Like the T-shirt says, life is good.

My name’s Shani Amira Marjorie Hanna, and up until I started going to Spencer Academy in my freshman year, all I wanted to do was get in, scoop as many A’s as I could, and get out. College, yeah. Adulthood. Being the boss of me. Social life? Who cared? I’d treat it the way I’d done in middle school, making my own way and watching people brush by me, all disappearing into good-bye like they were flowing down a river.

Then when I was a junior, I met the girls, and things started to change whether I wanted them to or not. Or maybe it was just me. Doing the changing, I mean.

Now we were all seniors and I was beginning to see that all this “I am an island” stuff was just a bunch of smoke. ’Cuz I was not like the Channel Islands, sitting out there on the hazy horizon. I was so done with all that.

Lissa Mansfield sat on the other side of the fire from me while this adorable Jared Padalecki look-alike named Kaz Griffin sat next to her trying to act like the best friend she thought he was. Lissa needs a smack upside the head, you want my opinion. Either that or someone needs to make a serious play for Kaz to wake her up. But it’s not going to be me. I’ve got cuter fish to fry. Heh. More about that later.

“I can’t believe this is the last weekend of summer vacation,” Carly Aragon moaned for about the fifth time since Kaz lit the fire and we all got comfortable in the sand around it. “It’s gone so fast.”

“That’s because you’ve only been here a week.” I handed her the bag of tortilla chips. “What about me? I’ve been here for a month and I still can’t believe we have to go up to San Francisco on Tuesday.”

“I’m so jealous.” Carly bumped me with her shoulder. “A whole month at Casa Mansfield with your own private beach and everything.” She dipped a handful of chips in a big plastic container of salsa she’d made that morning with fresh tomatoes and cilantro and little bits of—get this—cantaloupe. She made one the other day with carrots in it. I don’t know how she comes up with this stuff, but it’s all good. We had a cooler full of food to munch on. No burnt weenies for this crowd. Uh-uh. What we can’t order delivered, Carly can make.

“And to think I could have gone back to Chicago and spent the whole summer throwing parties and trashing the McMansion.” I sighed with regret. “Instead, I had to put up with a month in the Hamptons with the Changs, and then a month out here fighting Lissa for her bathroom.”

“Hey, you could have used one of the other ones,” Lissa protested, trying to keep Kaz from snagging the rest of her turkey-avocado-and-alfalfa-sprouts sandwich.

I grinned at her. Who wanted to walk down the hot sandstone patio to one of the other bathrooms when she, Carly, and I had this beautiful Spanish terrazzo-looking wing of the house to ourselves? Carly and I were in Lissa’s sister’s old room, which looked out on this garden with a fountain and big ferns and grasses and flowering trees. And beyond that was the ocean. It was the kind of place you didn’t want to leave, even to go to the bathroom.

I contrasted it with the freezing wind off Lake Michigan in the winter and the long empty hallways of the seven-million-dollar McMansion on Lake Road, where I always felt like a guest. You know—like you’re welcome but the hosts don’t really know what to do with you. I mean, my mom has told me point-blank, with a kind of embarrassed little laugh, that she can’t imagine what happened. The Pill and her careful preventive measures couldn’t all have failed on the same night.

Organic waste happens. Whatever. The point is, I arrived seventeen years ago and they had to adjust.

I think they love me. My dad always reads my report cards, and he used to take me to blues clubs to listen to the musicians doing sound checks before the doors opened. That was before my mom found out. Then I had to wait until I was twelve, and we went to the early shows, which were never as good as the late ones I snuck into whenever my parents went on one of their trips.

They travel a lot. Dad owns this massive petroleum exploration company, and when she’s not chairing charity boards and organizing fund-raisers, Mom goes with him everywhere, from Alaska to New Zealand. I saw a lot of great shows with whichever member of the staff I could bribe to take me and swear I was sixteen. Keb’ Mo, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Roomful of Blues—I saw them all.

A G-minor chord rippled out over the crackle of the fire, and I smiled a slow smile. My second favorite sound in the world (right after the sound of M&Ms pouring into a dish). On my left, Danyel had pulled out his guitar and tuned it while I was lost in la-la land, listening to the waves come in.

Lissa says there are some things you just know. And somehow, I just knew that I was going to be more to Danyel Johnstone than merely a friend of his friend Kaz’s friend Lissa, if you hear what I’m saying. I was done with being alone, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stand out from the crowd.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like this crowd. Carly especially—she’s like the sister I would have designed my own self. And Lissa, too, though sometimes I wonder if she can be real. I mean, how can you be blond and tall and rich and wear clothes the way she does, and still be so nice? There has to be a flaw in there somewhere, but if she’s got any, she keeps them under wraps.

Gillian, who we’d see in a couple of days, has really grown on me. I couldn’t stand her at first—she’s one of those people you can’t help but notice. I only hung around her because Carly liked her. But somewhere between her going out with this loser brain trust and then her hooking up with Jeremy Clay, who’s a friend of mine, I got to know her. And staying with her family last Christmas, which could have been massively awkward, was actually fun. The last month in the Hamptons with them was a total blast. The only good thing about leaving was knowing I was going to see the rest of the crew here in Santa Barbara.

The one person I still wasn’t sure about was Mac, aka Lady Lindsay MacPhail, who did an exchange term at school in the spring. Getting to know her is like besieging a castle—which is totally appropriate considering she lives in one. She and Carly are tight, and we all e-mailed and IM-ed like fiends all summer, but I’m still not sure. I mean, she has a lot to deal with right now, with her family and everything. And the likelihood of us seeing each other again is kind of low, so maybe I don’t have to make up my mind about her. Maybe I’ll just let her go the way I let the kids in middle school go.

Danyel began to get serious about bending his notes instead of fingerpicking, and I knew he was about to sing. Oh, man, could the night get any more perfect? Even though we’d probably burn the handmade marshmallows from Williams-Sonoma, tonight capped a summer that had been the best time I’d ever had.

The only thing that would make it perfect would be finding some way to be alone with that man. I hadn’t been here more than a day when Danyel and Kaz had come loping down the beach. I’d taken one look at those eyes and those cheekbones and, okay, a very cut set of abs, and decided here was someone I wanted to know a whole lot better. And I did, now, after a couple of weeks. But soon we’d go off to S. F., and he and Kaz would go back to Pacific High. When we pulled out in Gabe Mansfield’s SUV, I wanted there to be something more between us than an air kiss and a handshake, you know what I mean?

I wanted something to be settled. Neither of us had talked about it, but both of us knew it was there. Unspoken longing is all very well in poetry, but I’m the outspoken type. I like things out there where I can touch them.

In a manner of speaking.

Danyel sat between Kaz and me, cross-legged and bare-chested, looking as comfortable in his surf jams as if he lived in them. Come to think of it, he did live in them. His, Kaz’s, and Lissa’s boards were stuck in the sand behind us. They’d spent most of the afternoon out there on the waves. I tried to keep my eyes on the fire. Not that I didn’t appreciate the view next to me, because trust me, it was fine, but I know a man wants to be appreciated for his talents and his mind.

Danyel’s melody sounded familiar—something Gillian played while we waited for our prayer circles at school to start. Which reminded me . . . I nudged Carly. “You guys going to church tomorrow?”

She nodded and lifted her chin at Lissa to get her attention. “Girl wants to know if we’re going to church.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lissa said. “Kaz and his family, too. Last chance of the summer to all go together.”

And where Kaz went, Danyel went. Happy thought.

“You’re not going to bail, are you?” Carly’s brows rose a little.

It’s not like I’m anti-religion or anything. I’m just in the beginning stages of learning about it. Without my friends to tell me stuff, I’d be bumbling around on my own, trying to figure it out. My parents don’t go to church, so I didn’t catch the habit from them. But when she was alive and I was a little girl, my grandma used to take me to the one in her neighborhood across town. I thought it was an adventure, riding the bus instead of being driven in the BMW. And the gospel choir was like nothing I’d ever seen, all waving their arms in the air and singing to raise the roof. I always thought they were trying to deafen God, if they could just get up enough volume.

So I like the music part. Always have. And I’m beginning to see the light on the God part, after what happened last spring. But seeing a glimmer and knowing what to do about it are two different things.

“Of course not.” I gave Carly a look. “We all go together. And we walk, in case no one told you, so plan your shoes carefully.”

“Oh, I will.” She sat back on her hands, an “I so see right through you” smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “And it’s all about the worship, I know.” That smile told me she knew exactly what my motivation was. Part of it, at least. Hey, can you blame me?

The music changed and Danyel’s voice lifted into a lonely blues melody, pouring over Carly’s words like cream. I just melted right there on the spot. Man, could that boy sing.

Blue water, blue sky

Blue day, girl, do you think that I

Don’t see you, yeah I do.

Long sunset, long road,

Long life, girl, but I think you know

What I need, yeah, you do.

I do a little singing my own self, so I know talent when I hear it. And I’d have bet you that month’s allowance that Danyel had composed that one. He segued into the chorus and then the bridge, its rhythms straight out of Mississippi but the tune something new, something that fit the sadness and the hope of the words.

Wait a minute.

Blue day? Long sunset? Long road? As in, a long road to San Francisco?

Whoa. Could Danyel be trying to tell someone something? “You think that I don’t see you”? Well, if that didn’t describe me, I didn’t know what would. Ohmigosh.

Could he be trying to tell me his feelings with a song? Musicians were like that. They couldn’t tell a person something to her face, or they were too shy, or it was just too hard to get out, so they poured it into their music. For them, maybe it was easier to perform something than to get personal with it.

Be cool, girl. Let him finish. Then find a way to tell him you understand—and you want it, too.

The last of the notes blew away on the breeze, and a big comber smashed itself on the sand, making a sound like a kettledrum to finish off the song. I clapped, and the others joined in.

“Did you write that yourself?” Lissa removed a marshmallow from her stick and passed it to him. “It was great.”

Danyel shrugged one shoulder. “Tune’s been bugging me for a while and the words just came to me. You know, like an IM or something.”

Carly laughed, and Kaz’s forehead wrinkled for a second in a frown before he did, too.

I love modesty in a man. With that kind of talent, you couldn’t blame Danyel for thinking he was all that.

Should I say something? The breath backed up in my chest. Say it. You’ll lose the moment. “So who’s it about?” I blurted, then felt myself blush.

“Can’t tell.” His head was bent as he picked a handful of notes and turned them into a little melody. “Some girl, probably.”

“Some girl who’s leaving?” I said, trying for a teasing tone. “Is that a good-bye?”

“Could be.”

I wished I had the guts to come out and ask if he’d written the song for me—for us—but I just couldn’t. Not with everyone sitting there. With one look at Carly, whose eyes held a distinct “What’s up with you?” expression, I lost my nerve and shut up. Which, as any of the girls could tell you, doesn’t happen very often.

Danyel launched into another song—some praise thing that everyone knew but me. And then another, and then a cheesy old John Denver number that at least I knew the words to, and then a bunch of goofy songs half of us had learned at camp when we were kids. And then it was nearly midnight, and Kaz got up and stretched.

He’s a tall guy. He stretches a long way. “I’m running the mixer for the early service tomorrow, so I’ve got to go.”

Danyel got up, and I just stopped my silly self from saying, “No, not yet.” Instead, I watched him sling the guitar over one shoulder and yank his board out of the sand. “Are you going to early service, too?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “I’m in the band, remember?”

Argh! As if I didn’t know. As if I hadn’t sat there three Sundays in a row, watching his hands move on the frets and the light make shadows under his cheekbones.

“I just meant—I see you at the late one when we go. I didn’t know you went to both.” Stutter, bumble. Oh, just stop talking, girl. You’ve been perfectly comfortable talking to him so far. What’s the matter?

“I don’t, usually. But tomorrow they’re doing full band at early service, too. Last one before all the turistas go home. Next week we’ll be back to normal.” He smiled at me. “See you then.”

Was he looking forward to seeing me, or was he just being nice? “I hope so,” I managed.

“Kaz, you coming?”

Kaz bent to the fire and ran a stick through the coals, separating them. “Just let me put this out. Lissa, where’s the bucket?”

“Here.” While I’d been obsessing over Danyel, Lissa had run down to the waterline and filled a gallon pail. You could tell they’d done this about a million times. She poured the water on the fire and it blew a cloud of steam into the air. The orange coals gave it up with a hiss.

I looked up to say something to Danyel about it and saw that he was already fifty feet away, board under his arm like it weighed nothing, heading down the beach to the public lot where he usually parked his Jeep.

I stared down into the coals, wet and dying.

I couldn’t let the night go out like this.

“Danyel, wait!” The sand polished the soles of my bare feet better than the pumice bar at the salon as I ran to catch up with him. A fast glance behind me told me Lissa had stepped up and begun talking to Kaz, giving me a few seconds alone.

I owed her, big time.

“What’s up, ma?” He planted the board and set the guitar case down. “Forget something?”

“Yes,” I blurted. “I forgot to tell you that I think you’re amazing.”

He blinked. “Whoa.” The barest hint of a smile tickled the corners of his lips.

I might not get another chance as good as this one. I rushed on, the words crowding my mouth in their hurry to get out. “I know there’s something going on here and we’re all leaving on Tuesday and I need to know if you—if you feel the same way.”

“About . . . ?”

“About me. As I feel about you.”

He put both hands on his hips and gazed down at the sand. “Oh.”

Cold engulfed me, as if I’d just plunged face-first into the dark waves twenty feet away. “Oh,” I echoed. “Never mind. I guess I got it wrong.” I stepped back. “Forget about it. No harm done.”

“No, Shani, wait—”

But I didn’t want to hear the “we can still be friends” speech. I didn’t want to hear anything except the wind in my ears as I ran back to the safety of my friends.

School is out for the summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lucy would have made more exclamation points, but Lollipop, her pot-bellied kitty, was watching from the windowsill above the bed, her black head bobbing with each stroke and dot. She’d be pouncing in a second.

Lucy protected the Book of Lists with her other arm and wrote…

2. Aunt Karen is taking her vacation to some island so she won’t be coming HERE for a while. YES!!

3. We have a soccer game in two weeks, thanks to Coach Auggy. A for-REAL game, with a whole other team, not just our team split up, which is always lame since we only have 8 players to begin with. I cannot WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lollipop twitched an ear.

“Forget about it,” Lucy said to her. She’d only just discovered the joy of making exclamation points from Veronica. Veronica was a girly-girl, but she did have her good points. Lucy snickered. “Good points, Lolli. Get it?”

Lollipop apparently did not, or else she didn’t care. She tucked her paws under her on the tile sill and blinked her eyes into a nap. Lucy slipped a few more exclamation marks in before she continued.

I get to hang out with J.J. and Dusty and Veronica and Mora any time I want, not just at lunch or soccer practice or church. Okay, so I already got to hang out with them a lot before summer, but now it’s like ANY time, and that’s perfect. Except we’re still stuck with Januarie. If she weren’t J.J.’s little sister we could just ditch her, but she needs a good influence. We’re a good influence. Well, maybe not Mora so much.

Lucy glanced at her bedroom door to make sure it was all the way shut. The Book of Lists was private and everybody else in the house—Dad and Inez the housekeeper nanny and her granddaughter Mora—knew to keep their noses out of it. Still, she always had to decide whether it was worth risking discovery to write down what she really, really thought.

“What do you say about it, Lolli?” she said.

There was an answering purr, though Lucy was pretty sure that was more about Lollipop dreaming of getting the other three cats’ food before they did than it was about agreeing with her. She went for it anyway.

Januarie still thinks Mora is the next best thing to Hannah Montana. Even though Mora got her in way a lot of trouble not that long ago she would probably give a whole bag of gummy bears just to have Mora paint her toenails. And that’s saying a lot. Januarie loves gummy bears. And Snickers bars. And those chocolate soccer balls Claudia sells down at the candy and flower shop. Which reminds me—

5. We can go buy candy in the middle of the day, or have breakfast at Pasco’s café or take picnics to OUR soccer field, because, guess what? It’s SUMMER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something black whipped across the page, and Lucy’s pen flew into space, landing with a smack against the blue-and-yellow toy chest. Knocking down the ruler Lucy always kept there to hold it open, in case Lollipop needed to jump in and hide, the lid slapped shut, and Lolli sprang into an upside down-U before she leaped after it and skidded across the top with her claws bared. She glared indignantly at Lucy.

“You did it, Simplehead,” Lucy said. “Wait! I’ll open it for you.” But before she could even scramble off the bed, Lolli dove under it. A squalling fight ensued with Artemis Hamm, who had obviously been sleeping beneath the mattress.

“Break it up, you two!” Lucy said. But she didn’t dare stick her hand under there. One of them would eventually come out with a mouth full of the other one’s fur and it would be over.

“What’s going on in there?” said a voice on the other side of the door.

Lucy stuck the Book of Lists under her pillow. It was Dad, who couldn’t see anyway, but she always felt better having her secrets well hidden when other people were in the room.

“Come on in—if you dare,” Lucy said.

She heard Dad’s sandpapery chuckle before he stuck his face in. She cocked her head at him, her ponytail sliding over her ear. “What happened to your hair?”

He ran a hand over salt-and-pepper fuzz as he edged into the room. “I just got my summer ‘doo down at the Casa Bonita. Is it that bad?”

“No. It’s actually kinda cool.”

“What do I look like?”

“Like—did you ever see one of those movies about the Navy SEAL team? You know…before?”

“Yeah.”

“You look like one of those guys.”

“Is that good?”

“That’s way good.”

Dad smiled the smile that made a room fill up with sunlight. She could have told him he looked like a rock star and he wouldn’t have known whether she was telling the truth or not. But she liked for the smiles to be real, and she did think her dad was handsome. Even with eyes that sometimes darted around like they didn’t know where to land.

He made his way to the rocking chair and eased into it. It would be hard for anybody who didn’t know to tell he was blind when he moved around in their house, as long as Lucy kept things exactly where they were supposed to be. She leaned over and picked up her soccer ball, just escaping a black-and-brown paw that shot from the hem of the bedspread.

“Keep your fight to yourselves,” Lucy said.

“What’s that about?”

“Exclamation points! It’s a long story.”

“Do I want to hear it?”

“No,” Lucy said. Not only because she didn’t want to tell it, but because she could see in the sharp way Dad’s chin looked that he hadn’t come in just to chat about cat fights. She hugged her soccer ball.

“Okay, what?” she said. “Is something wrong? Something’s wrong, huh?”

“Did I say that?”

“Aunt Karen’s coming, isn’t she? Man! I thought she was going out in the ocean someplace and we were going to have a peaceful summer.” She dumped the ball on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Dad’s smile flickered back in. “What makes you think I was going to talk about Aunt Karen?”

“Because she’s, like, almost always the reason you look all serious and heavy.”

“You get to be more like your mother every day, Champ. You read me like a book.”

“Then I’m right.” There went her perfect summer. She was going to have to redo that list.

“But you’re in the wrong chapter this time,” Dad said. “I’m serious, but it isn’t about Aunt Karen. Last I heard, she was headed for St. Thomas.”

“He’s going to need to be a saint to put up with her.”

Dad chuckled. “St. Thomas is an island, Luc’.”

“Oh.” She was doing better in school now that Coach Auggy was her teacher, but they hadn’t done that much geography this year.

“I just want to put this out there before Inez gets here.”

His voice was somber again, but Lucy relaxed against her pillows. If this wasn’t about Aunt Karen coming here wanting to take Lucy home with her for the summer, how bad could it be?

“So, you know Inez will be coming for all day, five days a week.”

“Right and that’s cool. We get along good now.” Lucy felt generous. “I don’t even mind Mora that much any more.”

“Good, because I’ve asked her if she’d be okay with Mr. Auggy also coming in to do a little home-schooling with you.”

Lucy shot up like one of her own freaked-out kitties.

“School?” she said. “In the summer?”

Dad winced like her voice was hurting his ears. “Just for a few hours a day, and not on Fridays.”

“Dad, hello! This is summer time. I have a TON of work to do to get ready for the soccer games if I want anybody from the Olympic Development Program to even look at me. School work?” She hit her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Why?”

“You’ve improved a hundred per cent since Mr. Auggy started teaching your class—”

“Yeah, so why are you punishing me by making me do more work? I don’t get it.”

She wished she could make exclamation points with her voice.

“You’ll get it if you let me finish.”

Dad’s voice had no punctuation marks at all, except a period, which meant, ‘Hush up before you get yourself in trouble.’ Lucy gnawed at her lower lip. She was glad for once that he couldn’t see the look on her face.

“You ended the school year in good shape, but Champ, you were behind before that. That means you’re still going to start middle school a few steps back.”

“I’ll catch up, Dad, I promise! I’ll study, like, ten hours a day when school starts again and I’ll do all my homework.”

Dad closed his eyes and got still. That meant he was waiting for her to be done so he could go on with what he was going to say as if she hadn’t said a word. She was in pointless territory. It made her want to crawl under the bed and start up the cat fight again. It seemed to work for them when they were frustrated.

“Your middle school teachers are going to expect your skills to be seventh-grade level,” Dad said. “Right now, Mr. Auggy says they’re about mid-sixth, which is great considering what they were in January.”

If she had been Mora, she would have been rolling her eyes by now. What was the point in telling her how wonderful she was when she was going to have to do what she didn’t want to do anyway?

“So here’s the deal,” Dad said.

Lucy sighed. “It’s only a deal if both people agree to it, Dad.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet.”

She stifled a “whatever,” which was sure to get her grounded for a least a week of her already dwindling summer.

“You’ll work with Mr. Auggy until you get your reading up to seventh-grade level. That could take all summer, or it could take a couple of weeks. That’s up to you.”

Lucy looked at him sharply. “What if I get it there in three days?”

“Then you’re done. We’ll check it periodically, of course, to make sure it stays there.”

“It will,” Lucy said. But she hoped her outside voice sounded more sure than the one that was screaming inside her brain: You can’t do this! What are you thinking?

There weren’t enough exclamation points in the world to end that sentence.

My ten-year-old brother, Mac, gives me a strange look from the seat beside me. With the top down in my aunt’s convertible, he can’t hear my words that are cast into the air to dance with the wind.

The orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge loom toward us, with the darkening blue of sky and water filling the spaces between. Aunt Jenna is driving, with Mom talking beside her.

So it’s finally true.

Nick likes me.

I think I’m happy. Everyone will expect me to be happy. It’s not been a secret that I’ve liked him for . . . well, ever. Or at least for a few months.

And yet I have a very good reason for being completely annoyed about this.

The text stating Nick’s indirect admission of love, or at least “like,” arrives as we’re leaving an afternoon in San Francisco behind. But we aren’t driving the four hours home to Cottonwood. We’re driving toward our new life in Marin County.

Everyone at school knew that Nick liked me for a long time. His friends and my friends knew it. I knew it. But Nick apparently didn’t know his own feelings. Why can’t guys just trust others on these things?

I pick up my phone and reply to Kate’s text.

ME: Is Nick still standing there?

KATE: No. I think it freaked him out to wait for your response. The guys went to play Alien Hunter III before the movie starts. So what do you think? Patience paid off.

ME: I’m trying not to think that guys are really as dumb as most of us say they are.

KATE: Huh?

ME: Really now. I mean NOW. He says this on the day I move away?

KATE: Well you’ll be home most every weekend so it’s not that bad.

ME: But think about it. What made him decide today?

KATE: Who cares? He finally figured out he can’t live without you.

The car cruises along the bridge, and I stare up at the massive orange beams over our heads. Then I catch sight of a sailboat as it dips and bows on the evening waters of San Francisco Bay.

My brother is shout-talking to my mom and aunt. And with one earbud pulled out, I catch bits of the discussion being tossed around the car as the wind twists my hair into knots. The topic is “If you had one wish, what would you wish for?”

What poetic irony. Five minutes ago I would’ve wished that Nick would like me . . . and like some psychic genie working even before I wished it, the text arrived from Kate: “Nick said . . .”

So Nick likes me after I move four hours and a world away.

He likes me the day after I say good-bye to him and all my friends in Cottonwood.

I scroll back through my saved texts to find what he sent me after we said good-bye.

NICK: I wish you weren’t moving.

NICK: Next time you’re up visiting your dad let’s hang out.

NICK: How often will you be back?

NICK: So you don’t have a date for prom?

Men. I mean seriously.

So it’s like this. I’m moving to one of the coolest areas of California—Marin County. I’m going to live in this cool, quirky cottage that my aunt Betty gave us after she headed off on an extended Mediterranean honeymoon with the man, now her husband, she found online.

Since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to live near San Francisco. Aunt Betty’s house was one of my favorite places. Kate and I plan to attend college down here. So now I get to live my dream sooner than expected.

Mac taps my arm, but I watch the little sailboat lean toward the open Pacific and wonder at its journey ahead, far or near, some California marina or faraway exotic isle.

My brother taps on my arm persistently. “Ruby-Ruby Red.”

I really dislike it when he calls me that. Then he reaches for my earbud, and I push his hand away.

“What?” I ask loudly, wiping strands of hair from my face. The sun falls easily into the cradle of the sea. It’s eventide—that time between sunset and darkness, a peaceful time of wind and bridges and dreams except for one annoying brother and an incoming text that could disrupt the excitement of a dream coming true.

“What do you wish for?” Mac asks earnestly.

My phone vibrates again, and I nearly say, “Don’t bug me, and don’t call me Ruby-Ruby Red,” but Mac’s sweet pink cheeks and expectant eyes stop me. I rub his hair and tickle him until he cries for mercy.

He laughs and twists away from my fingers, then asks me again what I wish for.

“Wait a minute,” I say, and he nods like he understands.

KATE: He said he’s been miserable since he said good-bye last night.

ME: So why didn’t he like me before?

KATE: He says he always did, he just kept it to himself.

ME: Or he kept it FROM himself.

Everyone said Nick said I was hot, that I was intelligent, that he’d never met a girl like me—which can be taken as good or bad. Everyone told him to ask me out, but he just didn’t. No explanation,

no other girlfriend, just nothing. For months. Until today.

KATE: He’s never had a girlfriend, give the guy a break. I always thought he’d be the bridge guy! Maybe he will be!

I rest the phone in my hands at that. Nick has been the main character in my bridge daydream—only Kate knows that secret dream of mine.

We’ve crossed the bridge into Marin County with signs for Sausalito, Corte Madera, San Rafael. The names of my new home, and yet I’m still between the old and the new.

“What are you smiling for?” my brother asks.

“Nothing,” I say and give him the mind-your-own-business look.

Mac stretches forward in his seat belt toward the front seat, and I’m tempted to tell him to sit down. But for once I don’t boss him around. He’s so happy about this wishing talk, with his wide dimpled smile and cheeks rosy from the wind. His cheeks remind me of when I loved kissing them—back when we were much younger.

“Remember, no infinity wishes. That’s cheating,” Mac shout says to Mom and Aunt Jenna, but he glances at me to see if I’m listening.

“This is really hard,” Aunt Jenna yells back. She points out the window to a line of cyclists riding along a narrow road parallel to the highway. “I bet those guys wish for a big gust of wind to come up behind them.”

Mac laughs, watching the cyclists strain up an incline.

Now they’ll probably start “creating wishes” for everyone they see.

I bet that car wishes it were as cool as that Corvette.

I think the people in that car wish they had a fire extinguisher for that cigarette . . .

Mom and her sister often make up stories about strangers while sitting outside Peet’s Coffee or, well, just about anywhere people watching is an option.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and then immediately again.

KATE: Hello?? No comment on Nick being your mysterious bridge guy?

ME: Nope

JEFFERS: So beautiful, are you there yet?

ME TO KATE: I just got a text from Jeffers.

KATE: LOL He’s sitting beside me and saw me talking to you.

JEFFERS: When can we come party in Marin?

ME TO JEFFERS: Almost there. Ten minutes I think. Uh party?

JEFFERS: Yeah, party! How could you leave us, I mean what could be better than us? You’ll be too cool for gocarts and mini golf after a month w/ the rich and sophisticated.

ME: I hate mini golf.

JEFFERS: See? One day and already too good for mini golf.

KATE: You’re having us all down for a party?

ME: Uh, no

JEFFERS: Kate’s yelling at me. Thx a lot. But bye beautiful, previews are on with little cell phone on the screen saying to turn you off.

ME TO JEFFERS AND KATE: K have fun. TTYL.

KATE: Write you after. Bye!

It’s a significant moment, this.

One of the most significant in my fifteen years.

Not the “wish discussion” between Mac, Mom, and Aunt Jenna; not the text messaging back and forth; not the music playing in one of my ears; not even Nick liking me.

The significance comes in crossing bridges. Not the bridge in my dream, but the ones that take me into Marin. The many bridges that brought my family here with my dad still in Cottonwood, and my older brother, Carson, driving soon behind us. And though we can turn around and drive back to the small

town I’ve always lived in, I wonder if, once you cross so many bridges, you can ever really go back.

The music in my one ear and the voices of my family in the other make a dramatic backdrop for this moment—one that will shape the rest of my life.

I feel a sense of wonder, but also of fear. It’s beautiful, this time of long evening shadows. The sky in the west where the sun has fallen turns from a subtle to defined sunset of red and orange.

The hills of Marin County rise to the nighttime with their myriad dots of light. The salty breeze is cool coming off the Pacific.

“What’s your wish?”

I jump as Mac shouts at me, leaning to get his face close to mine. I nearly throw my phone out the open rooftop.

“Mac! Mom!”

“Mac, leave your sister alone. She needs time to think,”

Mom calls back with a worried glance in my direction. She was more worried than I was about this move to Marin . . .well, until I said all the good-byes this week and especially now. I realize it’s the last remnant of what is, taking us from the past and what has been to the new place, the new life, and the what will be.

“Do you know what I wish?” Mac says in a loud whisper that only I can hear.

The innocent expression on his face soothes my annoyance.

He motions for me to lean close.

“I wish I was six again.”

“Why?”

“Promise you won’t tell Mom or Austin or Dad and Tiffany, ’cause I don’t want to hurt their feelings . . .” He waits for me to agree. “I wish I was six ’cause Mom and Dad were married then. But then that would make Austin and Tiffany go away, and I don’t really want them to go away, but I sort of wish Mom and Dad were married still.”

I nod and glance up toward Mom, who is staring out toward the bay. “Yeah, I know, Mac. But it’ll be all right.”

“So what do you wish for?” he asks again.

We’re almost there now, and I still have no singular wish. How do you make such a choice when your whole life is upended—for the good and the bad? I wonder if San Francisco Bay is like one giant wishing well, and in the coming years I can toss as many pennies as I want into the blue waters and have all the wishes I need.

I hope so. And maybe wishing that the bay would become one giant well breaks Mac’s rule about infinity wishes. But regardless, this is what I wish my wish to be.

It was my choice to move to Marin with Mom. But now I wonder if these bridges are taking me where I should be going. Or if they’re taking me far, far away.

“I wish for infinity wishes!” I say and kiss Mac on the cheek before he protests. “No one can put rules on wishes.”

And this is what I truly want to believe.

They come softly, like the kiss of

newborn skin. Words, brushing my

Heels as I head for the kitchen, bruising my

Heart as life reaches for my hand.

Stirring the morning against my

Belly, I listen as they sift through my

Fingers, stories I’ve never heard,

Places I’ve never known.

Pouring into the pitcher of my

Day, they blow by. I open my

Hand, trying to catch a phrase,

To hold what cannot be held.

Love beckons, Purpose calls,

Drowning out the whisper words

Skating, out of place like fall leaves

Across the summer of my soul.

Truth swallows Hope, drowns the

Words. I squint against the glare

Of throaty screams and scarred

Earth, listening, wondering

If they’ll ever come again.

–Karol,

the morning the new neighbors moved in

CHAPTER ONE

“They’re ruining everything.” The words tangled in Karol Simon’s throat.

She watched in horror as a backhoe bit into the tree house she and her family had constructed with their former neighbors and best friends Hope and Singh. The rest of the yard, including Hope’s prize-winning roses and the strawberry bush the children had planted, lay in heaped mounds of roots and blooms.

To Karol, it looked a lot like her life.

Her tears, few at first, now streamed down her face as she watched butterflies and birds flee into her yard to escape the destruction of their homes and so many of Karol’s memories. She wanted to run to her husband, to collapse into his arms . . . Instead, she pulled the curtain back further, using it to wipe her tears.

“It looks like a cemetery,” she said without turning around, certain Rob wasn’t listening.

He was. “Get away from the window, Kay. It’s rude for one thing. It’s depressing for another. Do you think I don’t know how much you miss Hope? I miss Singh too. But the Lord led them to another place, to another job, to other—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t say it.”

“I will say it. To other friends. Hope and Singh are going to find new friends. A new church. A new life in North Carolina. That doesn’t mean they’ll forget us here in Tallahassee. It’s just a chance to share them with someone else.”

Rob laid aside his Linux Pocket Guide and stood. Four strides brought him to the window. His weekend work boots struck the floor with the same confidence she heard in his voice. Not so long ago, Karol had heard the same assurance in her own voice.

Was she the same woman who’d once run Vacation Bible School and the women’s ministry committee? These days the only running she did was from herself . . . and from God. She’d expected to miss Hope, to be sad for a little while, but this was more than that.

Karol needed her.

She hadn’t realized how much her friend helped her be a good mom, a good wife. Hope had a houseful of children, seven in all, and taught her children at home. She’d taught Karol a lot about being a mother and being a friend.

Now that the crew next door had moved away though, Karol couldn’t just pick up the phone and call. Their busy schooling schedule had been easier to interrupt when it only meant walking next door and waiting for a break in the action. Now when Karol called, she got the answering machine indicating the family’s school hours.

In the evenings, Hope was tired with moving in at first and then Karol started to unravel and didn’t want to call and detail her failures. She called her friend less and less these days and seemed to lose it more and more. And her husband was starting to notice.

That was the part that made her heart pound as Rob took her hand. Her pulse quickened too, both in anticipation and fear. Things had grown awkward between them. Rusty. She wasn’t ready to deal with him quite yet, though Lemon Pledge and sawdust were a hard combination to ignore.

He knew it too. Rob stood close behind her, running his hands over hers until she released the curtain. He brushed away her last tear with his thumb before lacing his arms around her waist. She closed her eyes as his stubbled face prickled against her smooth one, waiting for the kiss that was sure to come. It’d be a soft one, right in the curve of her neck most likely. Even after three kids, he still knew how to buckle her knees.

He kissed her ear instead, first with his lips and then with a whisper. “I know this is hard, honey. We all knew it would be. I get up every morning and reach for the phone to call Singh to pray or to borrow a tool from him, only to realize he’s gone. I know it’s even deeper with you and Hope, but maybe God has a purpose in this, for us as well as them.

“We’ll see them soon enough. Charlotte isn’t that far away. They mentioned coming down for Ryan’s birthday, remember? And we’re taking Mia over for Mia’s party next month. Until then, I figure we can work on some things between us—you and I. For starters, I was thinking that maybe I could be your best friend again.”

Karol swallowed hard and closed her eyes, drinking in this closeness with her husband. There had been a time before, when Hope and Karol had been close, but she and Rob had been closer. He had been her world. Then storms came and shook their little marriage tree, blowing away some of blossoms, shaking off much of the fruit.

Hope had helped her push things down in the soil again, prayer by prayer, day by day. Now Karol would have to do that alone. Rob wanted to help, to be friends, but there were things that she used to tell Hope that she just couldn’t say to her husband. What would he do if he knew that sometimes she didn’t like her life or herself? What would he think if he knew that sometimes she just wanted to run away?

He’d think that you’re human, Karol. He is too.

When women from church had come to Karol for advice about their marriages, she’d reminded them that they’d married sinners, broken people who continued to need forgiveness once the honeymoon was over. It had all made so much sense to her back then, until the stitches on her own marriage had loosened. Before then, she’d never understood those couples who disappeared and showed up with other spouses, the ones who lived in the same houses but drove to service in separate cars.

Those were the couples who had once been friends with Karol and Rob, part of the couples ministry that had met at Hope and Singh’s. One by one, those couples had disappeared: divorced, separated, moved away… They had discovered, as Karol had, that family came at a cost, that love required effort.

Rob kissed the top of her ear again and tightened his hands around her. She rested back against him and wondered if he wasn’t trying to get her to hear him. To really listen. Sometimes that was so hard to do, even though Karol tried.

She was blessed to be this man’s wife, the mother of her children. And now here she was, coming undone over new neighbors. Once more, she lifted her hand to the curtains, a green gingham set Hope had taught her to make during the months after Mia was born, the summer of darkness. At the thought of those hard days, her worst postpartum depression ever, Karol let the fabric fall from her fingers. Nothing was worth going back there.

Her husband ran a hand through her hair. “I mean it. I want to be your best friend.”

She turned to face Rob, trying to ignore the creaking sound as the tree house toppled to the ground next door. Would these strangers burn the wood they’d all signed and decorated or should she go over and beg for it? No, it was their house now. She had to let it go. All of it.

Karol tried to laugh but it came out more like a groan. She punched Rob’s shoulder lightly, then squeezed it.

“You are my best friend, silly. You’re just not acting like it. Hope wouldn’t take their side against me.”

Rob’s dimples appeared but his eyes went dull. She’d chosen to stay on the surface of things, skimming across the hurt he wanted to dive into. He joined her in the chit chat with a reluctant smile. “Whose side? The new neighbors’? Or the kids’?”

“Both.” Karol stared at him, once again wondering how he’d ended up with her. He had a careless beauty about him, a bearing that made him look like a king in a pair of jeans. Three kids had moved her body parts to new zip codes and left her face looking more like her mother’s than she wanted to admit, but except for the sprinkles of gray in Rob’s beard, he looked the same as the day they’d wed. Unless you looked close at the years in his eyes, he didn’t look much different from the husband of the young couple who’d moved in next door. Was this how the two of them had seemed to Hope and Singh? She peered through the window again, trying to convince herself otherwise.

The woman, “Dianne with a y” as Hope called her, shouted over the noise for the men to dig up a shrub they’d missed. No, she and Rob hadn’t been quite like this. This was a new kind of crazy. And from the way things were going in Carol’s house, it must be contagious.

“The kids are definitely out of control. It seems like they’re screaming at me every minute now. Like they’ve totally forgotten how to communicate.”

Rob’s look conveyed his thoughts but he voiced them anyway. “Maybe we’ve forgotten how to communicate, Hon. Things have been hard lately. They lost their best friends too. There’s no one to play with. Naturally they’re going to be a little out of sync.”

Out of sync? “Judah tried to put Mia in the dryer yesterday, Rob. Ryan hid in the closet reading a book so that he didn’t have to deal with his siblings during the whole ordeal. When they found him, he shut them in there!

“They are more than out of sync. And don’t start with that ‘we’ve forgotten how to communicate’ stuff. I know what you really mean. You mean I’ve forgotten how to communicate.”

Rob scratched his head. “I didn’t mean that, but since you mentioned it—you have been screaming quite a bit lately. It seems like we’re going back in time. I have to catch myself. Yesterday, I almost started screaming too.”

Karol rolled her eyes. As if. “You did not.”

More dimples. “Okay, so I didn’t, but I thought about it. Anyway, I am on your side, both with the kids and with the neighbors. I just don’t think you’re seeing the big picture right now because you’re hurting over losing Hope. Singh got a good opportunity there. He prayed about it and chose, with Hope, to make this move. Don’t forget that. We will get through this. I’d rather come out of it with a good relationship with our kids…and our neighbors.”

Karol couldn’t help being stung by the truth in Rob’s words. The move had been unexpected, an near parallel offer for Singh with a possibility of advancement. A slim possibility. And yet, Hope hadn’t thought twice about leaving her behind.

was right, of course. Singh was her husband. Hope’s only contradiction had been the house. None of them had believed that it would sell—for so much and so quickly. It was a deal they couldn’t refuse. A God thing. And yet, Karol couldn’t help feeling as though someone had ripped the rug out from under her.

More like the security blanket.

“You want to have a good relationship with those two? Even if they’re insane? I mean look at them.” She pointed out the window. ”They’re so…so…”

Rob planted his chin on her shoulder. “What? Young?”

“Skinny!” Karol said, louder than she’d meant to. Was the window still cracked from airing out the living room after Mia’s pull-up explosion this morning? Surely not. Her husband chuckled and she laughed too, in spite of her efforts not to. “I’m serious. They’re skinny and young and weird and they have no kids.”

“We were skinny and young and weird and when we moved in next to Hope and Singh, Kay.”

“I was never skinny,” Karol said, taking a deep breath.

“Thank God,” her husband whispered, slipping a hand in her back pocket. “But I was definitely weird. Remember how I slammed the door on Singh that first time he came over?”

“Well, in your defense, not many people serenade their new neighbors…especially people who are tone deaf. If he’d just handed you the pie, things would have gone much smoother.”

Her words slowed as her new neighbor, dressed in a celery-colored suit and tangerine pumps, tripped over the wood pile Singh had kindly left behind. “Dianne with a y” stared down at the timber in confusion and shook her head before motioning for someone to cart it away.

Karol shook her head too. “Okay, so we were a little goofy at first, but these people are unbelievable. She looked at that wood pile like it was going to come alive and eat her. Surely she saw the woodstove when they bought the house. It’s one of the best features.”

Rob stroked her hair. “It’s not Hope’s house anymore. Let it go, Mom.”

Mom. It’d been funny when Rob first started calling her that, but now it’d worn thin. She’d started it first of course by calling Rob Dad, only to abandon it when he returned the favor. Where had she gotten that from anyway? She closed her eyes.

Hope and Singh.

It fit them. It didn’t fit Karol. She wanted, needed, a name again. “I’m trying, Rob.” His name rolled of her tongue before she could call it back, say it better. Say it like she used to, in the sweet, husky tone he loved. Instead, it came out nasal and high pitched, almost as piercing as the cry from upstairs.

He gave her a funny look and lifted his head as if he were going to ask her something before their youngest child and only girl Mia let out one of her signature siren screams.

“Mooooooooooooom!”

Karol pinched her eyes shut. Her four-year-old-going-on-fifty was either going to be an opera singer or a very good referee. Either way, naptime was over. Not that it had ever started really, but after little Mia’s poopy finger painting incident this morning and five-year-old Judah’s egg juggling at lunch (“I thought they were boiled!”), her three children, especially the oldest who only liked to encounter body fluids on the page of a book, had gladly escaped to their rooms.

Now they were up and ready to roll and she’d been too busy staring at the mess next door to get together an activity for them. After a morning of Saturday cartoons, Karol liked to keep the TV off in the afternoons. Until lately anyway.

Her oldest son, Ryan, must have been thinking the same thing because he switched off the TV and started reading his younger brother and sister a story. Though only few weeks shy of his eleventh birthday, Ryan had an old soul. His younger brother and sister drove him crazy and often interrupted the book he always seemed to be reading, but Ryan always knew what everyone needed—especially Karol. She mouthed a thank you to him. He replied with a curt nod, which meant she’d probably have to make it up to him with brownies.

Karol wrapped an arm around her husband’s, bare to the elbow and hairy as ever. Her mother called him Sasquatch. To his face. She was not always a kind woman. Karol thanked God that Rob was a kind man. Too kind sometimes. She pinched her eyes tight, shutting out her new neighbors, her old memories and the sound of her two youngest children tumbling down the stairs.

“I’ve got it, Mom.” Ryan said quietly, still holding the book as he collected the two gymnasts. “Keep talking. Nobody’s hurt.”

Karol was headed to check anyway, but Rob pulled her back. “Ryan wants to grow up a little. Let him. Besides, you need a break. I’ll go and take them all out in a few minutes.”

“I don’t deserve you,” she whispered into Rob’s shoulder.

He lifted her chin and leaned in, finding Karol’s lips this time. The brevity and passion of the kiss took her by surprise. Rob’s love was like that: quiet, but powerful, coming alive when she least expected it. When she most needed it. “You don’t deserve me, Kay. You deserve better.”

She slumped against him, never knowing what to say when he was like this. When life was like this. Paint rubbed off on her arm as she twined her hands behind his neck. Her eyes narrowed, first at her husband and then at the window. She’d repainted enough kid-dingy walls to know white washable paint when she saw it. This wasn’t it. It was ecru or eggshell or some other frou frou color. A color for city people who bulldozed yards and ran off friends… “Are you helping them?”

Rob didn’t answer. He shrugged instead. Inwardly, Karol did too. He could only be who he was, her husband. He didn’t know how to be anything but giving and kind.

I wish I could say the same for myself.

Right now, Karol wasn’t sure who she was. Her middle son was glad to clear that up for her.

“Mom!” A pair of hands slipped between the two of them, adhering to the front of Karol’s shirt. The very front. Though she’d weaned her son Judah years before, he still seemed to find a use for the parts which had once fed him. The current choice? Doorknobs into Mommy world. Very effective, Karol had to admit.

Rob peeled his son from Karol’s shirt and lifted him into his arms. “Judah, don’t touch your mother there, okay? And go wash your hands—”

“But Dad—”

“No buts, son. Mom and I were talking. Use your manners.” He winked at Karol and took one step before the next child, little Mia, barreled into the room, wearing her bathing suit from last summer. Hadn’t they given that to Eden, Hope’s youngest girl, before they moved away?

“Moooooom! Judah ‘it me!”

Both adults stared at the oldest brother, Ryan, who’d just entered the room, hoping for a translation of their only daughter’s language. Only he knew this latest version of Mia-latin. She removed the first consonant of all incriminating words. In this case, the first sound meant a big difference. While hitting his little sister was enough to get Judah into a mess, biting her would be even worse.

Karol rubbed her arm thinking of how bad his biting had been when he was a toddler. Hope had helped her through that too. Her middle child hadn’t bit anyone in three full years now and she prayed that losing his friends wouldn’t start him up again.

Ryan’s translation skills didn’t disappoint, but their budding young man looked plenty frustrated. Sharing a room with his little brother was ‘stagnating’ or at least that was the latest update he’d given Karol and Rob before putting his little brother’s things into the hall to make room for his books. Puberty came a lot earlier these days evidently.

“She said hit not bit. But Mom—”

A banging sound echoed from down the hall. Karol and Rob looked at each other and at Ryan with panic in their eyes. Judah unattended usually meant disaster.

Rob moved first. “Where did he go to wash his hands? Bathroom?”

Karol screamed. “Kitchen!”

If there was ever a sure way to catch up with the plumber, it was Judah alone in the kitchen. Karol picked up Mia, taking a wide step to leave room for Rob, who ran to check the bathrooms just in case Judah was clogging some fixture instead of scrambling eggs on the kitchen floor.

Just the thought of what might be happening made Karol’s heart pound. She wanted to scream at him so loud that the people next door would hear and run away screaming too. But inside her head, Hope was there, as sure as if she was sitting on that battered couch in the corner.

Man’s anger doesn’t achieve the righteousness of God, Kay. A mother’s anger doesn’t accomplish much either. You have the authority. Use it wisely. Don’t waste it screaming.

Another tear salted the corner of Karol’s eye and she rounded the corner in time to catch a glimpse of Judah’s superhero cape fluttering away from the scene of the crime. Karol tucked her daughter under one arm like a football and headed for the kitchen. Her socks glided across the laminate and into a pile of . . . hamburger, the meat for the church potluck. Rob ran into Judah in the hall and grabbed him up just as he was about to take a bite of meat that he’d taken as a souvenir.

Karol froze, unable to do anything but stare as she calculated the cost of the food her son had fed to the floor.

And just when I’d splurged on the grain fed beef too.

The perpetrator returned. “Mom! See my burger? My bur-ger!” Judah cried, wiggling in his father’s arms and pointing to the bloody mound on the floor.

Karol paused, looking into Rob’s eyes, the same eyes she’d looked into on her wedding day and she could swim in their chocolate depths forever. Back then, love meant flowers and candy. Now it meant capture and cleanup. Lines etched those eyes now and a frost of wisdom sprinkled Rob’s beard, but he’d never looked better to her.

“Do you want to deal with meat or munchkins?” he asked.

Neither. Today, just want to sit down in the corner and have a quiet talk with my friend.

Karol smiled. Outwardly anyway. The never-ending discipline that Judah seemed to require wore her out. She’d let Rob be the bad guy today. “I’ll take hamburger. And let’s blow up the pool. I know they’re used to being outside all summer. I have to go outside some time.”

Something like sunshine spread over Rob’s face. He slapped the back of her jeans. “That’s my girl.”

Judah made a gagging sound and ran ahead of his dad up the stairs. “Cover your eyes, Mia, they’re gonna kiss!”

“Ewwww!” Mia said before shielding her face from such the horror.

Ryan pulled a book from the pocket of his cargo shorts and walked away from all of them. He probably wouldn’t surface until dinner, when he’d have started another book with a similar cover—dragons and swords—but a different name. Every now and then he showed up with a book of theology or philosophy, which probably worried Karol more than the dragons. Ryan was growing up too fast. They all were. And she wasn’t keeping pace with them.

As Rob’s lips met hers in a fake kiss just to freak out the kids, Karol laughed softly. Laughing was definitely better than crying.

Rob gave her a wink that meant the real kisses would come later. She watched as he left the kitchen and started toward the stairs. He stopped halfway and turned back. “I know this is hard, Kay. But it’s going to be all right. Really. I just feel it in my gut.”

What gut? Any knowledge held in Rob’s six-pack was less than reassuring. If there’d been a feeling in Karol’s non-existent abs that might really be something. It’d be hard to locate, but it’d be something. Still, she knew he meant well and was probably right. He usually was.

“You’re right, honey,” she said, reaching for a trash bag and hoping that what he’d said was true. Anything could happen. The new neighbors might even turn out okay.

Probably not.

Not for Karol anyway. For Rob, well, everything would be fine. He’d already gotten over losing Singh as though he’d barely known the man. Sure the two of them were better about email—Hope wasn’t much of a computer person—but still the two men didn’t talk anywhere near as much as they once had. The kids still asked for Heidi-Katie-Lizzie-Tony-Aaron-Annie-Eden-and-Bone-the-dog at least once a day, but their pleas were much less urgent. They’d be fine too.

Karol might not be fine, she was starting to realize as the manic mama feelings tumbled in her stomach. There was none of Rob’s confidence to settle it. The clump of ground beef slid easily into the bag, but scrubbing the floor proved harder. Everything seemed harder. Had the past ten years been a dream? Had she ever had Hope’s consistency or Rob’s calmness? She’d thought so until the moving van took her best friend away. Could she be a good mom without Hope?

The question that sprung to her heart in response took Karol’s breath away:

The question is, can you be a good mom without Me?

#

The ceiling fan whirred above Rob slowly, breathing the first breath of summer into his upstairs bedroom. Though it was only April by the calendar, summer was always a breath away in Tallahassee, drowned only by the rains that began in October and trickled through spring. The bright, hot victory of summer retaking her throne usually happened on a May morning, but on this night in late April, Rob felt the humidity that signaled the rise of the order of the sun.

Usually, he welcomed summer. It meant more time outdoors with fresh earth and the soft, brown skin of his wife and children. In the north Florida sun—which often seemed to have the red, patient glow of the peachy rays of south Georgia—nothing could be hidden or covered up. In the end, sweat and sweet tea trickled into everything, seeping between the finest fabrics, the best of plans. By summer’s end, there was never anything left unknown.

Not without a price.

As Rob slipped from his king-sized bed and stepped onto the still-cool cherry wood floor that he’d installed with his own hands, he wondered if the price would not turn out to be higher than his marriage could afford to pay.

He took the phone into the bathroom, thankful that Karol slept like a log, especially on hot nights like this with the smell of crepe myrtle syrupy and sweet in the air. For once though, he almost wished she’d wake up and overhear his conversation, saving him from being torn between his best friend…and the love of his life.

Rob’s fingers eased quickly over the phone’s keypad. Though his friend had been gone for weeks now, Singh’s cell phone number still stuck in Rob’s head like a familiar song.

Singh picked up on the first ring, probably in his bathroom too. “Hello? Rob?”

A sigh. “It’s me. Did you tell her yet? Hope, I mean?”

His friend didn’t answer which was an answer in itself.

“You’re killing me here, man. Kaye is going crazy. Today was really rough. On the kids too. Weekends are the worst. At least they have school now, but that’s only for another month and Mia’s here all the time—”

“Forgive me.”

The words made Rob swallow hard. How many times had he called this number and said the same phrase in the past ten years? He and Singh were prayer partners, accountable to one another in their walk with God, their actions as fathers and husbands. So many times they’d both fallen short of being the men they wanted to be, but one of them had always been there to hear, to believe, to pray.

When the tables turned a few years ago and Singh was the one calling Rob asking for prayer, it had been strange at first. Though theirs had been a great friendship, Rob had always felt himself to be the student and Singh the teacher. He’d had to address his own sin of holding Singh up to a standard of perfection no man could meet. It hadn’t been easy to get over though and sometimes Rob still wondered if he wasn’t harder on Singh than he might have been toward some stranger who’d walked into the men’s ministry group asking for prayer.

And yet, those two words—forgive me—reminded Rob of his own humanity and weakness. He was no better than his friend. No better at all.

Forgive me, Lord, Rob whispered in his heart. Forgive us all.

“All is forgiven, brother. I love you. I’m just worried that this is going to turn bad for both of us if we don’t do what we agreed upon. We were both supposed to tell our wives by now. True enough, you have more to tell and it won’t be easy, but we both know it has to be done.”

“Yes.”

More than a minute went by without speaking, but Rob wasn’t worried. He knew that Singh was praying. He was too.

Karol stirred in the next room.

“I’m going to have to go, man.”

“Yes. Me too. Quickly though. How is it with the neighbors? The man, Neal? I know that the girls are worried about the wife but I had a good feeling about him. Both of them. The same feeling I had when the two of you came.”

In the dark of the bathroom, Rob nodded to himself. Though the new neighbors weren’t very friendly and his wife wasn’t very fond of them, he had a feeling that somehow they would all end up as friends. What worried him was the future of their relationship with Hope and Singh.

“I hope we did the right thing.”

Singh grunted in agreement. “As do I.”

Without saying goodnight, the two men hung up and crawled back into bed with their sleeping wives.

One of them, however, was not sleeping.

From MOM’S THE WORD, by Marilynn Griffith, Steeple Hill

ISBN 0373786417, January 2009, Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Enterprises

Limited. ® and tm are trademarks of the publisher. This edition published by

arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.