Ryan tries and fails to hold back his grin. “Exactly what your sister thought about me.”
Cara chuffs, shooting him her best eye-roll. We all know Ryan persistently pursued her for months before she finally agreed to go out with him. After a year of dating, they were engaged. Six months later they got married in Hawaii. Marigold followed a little while later. They let me live with them while I was in college then convinced me to stay after graduation so I could be closer to family. I’m grateful to them, but it’s probably past time for me to move out.
“Just don’t work too much,” Cara says, handing me a hanger. “You need a life too.”
“I’ll drag her out of the house if she starts nesting with her sticky notes,” Lottie teases, grabbing a sweater from the pile on my bed and putting it on a hanger.
I roll my eyes as Marigold lets out a tiny wail in Ryan’s arms. He kisses the top of her head before handing her over to Cara to feed her.
Lottie helps me unpack and put away my clothes while Ryan sets up my TV—even though I told him I can do it myself. When Cara is finished feeding Marigold, she changes her diaper before handing her over to me to say goodbye.
“How can you leave this face?” Cara asks, making one last attempt to guilt me into staying. “She’s going to miss her Auntie Madeline. I haven’t had the heart to break the news to her that you won’t be there for bath time.”
Marigold looks up at me with big, blue eyes and smiles. God, I’m going to miss her.
“Good luck at Cove.” Ryan wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into his side. “If you need anything, just call. You know we are always here for you.”
“You better,” Cara agrees, kissing me on my cheek. “I love you, girl.”
TWO
Madeline
I am halfway through organizing my sweaters when Lottie’s music starts echoing through the shared wall. Violin, of course. She’s been playing since we were teenagers, and it still carries the kind of haunting, dramatic sound that makes you feel like you’re living in a movie trailer of your own life.
For a moment I just sit and listen. It’s beautiful and I didn’t realize how much I missed the sound. Lottie has always played like the music comes from somewhere deep in her bones. In high school, when the rest of us were struggling through basic guitar chords, she was performing Bach at the winter recital. Later, when her life was turned upside down by a major surgery, violin was the one thing that brought her back to life.
Suddenly, the music cuts off mid-note, replaced by the sound of her footsteps in the hall.
“Ready for a break?” she asks when she appears in my doorframe a second later.
Lottie’s hair is slicked into a perfect knot, a few strands purposefully escaping to softly frame her face. She’s barefoot, wearing faded jeans and an oversized sweater that looks designer, because everything she owns seems like it belongs on a runway.
“Maybe a quick cup of tea,” I say, stacking one sweater on top of another.
“Tea?” she asks, sounding skeptical. “Oh wow, you’re really going full grandma tonight, huh?”
“I picked up some chamomile. It’s calming.”
“Calming,” Lottie repeats. “You moved to a small, coastal town. Not a convent.”
I arch a brow. “Some of us find serenity in silence.”
“And some of us find it at Replay Brewery during half-price flights night.”
I blink. “During what?”
She waltzes into my room, violin still in hand. “Every Friday, they’ve got live music, trivia, and a guy named Nolan who brews an IPA that could change your life. Come with me. It’ll be fun.”
“Really?” I tuck an errant strand of hair behind my ear, looking down at my tights. “Half my stuff is still in boxes. I’m a mess. There’s no way to fix this.”
“It’s fine. It’s Deep Cove, not one of your parents’ stuffy cocktail parties with twenty-dollar drinks,” she says, setting her violin carefully on my desk to go look through my closet.
I laugh, despite myself. “Trust me, I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.”
Lottie and I both have. We met at St. Margaret’s, the boarding school tucked an hour outside of Vancouver, where the tuition was obscene, and expectations were sky high. It was the kind of place whereeveryone there had a last name that opened doors, and we were expected to walk through them without hesitation. Lottie played in the school orchestra while I ran the debate team per my father’s instruction. We bonded over our mutual dislike of weekend galas and resentment over being told to “act the part.” We both grew up in a world that looked perfect from the outside but felt hollow up close. I think that’s why she gets me.
I grew up surrounded by that lifestyle. Fundraisers, galas, rooftop parties with people who wore their family lineage like a status symbol. As the daughter of a politician who oozes charm right down to his monogrammed cufflinks, I’ve had my lifetime quota of champagne and fake smiles. Every dinner conversation was a rehearsal for the next campaign, every compliment crafted for optics. My mother has perfected the role of the politician’s wife. She smiles on cue, dresses like a headline, and never lets a hair fall out of place—even when everything around her is unraveling.
