“Everything's perfect. I saw the woodchuck.”
“The woodchuck? The actual woodchuck?”
“The actual woodchuck. It came out of its hole and looked at me.”
“What did it say?”
“Nothing. It's a woodchuck. But I think we reached an understanding.”
“You've officially lost your mind,” Sarah said from the back. “Just so you know.”
“Probably. But I'm at peace with it.”
Grandma Sarah was already in the driver's seat, her hands on the wheel, her purple tracksuit bright against the gray morning.She adjusted her mirrors with practiced efficiency and looked at Maggie in the rearview.
“Ready?”
Maggie took one last look at the house through the window. The white house with black shutters. The wraparound porch. The maple tree. The life she had lived and lost and finally released.
“Ready.”
Grandma Sarah put the RV in gear, and they pulled away from the curb. Maggie watched the house grow smaller and then shrink until it was just a white shape among other white shapes, and then they turned the corner and it was gone.
She settled back in her seat and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
“So,” Lauren said, “how long until we get to the pie place? Because I'm already hungry.”
“It's in New Jersey,” Grandma Sarah said. “We should be there by early afternoon if traffic cooperates.”
“Traffic never cooperates,” Sarah said.
“Then we'll make it cooperate. I have a horn and I'm not afraid to use it.”
“We know, Grandma. Everyone on the Eastern Seaboard knows.”
Maggie smiled and looked out the window at the Massachusetts landscape sliding past. They would drive south today, would stop in New Jersey for the famous pie, would find a hotel for the night. Tomorrow they would continue, and the day after that, and eventually the trees would change and the air would warm and they would cross into Florida, into the land of palm trees and sunshine and the life she had built from the wreckage of the one she had lost.
Captiva was waiting for her. The Key Lime Garden Inn, with its cheerful yellow walls and its view of the Gulf. Paolo, who loved her in ways Daniel never had, who saw her clearly andchose her anyway. The inn’s chefs, Oliver and Iris, the housekeepers, Millie and Dottie, the guests who came and went, the rhythm of island life that had become as familiar as her own heartbeat.
And soon, Christopher, Becca and Eloise would be there too. Their fixer-upper was waiting, full of problems to solve and rooms to renovate and a future to build. Her son would be close enough to visit, close enough to share Sunday dinners and birthday parties and all the ordinary moments that made up a life.
The waters of the Gulf would call to her again. The sunsets would paint the sky in colors she had never seen in Massachusetts. The sand would be warm beneath her feet, and the air would smell like salt and flowers, and she would wake each morning in a place that felt like home.
Not because of the building. Because of the life inside it. Because of the people she loved and the person she had become.
“I'm hungry,” Sarah announced. “When are we stopping for food?”
“We've been driving for twelve minutes,” Chelsea said.
“And? Twelve minutes is a long time.”
“It's really not.”
“I brought snacks,” Grandma Sarah said. “They're in the cabinet above the sink.”
“You brought cheese puffs?”
“Those are mine!” Lauren yelled. “They're essential road trip provisions.”
