“Don’t wait too long to open this.” Alex handed me the takeout container.
“Okay.” I kept my eyes on it. “Alex, I—”
“No. Don’t say it. You just…” He swallowed and took a step back. “You just stand there and make heart-eyes at me, okay?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded. When I opened them again, he was walking down the street, his backpack bouncing with each step. He stopped a few streetlamps away and turned around.
“What?” I called out.
“Just checking,” he said.
I laughed in spite of the distance growing between us. Of course, I was still making heart-eyes, eating up the way the light fell on his hair, the outline of his shoulders, his long, easy strides. I watched him get smaller and smaller, until he was almost beyond the curve of the hill. He turned around again and waved, walking backward, step by step, until he disappeared from view.
For a moment, the whole island went quiet. The night was emptier, and the air rushed away from me toward the shadows that Alex had melted into.
“Go.” Someone slid something cool and solid into my hand. It was the handle to my suitcase.
I turned to find Dolly by my side.
“Go,beta,” she said. “If you leave now, you can still catch him.”
I stared at her. “Wha—”
“I haven’t always been a good mother, have I? I built a wall and kept you on the other side. It’s not that I didn’t love you. I just never loved myself enough to let anyone in. But you… You always tried to break through, always tried to meet every expectation. You offered up your love, but it only reminded me of the choices I made.
“I did exactly what was expected of me, too. I walked the path my father laid out for me, even though it meant denying my truth. I was suffering, and I pulled you into the same cycle with me. It’s time to break free,beta.” She nudged the suitcase toward me. “Ja. Do it for both of us.”
“But—”
“No buts. I asked Isabelle to invite Alex tonight. My God, the way he was watching over you while you slept. Like nothing else existed. We were all scared to cross him.Maineh phaisala karliya. I’ve decided. He is the one for you.”
“He is?”
“Haan. Like I’d let you marry anyone else.”
“But you always said it has to be someone with three thumbs.”
“Of course it has to be someone with three thumbs. I’ll die if you marry anyone else, or have you forgotten that part? But Alex already has three thumbs,na?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look.” She pointed behind us.
Naani was standing there, giving me a thumbs-up. “One,” she said.
Beside her was Rachel Auntie, doing the same. “Two.”
“Three.” Dolly raised her own and stood beside them, all three thumbs in a row.
Three soul sisters passing on the baton, cheering me to take it and run as fast as I could toward my own happiness.
I looked toward the harbor. “I don’t know if I’ll make it in time.”
“Over there.” Rachel Auntie pointed to the bridal horse. “Quickly now.”
The horse’s handler, who had dozed off under the tree, opened his eyes as if alerted by a sixth sense. He blinked, unaccustomed to three generations of women stampeding toward him.
“I need your horse.” I threw the strap of my evening bag across my body. “I have to get to the port.”
