Page 25

EMERY

“Hey, you’re back.” Ava rose from the chair. “Delilah was telling me she used to be a big-time folk singer. Em, she even toured with the Beach Boys. Isn’t that wild?”

“You’re talking about your past?” Emery leaned around her sister, her eyes wide.

“Your sister is very clever. Wrangled a bit out of me. But all of that was a long, long time ago.” Delilah pushed up from her chair.

“Em, sit here. Enjoy the fire.” Delilah tucked her blanket around Emery, then brought out a glass of wine.

“Are you covering the Beach Boys concert on the twenty-first?”

“I couldn’t get tickets or press passes. The amphitheater never returned my calls.” Emery glanced up at the beautiful folk singer. “The Gazette has lost so much clout. What we need is a couple of big stories. Prove our worth. I don’t suppose you could get me tickets?”

“Honey, those days are long over for me. Most of the boys I toured with are gone. Mike Love might not even remember me,” Delilah said, her attention stuck on something over Emery’s head.

A picture from the past, perhaps. “Well, good night. Ava, it was lovely to meet you. Emery, you never told me you had a sister.”

And ... thank you for that , Delilah. Emery sipped her wine with a side glance at Ava. “It wasn’t intentional. Just never came up.”

Ava curled up in the chair, facing Emery.

“I think it’s hard for me because I was so happy to have a big sister.

You’d think I would resent it being the oldest myself, but I thought I’d have someone to confide in, talk girl talk with, tell people, ‘My big sister is taking us shopping this weekend.’ So some of this is on me.

I’m disappointed in you because of my own imagination. ”

“Ava, I’m sorry I was none of those things. I am. Maybe they were your imagination, but they’re also very real things sisters do.”

“Probably, but none of my friends with sisters had that kind of relationship. I watched too much TV. Read too many books.”

“First off, you can never read too many books. Second, how about if I’m a big sister right now?

The kind I know I can be.” Ava sat forward, listening, waiting.

“Maybe you’ve done the same thing with Jamie.

You’ve built up an idea of marriage in your head, then when you have to deal with real life—deal with a real man with real ideas of his own—you think it’s not right.

You think he’s going to be like me. Emotionally unavailable.

But he’s not. He loves you, Ava. Trust me, I’ve known him a long time, and he’s never been with anyone like he is with you.

You’re the one for him. He’s the one for you. ”

“I called him tonight,” she said softly.

“He was scared I’d call off the wedding.

Then he was upset I didn’t tell him how I felt about our first house.

He thought the one he wanted proved he could provide for our family.

He wanted to give me something grand and nice, something beautiful.

But he understands my point of view, wanting to start out small and messy, grow into each other, work out our likes and dislikes. ”

“How do you feel about getting married in May?”

Her smile was so like Joanna’s. Wide and winning with a dash of tenderness. “Excited. I do love him, Emery. Very much. I feel stupid for panicking and running away. Jamie’s going to ask our realtor to look for something smaller and less grand.”

“Good.” Emery raised her glass in toast. “I went for a walk with Caleb tonight, and he pointed out that despite our issues and how emotionally unavailable I am—”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“—you did come to me for help. And no, I’m not.”

“To be honest, I thought your lack of emotional interest in me would point me in the right direction.”

“Then you’re welcome.” Emery took a sip of the wine, which was smooth and slightly sweet. “Little sister.”

Ava grinned and leaned toward Emery. “So, do tell. What’s up with Caleb? Delilah told me a little more about your summer of love. Dad left out the juicy details.”

“Juicy details? Then Delilah is making stuff up.” Emery looked toward Cottage 1 with its framed windows watching over the courtyard. Two hundred yards away, the Gulf hummed a night song against the shore. The moon, the great pearl in the sky, hovered over them. “He’s just a friend.”

“What happened the summer you were here with Dad and your mom?”

“Our third night here, I was sitting where you are when he walked into the courtyard and commented on my sunburn.” Emery smiled at the memory.

“I saw him a few days later, picking up trash on the beach with his football team, and he followed me into the Blue Plate Diner. After that, we started hanging out as much as we could. I thought Mom, Dad, and I had come down to build memories as a family, but Mom was sick, which I didn’t know, so she was happy to let me run around town with a nice kid, making happy memories, knowing she’d be gone in a few months. ”

“Why didn’t you ever tell us about him? Then again, you never told us much of anything.” Despite her last comment, a tenderness remained in her tone.

“You were ten when I met you. What’d you want me to say? ‘Hi, I’m Emery. I met a boy in Florida last summer. He’s really cute.’”

“I’m not ten now.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Em, is anything a big deal to you?” Ava finished her final swirl of wine. “Except your mom’s pearls.” Emery looked over sharply, and she immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

“Okay, little sister, since we’re confessing things, what is with you and Mom’s pearls? You didn’t even know her.”

Ava set her glass on the pavers and leaned toward Emery. “Mom asked me the same thing. And when I found myself at the airport with a small carry-on and an eight-hundred-dollar airline ticket, I asked myself, ‘Why are you going to see Emery? She hates you.’”

“Stop, Ava, I do not hate you.”

“You certainly don’t like me, or Elianna, very much—at least you didn’t.

Though we all love Blakely. We can’t help it.

Anyway, at the airport, it hit me. I want to know why you don’t like me.

Why you don’t want to be my sister. Why you don’t like being a part of our family.

Your family. I’ve never understood it. Flying here meant you’d have to face me, deal with me, counsel me in your cool, emotionally unavailable way.

I was going to force you into being my big sister.

” She laughed softly at her confession. “It’s the same feeling I get when I ask about the pearls.

They’re like a visual of our relationship.

‘The pearls are unavailable to you, Ava Quinn.’ Yet if you actually loaned them to me, it would mean you liked me.

Approved of me. It would mean we are sisters. ”

Emery listened with her glass cupped against her chest, waiting for Ava’s honesty to sink in before answering.

“First of all, I do like you and Elianna. And you’re right about Blake.

We can’t help but love her.” She glanced at Ava.

“I just never looked at the situation from your point of view. I was still grieving Mom when Dad and Joanna married. Then, in some ways, I was grieving the loss of Dad, our relationship, the family we had for sixteen years. The months after Mom died, we got really close. Even after he connected with your mom, Dad and I were always there for each other. Then he married, adopted two little girls, and for first time ever, Ava— ever —I had to share him. And I didn’t want to share. ”

“So we’re both guilty of not seeing each other’s side.

For Ellie and me, Mom would tell us every day about how lucky we were to get a new dad and a sister.

How we’d all love one another, and yes, disagree, but in the end, we’d have each other’s backs.

Elianna and I were young when our dad died.

We have so few memories of him. We loved Doug Quinn the moment we met him.

And you know why? Because of you, Emery.

He had one great daughter and believed he could have two more.

” She looked toward the sound of the ocean.

“But Mom didn’t prepare us for a sister who didn’t want to be a sister. ”

“Well,” Emery said, swirling her wine, “thank goodness we’re sorting this out now. Do you realize we’ve spent more time talking about me and you than you and Jamie?”

Ava laughed softly. “This convo has been a long time coming,” she said. “Also, I recognize that Elianna and I were pretty annoying. I’m not sure I’d have appreciated us either in those early days.”

“You weren’t that annoying. But at the time, I felt left out. Like Dad replaced Mom with Joanna, and me with you two.”

“Before Dad, Mom was sad all the time,” Ava said. “I used to hear her crying in her room. Then one morning, she came out for breakfast, smiling, and made us French toast, made us laugh. She’d connected with your dad the night before. Our whole lives changed from dark to light.”

“He is pretty great, isn’t he?”

“We have more in common than you think, Em. We both lost a parent. We love Dad. We’re professional businesswomen. We both run when we’re panicked.”

“Do you really think I run when I’m panicked? I went to college. I worked summers in Columbus. I came here for a job. How’s that panicked running?” Emery reached for the stick to stir the fire, but the last log was well on its way to embers. Without the heat, the courtyard grew cold.

“You were stuck. Nothing was happening for you.”

“I was not stuck.”

“Em, come on. The job you loved abruptly ended. You could no longer afford your beautiful apartment.”

“My lease ended.”

“You were writing freelance, which you hated. The only guy I remember you going out with made you pay for your meal. More than anything, you had to move into your parents’ house, into the bedroom you lived in for a hot second.”