“The cleaners went out of business years ago. I Googled it.”
Maggie sighed noisily, that respect growing. “I don’t know what we were expecting to find.”
“We found something,” Jo Ellen said with her eternal optimism.
“What?”
“We found each other.” She put her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Please, Mags. Break your promise. I’m willing to break mine. I don’t know why our husbands wanted us separated but they are dead, and we are both more alive than ever when we’re together.”
Maggie just looked at her, feeling her eyes fill. She was right. She was so right. But…
“I gave him…my word.” Her throat thickened.
Jo Ellen’s shoulders dropped. “Yeah. I know. And I don’t want to spend one more minute on this. Let’s go back to the Summer House and be with family. That’s what matters.”
Yes, it was. But Roger was family, too. She was still connected to him. If she broke her promise…did she break that connection?
She wanted to throw her head back and howl. Instead, she pushed up and somehow held it together. “We have to buy something at Publix since we said we would.”
“I vote for chocolate,” Jo Ellen whispered. “Maybe a bottle of wine or three.”
Maggie smiled, but her heart hurt in a way that she couldn’t describe.
Lacey paced a narrow figure-eight around the bedroom, chewing her bottom lip and eyeing her phone like it might buzz to life if she glared hard enough.
But it didn’t. It hadn’t. Not since yesterday morning, when Roman left to tell his adoptive parents the truth. And it was darn near five o’clock now.
She flopped onto her bed, then sat back up. Then lay back down.
“What if it went badly?” she muttered out loud, to no one but her growing panic. “What if they’re mad? What if they blame me?”
Not that this was about her—but she was somehow at the center of this drama and felt responsible for how it all unfolded. She was the one who found him, then pretended to be his girlfriend, then secretly introduced him to his birth mother.
She was the girl who stirred the pot. The one who overstepped.
She groaned and rolled onto her stomach, face down in a pillow.
Why hadn’t he called? It wasn’t like him. Since they’d been…whatever they were…he texted frequently, called twice a day,and even sent her silly reels from Instagram that made her laugh.
Roman had communicated from Day One. Now? Radio silence.
What if the whole thing with his parents had made him rethink…everything? What if they told him to stay away from Tessa entirely? What if they hated what Lacey had done?
What if…
She sat up, heart pounding. “Okay. I’m spiraling.” She stood and yanked her shoes from the closet, deciding a long walk was in order. Something. Anything.
Forty minutes later, she was still clutching her phone, marching along the beach like she had a destination. Finally, she folded to the sand and looked up to the blue sky, and her whole hand vibrated with the happy, happy buzz of a text.
One look and she nearly squealed with relief.
ROMAN:Hey, I’m back. Come over?
Yes, yes, yes!He’s back. He wants to see me.Her brain immediately followed with a fresh worry:What if it’s to tell me goodbye?
“Nope. No spiraling. You’re going.”
After a quick reply, she ran back to the house, sneaked into the front and grabbed her keys from the entryway bowl, risking no license and no purse—and no questions from anyone—and slipped out to the driveway.
