Page 34 of Willow in the Wind

When Chloe went inside to charge her phone, Matt sipped his margarita and said, “Do you mind if I ask you about Bruce?”

Stella made a face, but she didn’t reject him. “Okay.”

“Has he reached out at all since he left?”

“I asked him not to,” Stella said. “I needed a clean break.”

Matt nodded. “I understand.” He put his margarita back on the hot concrete and lay back in his sun chair. “I wonder what’s going through his head right now. Meeting his ex after so long. Seeing his son reconnect with his ex-wife. It sounds so messy.”

“I can’t get involved with his mess,” Stella admitted.

Matt raised his eyebrow. “But we don’t really have a mess on our hands, do we?”

“No. And I prefer it that way.”

Matt reached over and squeezed Stella’s hand between the chairs.

Stella drove herself to the Sutton Book Club to clear her head. It was four fifteen when she arrived. She and Esme had already set up everything: a massive table and chairs for the book signing, a chair for the reading, the microphones, and enough audience seats for half the tickets sold. “The rest can stand,” Esme had said with a wave of her hand.

It was going to be tight in the Sutton Book Club. But the microphone would pipe Stella’s voice out on all floors of the Sutton Book Club, plus another few speakers set up outside. It meant not everyone had to be crammed inside to hear her voice.

Esme was already there, of course. Just as ever. She was in the kitchen with her daughters Rebecca and Bethany. Valerie, the event planner, had been instrumental in setting up the event itself and was off to the grocery store to grab some supplies they’d run out of.

Rebecca, Bethany, and Esme hugged Stella tightly and congratulated her.

“It’s such a big day!” Esme said.

“I never could have made it here without you,” Stella said.

Rebecca had made sensational snacks for the event—salmon puffs, empadas, and stuffed mushrooms. Now that the Sutton Book Club was also a part-time restaurant, they’d gotten an alcohol license, and plenty of wine bottles were at the ready, standing in a glossy line on the table under the window. Stella watched as Esme worked side by side with her daughters, the daughters she’d missed so much that it had nearly destroyed her. Stella hated that it had taken Larry’s death for the girls to come back. But they needed each other now. More than ever.

Guests began to arrive at four thirty. Stella was anxious, hovering near the book signing table and shaking people’s hands. The book had technically come out a few days ago, and several readers already had copies and wanted her autograph.

“I tore through it the first night I got it,” a woman in her early sixties announced as she handed a pen to Stella. “You captured just what it felt like to fall in love for the first time. Of course, when I fell in love for the first time, I was in Providence, Rhode Island. That’s quite different from Greece.” She chuckled, throwing her head back.

Stella smiled. “Did you stay in love?”

“Goodness, no,” the woman said. “He left me in the middle of the night for a woman he’d met at the diner that morning. What a rush, right? But I met my husband six months later, and we had six children.”

“That’s a great story,” Stella said. “It sounds like you were ready to find your husband. That first guy just needed to get out of the way.”

The woman cackled.

To sign her book, Stella wrote:To finding the one! Love, Stella Sutton

Stella wondered if all of her fans would find ways to tell her about their love life throughout her book tour. Today was only the beginning, after all. In two weeks, she would be in Manhattan, then Boston, then Charleston, then Miami. In all, there were twenty-two cities. It was nightmarish but also her dream.

She would really miss Chloe, though. Thank goodness for Matt. He would be there for her every step of the way.

Not long after that, Stella’s family arrived: her father, her mother, her brothers, their wives. Stella’s cheeks were hot as she hugged them. She had a hunch none of them had read the memoir. Opening up to one another in that way wasn’t really a Sutton thing. But they wanted to be supportive, and Stella was grateful.

“Always wondered what you were up to in Greece,” her father said. “Guess the entire world will know now.”

Her mother swatted him. “We love you, honey. We’ll get seats near the back so we don’t make you too nervous.”

Stella thanked them and watched them walk in a line through the aisle to the back.

Fans continued to mill in, ask for autographs, and grab their seats. Several more women told her about their first loves—and how they’d lost them. Stella worried the stories would run together.

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