Page 4 of Five Summer Wishes

HARPER

I couldn’t sleep.

I tried.

I shut the blinds, dimmed the lamp, smoothed the blanket with the same obsessive precision I used on legal briefs and grocery lists. But my body refused to follow the rules. My thoughts scattered like dropped pins.

The quiet didn’t help. It never had.

In Boston, I slept with a white noise machine and two ambient light sources. A habit Daniel once teased me about—until we started sleeping in separate rooms and neither of us needed excuses anymore.

Now, here in this creaky, salt-heavy house, the silence felt too wide.

I got up, pulled on a sweatshirt, and padded downstairs barefoot.

The kitchen smelled like lemon and something sweet. A ghost of the night before.

The swing outside was still. The porch empty. The wind had gone to sleep.

I poured a glass of water and stood at the sink, watching the stars blink in the sky. One of them burned a little brighter than the rest. I tried to remember if it was a planet. Daniel would know. He always knew useless trivia like that.

Which, of course, made me reach for my phone.

The screen glowed in my palm. One unread message.

Daniel: Let me know if you want to talk. Or not. I’m around.

I stared at it for a long time. Then I called him.

He picked up after two rings.

“Harper,” he said, his voice low, like he already knew he wasn’t welcome.

“I got your message,” I said.

A pause.

“I wasn’t sure if I should send it,” he said. “I didn’t want to make things worse.”

“They’re already worse.”

“I know.”

We both went quiet. Not for the first time.

“I’m not calling to fight,” I said. “I just… I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“At the house?”

“At all.”

He sighed. “You always know what you’re doing. That’s your thing.”

I let out a hollow breath. “It used to be.”

“Is it the girls?” he asked. “The will?”

“It’s everything.”

Another long pause. Then, softer: “Do you want me to come up?”

I flinched. “No. That’s not what this is.”

“Okay.”

And he meant it. That’s the worst part. Daniel never fought for anything. Not even us.

“I should go,” I said.

“Okay,” he repeated.

And that was that.

No anger. No heartbreak. Just the gentle thud of another door closing between us.

I couldn’t go back upstairs. Not yet. Not with my thoughts echoing against the bedroom walls like accusations I wasn’t ready to answer.

So I grabbed my jacket and walked.

The harbor wasn’t far. Just a few turns through streets I’d memorized as a teenager desperate to outrun them. Most of the houses were dark now; light spilling faintly behind curtains, the town tucked into itself like an old quilt someone kept stitching back together out of sheer stubbornness.

The wind off the water bit through my sleeves, sharp enough to remind me I was still here. Still deciding. Still mine.

At the end of the dock, I found him.

Nate Morrison.

If there was ever a person built for this place, it was Nate.

Solid where I’d always been restless. The kind of man who could mend a boat, fix a leaky porch roof, or stand at the edge of your worst day without flinching.

He’d been my first real friend here—the one who’d seen through every version of me I tried to perform.

I’d left him behind more times than I wanted to count.

And somehow, he’d stayed, stubborn as salt air, steady as the tide.

Tonight, he sat hunched on a weathered bench at the end of the dock, a battered thermos in one hand and an old notebook in his lap.

A halo of boat lights flickered behind him, softening the new gray at his temples and the lines at the corners of his eyes.

Time had made him look older, yes. But it hadn’t made him small.

It had carved him into something even more unshakeable.

He looked up when he heard my footsteps. No surprise on his face, just that calm recognition I’d once found comforting and now found impossible to bear.

“Didn’t expect to see you out here,” Nate said, voice low and warm enough to slice right through the chill.

God help me, part of me wanted to turn around. Run.

But I didn’t.

I just stood there on the dock, breathing him in like the last safe place I wasn’t sure I deserved.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah,” he said. “The air gets inside your head, doesn’t it?”

I nodded.

He held up the thermos. “Still drink tea?”

I sat beside him. “Only if it’s black and over-steeped.”

He refilled the cup, handed it over without looking. The mug was chipped. The tea was hot and strong. Just the way I used to like it.

We sat in silence for a while. Not the stiff kind. The other kind. The kind that fills a space without crowding it.

“Remember when we used to come out here with peanut butter sandwiches and talk about who we’d be someday?” he said.

“I do.”

“You always said you’d wear heels and run a firm. I said I’d own a boat.”

“Guess we both got close.”

He smiled. “Close enough to disappoint ourselves.”

That made me laugh. Not a full laugh. But enough.

“Why are you really here, Harper?” he asked.

“Because Iris left a will and a wish list and I’m too stubborn to walk away before I check every box.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I looked out at the water. The moon was just a sliver.

“I think I forgot how to be still,” I said. “And this place won’t let me pretend otherwise.”

Nate didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he leaned back on the bench and said, “You don’t have to prove anything here.”

I swallowed hard. “That’s the problem. I don’t know who I am if I’m not proving something.”

The wind picked up. The tea went cold.

But I stayed.

When I got back to the house, the porch was dark.

One of the string lights had burned out. The air had that dense, briny chill that clung to your skin and made you feel like you’d been holding your breath.

Inside, the floor creaked under my feet. I moved slow, half-hoping no one else was awake. But as I turned toward the stairs, a quiet voice drifted from the kitchen.

“You okay?”

June.

She was sitting at the table in pajama pants and a stretched-out sweater, her hair clipped up, the steam from her mug curling like ribbon around her face. She looked like she hadn’t moved in hours.

I hesitated. Then I sat down across from her.

She didn’t press. Just pushed a second mug toward me.

I didn’t say thank you. I just took a sip and let it burn the roof of my mouth.

“I talked to Daniel,” I said after a moment.

Her gaze flicked to mine, quick and careful. “Yeah?”

“I called him. I don’t know why. Habit. Masochism.”

June wrapped her fingers tighter around her cup. “How’d it go?”

I let out a short laugh. “He offered to drive up here. Like that would fix anything.”

“Would it?”

“No.”

I stared at a crack in the table, a thin fault line running through the grain like it had been hiding there the whole time.

“I think we’re done,” I said quietly. “And I think we’ve been done for a long time.”

June didn’t gasp. She didn’t flinch. She just nodded like she’d already known.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said.

“I kind of want to.”

I looked at her—really looked. Tired eyes. Worry tucked beneath the skin like something that had learned how to hide. She’d always been the quiet one. The one who made herself small to keep the peace.

I was the one who made myself loud to survive it.

“I spent years making it look like I had everything under control,” I said. “And the truth is, I don’t even know what everything is anymore. I don’t know what I’m trying to keep together.”

June was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I feel that way most days.”

We sat in the stillness together. Not trying to fix it. Not offering advice. Just two women with hands full of things they couldn’t carry alone anymore.

Finally, I stood.

She didn’t stop me.

At the stairs, I paused and turned back. “He said something tonight. Daniel. He said I always know what I’m doing.”

June blinked up at me.

I let out a breath. “I don’t.”

Back in my room, I didn’t turn on the light. I just sat on the edge of the bed and stared into the dark like it might give me something I’d lost.

My marriage was over. My career was stalled. My inheritance was wrapped in a to-do list written by a dead woman who knew me better than I liked to admit.

I felt… hollow. Emptied out.

Like all the sharp edges had dulled. Like I’d been holding on too tightly for too long, and now that I’d finally let go, there was nothing left in my hands.

There was a kind of freedom in it.

The terrifying kind.

I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes.

I could still feel the harbor wind in my hair. Still hear Nate’s voice in the dark.

You don’t have to prove anything here.

What would it feel like to believe that?

To live like that?

The next morning, I was the first one up. My body just didn’t know how to sleep in places that felt soft.

I poured a cup of coffee and walked out to the porch.

The swing held steady beneath me. The cushion was still indented from the night before.

The morning light was thin and silvery, curling through the branches and scattering across the dew-damp grass.

The world felt unwashed. Honest. The kind of quiet that didn’t ask you to fill it.

I heard the door creak behind me.

Willa.

She sat beside me without asking, barefoot, hair tangled, holding a blueberry muffin she definitely hadn’t paid for.

“You look like you slept in a confession booth,” she said, biting into the muffin.

I sipped my coffee. “That obvious?”

“Only to people who know you.”

“I’m fine.”

She snorted. “And I’m the Queen of France.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue.

“I talked to June last night,” I said instead.

Willa raised an eyebrow. “Voluntarily?”

“She was up. I was unraveling. It was mutual.”

She took another bite. “Did you tell her about the husband situation?”

“I did.”

Willa didn’t say anything for a minute. Then: “Good. You don’t have to pretend here.”

I looked at her. “You sound like Nate.”

She looked at me. “You saw Nate?”

I nodded.

“He’s a smart man. Hot, too.”

“Willa.”

She grinned. But then her expression softened, and she bumped her shoulder against mine. “You’re allowed to fall apart a little,” she said. “You don’t get points for pretending you’re fine.”

“I’ve spent a long time building a life that looks like it’s working.”

She nodded. “Yeah. But sometimes things that look like they’re working are just things that haven’t collapsed yet.”

I didn’t respond.

She stood and stretched, the muffin wrapper dangling from her fingers.

“You gonna tell the others about Nate?”

“I don’t know.”

She shrugged. “When you’re ready. Or not. We’ll still love you.”

She walked back inside like she hadn’t just hit me with a wrecking ball.