I thought my daughter’s whisper about a “grown-up surprise” was harmless — until she mentioned the woman she saw in our hotel room with my husband and my brother.
The sun spilled gold across the coastline, and the salt air carried the kind of ease I had been chasing for months. I watched Lily crouching at the edge of the surf, her small hands patting a lopsided sandcastle into shape, and I felt my shoulders finally drop. This vacation had been circled on our calendar since spring.
“You’re on vacation.”
My husband stretched out on the lounger beside me, sunglasses pushed up in his hair.
“She’s going to want that castle to survive the tide,” he murmured.
“She’ll cry when it doesn’t,” I said, smiling. “And then she’ll build another one.”
Jim was a few yards away, phone in hand again, scrolling through something with a crease between his brows. My younger brother had arrived only two nights ago, last-minute, after the new job and new apartment had ground him down to nothing.
“Jim, put the phone down,” I called. “You’re on vacation.”
“Just guy talk.”
He glanced up, startled, then tucked it into his pocket with a quick grin.
“Sorry, sis. Old habits.”
I remembered the winter he’d slept on our couch after his lease fell through, and how I’d made him grilled cheese at midnight while he cried about a girl whose name I couldn’t recall anymore. We had always been like that, he and I. Two against the world since we were kids.
“You doing okay?” I asked, softer.
“Better now that I’m here.” He looked at Bruce, and something passed between them, a quiet flicker I couldn’t quite read. “You picked a good spot.”
“Guy talk?” I teased.
“I am happy.”
Bruce laughed, but the laugh landed a beat late.
“Just guy talk.”
Lily came running up then, sand in her hair and triumph on her face.
“Uncle Jim, come see! It has a moat!”
Jim scooped her up with an exaggerated grunt.
“A moat? What kind of engineer are you, kid?”
“The best one,” Lily declared.
I watched them walk toward the water, my brother and my daughter, and I told myself the tightness I’d noticed in Jim’s jaw was just leftover stress from the move. Bruce reached over and squeezed my hand.
Daddy told me not to tell you…
“You look happy,” he said.
“I am happy.”
