CHAPTER 1
Maggie Wheeler Moretti leaned against the kitchen sink at the Key Lime Garden Inn, her palms pressing into the cool edge of the counter as she stared off into nothing. Late afternoon light filtered softly over Captiva, that gentle lull of mid-March when winter guests had mostly gone, the spring breakers at Fort Myers Beach not yet in full force, and the island itself seemed to pause. In that quiet she could actually hear her thoughts, and some days she wasn’t sure whether that was a gift or a curse.
Behind her, the kitchen bore the evidence of a long, ordinary day: a pot soaking in sudsy water, a stack of plates waiting for the dessert crowd, the faint scents of coffee and lemon cleaner lingering in the air. Nothing noteworthy. Just another afternoon at the inn she cherished. And yet the atmosphere felt charged, as if change were gathering at the edges of everything.
Her eyes flicked to the wall calendar. March. Paolo had circled the final week in red. Next to it, in his careful block letters, were the words that made her chest constrict every time she read them: “Twins arrive this week.”
She tapped the counter absently. Twins. The word still sent athrill and a tremor through her. Beth had sounded worn out when they’d last spoken. Maggie pictured her youngest daughter alone in that old Massachusetts farmhouse, heavy with pregnancy, trying to act composed when she felt anything but.
Beth had always preferred to handle life’s storms on her own, a trait that made Maggie both proud and exasperated.
Her gaze slipped from the calendar to the small spiral notebook on the counter. A list of things that needed to happen before she set foot on an airplane headed for Boston.
Talk to Paolo about closing the inn for a few days if needed.
Confirm Lauren can get away from Sarasota.
Check on Sarah’s schedule with the kids and the Outreach Center.
Talk to Chris and Becca about timing.
Call the realtor in Andover.
The thought of that call twisted in her stomach.
She reached for a dish towel, more for something to do with her hands than anything else and started drying a dish. The movement was familiar enough that her mind slipped easily somewhere else.
In her mind, the house in Andover was always sunlit, even in winter. She saw the staircase with its worn banister, the scuffed floor in the hallway where five children had thundered back and forth, the kitchen table that bore the dents and scratches of every family dinner they had ever had there. She could picture the way Daniel used to come in from work, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door, calling out for whichever child was within his sight.
He had been a good father then. Before everything shifted. Before secrets and affairs and the long unraveling that changed their family forever.
She didn’t miss their marriage. That loss had healed over long ago. But the imprint of their family home remained, not as a shrine to Daniel, but as a record of the years when the Wheeler family was young and loud and still under one roof. Selling it felt like closing a chapter in a book she had lived line by line.
She shook her head and laughed softly at herself. “Ridiculous,” she murmured.
The back door creaked, and Paolo stepped in from the porch, bringing with him the smell of sun-warmed wood and potting soil. He wore one of his Sanibellia shirts, the green cotton smudged with dirt at the hem, and there was a smear of something dark on his cheek.
“Your rosemary is thriving,” he said, setting a crate of small herb pots on the table. “It’s trying to take over the back step. I thought I’d better bring some inside before it stages a coup.”
She smiled despite herself. “The last thing we need is an herb uprising.”
“We’d lose,” he said. “They outnumber us.”
He crossed to her, leaned in, and kissed her cheek. “You’ve been standing in the same spot for a while. Everything all right?”
“Just thinking,” she said.
He glanced at the calendar and nodded. “Dangerous activity.”
“Someone has to do it,” she replied.
He took the pot from her hands and placed it on the counter. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“The realtor called again,” she said. “She wanted to confirm that we’re still planning to come up when the babies arrive.”
“She’s anxious to get that house sold.”
Maggie nodded, “I can’t blame her. I think she wanted to put that house on the market the minute I moved here. After some explaining that Beth and Chris planned to stay there, she backed off. Then, when Beth and Gabriel got married and Chris and Becca did too, Lizzy couldn’t wait to call me again about selling. I could hear the disappointment in her voice when I told her Chris and Becca were going to stay there. Now that everyone is moving on, Lizzy’s finally getting what she’s wanted all these years.”
