Page 17 of Five Summer Wishes

JUNE

I didn’t expect the quiet to feel this full.

The morning after Harper turned down Boston, the house felt... different. Not louder. Not brighter. Just steadier. Like something had clicked into place none of us had realized was loose.

Willa was still asleep, tangled in a blanket on the couch with her sketchbook open across her chest. Harper was already outside, barefoot in the grass, walking a slow lap around the yard with a cup of coffee like she was learning it all from scratch.

And I… I had Grant.

He was in the kitchen, making pancakes without a recipe, wearing a T-shirt with a fading band logo and a look of pure focus.

Lily sat at the counter, legs swinging, watching him like he was a magic trick.

“You’re gonna flip it too soon,” she said.

Grant raised an eyebrow. “Are you a pancake expert?”

“Obviously.”

He grinned and waited an extra beat before flipping.

Perfectly golden.

She gave him an approving nod. “Not bad.”

We ate at the table, the three of us, like we’d been doing it for years.

No big conversation. No big declarations.

Just syrup and warmth and elbows bumping and the occasional giggle that felt like a balm.

After breakfast, Lily went out to the porch to build what she called a “wish wall” using old postcards and glue dots. Grant stayed to help me with the dishes.

At one point, he reached past me to grab a towel, and my whole body registered the closeness before my brain did. The warmth. The familiarity.

He caught my eye, then kissed my temple like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t flinch.

I leaned in.

Later, he offered to take Lily to the bookstore so I could have an hour to myself.

I nodded, throat thick. “Thank you,” I said.

He kissed my knuckles. “Go do nothing.”

And I did.

For exactly forty-six minutes, I sat on the porch swing with a glass of iced tea, barefoot, legs tucked under me, listening to the wind in the trees and the hum of this life I was slowly starting to believe I could claim.

The house was still when they got back.

Grant carried Lily in, her arms looped around his neck, half-asleep and completely content. She stirred just enough to mumble something about jellybeans and chapter books, then went boneless against his chest.

He looked at me over her shoulder and smiled, soft and sure. “I’ll take her upstairs.”

I nodded, heart a little too full to speak.

While he tucked her in, I wandered into the dining room and saw it on the table, something Lily must’ve made at the bookstore while he helped her pick out paperbacks and snacks.

It was a drawing. Crayon and glitter. Messy, bright, alive.

A house with a purple roof.

A tree with hearts in the branches.

Three figures.

Labeled carefully in shaky, eight-year-old handwriting:

Me. Mama. Grant.

Underneath, in smaller letters:

Our family tree. The new kind.

I sat down hard. The kind of sitting that comes after a shift. After a knowing.

I traced the lines with my finger. The way she’d drawn me in a dress with stars on it. The way Grant’s hand reached toward mine, not holding it, just… there.

There.

That was the word.

Not perfect. Not rescued. Not fixed.

There.

Present.

Real.

I found Grant in the hallway just as he was coming down the stairs.

He saw my face and stopped moving. “You okay?”

I held up the picture. “She sees it.”

He stepped forward slowly, carefully.

“She sees us, ” I said. “Even when I wasn’t sure I did.”

His voice was barely above a whisper. “Do you see it now?”

I nodded, eyes burning.

“I want this, Grant.” I didn’t dress it up.

Didn’t apologize for it. Didn’t protect it in qualifiers or caveats.

“I want the house, the mornings, the bookshelves full of fairy tales and paint stains. I want the dinners and the swings and the nights we don’t say anything but still know we’re not alone. ”

I stepped closer. “I want you.”

His breath hitched.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to hold it all alone just to prove I can. I want to share it. All of it.”

He touched my cheek like I might dissolve if he pushed too hard. “You don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “You never did.”

And then he kissed me.

Not the first kind of kiss. Not the eager, searching kind. The second kind.

The kind that feels like home.

That night, I pulled out Iris’s journal again.

Dear Iris,

You told us to make something beautiful. To feed someone. To offer a kindness. To remind this place that we were here.

I think I did all of those things today.

But more than that… I let myself belong.

And for the first time in years, I’m not tired from giving. I’m full from receiving.

I’m not leaving.

I’m choosing this.

I think maybe… this life chose me back.