Page 33 of Seashells and Other Souvenirs

I try my best to tone down the idiotic grin I can feel plastered across my face, but it’s impossible. Rather than going upstairs when I get back to our beach house, I walk across the backyard to the tables where two of my aunts are still busy pouring pancake batter onto a couple large griddles.

I’m surprised to see Elle sitting beside my parents, Sutton and Chris on the other side of their table.

“Good morning.” I snag a cup of orange juice from the breakfast buffet and sit by Elle. “Weird seeing you at breakfast; we used to always be the last ones awake.”

“I’m still on Spanish time.” She taps her juice cup to mine, an apparent toast to early mornings. “What’s your excuse?”

“I went for a walk on the beach.”

“Alone?” she whispers, and I elbow her in the side.

My dad cuts into his pancakes, oblivious. “All it took was one summer at the beach to turn you into a morning person? Maybe you should stay until Christmas.”

“Glad you’ve missed me, Daddy.”

“He’s kidding,” my mom chimes in. “But we do like seeing you so happy. I’m glad you’ve had this time for your writing.”

I preemptively elbow Elle again, because I know her well enough to guess she has some suggestive comment at the ready.

“What are we supposed to wear for the family picture tonight?” Sutton rescues me.

Elle groans. Standing on the beach in dress clothes for an hour every year while my photographer aunt tries to get us organized and all the kids either melt down or run wild is everyone’s least favorite part of vacation.

But having a photo of our whole family to remember the year by is enough of an incentive to make it bearable.

“Navy and white,” my mom tells her, then turns to me. “I brought that navy top from your closet just in case you didn’t pack something already.”

Marcail wiggles in Chris’s lap and reaches across toward Elle’s plate. “Hey, sweet girl.” I break a tiny piece of pancake off the one Elle is cutting. But just as I stretch out my hand, Sutton slaps it away.

“She can’t have that.”

“Sorry.” I wince. “I forgot.”

“It’s okay,” Chris says. “A little bite wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“Then you and Alex can change her diapers today,” she snaps. “We aren’t supposed to be introducing anything new this week.”

“I’m sorry, Sutton,” I repeat. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She picks up her empty plate and swings her legs over the picnic bench. “I’m going to iron our clothes for the picture.”

“Sutton,” Chris implores. But she doesn’t look back.

My mom frowns. “What was that about?”

I shrug.

But Chris turns his pleading eyes to me. “Talk to her, Alex. Please.”

Elle loops an arm around mine. “I’ll go with you.”

I pace the room while we wait for Sutton to bring over the curling iron Rebekah requested. It seemed less confrontational to ask her to run up to our room than to all show up at her door.

“You should do the talking, Bekah. She listens to you.”

“No ma’am.” Rebekah pulls the elastic band from her ponytail and slides it onto her wrist. “We’re just here for moral support.

The two of you need to work through whatever this is, because we only have two days of vacation left, and we’re not gonna spend them watching you give each other the cold shoulder. ”

“My shoulder is plenty warm,” I grouse. “It’s Sutton who has a problem.”

“What?” Sutton pushes the door open, hair products in hand. “Did I hear my name?”

Rebekah takes the basket from her arms. “We were just saying we were glad you brought all this stuff. I can’t believe I forgot mine.”

“After I specifically reminded you in the packing list I sent to the group text.” Sutton tsks playfully.

“She did,” Elle verifies. “Though I barely remembered to pack a brush, so who am I to judge?”

I forget the speech I planned about how worried we’ve been about Sutton. “What group text?”

Sutton pretends not to hear. “I don’t know why you’re curling your hair now though, Bek. You’re not going down to the ocean today?”

“No, I am. I just thought if you brought it on over, we could talk you into getting ready with us after dinner. Like old times.”

“What group text?”

“I’ll need to get Marcie dressed though. You can just run it back down to me after you do your hair.”

“Chris can dress Marcie,” Elle says. “It’s not that hard.”

“What. Group. Text.”

Everyone freezes. Sutton sighs and turns to face me. “I sent Elle and Bekah a packing list to help them out. You were already here, so I assumed you didn’t need it.”

For having just been ready to make up with Sutton, I’m unreasonably angry at the moment. “So that was the only purpose of this group text? Or is it the one you created to talk about Marcail’s food allergies and whatever else you decided to leave me out of?”

Sutton’s icy blue eyes turn to straight fire. “No, Alex. This is the group we created to discuss why you suddenly stopped communicating with us when you left for the summer.”

“I didn’t stop communicating with y’all.” My voice shakes.

“Sorry,” she amends in the most patronizing tone I’ve ever heard. “What I meant to say was why you suddenly stopped communicating honestly with us.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” I spit back, doing it even now. “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

Sutton reaches for the doorknob. “I’m leaving.”

“Of course you are.” I cross my arms.

Rebekah slides between Sutton and the door. “I don’t think you should go until we’ve had a chance to talk this out,” she suggests diplomatically.

“Fine.” Sutton huffs. “Why then, Alex?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about Jude?”

Because I was trying not to overthink it?

Because I wanted to keep it to myself for a while?

I don’t know why.

But how can I say any of these answers out loud?

“Because I was afraid you’d do what you always do, Sutton.

You’d offer me unsolicited advice and tell me what I should be doing, what I should be feeling.

Then, you’d hang up and leave me to torture myself with everything you said while you went back to your busy life and forgot all about me again. ”

Her face morphs, and she blinks once. Twice. Her voice is barely a whisper. “What are you talking about, Alex?”

“Sutton, you’ve always had an opinion about everything,” I start.

“I know that; I didn’t mean that part. What you said about me forgetting about you.

” She sits on the bed closest to her. “I’ll acknowledge that I’m a little bossy sometimes.

But it’s only because I love you guys more than anything and I want you to be happy.

How on earth could you think I’m ever too busy to think about you? ”

I lower myself onto the other bed, and the tears start.

“Because you guys all have these . . . real lives. Between Spain and the ICU and your husband and kid.” I wave my arm around the room.

“And I’m the odd one out now. And I don’t know how to fix it, because this is just who I am: boring, safe, same-as-always Alex. ”

Sutton fixes me with a look of authority I’ve seen hundreds of times, but somehow this time it’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

“That’s the most absurd, least true thing you have ever said, Alexandria Henry.

There is nothing about you that is boring.

You are extraordinary.” She pauses to keep her emotions in check, and Rebekah sits down beside her.

“I keep waiting for you to wake up and realize that you could literally do anything you decided you wanted to. Why else do you think I keep trying to set you up with Chris’s coworkers and nagging you to write your book?

It’s because I’m torn between wanting you to find all the insane happiness you deserve and being terrified that you’re going to find it without me.

And if anyone has become the odd one out—” She shudders with a sob, and it registers that she’s crying now. “It’s me.”

Rebekah hardly has time to scoot over and slide her arm around Sutton’s back before Elle and I are there too, undone at the sight of our ever-composed cousin falling apart.

“I love Chris and Marcie,” she chokes out.

“I really do. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world for having them. But after watching our moms and aunts do this seamlessly for so long, I just assumed—” She draws a shaky breath.

“I didn’t realize it would be this hard.

Or that I’d worry so much. It’s made me neurotic and snappy, and I hate who I’ve become.

” We’re all crying with her now, even Elle as she rubs circles on Sutton’s back.

“I know it sounds selfish, but I’m sad I can’t stay with you guys in here anymore or do all the things we used to.

And then I’m even sadder thinking about how sometimes that’s probably a relief for you. ”

“No.” I wrap myself around her arm. “We miss you, Sutton. I miss you. I had no idea you were feeling this way.”

Rebekah strokes her hair. “I feel like this all the time too. I’ll reach for my phone at the end of a shift and think, ‘No one wants to hear about the catheter I changed today or the patient who coded or the dad who broke down on my shoulder.’ It’s all so heavy, but the last thing I want is to put that burden on you guys.

It’s just weird not telling you everything.

And I worry that you’re all having fun without me. ”

“I want you to call me!” Elle exclaims. “I’m all the way over in Europe, missing everything.

But I can’t even complain about it, because I chose it.

I can’t explain it, but it feels so right to be there.

And so wrong to not be with you guys. But I never want to reach out when things are hard, because you all still think of me as the baby, and I don’t need someone to fix everything; I just need you guys to know everything.

And tell me everything. All of it. I don’t need you to protect me. Does that make sense?”

Sutton turns and pulls Elle into her lap. “Oh, Elle Belle. You have grown into a strong, beautiful woman who we all have so much respect for. You might be the bravest of us all.” She kisses the top of her head. “But you’ll always be our baby.”

Elle laughs through her tears. “And you’ve always been neurotic, Sutton.”

Suddenly, we’re all laughing and crying and holding onto each other for dear life, and I can hardly breathe, and I can breathe freely for the first time in months. “You’d better add me to that group text as soon as we stop hugging.”

“Let’s never stop hugging,” Rebekah says.

Sutton clasps my hand. “I just can’t believe you fell in love and I missed it.”

“You haven’t missed it; it’s still happening.”

Rebekah and Elle both squeal. “Start talking,” Sutton demands. “We want every last detail.”