“Breakfast?”
“It's a date. Our usual place?”
Our usual place. They already had routines, patterns, a shared rhythm developing. Kate tucked her phone away and looked at her sister, who was staring at her own phone, probably at a text from Ryan.
“Family dinner time,” Dani said. “Tom's cooking, so I ordered pizza as backup.”
“I'm getting better!” Tom protested.
“You made pasta into charcoal last week,” James reminded him.
“That was the stove's fault.”
As they bickered and cleaned, Kate moved to the porch and looked out at the harbor. She thought about the cycles of things, how her parents had met young, married young, built a life together until death separated them. She smiled thinking that she and Ben had known each other forever but were only now finding their way to each other. And now, Dani and Ryan had come together after years of finding themselves separately first. She thought about her father’s letter, still sitting inside the nightstand drawer. She still wasn’t ready to look at it, but she could see a time when the letter didn’t have the power to crush her.
“Kate, you coming?” Dani called. “The pizza's here and Tom's threatening to cook something to prove a point.”
“Coming,” Kate called back, taking one last look at the arbor where the couple had made their promises.
“Someday,” she told the flower girl, “but not yet.”
Maybe she was half right about that. Maybe someday was just about being ready when the moment arrived, about recognizing second chances when they appeared, about being brave enough to say yes when you'd spent so long saying not yet.
Kate joined her siblings in the kitchen, where Dani was already texting someone, probably confirming that business dinner that everyone knew was a date. Tom and James argued about the proper temperature for reheating pizza.
This was her family now. Not perfect, not without history and hurt, but choosing to be here together. They were all finding that it was never too late for someday to become today.
The next morning, Kate woke at five, too wired from the wedding to sleep. The inn was quiet, guests still sleeping off the celebration. She made coffee and stood in the kitchen, thinking about the bride and groom, their second chances, their promises about choosing each other every day.
Something pulled her to the attic. Maybe it was watching the bride in her simple silk dress, or maybe it was the talk of promises and forever, but Kate found herself climbing the narrow stairs, dust motes dancing in the early morning light streaming through the small window.
Her mother's wedding dress was in a trunk somewhere up here. Kate had never looked for it, never wanted to see it during those first raw years after her death. But this morning, with love in the air, she wanted to see what her mother had worn when she'd chosen her father, chosen this life.
The trunk was in the corner, covered in a sheet. Kate lifted the lid carefully, the hinges creaking. The dress was on top,wrapped in tissue paper that had yellowed with age. Simple white cotton, nothing fancy, but beautiful in its simplicity. Elizabeth had been twenty-one, younger than Dani was now, making promises about forever.
Beneath the dress were other treasures. Pop's boutonniere, dried and fragile. A guest book with signatures Kate recognized—some still alive, many gone. Their wedding invitation, handmade, announcing the union of Elizabeth Whitfield and Daniel Perkins.
At the bottom of the trunk, in a manila envelope with “Katherine” written across it in her mother's careful script, was a letter. Kate's hands trembled as she opened it. The paper was thick, cream-colored, her mother's handwriting young and full of hope.
My dear Katherine (I know it will be Katherine),
I'm writing this the day I declined Woods Hole. You're just a flutter in my belly, barely real, but already you've changed everything. Your father doesn't know yet. I found out this morning, and he'll be thrilled.
But first, I needed to decide. Woods Hole, over marine biology, over thirty thousand dollars of freedom my father secretly gave me for school. I'm putting the money away for you because someday you might need to know that I chose you. Not sacrifice, choice. Not resignation, joy. You were wanted, Katherine. Every dream I might have deferred was worth the dream you were bringing.
I’m not going to tell your father about Woods Hole. I know he’d insist that I go, that he’d care for you when I couldn’t, but that’s not the life I want. I want to be a full-time mother. I don’t want to miss even one minute of your life. I want to show youeverything I know about the ocean, I think you'll love it like I do.
Here’s what else I know. I think you'll be brilliant and stubborn and too independent for your own good. I think you'll doubt, and cry, and worry, and wonder why you can't be more, do more, give more.
So let me tell you now, before you're even born: You matter because you exist. You're enough exactly as you are. And when you're ready, when you're older, when you have to make impossible choices, remember that the best decisions are made with love, not logic.
Be brave, my darling girl. Choose your own path. And know that whatever you choose, you were born from love and into love, and that's the only inheritance that really matters.
All my love, Mommy
P.S. I know your father will protect this account and will add to it when he can.
Kate sat on the dusty attic floor, the letter in her lap, crying for the mother who'd chosen her, the father who'd honored that choice, the gift that was so much more than money. Her mother had been accepted to Woods Hole, the same prestigious program Kate had dreamed of but never thought she could reach.
