Chapter 3
Sophia was the first one up.
She hadn't slept much after Mason left, which was nothing new, and she’d stopped pretending otherwise years ago.
It took her a few nights to get used to sleeping without him, and the house had a different quality of silence when he was gone, not peaceful…
empty. She lay there for a while staring at the ceiling and then gave up and got up, because lying in the dark feeling sorry for herself had never once made anything better.
Coffee first. Always coffee first.
She stood at the counter and watched the machine do its work and thought about nothing in particular, which was a skill she had developed out of necessity.
When Mason was deployed she could not spend every waking hour imagining worst-case scenarios or she would lose her mind.
You made coffee. You got your children to school.
You ran your business. You called your friends.
You lived your life, because that was what he was out there doing, his job. Just like any other spouse.
Yeah sure.
She poured her mug and took it through the sliding door to the back deck.
Their house sat on a hillside in Eastlake, a master-planned community in Chula Vista that was clean and well-kept and full of families, which was exactly why they had chosen it.
There were a lot of other Navy families in the neighborhood, which helped.
The streets were palm-lined and the parks were maintained and the neighbors knew each other, which in Southern California was not something you took for granted.
From the back deck you could see the rolling hills to the east and, on a clear morning, the blue-gray outline of the mountains beyond them.
Further down the slope, the walking trails that wound around the edges of the Otay Lakes reservoir were already dotted with early joggers.
The hills were dry and golden in the way San Diego hills always were by October, and the sky above them was just beginning to lighten at the edges.
She and Mason did this together every morning he was home. Two mugs, two deck chairs, usually not much talking. Just the canyon and the sky and the particular ease of being next to the person you had built your life with.
She sat in her chair and put her feet up on the railing and drank her coffee alone.
She let herself think about the early days for a few minutes, the way she sometimes allowed herself to when she was missing him.
Twenty-two years old and eating cup noodles on a blanket at Moonlight Beach, watching a surfer she didn't know yet and projecting all her loneliness onto him.
The girl she had been then… so young, so hollowed out by everything she had already been through, so certain at some fundamental level that she was not worth very much.
She had carried that belief around like a stone in her pocket for years before Mason reached in and took it out of her hands.
She smiled into her mug.
Her knight in shining armor. She had called him that once, sincerely, and these days it made her laugh.
Not because it wasn't true, but because she was so far from the woman who had needed rescuing.
She owned a bakery. She ran a catering company that was, frankly, doing extraordinarily well.
She had a fourteen-year-old on the JV volleyball team and a ten-year-old who could talk the ear off a statue.
And a husband who still looked at her the way he had looked at her in that hospital room when she was bruised and broken and he'd called himself her fiancé to a doctor who didn't know any better.
Not bad, Gault, she thought. Not bad at all.
She finished her coffee and went inside to start the morning get-ready-for-school wars.
Lisa required three attempts. This was not a surprise. This was a law of nature, as reliable as gravity.
The first attempt produced a groan and a burrowing motion deeper into the covers. The second produced one open eye and a sound that was technically a word but not one Sophia could make out. The third produced Lisa upright, hair in a blonde tangle, blinking like a newborn.
“Is it really morning?” Lisa asked.
“It really is.”
“That's so unfair.”
“I completely agree. Bathroom, please.”
Kayla's room was next. Sophia knocked and heard “come in” in a voice that was sleepy in the specific way that meant she'd been awake recently.
Sophia opened the door and took in her older daughter, still in bed, the decorative pillow fortress somewhat collapsed from the night, the paperback on the nightstand with a bookmark that was significantly closer to the end than it was yesterday afternoon.
She knew immediately.
Kayla had been reading when Mason came in. And just like Sophia, she hadn't been able to fall back asleep after he left.
Sophia came and sat on the edge of the bed. Kayla looked at her with eyes that were trying to be fine and not quite getting there.
“He'll be okay,” Sophia said.
“I know.” The two words came out with the particular flatness of someone who was saying what they were supposed to say rather than what they actually felt.
Sophia waited.
Kayla looked at the ceiling. “I always worry. I know I'm not supposed to, or whatever, but I always do.”
“I know you do.” Sophia reached over and pushed a strand of hair out of her daughter's face. “I do, too.”
“Then how do you stand it?”
How often had she answered this same question?
“Because I know who he is. I know what his team is.
I've watched these men operate for twenty-two years, and I have never once seen them fail to bring each other home.” She paused.
“And I have faith. You have faith in things you love and trust even when you can't control the outcome.”
Kayla was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “What if faith isn't enough?”
“Then we deal with that if it comes. But it hasn't come yet. Not once in twenty-two years.” Sophia squeezed her hand. “Your dad is smart, Kayla. He has always been smart. That's what keeps him safe more than anything else.”
Kayla nodded slowly. She wasn't entirely convinced, but she was a little better, which was all Sophia had been aiming for.
“I bet you didn't get your homework done,” Sophia said.
Kayla's expression shifted immediately into something deeply offended. “You're thinking of the wrong daughter. I'm the perfect one.”
Sophia laughed, and it felt good, “Oh yeah, I forgot. Well, Miss Perfect, you better get your tushie into the shower before your baby sister hogs all the hot water.”
Kayla was throwing back the covers when Sophia left her bedroom.
Sophia spent the morning at her desk working on catering proposals.
The girls had gotten themselves out the door with minimal drama.
Lisa had misplaced one shoe and found it under the couch, Kayla had remembered at the last possible second that she needed a permission slip signed, and then they were gone and the house was quiet.
She had two proposals to finish, and she worked through the first one methodically, pulling together the numbers and the menu options and the staffing requirements with the efficiency of someone who had been doing this long enough that it no longer felt like guesswork.
When she was done she looked at the total at the bottom of the page and sat back in her chair.
The proposal was for a wedding on a private estate in Rancho Santa Fe.
The catering contract alone, not counting the cake, was significant enough that four years ago it would have represented five months of breathing room and she would have celebrated landing it with a bottle of prosecco and a call to Margie.
These days it was a Thursday. A good Thursday, but still just a Thursday.
She thought about Margie sometimes when moments like this happened.
How proud the woman would have been. How she would have sat at the lunch counter and made Sophia walk her through every detail of how the business had grown, nodding along with that particular Margie expression that meant she had seen this coming before Sophia had.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. Angie.
You up for lunch? There's a place I like near Fashion Valley. 11:30?
Sophia looked at her proposal, looked at the clock, looked at the proposal again. The second one could wait until this afternoon.
I'll be there, she typed back.
Sophia got to the restaurant first, which never happened. She was still quietly proud of it when Angie came through the door, dark auburn curls and that quick, assessing walk that fifteen years hadn't slowed down at all.
They hugged. Both arms. No explanation needed.
“You're early,” Angie said.
“Don't get used to it.”
Angie laughed and then sat. They set down their menus almost immediately. Neither of them needed them.
“How are you holding up?” Sophia asked.
Angie shrugged. “I'm fine. You?”
“Fine.” A beat. “Lisa asked me this morning if Mason was going to miss her school play.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That he would be back as soon as he could.” Sophia folded her hands on the table. “Which is the only true thing I could say.”
Angie nodded. That was the whole of it, really.
No timeline, no destination, no estimated return.
Just the waiting, which had gotten easier over the years in the way that carrying something heavy got easier…
not lighter, just more familiar. The hum of it was always there underneath everything.
You just learned to talk and laugh and eat lunch right on top of it.
“I’m guessing Evelyn’s been over more,” Sophia teased.
“You got it in one.”
“Butter cookies?”
Angie nodded.
“She still hasn’t given me that recipe,” Sophia pouted.
“She promised to leave it to you in her will.”
“She and her son are just alike.”
Angie grinned. “They are at that. So is Nora. Evelyn brought Nora home from school twice this week,” Angie continued. “Which Nora considers a gift from God because her grandmother is apparently the only person on earth who takes the dog campaign seriously.”
Sophia laughed. “Is Captain still the frontrunner for the name?”
“Captain has been the name since March. It is non-negotiable.” Angie shook her head. “Finn doesn't know she's named it yet. I'm saving that for when he gets home. I want to see his face.”
“He's going to cave immediately.”
“Immediately. The man cannot say no to that child and he knows it and she knows it.” Angie's expression shifted into something warm and slightly helpless. “She made another chart this week. With data.”
“She's eight.”
“She's eight and she made a chart with data. Lydia helped her with the formatting.” Angie pointed at her. “Do not laugh.”
“I'm not laughing.”
“You're doing that thing with your mouth.”
Sophia pressed her lips together more firmly. “How's Declan?”
The warmth in Angie's face stayed but took on a slightly more complicated quality. “Declan has informed me he's going to be a SEAL.”
Sophia looked at her steadily. “How long has this been going on?”
“Officially, about three months. Unofficially, I think since he was nine and your husband let him try on his vest.” She picked up her fork.
“He's twelve. He's playing lacrosse and now apparently that isn't enough, he needs to be swimming competitively as well, because SEALs swim. He told me this like I might not be aware that SEALs swim.”
“Kayla wants to know if women can try out for—”
“I heard.” Angie pointed at her again. “From Rebecca, actually. Apparently, Kayla texted her about it.”
Sophia felt a flicker of delight at that.
Rebecca was Evelyn’s foster daughter and Finn’s foster sister, but as far as the Crandalls were concerned she was blood family.
And having Kayla and her texting each other shouldn't have surprised her.
“How is she? I haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks.”
“She's good. Really good, actually.” Angie's voice settled into something genuine. “She had a student nominate her for a district teaching award. A freshman wrote the letter.”
“A fourteen-year-old?”
“A fourteen-year-old,” Angie confirmed. “Apparently he sat down and wrote it on his own.” Angie shook her head. “Finn read it when she showed us and spent the next ten minutes very convincingly not choking up.”
Sophia smiled. She could picture it exactly. Finn Crandall standing in his own kitchen, jaw set, eyes suspiciously bright, insisting he was fine.
“She's always been like that,” Sophia said. “Even at fourteen. You could just see it. Caring about everyone.”
Their food arrived. They ate. The conversation moved the way it always did, kids and work and the small details of lives built to run without their husbands for stretches of time nobody could predict.
Angie mentioned Lydia and Rylie briefly, the three of them had been working on something together.
Angie and Ryle worked about twenty hours a week, while Lydia worked forty since she didn’t have kids.
She was a dedicated aunt to Beth and Jack’s four kids.
“Lydia's been good for Nora,” Angie said. “She has infinite patience for the charts.”
“That's because she makes them herself,” Sophia said.
“Exactly. They're kindred spirits.” Angie paused. “Nora has also decided she wants to learn to code. I blame Lydia entirely.”
“Does Lydia know she's being blamed?”
“Lydia is delighted to be blamed. She considers it a compliment.” Angie picked up her coffee. “Beth's youngest gave her a macaroni picture frame for her birthday last month and she hung it up in her office.”
Sophia wasn’t surprised. She had watched Lydia Archer at approximately forty children's birthday parties over the years and the woman loved those four kids with everything she had.
“We should get everyone together,” Sophia said finally. “All of us. When the men get back.”
Angie looked at her. “When they get back.”
“When they get back,” Sophia agreed.
Not soon. Not probably. Just when.
They split the check without discussing it and walked out into the afternoon together. Hugged again in the parking lot. Sophia sat in her car a moment before she started it, the sun coming warm through the windshield.
She thought about Mason, somewhere she couldn't name. Thought about Nora's chart and Captain the not-yet-pet and a fourteen-year-old boy who sat down to write a letter for his teacher.
Her people, all of them.
She started the car and pulled out into the afternoon sun.