No one could hear me inside the car, but I’d never really undertaken a covert mission like this before, so I was nervous.
He turned to look at me, resting his forearm on the center console. “I just need to check on her.”
I nodded, feeling everything inside myself steel. I could do this. I could.
Mason opened his door quietly and crept out, walking around to open my door too, but not bothering to close it.
He took my puppy-free hand and we crept through the front yard as silently as possible, making our way toward the house, which was all lit up.
“We don’t even know that they’ll be here,” I whispered. “Or that she’s awake.”
“She’ll be up for her ten o’clock feeding,” Mason said, making everything inside me feel warm. He knew Maisy’s feeding schedule; he remembered. Maybe hewasready to be a father.
I stopped walking as my heart began to race.
“What?” Mason asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can see her. What if she’s crying? What if she’s upset?”
Mason nodded. “Okay. We don’t have to go,” he whispered. “We can just get back in the car.”
I looked at the two of us, in the dark, in Cheryl and Andy’s yard like a couple of criminals. We could have simplycalledthem. I’m sure they would have let us come over. But it wouldn’t be the same. That would be a performance. This was natural. And I wanted to see that, the natural. I wanted to see if they could handle my baby girl. I knew I had to stop thinking of her as mine. But wouldn’t she always be? At least a little?
I took Mason’s hand again and whispered, “We’re here. Let’s just do it.”
As we made our way toward the big picture window on the front of the house, I could make out three figures. My breath caught and my eyes filled with tears as we got close enough to see Drew—baseball star, alpha-male Drew—cradling his baby daughter on the couch. Sarah was beside him, stroking Maisy’s head, and they were both smiling down at her, talking, awestruck, like they couldn’t believe their luck.
Cheryl walked in with a bottle. The minute Maisy saw it, she began to cry. Mason and I both laughed softly. We remembered that. I leaned into him, and he squeezed me to his side. Neither of us said a word, just watched the interaction in the living room, as Cheryl tried to take Maisy and then, evidently, Drew decided he would keep her,he would feed her. He smiled down at his baby daughter as she took the bottle, and Cheryl sat on his other side.
Andy walked in too and stood smiling at the four of them. And, against all odds, instead of feeling like my heart was going to break, something new happened. I felt peaceful. I felt content. Maisy was happy. Maisy wasextravagantlyloved. I swallowed the lump in my throat as Mason rubbed his thumb over my shoulder.
“We did that,” he whispered. “We gave her that.”
All I had thought of the past few hours was how devastated I was that Maisy wasn’t mine. But Mason was right. He had rescued her. I had cared for her. We had helped a couple of scared teenagers tell the truth. And that had made a family.Wehad done that. Together.
I knew what it was to feel lost and let down by the world. I knew what it felt like for the people who were supposed to love and protect you to leave you behind. And I knew then that, even though we wouldn’t be the ones to raise her, Mason and I had helped create a future for this little girl where she would never, ever have to feel like that.
I snuggled tighter into him. Mason leaned down and kissed the top of my head as Dolly licked my face. I thought about what Abbott had said. She was getting her second chance, and, with the stars shining around us, in the arms of the man I loved, holding a new little life, I couldn’t help but think that maybe we’d get ours too. As we watched the parents, grandparents, and baby inside like we had bought tickets, like they were there for our entertainment, I had the most wonderful thought: Maybe, one day, Mason and I could have a family of our own.
TILLEYTilley All the Time
Every now and then, Tilley had to remind herself that this was real, not just another fantasy she had slipped into. Lying by the sparkling pool—George’s pool—surrounded by palm trees in a vintage Pucci caftan that Tilley believed somehow made the diamond ring on her left hand even more sparkling seemed too good to be true.
But, as George made his way toward her, a glass of champagne in each hand, she realized that it wasn’t a fit or a fantasy. This big love, this glorious, warm Palm Beach life, was hers and it was real. And, Tilley knew, it had saved her.
Tilley looked down at the notebook in her hand. “I can’t have champagne!” she proclaimed. “George, you of all people know I’m on a deadline.”
Tilley had begun writing theater reviews forClematis, the Palm Beach magazine that was owned by George’s McCann Media.
He smiled at her as he sat down and placed the glass on the table. “Well, you know what they say, my dear: Write drunk, edit sober.”
Tilley giggled. Yes,giggled.Like a girl. She supposed she felt like one too. That was what George could do to her. Or maybe it was Palm Beach. Or the writing. Or the fact that she had costarred in two PalmBeach productions since she had been down here. “Well, if it’s good enough for Hemingway…” Tilley picked up her champagne flute and tapped it to George’s.
As if the tinkling had summoned her, little Greer burst through one of the glass-paned doors, in a pink dress with fairies smocked on it, and flew toward her great-aunt, her brother on her heels.
George scooped little George up as Tilley covered Greer in kisses. It had been only a month since George and Tilley had been back to Dogwood—where they still resided in their separate rooms for propriety’s sake—but it felt like forever since Tilley had seen the kids. But it was right for Parker and Amelia to be free of her—at least some of the time.
“How was your flight?” Tilley asked Greer animatedly. Her eyes went wide. “Aunt Tilley, George and I gotwings.”
