Page 39 of Five Summer Wishes

I don’t need to earn rest. Or love. Or softness.

I want to build something different.

I’m scared. But I’m not leaving.

I’m still here.

I sat with that last line for a long time.

Then, without overthinking it, I pulled out my phone and sent a message to Nate

Still here.

He replied almost instantly.

Same.

11

JUNE

Iris used to say the best place to think was the shore by the old chapel. Not the tourist part, not the big overlook. The quiet one, tucked behind a weathered row of sea grass, where the sand stayed cool and the wind always came in sideways.

So that’s where I took Lily the next morning.

I packed a lunch. Some paper and crayons. Water bottles. It felt like something my mother would’ve done if she’d been the kind of woman who packed lunches and sat still.

Lily skipped ahead on the path like she owned it.

“She used to bring me here too,” she said without looking back.

I blinked. “Iris?”

Lily nodded. “She said the ocean was loud enough to hold secrets.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

So I just followed.

We sat on a flat stretch of sand beneath a crooked tree that looked like it had been holding on longer than it should’ve. Lily drew a picture of a jellyfish in a tutu. I watched the tide roll in and out like breath.

I should’ve been thinking about the next steps. The next card in Iris’s box. The next thing to manage.

Instead, I let myself be still.

The silence didn’t ache the way it usually did. It softened.

Grant showed up sometime after noon.

I wasn’t surprised.

He didn’t ask if he could join us. Just dropped onto the sand with a grunt, set down a bag of oranges and crackers, and offered Lily a juice pouch like he’d been doing this forever.

She took it without hesitation.

I watched them for a minute, how easy they were together. How he didn’t talk to her like she was fragile or precious. Justreal.

It made something in my chest pull tight.

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