I slide the phone back into my pocket without replying. Tonight will come with its own weight—family dinner in the very yard where everything changed five years ago. But this moment belongs to Beckett and me.
"Mom! Hurry up!"
"I'm coming, baby." I pick up my pace, following the sound of my son's joy through our empty, sun-drenched future.
Hours later, the sun is gone, the laughter spent. Dinner came and went in a blur of voices and clattering dishes, the kind of chaos that fills a house before it empties again. Now the night is still.
I slip through the back door, kindling tucked under one arm, lighter clutched in my hand.
The screen door whispers shut behind me, careful not to wake Mom and Dad—or worse, Beckett. My son sleeps like a rock most nights, but today's excitement about our new house left him wired until he finally crashed, sprawled across my childhood bed upstairs.
The yard stretches before me, as familiar as my own reflection. Moonlight catches on the edges of Mom's hydrangea bushes, turning them silver.
The old stone firepit waits in the center, a dark circle ringed by teak chairs worn smooth from years of Florida humidity and countless bodies.
I arrange the wood carefully, methodically, the way Dad taught me. The newspaper is twisted at the bottom, with smaller sticks crossed over it, and larger pieces balanced on top. The lighter flicks to life on the third try, flame dancing against my thumb before catching the paper.
I watch the fire climb, patient and hungry.
The chair creaks as I sink into it. My fingers curl into the armrests, finding the same grooves they've known since high school. How many nights had I spent out here? Homework sessions with friends. Post-game celebrations. College acceptance tears.
And then that night.
The flames grow stronger, and I see Warren's face in them. His hesitation melted into desire. The way his eyes caught the firelight before he leaned in. How his hand brushed ash from my cheek. It was the first touch that changed everything.
Or had things changed before that? Maybe it started earlier—when he laughed at one of my dumb jokes that summer, or when his hand brushed mine passing a drink across the porch, and I felt it everywhere.
Being back here in Palm Beach, seeing him yesterday at the board meeting, brings all of it back to the surface. I thought five years was enough to put it and him to rest.
But we share something he knows nothing about. We will always be connected, and I'm wracked with a guilt I never knew I'd experience before seeing him again. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
I see Beckett in his eyes.
I press my palm hard against my thigh, anchoring myself to the present. Upstairs, Beckett sleeps with his stuffed dinosaur tucked against his chest. He has Warren's intensity when he focuses on building blocks or kicks a soccer ball. He furrows his brow exactly like his father when he's frustrated.
Heat from the fire mirrors the burning in my chest. Five years of carrying this alone. Almost five years of watching Beckett grow, cataloging each new similarity with a mixture of joy and dread.
I thought coming home would complete the closing of a circle. Instead, it's like I've torn open the stitches I've spent years carefully sewing.
The flames blur as tears threaten. I blink them back, refusing to let them fall. I've made it this far without breaking. One more day, one more week, just until Beckett and I are settled.
My phone threatens to fall out of my pocket. I pull it out, my thumb finding Gemma's contact photo. Her face appears, dark eyebrows raised in her perpetual state of amused skepticism.
I need her voice, her blunt perspective to pull me out of this spiral.
I exhale shakily and press call, holding the phone in front of my face. The fire crackles, giving my face an orangish hue, the pops as persistent as my guilt.
Gemma's face appears on screen, all messy ponytail and crooked grin. Behind her, I glimpse blankets tangled on her couch and what looks like a half-empty bottle of wine sitting on the side table behind her.
"Well, well, well. You look like you're about to summon spirits. Your face is reflecting what I can only assume is the famous Palm Beach fire pit I've heard so much about." Her voice carries a soothing balm in my hurricane of a life.
My shoulders drop an inch. "Trust me, I've considered it. Maybe one could tell me what the hell I'm doing. Why didn't you tell me to never take a job in Palm Beach?"
"Please. You survived five years of Chicago winters as a single mom in hospital admin. Palm Beach is a vacation compared to that nightmare."
The flames pop and crackle as I shift in my seat. "Remember that blizzard when the daycare closed and I had a board presentation?"
"When I showed up with a beach float and took Beckett sledding?" Gemma laughs. "That kid was a natural, by the way. Even at two."