Page 3 of Five Summer Wishes

WILLA

T he first thing I noticed when I woke up was the smell.

Salt air and lemon. A little old wood. A whiff of whatever ghost was definitely still haunting the attic.

I stretched out on the too-small mattress in the guest room, let my bare feet dangle over the edge, and stared up at the ceiling like it might reveal my purpose for the day.

It didn’t. But I had an idea anyway.

Dinner.

The first official “Summer Wish.” And bonus, we were going to cook something that didn’t involve a microwave, a plastic fork, or a questionable gas station burrito. Progress.

I rolled out of bed, found a half-clean sundress from the pile I hadn’t unpacked, and pulled my curls into a messy bun with the same pen I’d used to doodle on a napkin yesterday. Style is a state of mind.

Downstairs, the house was already humming.

Harper was in the kitchen, clanging pots. June sat at the table with her planner and a mug that read “I Run on Caffeine and Consequences.” Very on-brand. And Lily was twirling in the hallway in a tutu and rain boots, narrating her own fairy tale.

“Morning, witches,” I said brightly, stealing a strawberry from the bowl on the counter.

“You’re late,” Harper said.

“I’m never late. I just arrive at the time the moment requires.”

Harper gave me a look. “You said you’d be ready to help with setup.”

“And I am! Look—” I gestured to the grocery bags I’d brought in from the car. “I got twinkle lights. And fresh basil. And two bottles of wine that don’t have screw tops.”

June raised an eyebrow. “Did you spend fifty dollars on aesthetic?”

“Seventy-eight. But that included a candle shaped like a seashell. You’re welcome.”

Harper opened one of the bags and pulled out a string of fairy lights. “These are battery-operated.”

“I know. That’s why they’re magical.”

She sighed but didn’t argue. Victory.

I turned to June, who looked about ten seconds from spiraling. “You okay?”

“I just want tonight to go well.”

“It will. We’re not hosting a royal banquet. We’re cooking pasta. For one very polite man who, in case no one has said it today, is extremely attractive.”

June blushed. I mentally filed that away for later.

“Where is the aforementioned Adonis, anyway?” I asked.

“He’s coming around five to finish the porch swing,” June said.

“Perfect. Just enough time for me to arrange everything just so. I’ll set the table. Light candles. Pretend we’re in Tuscany.”

Harper muttered something about Tuscan fire codes, but I ignored her.

The truth was, I needed tonight to go well. Not just for Iris. Not for the inheritance. For us.

Because despite the sarcasm and the glitter, I knew exactly how fragile we were.

By late afternoon, the house looked borderline magical.

The porch swing had been repaired and given a throw pillow makeover courtesy of a stash we’d found in Iris’s sewing closet.

The dining table was set with mismatched china and cloth napkins folded like little boats.

The string lights twinkled across the windowpanes, and the air inside smelled like roasted tomatoes, garlic, and hope.

June was in the kitchen with Lily, making lemon cake. Harper had given in and was stirring pasta sauce on the stove like she had a grudge against it.

And I was lighting candles and pretending my life didn’t feel like it was unraveling the longer I stayed here.

Every room in this house had a memory. Some soft. Some sharp. And somewhere in the middle of them all, I kept catching echoes of myself—versions I’d forgotten. A girl with paint under her nails. A teenager who believed in love stories. A woman who’d once wanted to be a mother.

I hadn’t told my sisters about the miscarriage.

I probably never would.

Some stories weren’t meant to be shared. Some were meant to be carried, quietly, like stones in a pocket. Just heavy enough to keep you tethered.

“Willa,” June called. “Can you open the wine?”

Grateful for the distraction, I grabbed the corkscrew and a couple of glasses.

Grant arrived a few minutes later, toolbox in one hand, a bouquet of wildflowers in the other.

“You brought flowers?” I said, opening the door like I was hosting a game show. “Be still my heart.”

He shrugged, sheepish. “Figured it was better than showing up empty-handed.”

June appeared at my shoulder, a towel slung over her shoulder. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

He smiled at her like she’d said something important.

I excused myself before I intruded too much.

As the sun dipped low and the first strands of music drifted through the speakers, I looked around the room and saw something I hadn’t seen in years:

My sisters. Smiling.

A house that felt like it might be forgiving us.

And maybe the beginning of something new.

Dinner started the way most family dinners do—ambitiously.

We’d pulled off pasta with fresh herbs, garlic bread that only slightly burned on the bottom, and lemon cake that Lily insisted on decorating with a rainbow of sprinkles and a single seashell she found in the driveway.

Harper had arranged the chairs like she was conducting a board meeting. June lit three candles, then blew one out because it was "too much.” And I told Alexa to play some Edith Piaf and pretended I wasn’t vibrating with nerves.

Grant arrived right on time, smelling faintly of cedar and ocean, which felt unfair.

He stepped inside with that easy kind of confidence people only earn from spending a lot of time alone or surviving something big. Maybe both.

“Wow,” he said, surveying the table. “Looks like a magazine spread.”

“See?” I said, nudging Harper. “Told you it was a vibe.”

“Just sit down,” she replied, but her lips twitched like she might actually be enjoying herself.

Lily beamed as she showed him her cake, complete with the driveway seashell.

Grant crouched to her level again—he was good at that, I noticed. Never talked down to her. Just met her where she was. “This is incredible. You made this yourself?”

“I supervised,” Lily said. “Mom did the oven part. And Aunt Willa let me use real sprinkles.”

He looked up at me. “Risky move.”

“I like to live on the edge.”

We all settled in, plates full and napkins in our laps like civilized humans. For exactly four minutes.

Then Harper dropped her fork and said, “We forgot the salad.”

June shot up. “I’ll get it?—”

“Wait, no, it’s fine?—”

“It’ll only take a sec?—”

Meanwhile, Lily knocked over her lemonade, and I laughed way too hard and somehow set a napkin on fire trying to light another candle.

Grant calmly blew it out, picked up the glass shards, and asked if anyone wanted more bread.

Somehow, that was the moment the whole thing clicked into place.

We all exhaled.

The room filled with the clatter of silverware, the clink of glasses, the scent of roasted garlic and lemon, and beneath it all, a strange, tender kind of ease.

Later, as the sky slipped into navy and the stars blinked awake one by one, we drifted outside. The swing creaked gently in the breeze. June took Lily upstairs to bed. Harper offered to wash the dishes and disappeared inside with a look that clearly said no one follow me .

Which left me alone on the porch.

Until Grant came back with two slices of lemon cake, one in each hand.

“Thought you might want dessert without commentary,” he said, handing me a plate.

I accepted it gratefully. “You’re a saint.”

He sat beside me on the swing, careful not to rock it too fast. The porch was wrapped in golden light from the battery-powered strings I’d hung that morning. They buzzed faintly, a soft lullaby for the dark.

“Thanks for coming tonight,” I said after a few bites. “It meant a lot. Especially to June.”

“She’s kind,” he said. “Quiet, but… anchored.”

“She’s the strong one,” I said automatically.

Grant gave me a look. “I think you all are. Just in different ways.”

I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure how.

Instead, I licked a bit of frosting from my thumb and stared out into the dark yard, where the garden had gone feral and the wind chimes near the porch whispered like they had something to say.

“You know,” I said finally, “I thought coming back here would feel like failure.”

His voice was low. “Why?”

“Because I left on purpose. I built something. Not much, but… enough. And now I’m back, and all I have to show for it is a suitcase, three expired tubes of mascara, and a half-finished mural that got painted over by an ad for iced coffee.”

I didn’t mean to say all of that.

But he didn’t laugh. Or give me advice. He just listened.

“Maybe,” he said quietly, “you didn’t come back to prove anything. Maybe you came back because this place still had something to give you.”

I let that sit between us.

Then I said, “You’re really good at this, you know.”

“At what?”

“Saying things that make people feel seen.”

Grant looked down at his empty plate. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to be.”

“Well,” I said, “I do. I think.”

He smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made me want to stay in this town longer than I planned. Which, if I was honest, scared me more than anything else.

The house was quieter than it had been all day. Just the low hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen and the creak of old floorboards shifting their weight.

I found Harper at the sink, sleeves rolled up, her shoulders tight with precision.

“You know there’s such a thing as too efficient,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.

She didn’t look at me, just kept rinsing plates.

“I like things clean,” she said. “Is that a crime?”

“Only if you scrub away all the personality with the grime.”

A pause. Then, without turning around, she said, “Dinner was nice.”

I blinked. “Did you just admit to enjoying something?”

She gave a faint, exhausted laugh. “Don’t push it.”

I grabbed a dishtowel and started drying. We worked in silence for a few minutes—awkward but companionable, the way sisters are when they’re not quite ready to apologize but aren’t angry anymore either.

“Thanks for letting Lily take the lead on dessert,” Harper said quietly. “It made her feel important.”

“Of course,” I said. “She is important.”

“She looks up to you.”

That stopped me. I swallowed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“It is,” Harper said, finally meeting my eyes. “You’re the fun one. The one who makes her feel like the world is bigger than she thinks.”

That did something to my chest. I folded the towel too many times.

“I’m also the one who never stays anywhere long enough to leave an address,” I said.

“People still send you postcards,” Harper replied.

She rinsed the last plate and turned off the faucet.

Neither of us said anything else. We didn’t have to.

Some truths lived better in the quiet.

Back upstairs, I lit a candle on the bedside table and pulled out my sketchbook. It was half-full already—doodles, scraps of ideas, fragments of color and feeling I couldn’t say out loud.

Tonight, I let my pencil move without thinking.

A porch swing.

Three sisters sitting side by side, their shoulders touching.

A little girl in a tutu spinning in the yard.

A man with quiet eyes and strong hands holding a set of wind chimes.

The lines came easily. Too easily.

When I was a kid, Iris used to say that art wasn’t about making things pretty. It was about telling the truth with your hands when your mouth couldn’t handle the weight of it.

I hadn’t told the truth in a long time.

Not even to myself.

I looked at the page and realized I wasn’t drawing what had happened tonight.

I was drawing what I wanted to remember.

Not the clumsy sauce spill. Not the tension at the table. Not the ache behind my ribs that never quite left me.

Just this: the laughter, the light, the way it felt—briefly—to be wanted without having to perform for it.

I added one more detail to the page: a butterfly pin in the corner, its wings open wide.

Then I closed the sketchbook, blew out the candle, and let the quiet take me.