"Good for him." Tom watched Ethan work for a moment. "He seems like he's got a lot going on."
"His dad's getting remarried. To someone not much older than Sophie."
Tom whistled low. "That'll do it."
A server came through from the patio—college-aged, relaxed, tan in a way that suggested he'd grown up spending summers here. He stopped at the host podium, leaning against it to say something to Sophie. She laughed—really laughed, not the polite version Meredith knew so well—and then she reached up and touched his arm. Brief, almost nothing. Her fingertips against his forearm, a gesture so small it might have meant nothing.
Except Meredith saw Sophie's whole posture change. How she angled toward him, her smile softer than it had been a moment ago. The server—Jake, she'd heard Diane call him—looked at Sophie like she'd said something brilliant instead of whatever small joke had passed between them.
Sophie's phone buzzed on the podium. She glanced at it, and Meredith watched her daughter's face shift—the softness disappearing, replaced by an expression more careful. More composed. She typed a quick reply without picking it up.
Trevor. It had to be Trevor.
And the way Sophie had glanced at her phone was nothing like how she'd looked at Jake.
Meredith's stomach dropped.
"Don't," Tom said quietly.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever you're thinking. Don't."
"I wasn't thinking anything."
"You were thinking about getting involved. About warning her, or guiding her, or whatever it is you do when you think one of your people is about to make a mistake." Tom set down his glass. "She's seventeen. Let her make her own choices."
"Even if they're bad ones?"
"Especially then." He met her eyes. "She'll figure it out."
Meredith looked at her daughter across the restaurant. Sophie was helping another family now, menus in hand, smile professional but genuine. She handled the job like she handled everything—competently, carefully, with just enough personality to make people like her.
She was going to be fine. College in the fall, a whole future ahead of her, a life that would take her further and further from the girl who'd built sandcastles on this beach and cried over jellyfish stings.
But Trevor was at home, waiting. Texting. Planning for a future Sophie might already be drifting away from.
"I'm not ready," Meredith said. She meant Sophie leaving. She meant all of it.
Tom reached over and took her hand. "Nobody is. That's not the point."
They finished dinner and left cash on the bar. Sophie waved to them on the way out—a real wave, not the dismissive flick she'd given when they arrived. Ethan nodded from across the room, barely looking up from his work.
At the door, Meredith glanced back one more time. Jake had returned to the patio, but Sophie was watching him go—a second, maybe two, long enough for Meredith to catch it before her daughter refocused on the podium and her phone and the text she still hadn't answered.
CHAPTER SIX
Driftwood Coffee was quiet, the lull between the early rush and the lunch crowd.
Jen ordered at the counter and scanned the room while she waited. Corner tables, a couple with a stroller near the door, two women deep in conversation over what looked like the day's plans. The table by the window was open.
Coffee in hand, she claimed the window table and opened her laptop before she could talk herself out of it. The document labeled "DON'T DELETE" was right where she'd left it, cursor blinking after the last sentence she'd written. More pages now than when she'd started. She'd been adding to it in stolen hours, early mornings, late nights when the house was quiet.
It was ridiculous. It was nothing like what she was supposed to be writing. Her editor was waiting for the next Clementine Fields. The series that had built her career, paid off her mortgage, given her the life she'd carefully constructed over fifteen years of deadlines.
She scrolled through the fantasy pages instead.
The prose was looser here, less careful. She'd stopped thinking about word counts and chapter breaks and whether the red herrings were planted early enough. She'd written. And for three days, that had been enough.
