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“Barely,” Naomi says. “And you haven’t missed much. Just a conversation about Eloise’s sad sex life.”
“It isn’t sad. It just takes place at more normal hours. Now, can we stop talking about my sex life,please?We’re going to scar the babies.”
Merritt spreads out an oversized beach blanket under the tent and drops her stuff on top. “Sex? I don’t even think I remember what that is.”
“If you want to walk back to the carriage house with me, I’ll remind you,” a deep voice says.
Merritt spins around to see her husband standing at the edge of the tent, a wide smirk on his bearded face. After morethan a decade of having him as a brother-in-law, Hunter rarely surprises me. The man is as steady and unflappable as any man I’ve ever known. But every once in a while, he says something that is so uncharacteristically bold, it makes me think there must be a whole side to him that I don’t actually know.
I have a feeling it’s a side only Merritt knows. My sister wakes him up like no one else can.
Mer takes a few steps toward him and presses a long kiss against his mouth. The kind thatalmostmakes me have to look away. “Are you flirting with me, Hunter Williams?”
Charlie lets out an ear-piercing screech from my arms, and Merritt’s shoulders drop. “Man, that kid has impeccable timing.” She turns to me and takes Charlie while Hunter sets up a beach chair next to their blanket. “Where’s Izzy?”
Hunter tilts his head toward Liam, who is in the water now, Leelee dangling from one arm, and Mandy dangling from the other. Liam doesn’t come to our beach days nearly as often as he used to since he’s in college, but whenever he does, he’s always a good sport about all the kid-wrangling his younger cousins expect.
“She’s primping,” Hunter says with a grunt and a dark look. “She knows Liam’s here.”
Merritt tosses me a knowing glance, and I chuckle. We’ve been calling Liam and Izzy cousins since I married Jake and Merritt married Hunter. But the two aren’t related by blood and they aren’ttechnicallycousins. The older Izzy gets—or maybe it’s the more handsome Liam gets—the more she seems to be aware of that fact.
Minutes later, Merritt is stretched out on the blanket feeding Charlie, and Hunter has moved down to the beach to join Jake, Ben, and Camden, who are working together with Nat and Ezra to build a sandcastle. I will never get tired of seeing these good,good men playing with their kids, looking at their nieces and nephews with patience and tenderness.
Soon, the men will get tired of the sun, and they’ll make their way back to the tent where they’ll dig into the coolers looking for drinks and five minutes to relax without a kid asking for something to eat. Or to have a turn on the boogie board or to play a game of spike ball.
They probably won’t get five minutes to themselves—none of us usually do—but most of the time, they’ll get up anyway. Just as we all would, and all do, for each other and each other’s kids.
It’s not lost on me that it’s nothing short of magic that we’re all here, that our marriages are solid (for now) and our kids are all healthy and whole (for now).
But this magic we found on Oakley—it’s more than that, too. It’s not just my relationship with Jake or Sadie’s with Ben or Merritt’s with Hunter. It’s also the friendships we’ve built—the relationships I have with my sisters that I never would have found had Gran not brought us here. The relationships all of our children have with each other.
Her house changed us. Thisislandchanged us. Gran’s legacy changed us.
Down the beach, an enormous pelican drops onto the sand not far from where the kids are still working on their sandcastle, a little pink ID tag wrapped around his leg. Steve must be close to twenty years old now, but it always makes me smile to see him around the island. They switched to green tags the year he was rescued, so we always know it’s him. As impossible as it seems, we realized he was the bird following Sadie and Ben on the yacht, the bird who took out a paid hitman—someone should really make a movie of this. Except … no one would believe it.
Ever since then, Steve seems to love dropping in on us. At the bed and breakfast sometimes, but especially when we’re onthe beach. Maybe because he knows we’ll feed him—even if we shouldn’t.
“Mom!” Nat calls. “Look! It’s Steve!”
I wave in response, but then I’m distracted when Hunter stands up, dropping the tiny yellow shovel he’s holding as he glares across the sand.
“Um, Mer? Why does Hunter look like he wants to kill someone?”
She sits up, following my gaze to her husband, then tracinghisgaze to … Izzy.
Izzy, who is walking across the sand with bold confidence, wearing a pair of cutoffs and a teeny, tiny string bikini top I’m guessing she wasnotwearing when she left the house with her dad.
“Oh geez,” Merritt says, hopping up off the blanket. “I better go stop him from saying something stupid.”
“I think she looks great,” Sadie says. “Gotta rock what you got while you got it. I mean, if shewantsto rock it.”
“Hey,” Naomi calls after Merritt. “Remind Hunter that she’s nineteen, not thirteen!”
I move to the blanket to sit with Charlie while Merritt is gone, my eyes drifting to Genny, who has moved to a towel beside the tent. She’s stretched on her belly, reading a book, her knees bent and her ankles kicking the salty sea air.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to see her grow up like that,” I say to Naomi, feeling the unwanted prick of tears. I’ve beenwaytoo emotional the last few weeks.
“Don’t sweat it,” Naomi says. “It’s a wild ride, but you and Jake will do great.”
