Page 24 of Give In

That is, I think, the most accurate thing anyone has said about the Hill family in living memory.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“I love you,” she says. “The truth is, if that man can make you as happy and love you as well as Leo has me, then it’ll be worth whatever weirdness might come.”

“You’re the very best human there is, Juniper. I hope you know that.”

“Right back at you!” She unfolds herself from the chair with the decisive energy of a woman who has said what she came to say. “I am going to sleep because I am getting married tomorrow and I need to not look like a raccoon in my wedding photos.” She points at me. “You should also sleep.”

“I will sleep.”

“You won’t.”

“I’ll try to sleep.”

“Better.” She bends down and kisses the top of my head, the way she used to do when we were teenagers, and she was two inches taller and deeply smug about it. She is still two inches taller. She is less smug about it now, but she still uses it when the moment calls for it.

After she leaves, I sit for a little while longer with the ocean. I think about the story of a man who bought every book twice. I think about the way Heath makes me feel. I think about the way I feel about myself when I’m with Heath—that part seems new. Not because he makes me feel like less of a hot mess than I am, but because with him, it doesn’t seem like such a negative thing.

Then I consider the man my sister is going to marry, and I know that tomorrow is going to be the best day.

chapter

eleven

Clover

Here is something I was not expecting about this morning: I am completely fine.

Not fine in the way I usually mean it, which is to say not fine at all but functional enough to pass a casual inspection. Actually fine. Genuinely, surprisingly, against-all-reasonable-expectations fine.

The bridal suite is full of women who have collectively decided that this morning is going to be beautiful, and the force of that collective decision is apparently strong enough to carry even me along with it. Someone has ordered enough food to sustain a small village. There is a mimosa in my hand that I am drinking at a responsible pace. My hair, by some miracle of the universe and a stylist named Pilar who worked on it for forty minutes with the focused expression of someone defusing something, is behaving. I am in my bridesmaid dress, which fits. Something I was uncertain of until this morning, because the last fitting was six weeks ago, and I went through a brief but committed pasta phase in the interim.

Everything is fine. I am fine.

Juniper is at the vanity, and she is so beautiful it keeps catching me off guard. Not because she isn’t always beautiful, she is, but because today there’s something else underneath it. A quality of settled happiness that sits on her like light. She catches my eye in the mirror every few minutes and smiles the specific smile she reserves for me, the one that means can you believe this and I love you and thank you for being here all at once. Every time she does it I have to take a small breath to keep my tear ducts from activating.

I am keeping it together. I am a vision of composure.

Lizzie, Graham’s wife, is perched on the arm of the settee refilling mimosas with the generous hand of a woman who understands what mornings like this require. She has a warmth to her that I clocked within about four minutes of meeting her, the kind that isn’t performed, that’s just how she moves through the world. She’d pulled me into a hug when we were introduced and said I’ve heard so much about you in a way that made me feel like what she’d heard was good.

Emma, Bram’s wife, is beside her, curled into the corner of the settee with her shoes already off. She has sharp eyes and a dry humor that I have decided I want to study and eventually replicate. We spent twenty minutes earlier comparing notes on being the chaotic one in a family of capable people and I think we might be actual friends by the end of this weekend.

Rebecca, Heath and Graham’s sister, is standing at the window with her mimosa looking out at the beach where in approximately two hours her nephew is going to get married. She’s tall and has the same steadiness about her that Heath has, that quality of being entirely comfortable taking up exactly the amount of space she takes up. She’d looked at me when we were introduced with a thoughtful expression and said so you’re Clover in a way that suggested she had been briefed and was now conducting her own assessment, and then she’d smiled and said I can see it and moved on before I could ask what she meant, which has been occupying a pleasant corner of my brain ever since.

These women, I think, looking around the room at all of them, these women are going to be family. Well, technically Juniper’s family, but mine by proxy. I am not allowing myself to go down the mental road of what-ifs with Heath and me. Not yet. We agreed to table the conversation until after Leo and Juniper’s wedding.

The thought lands somewhere warm and stays there.

“Pilar, you are an actual genius,” I say, catching another glimpse of my own hair in the mirror. “I want you to know I have been fighting this situation my entire life and you have made it look intentional and elegant. I don’t think I’ve ever managed elegance in my entire life.”

Pilar, who is currently applying something to Juniper’s cheekbones with a brush the size of a finger, glances at me in the mirror with a professional satisfaction. “Your curls are beautiful. They just need direction.”

“Don’t we all,” Emma says from the settee.

“Story of my life,” I agree.

Juniper laughs, soft and happy, and Pilar makes a small noise of protest about keeping still, and the room settles back into the warm hum of women getting ready together and I think, not for the first time this morning, that I am genuinely okay. That whatever happens after this weekend, whatever Heath and I figure out or don’t figure out, right now in this moment, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Because my sister has found her person, and that is what truly matters.