“And one napkin,” Nina said, holding it up.
The dusty rose was almost white now, the ink barely visible, the edges soft from a year of being touched and read and carried in pockets.
But the words were there. The pact.
Against all odds, these three women who had promised each other they would not back out had kept their promise every single time.
Harper took the napkin from Nina’s hand and looked at it. She thought about the night she’d written it, the porch, the frogs, the wine, the moment she’d pulled that pen out from her purse and decided being scared wasn’t a reason to stop.
“You know, I think this is the most important thing I’ve ever signed,” Harper said. “And I’ve signed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but none of them ever mattered to me like this.”
She handed the napkin to Claire, who folded it carefully and put it in her pocket.
They stood in the airfield.
The plane came in for a landing, yellow against the blue sky, and a new group of people in neon jumpsuits walked toward it, their faces filled with terror.
“You’ll be okay!” Harper yelled. “Most likely.”
The Lowcountry stretched out around them in every direction. And it was the most beautiful place any of them had ever lived.
They had survived.
And yet they were just getting started.
CHAPTER 19
Nina didn’t change the napkin color even once. Unlike Claire, she didn’t even think about it. She bought white napkins from the Piggly Wiggly, the kind that came in a plastic pack of 200 for about 4 bucks. She set them on the kitchen table in a pile, not fanned out or folded. They were white, they were napkins, and they were perfectly fine.
Claire would have had feelings about this.
A year ago, Claire would have shown up three hours early and reorganized the entire table with Mason jars and twine. She would have brought dahlia stems in colors complementing the season. But Claire was not hosting this party. Nina was, and Nina’s version of hosting was this.
There would be food. There would be people. Nobody would have an assigned seat, and if you needed a fork, you could open the drawer and get one yourself.
The food was Elena’s, all of it.
Elena had arrived at eight in the morning with the Honda rattling and a trunk full of food. She had an expression that suggested she had been cooking before the sun came up, which she had, most likely, because Elena didn’t believe in doing things halfway. And she especially didn’t believe in doing things halfway when the occasion was her daughter-in-law’s birthday.
Pollo asado, frijoles refritos, plátanos fritos, and empanadas that she guarded on the counter as if someone was trying to break in and steal them. Of course, if Harper got there, they would cease to exist within a few minutes. She made flan, a recipe she had been making since before David was born, from a card in her mother’s handwriting that was so old the edges were brown.
And, of course, the mole. Not Nina’s mole, but Elena’s mole, the very original one, the one David had grown up eating.
“You always make way too much food,” Nina said, putting her hands on her hips and looking across the counter.
“There’s no such thing as too much food. There is only not enough people,” Elena said.
She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at Nina, checking her for weight, color, and signs of life. Whatever she saw apparently satisfied her because she nodded once.
“You look good.”
“Thank you, Elena.”
“The man is coming?”
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
