Janine’s heart was full. She thought about how funny destiny worked sometimes and was forever grateful for it.
“Grandma?” This was Maggie, whose red swimsuit had created a funny tan line across her stomach.
“Yes, honey?”
“Do you recommend the cucumber treatment? You look so young!”
Nancy chuckled and eyed Janine, who leaned against the railing nearer to the water. “Actually, my only recommendation is to have a baby at sixteen. Then, you actually are young, when you should be much, much older.”
“I guess I’m a bit late for that,” Maggie said with a laugh.
“Me too. Six whole years too late,” Alyssa countered.
“Shoot. Guess you’ll have to do everything the proper way, then,” Nancy said.
“Boring,” Maggie said with a smile. “Although I have to admit, that wedding dress Greta is going to sew for me is so divine. I was blown away by the design she showed us.”
“I was, too,” Nancy admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Wedding next summer, Mags?” Alyssa asked.
“It’ll have to be here, I guess,” Maggie affirmed. “The Vineyard is the perfect place for our wedding. You must remember that Ursula Pennington wedding from last Thanksgiving?”
“Absolutely insane,” Alyssa said with a wry smile. “I don’t think you could outdo that one.”
“At least, I don’t think we have to outdo the drama. It was basically called off, remember? And then, they got married at that little chapel down the road,” Maggie continued.
“I can take you to that chapel,” Nancy said. “It’s just a quaint little place. Hard to believe celebrities had any romantic notions about it.”
Alyssa and Maggie remained on their backs, with their cucumbers on their eyes, while Nancy and Janine arranged themselves on the steps that overlooked the glistening ocean. Elsa was nearly back from her shift at the spa, and when she arrived, they would do mud facials and light candles and laugh and talk into the night.
“I signed the papers today,” Janine told her mother as her heart dropped slightly. “I just have to send them back to Manhattan, and then it’s really over. All of it. My friendship with Maxine and my marriage to Jack. That chapter of my life is done for good.”
Nancy splayed a hand across Janine’s upper back. “There’s only one way out of this pain, you know,” she murmured after a long pause.
“And which way is that?”
“Forward.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“But we’ll be there alongside you,” Nancy said softly. “Every step of the way. Side-by-side. The Grimson girls. Just like the old days but better.”
Janine turned her head toward her mother as her eyes welled with tears. “Do you remember that day, when I was ten or eleven, and you were in a good mood and you let me skip school? You didn’t have a job at the time, and we went out to Coney Island. We ate cotton candy for lunch and we skipped rocks for an hour. You told me you would never love anyone more than you loved me.”
Nancy allowed a single tear to fall. “And you told me the same.”
Janine shifted her eyes back toward her beautiful daughters. “I made more space in my heart for them.”
“I did, too,” Nancy breathed.
“Part of a long line of women,” Janine whispered as her voice cracked.
“How grateful I am,” Nancy murmured.
“The Grimson girls.”
“Till the end,” Nancy finished. “To the moon and back again.”
Coming next in the Katama Bay Series
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––––––––Other Books by Katie
The Vineyard Sunset Series
Sisters of Edgartown Series
Secrets of Mackinac Island Series
A Katama Bay Series
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