I know things haven’t been easy between you. I’m partly to blame for that. I was better at cleaning house than mending hearts. But I believe in the three of you, more than you know.
So here is my final wish:
I’ve left the house to you equally. But before you can sell it or keep it or do whatever you please… you must live here, together, for one summer.
And you must complete five challenges. Five “summer wishes,” as I’ve named them. The details are in the box beneath the window seat in the library.
Consider it my final attempt at getting you three to sit down at the same table again. I hope you’ll honor it. I hope you’ll let yourselves come home.
With love (and mischief),
Iris
I folded the letter slowly. “She really did it,” I said.
June leaned against the counter, eyes closed. “She’s not even cold in the ground, and she’s still pulling strings.”
“I guess we should have expected that.”
“Do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “Do you?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know either.”
The sound of a car engine cut through the silence, followed by the screech of tires on gravel.
June groaned. “Right on cue.”
A door slammed. Then another. And then?—
“Hellooo, my favorite people! I’m here! Don’t everyone faint at once!”
Willa.
She swept through the front door like a hurricane with good hair, floral suitcase in one hand, a canvas satchel in the other, sunglasses perched on her head like a crown. She looked exactly the same and entirely different. Wild, beautiful, effortless. The kind of person who didn’t worry about matching socks or rent payments.
“God, it smells like lavender and ghosts in here,” she said. “Isn’t it amazing?”
June and I just stared at her.
Willa dropped her bags and held her arms out like a game show host. “Come on. Don’t be shy. Let’s get this awkward reunion over with. I’ll even go first.”
I didn’t move.
June didn’t either.
Willa rolled her eyes and stepped forward, throwing an arm around each of us before we had a chance to duck away. She squeezed tight, then leaned back.
“There,” she said. “Was that so hard?”
We settled in the kitchen, reluctantly, unevenly, like we were auditioning for a play none of us remembered agreeing to. June stood by the counter with a mug of tea, Willa perched cross-legged on one of the wicker chairs like she was at a café in Paris, and I leaned against the pantry door with my arms crossed, trying not to look like I was bracing for impact.
“So,” Willa said, nodding at the envelope still sitting on the table. “I see the old girl left us her version of a scavenger hunt.”
“It’s more than that,” June said quietly. “She wants us to stay the summer. Together.”
Willa whistled. “She really did go full Hallmark on us, huh?”
