Ford’s voice carried steady as a ship’s keel through the sudden quiet, and even though I’d seen the ring in our group text earlier, had watched him agonize over the timing and the words for weeks, hearing him actually say them still hit me like a wave I wanted to let carry me along.
“Bree Cartwright,” he began, a slight tremor underneath all that determination, “I have loved you for most of my life. First as my best friend, then as the woman who stole my heart, and now as this amazing bonus mom to my kid. You’re the missing piece I didn’t even know I was looking for until I lost you. I was an idiot to ever let you go, and I don’t want to waste another minute.” He pulled out the ring box, and several people in the crowd actually gasped. “Will you marry me?”
For one heartbeat that felt like it lasted an hour, I heard only my own pulse hammering in my ears. Then the room seemed to tip toward pure joy, and Bree’s laugh broke on a breath that sounded like yes before she actually managed to say the word out loud.
“I will marry you on one condition.”
Ford didn’t even blink. He probably would have agreed to anything in that moment. “What’s that?”
“You never, ever get me up here again.”
The place absolutely detonated—cheers and applause and whistles that probably reached all the way down to the docks. I didn’t try to shout over the celebration; I just lifted my glass in a quiet toast, while Ford slid the ring onto her finger with shaking hands and pulled her up into a kiss that turned the whole bar molten with shared happiness.
It was nice to have something to celebrate.
Even if everything else in my life was falling apart.
Two
MADDEN
The ferry deck was a parking lot with railings. We sat in two tight lanes, engines off, windows cracked. Heat shimmered up from the metal around us. Somewhere behind me, a toddler announced for the fourth time that his popsicle had “died,” which earned sympathetic laughter from a row of sunburned adults in matching neon shirts that said FAMILY VACAY.
I stayed in my car with the seat pushed back, elbow on the sill, watching tourists take pictures of each other against the sliver of water you could see through the gaps. Phones up. Peace signs. Duck lips. A girl in a floppy hat recorded a slow pan of the horizon like she was panning across the Grand Canyon instead of a sound dotted with crab pots and a handful of sails.
Los Angeles had taught me how to disappear. You could walk three blocks there and shed one life for another. Hatterwick was the opposite. Here, you collected lives you couldn’t set down—daughter, cousin, the girl who left, the woman who came back. You didn’t vanish on Hatterwick; you got recognized, cataloged, recounted, misremembered. You became a story whether or not you wanted one.
A deckhand in a reflective vest appeared at the head of the lane, hand up, then rotated it in a lazy circle that meant “get ready.” Doors thunked as people climbed back into their cars. Keys turned. Engines rumbled awake. The ferry shifted under us as the crew brought the ramp down. A cheer went up somewhere on the upper deck, because apparently ramps lowering were content now.
I checked my phone while we waited for the front row to move.
Astrid:
You close?
Madden:
On the deck. Should be off in a few.
The dots popped up immediately.
Astrid:
I’ll meet you at the marina. Text me when you park.
Madden:
Will do.
I set the phone face down and put both hands on the wheel. My palms were damp.
We rolled in a slow, patient crawl. The sight line widened to the dock and the squat building with the snack bar and the rack of brochures advertising fishing charters and ghost walks. A kid in a life jacket bounced on his toes on the pedestrian side, waving like we were a parade. When it was my turn, I eased down the ramp and felt the ferry let us go.
The road off the dock was the same and not. New paint, wider shoulder, fresh striping that would have to be redone in a couple of summers. Banners announced a summer concert series in cheerful fonts over names of bands I didn’t recognize. The gift shops had multiplied, colorful as candy; the old ice cream parlor still sat in its pretty pink shell like a time capsule someone had dusted. For a block, I let myself scan the street for Gwen the way I always did—out of habit more than hope. It was a reflex. It hurt anyway.
My cousin wasn’t here.
She never would be again.
