said. “She made me a branch.”

He nodded. “That sounds right.”

Lily ran over and wrapped her arms around his waist like she’d known him for years.

“You’re in the tree too,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted. “I am?”

“You’re the helper branch.”

He looked at me, a little stunned.

I smiled. “She’s not wrong.”

After Lily went to play in the backyard, Grant and I cleaned up the project mess. The silence between us was… expectant.

Finally, I asked, “Did you mean what you said the other day? About staying?”

He met my eyes. “Yeah. Every word.”

“I don’t know how to make space for someone in my life who doesn’t need me to carry everything.”

“Then don’t carry me,” he said. “Just walk beside me.”

It was so simple, so obvious, that I wanted to cry.

Instead, I said, “I think I want that.”

Grant smiled. “Then let’s start there.”

After Grant left, I sat at the table for a long time.

The kitchen had that warm, lazy glow it gets in the early afternoon; light pooling across the floorboards, the faint hum of bees outside the window, Lily’s laughter drifting in from the porch like wind chimes in a summer breeze.

Everything was soft. Still.

And I realized how rare that was—this feeling of being held by the moment instead of braced against it.

I reached for Iris’s journal.

There was something about the way she’d made space for the quiet pieces of her life in those pages. Grocery lists next to poetry. Torn edges and coffee stains pressed against confessions in careful cursive. She didn’t categorize her thoughts or polish them. She just… put them down.

I opened to a page at random.

you can be strong and still need softness.

you can hold others and still want to be held.

don’t let them tell you it’s one or the other.

I traced the words with my finger. My breath caught on the truth of it.

When Lily came inside later with sticky hands and sun-pink cheeks, I helped her wash up, made her a sandwich, and watched her curl up on the couch with her stuffed stingray and a glass of apple juice like the world had never let her down.

Maybe I don’t want to just protect her from the hard parts. Maybe I want to show her what it looks like to live through them.

That night, after Lily was asleep and the house was dim and quiet, I sat outside with a blanket wrapped around my legs and the ocean breathing in the distance.

Willa came out a few minutes later and wordlessly handed me a mug of tea. She didn’t ask for anything in return; no story, no explanation. She just sat beside me, curling her legs under her and staring out at the stars.

“Do you ever feel like you became someone out of necessity, and now you’re not sure how to undo it?” I asked after a long silence.

“All the time,” she said. “I was the escape artist. You were the caregiver. Harper was the achiever. Survival roles.”

“And now?”

She shrugged. “Now I think we’re finally in a place where those roles aren’t required. Which is kind of terrifying, honestly.”

I looked at her. “Do you think I’ve forgotten how to want something that’s just for me?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“I think you’ve been so busy holding up the sky that you never stopped to ask whether it was your job to begin with,” she said gently.

My eyes burned.

“I let someone break me once,” I said. “A long time ago. Before Lily.”

Willa didn’t move.

“He wanted a version of me I couldn’t be. And I tried. I tried so hard. Gave up friends. Skipped art school. Worked three jobs so he could finish his degree. And when I finally admitted I was exhausted, he said I wasn’t supportive enough.”

I swallowed.

“I spent years thinking if I had just tried harder, he would’ve stayed. That maybe it was my fault.”

Willa reached over and wrapped her fingers around mine. “It wasn’t.”

“I know that now,” I said. “But I don’t know what it means to want something that isn’t just survival.”

“Well,” she said, squeezing my hand, “I think you’re about to find out.”

The next day, Grant came by midmorning with his usual low-key grace, like he belonged on our porch and had been there in every past version of our lives.

He held up two iced coffees and a bag of something that smelled like cinnamon and butter.

“Peace offering or bribery?” I asked.

“Both,” he said, passing me the drink. “Thought you might need fuel for your next masterpiece.”

Lily peeked out the door. “Hi Grant. You’re still in the family tree.”

“Good to know,” he said. “I’ll try not to fall out of it.”

She giggled and disappeared back inside.

I took a sip and sat down on the porch swing. Grant followed.

“I told Willa last night,” I said after a few quiet moments. “About someone from before.”

He didn’t press.

“He made me believe love was a transaction,” I said. “That it was measured in how much I gave up.”

I kept my eyes on the horizon. I didn’t think I could say it while looking at him.

“But with you,” I murmured, “I don’t feel like I owe anything. And that’s what scares me most.”

Grant didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t offer soft affirmations or big declarations. He just reached over and let his hand rest on top of mine. Not tight. Not claiming. Just there.

Solid.

“I don’t want to take anything from you, June,” he said. “I just want to be where you are.”

I turned toward him. And for once, I didn’t pull back from the way my heart leapt at the sound of my name in his voice.