“Emma would come in a heartbeat,” Kate admitted. “But there’s Matt, and Jeffrey has his custody rights, and my job—though the lab is closed, so that’s less of an anchor than it used to be.”
“And the faith thing?” Tessa asked gently.
Kate looked out at the water. “I don’t know. But surely that can’t get in the way of a good love. Right?”
Neither of them answered immediately, which Kate appreciated.
“Right,” Vivien finally said, with the quiet confidence of a woman who’d watched her own love story unfold recently enough that she still glowed at all times.
“Right,” Tessa echoed, lifting Olive from the highchair for a more thorough cleaning and some lap time. “And for the record, Lady Katie, you deserve the whole thing, too. Not just the good love—the whole, settled, happy, figured-it-out thing. All of it.”
Kate put her glasses back on—of course she hadn’t realized she’d taken them off—and looked at her sister and her best friend across the table, their love palpable.
“Okay,” she said. “But first, we plan your wedding.”
“Deal,” Tessa said, and raised her iced tea. “I have only one request.” She leaned in. “You know what the three of us are going to dance to at the wedding.”
Vivien gave a little hoot. Kate threw her head back and laughed. And Tessa squeezed the sweet girl on her lap and started singing their signature song.
And all the way home, little Olive sang a toddler version of, “Walka on Sun-sine—oh, oh!” to the sheer delight of her mother and aunts-to-be.
Kate floatedinto the guest room on a cloud of wedding plans and sisterly love, still smiling from the afternoon at Pompano Joe’s.
“You should have seen Olive with the guacamole,” she said to Emma, who was sprawled on the bed, reading. “That child turned a highchair into a Jackson Pollock painting, but she’s adorable. And now we have to stay until September because Tessa’s going to have a real wedding, Em. On the beach at the Summer House, sunset, the whole thing.”
“That’s so cool,” Emma said, lowering her book, which was leather-bound and…wait. What was she reading?
She stared at the cover, embossed with a fish and some words. Kate’s smile didn’t disappear, but it froze in place.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“If you think it’s a Bible, yeah.” Emma looked up with an expression that held no guilt and no defiance—just youthful honesty.
“Eli gave you a Bible?” She didn’t have to ask, though. Who else would do such a thing?
“Actually, it was that old guy at the marina, Seamus. And he bought them for his ministry, which teaches poor kids how to fish.”
“And read the Bible.”
“Yeah, but did you know Grandpa’s name is on the scholarship that paid for these?” She patted the leather cover. “I kind of love that. It makes me feel close to him.”
How could Kate argue with feeling close to her dear late father? She couldn’t. She shouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
But still. A Bible?
She lowered herself onto the edge of the king-sized bed, facing Emma. She took off her glasses and cleaned them on her shirt, which she did not need to do but it bought her five seconds to arrange her face into something that wasn’t alarm.
“I didn’t know you were interested in that,” she said carefully.
“I wasn’t, really. But Eli said some stuff on the boat that stuck with me, and I wanted to look it up.” Emma rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “Did you know there’s a verse that says your body is a temple? Like, an actual temple where God lives?”
“I’ve heard the expression.”
“It’s in…one of the Corinthians. I really don’t get it all, but I found the quote. It’s kind of cool when you think about it, like, that your body is…for goodness. For God.”
“If you believe that sort of thing,” Kate said softly.
“Well, I like thinking of myself as…” She searched for the word. “Sacred.”