Maggie sat down on the couch because her knees had stopped working. She looked at the phone. She looked at Jo Ellen. She looked at the phone again. On the screen, in real time, three little dots appeared under her last message.
“Oh, no,” Maggie said. “He’s writing back. Maybe I should block him.”
“You will not block him.”
The dots kept going. Maggie could feel her pulse in her throat, which was a new and unwelcome development. Then the message came through.
Brick: How about Tuesday night? Ladies drink free at Crabby’s in Fort Walton. They got a band.
Maggie read it twice.
“Crabby’s,” she said.
“It sounds charming and seafood-ish,” Jo Ellen cooed.
“It sounds like a venereal disease.” The whole thing was absurd, and unserious, and entirely beneath the dignity of Magnolia Fredericks Lawson. “I can’t believe you did this,” she finally said.
“Just type three little letters, Mags. Y-E-S. And we’re good to roll. And by roll, I mean?—”
“Stop!” Maggie exclaimed.
“Type,” Jo Ellen insisted. “We could die in a hurricane a week later. You’ll be sorry if you didn’t let that beard tickle your…chin.”
Heat burned her cheeks, but a laugh bubbled up and came out strong enough that she hit the screen and just happened to land on the Y. So, she finished the word and closed her eyes, the traitorous phone hot in her hand.
“Oh, Mags.” Jo Ellen sat down and put her arm around Maggie’s shoulders. “Remember the motto.”
“You only live once?” Maggie guessed.
“In Destin, we drink.”
“Well,” she whispered as she set the phone down and leaned into her friend. “I’ll have to in order to get through Crabby’s in Fort Walton Beach.”
“Oh, yes! Let’s go get new dresses and dancing shoes.” Jo was up and pulling Maggie with her. “Life is just beginning, Mags! And we are living it!”
From the deck of the Summer House, Kate watched a man in a black T-shirt unscrew the last bolt at the base of the wedding arch, impressed that the set company they’d hired really did work on Sunday morning.
The arch came down in two pieces—the curve of white flowers and lace, then the wooden structure itself. Another man in a baseball cap caught the entire thing before it hit the sand, and a woman working with him hooted loudly, the sound of their success drifting up over the dunes.
Closer to the house, two more men rolled up the dance floor in long pale strips. The lanterns were already gone, and the boardwalk aisle runner had been bagged and packed away.
Twelve hours ago, Tessa had floated down that boardwalk on the arm of a son she’d met only a few months earlier. Kate’s twin sister had glowed from dawn to the last dance, the happiest she’d ever been.
And now, a crew packed it all away…like it never happened.
Sometimes, Kate mused, it seemed like nothing ever stayed permanent. She’d battled that feeling when she’d gotten divorced, and again after Dad died, fighting it by digging herheels in at the chemistry lab at Cornell and holding on with a death grip.
Then the lab was yanked away, and the sense of impermanence and pending loss rose up and choked her again. At least she had the budding romance with Eli, a man who defined permanence.
And then…they faced the chasm of faith that all but assured this relationship was doomed.
Doomed.
Goodness, she was bleak. To shake off the feeling, she gazed into the Destin blue sky, glorious and clear and achingly perfect. It was nearly impossible to imagine a hurricane brewing in these same waters. Impossible to feel…doomed.
Although, on his way out, Eli warned her that the minute the wedding décor was down, he’d be installing hurricane shutters on the first floor, which would be the most vulnerable to a storm surge. He seemed calm, but his focus had moved to getting their world ready for the worst.
And hers had moved to the challenge she’d blithely accepted while in his arms last evening.
