Page 79 of Not Another Beach Read
Grace laughed. "Completely cliché. Do it anyway."
As Grace browsed the store, I found myself reflecting on how much had changed in just a few weeks. The urge to play detective hadn't completely disappeared. I still found myself observing people a little too closely at restaurants, wondering about their stories, but the compulsion to intervene had faded.
Instead, I was channeling that energy into planning Holly's future bedroom remodel (she insisted the guest room was fine, but Drew and I wanted her to have a space that truly felt like hers), organizing Paige's book launch party, and working on the newly expanded children's section at the bookstore.
32
HOLLY
Istood in front of my bedroom mirror, my reflection staring back at me with an intensity that bordered on ridiculous. My pink hair was growing out, dark roots now visible at my scalp—a perfect metaphor for how I felt these days. New growth emerging from old foundations.
"Mom," I whispered experimentally, the word feeling foreign on my tongue.
No, that wasn't right. Too formal.
"Mom," I tried again, this time with a casual lilt, like I was calling from downstairs to ask where the laundry detergent was kept.
Better, but still not quite there.
This was so stupid. Why was I practicing in a mirror like some cheesy movie montage? It was just a word. Three letters. One syllable. People said it every day without having existential crises about it.
But it wasn't just a word. It was an identity. Hers and mine. A relationship. A choice.
I flopped backward onto my bed, staring up at the ceilingI'd recently covered with photos from my photography class. A canopy of images I'd captured since coming to live here—the oak tree at school, Eden playing in the surf, Uncle Drew grilling with an absurd "Kiss the Cook" apron, Aunt Elyse asleep on the couch with a book still open on her chest. Moments of my new life, preserved in film and digital pixels.
It had been two weeks since Mom's text messages, since her silence following my boundary-setting. Two weeks of waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to show up drunk at the door, for something to shatter the tentative peace I'd found.
But nothing had happened. Life had continued its steady rhythm: school, bakery shifts, photography club, family dinners. Normal. Safe. Boring, even, in the best possible way.
And through it all, Aunt Elyse and Uncle Drew had been... well, parents. Real ones. They'd listened when I told them about Mom's texts, had validated my mixed feelings without judgment, had supported my decision to maintain boundaries. They'd shown up to my photography exhibition at school, had framed prints made of my best shots, had bragged about me to their friends with an embarrassing enthusiasm that secretly made me glow.
They were doing all the things parents were supposed to do. Wasn't it time I acknowledged that?
I rolled onto my side, picking up the small framed photo on my nightstand—the only one I had of my mother where she looked truly happy. In it, she was laughing at something off-camera, her arm around a much younger me eating an ice cream cone at Clearwater Beach.
"I still love you," I whispered to her image. "That's not going to change."
And it wouldn't. No matter what I called Aunt Elyse, no matter what papers we signed, no matter if my mother never contacted me again, she would always be my first mother. Thewoman who gave me life, who sang me to sleep when I was little, who taught me to swim in the Gulf on her good days.
But loving her didn't mean I had to wait for her to become the mother I needed. It didn't mean I had to reject the love and stability being offered to me now.
Maybe family wasn't an either/or proposition. Maybe it was a both/and.
A soft knock on my door interrupted my thoughts. "Holly? Dinner in five," Aunt Elyse called. "Drew made that pasta you like."
"Coming," I replied, setting the photo back on my nightstand and standing up.
I took one last look in the mirror, straightening my shoulders. No more practicing. When/if it happened, it would be natural. Organic. Real.
I headed downstairs to find Uncle Drew at the stove, stirring a pot of his famous pasta sauce while simultaneously trying to keep Eden from snagging a piece of garlic bread cooling on the counter.
"Perfect timing," he said when he spotted me. "Can you set the table? Your aunt is finishing up some work emails."
"Sure," I said, grabbing plates from the cabinet. The domesticity of it all still surprised me sometimes. How easily I'd slotted into their routines, how they'd adjusted theirs to include me.
By the time Aunt Elyse joined us, the table was set and Uncle Drew was ladling sauce over steaming pasta.
"Sorry about that," she said, sliding into her chair. "Work crisis averted. How was everyone's day?"
