Anne climbed up onto the warm rocks to sit beside her. She was shivering a bit from the icy water, but the powerful sunshine warmed her up quickly enough.
As soon as the water evaporated from their skin, Oakley sprayed her sister’s freckled back with sunscreen.
Anne gave her a look that was half exasperation, half affection.
“Wait five minutes,” Oakley ordered.
Anne rolled her eyes and handed her half of a tangerine.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, watching their kids splash and play. Claire was splayed on a flat rock above the waterfall, and Oakley’s hands itched to douse her in sunscreen. Maybe after this tangerine, she would just climb up and…
“Mom!” Harper shouted. “Look at this!”
“I’m watching,” she called back.
Her baby – eight years old already, by some cruel trick of time – did a spinning jump off of the cliff, twirling through the air like a ballerina before splashing into the water.
Oakley’s breath caught; it always did when one of her girls was underwater.
Then Harper surfaced with a smile, and she could breathe again.
“Are you going back in?” Anne asked.
“Eventually.” She felt languid and relaxed, sitting there in the sunshine.
“How’s Trent?” Anne asked after a while.
“Good. He’ll be back next week.”
“He’s gone?”
“Business trip. Some meetings on the mainland.”
“You never talk about him.” Anne was peering at her in an intense sort of way from beneath her oversized sunhat.
“Sure I do,” Oakley said with a frown.
“Not really.”
She looked back out at her girls, who were climbing the rocks beside the waterfall for the upteenth time.
“Is everything okay with you guys?”
“You know how it is.” Oakley shrugged. “Once kids come into the picture, everything else sort of fades into the background. That happened with you too, didn’t it?”
“Yep.” Anne’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “And look how that turned out.”
She winced. “Sorry.”
“I’m happy to babysit. I know driving all the way down to Mom’s just to drop them off for a date night is hard. I can drive up as soon as I have my car.”
“Sure,” Oakley agreed automatically. She stared off into middle distance, trying to remember the last time that she and her husband had gone out on an actual date, just the two of them.
She couldn’t remember.
Years of infertility had taken their toll, and then parenthood had finally come all in a rush, with a traumatized toddler and a wailing newborn. Oakley had thrown herself into motherhoodwith everything that she had, and Trent had supported her. She could hardly remember what things had been like before, when it was just the two of them. That was almost inconceivable to her now.
They needed time to reconnect.
