“That’s whywe’replanning it,” Vivien said. “You just show up and be beautiful. Which, annoyingly, requires zero effort on your part.”
Tessa’s mouth quirked. She picked up her iced tea, took a long sip, and set it down.
“When?” she asked.
Kate and Vivien exchanged a look of pure triumph.
“Before the summer ends,” Vivien said. “Lacey is looking at the Jags schedule for Roman’s off-weekend.”
“He can’t come all the way from Jacksonville in the middle of the football season,” Tessa said.
“For your wedding?” Kate choked. “He’ll fake an injury if he has to, but your son will walk you down the aisle. Well, boardwalk.”
Tears pooled in Tessa’s eyes. “That would be…something.”
“Something you deserve,” Kate whispered.
Tessa pressed her fingers under her eyes, the move eerily similar to Kate’s own glasses-adjustment habit. They were opposites in almost every way, but the Wylie women shared certain tells.
“I have to tell Dusty,” Tessa said, her voice thick.
“Dusting!” Olive shouted from the highchair, right on cue, and the three of them burst out laughing so hard that the table next to them looked over.
“Perfect timing, Double O.” Tessa picked up a sticky little hand to kiss it. “What do you think, baby girl? You want to be a flower girl? Throw some petals on the sand?”
Olive held up the plastic starfish. “Fow-er?”
“Close enough.” Tessa looked at Kate and Vivien with an expression that Kate hadn’t seen on her sister’s face since the courthouse—raw, unguarded gratitude. “You really want to do this for me?”
“We really do,” Kate said.
Their food arrived and the conversation shifted into logistics. A guest list. Whether the ceremony should be at golden hour or true sunset. Music—live or playlist?
Tessa had opinions about everything, which was exactly what they expected from a professional event planner. By the time they finished lunch, Tessa had sketched a rough layout of a wedding arch and a short action list on a napkin while Olive painted her highchair tray with guacamole.
It was, Kate decided, a perfect afternoon. The Gulf stretched out beyond the deck railing. Her sister laughing and planning and alive with joy. Vivien mediating when they disagreed about flowers. And Olive, this sweet, unexpected gift, sitting in the middle of all of it like she’d always been there.
“Can I say something?” Kate said during a pause, while Tessa was cleaning avocado off Olive’s fingers.
“You can say anything,” Tessa said.
“I’m really happy for you, Tess. Not just the wedding—all of it. You’ve got Dusty and Olive and Roman and this house that’s currently being destroyed but will be beautiful. You found it. The whole thing.”
Tessa looked at her with soft eyes. “It only took me fifty years.”
“It took all of us a while,” Vivien said. “Look at us. Three women who spent their summers in Destin as teenagers, dreaming about boys and weddings and what our lives would be. And now—Peter, Eli, Dusty. They were all there, too. The three of them, right on the beach with us, all those summers ago.”
“The universe has a sense of humor,” Tessa said.
Kate almost corrected her but stopped herself. Eli would say it was God who’d orchestrated all that, and she knew it was chance and geography and a series of family connections that happened to converge.
Did it really matter what or who it was or wasn’t?Somethinghad drawn all of them back to this place, to each other, to love that had been waiting decades to find them.
“Speaking of Eli,” Tessa said, eyeing her with the ruthless scrutiny of a twin sister. “How are things?”
“Good. Really good.” Kate smiled. “I just keep thinking—the more time I spend with him, the more I love him. Distance is not our friend.”
“Then move here,” Vivien said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.