29. Ethan
Chapter twenty-nine
Ethan
She’s home.
The words beat in my chest as I drive us through Seabrook with her suitcase rattling quietly in the back and her hand warm on the console.
Six months of screens and static and waiting, and now Ami is right here—salt air threading through her hair, seashell necklace catching sun like it’s been waiting for this moment, like I have.
“Feels like I paused a movie and just unpaused it,” she says softly, peering out at storefronts I’ve seen a thousand times. “Everything looks the same… but I feel different.”
“Seabrook doesn’t rush,” I say, smiling, “it just keeps a chair open.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. We don’t need more than that.
We pull into Aunt Maggie’s drive first. Of course we do.
The door swings open before I’ve even cut the engine.
“Well, would you look at that,” Aunt Maggie calls, marching down the steps, eyes bright.
“My runaway niece figured out where home is.” She pulls Ami into a hug that could set a shoulder.
Then she turns on me, chin lifted, smug as a cat with a ribbon.
“You—don’t ever hurt her. Or I’ll un-elect myself and make a new office called Sheriff of Love and arrest you. ”
“Yes, Mayor,” I say, dead serious, and she barks a laugh.
Inside, the kettle is already on, cookies cooling on the counter, the table set like she’s been rehearsing this scene. We sit. We breathe. We pretend this is normal. “So?” Aunt Maggie says hands on hips. “Ami-girl, are you here for a visit or are we finally calling this permanent?”
Ami doesn’t look at the table. She looks at me. “Permanent,” she says, steady. “I wrapped all my deadlines, turned in my notice last week and finished out the last edits yesterday. I’m back for good.”
The words land like a match on dry kindling. I reach for her hand under the table. She meets me halfway.
“And,” Aunt Maggie adds, knowing glint in her eye, “she already had the utilities turned on.” Ami’s cheeks flush. “I was going to tell him next.”
“Utilities?” I echo, slow on purpose, because I know exactly where this is going and I want to hear her say it.
Ami takes a breath. “I’m moving into my family’s house . I never sold it. I couldn’t. It’s right between you and Aunt Maggie for a reason.” Her eyes shine, and there it is—the thing I’ve wanted since July. “It’s home.”
My chest eases in that way it only ever does around her.
“Good,” I say, voice rougher than I expect.
“That’s good.” “And before you say anything,” she adds, glancing between us, “there is no beach-cottage surprise or anything like that. I know I mentioned it once or twice on our calls. Not now. Ethan. I don’t want you to think that I’m buying houses to back you into a corner.
The only plan is making the family house mine again.
Ours – eventually if that is what you want.
The cottage idea can wait until it’s a “we" project, not a “me” panic.”
Aunt Maggie looks like someone just handed her the Atlantic. “Bless it,” she mutters, wiping at one eye. “You two finally learned to use your words.” “Working on it,” I say.
Ami squeezes my fingers under the table. “I told Aunt Maggie early because I needed help with the inspector and the plumber and… everything. I didn’t want to tell you until I could say it face to face.” She swallows. “I was afraid it would sound like pressure.”
I shake my head. “It sounds like home.”
Aunt Maggie clears her throat, shamelessly eavesdropping. “For the record,” she says, tapping the table like a gavel, “you have my blessing. On the house, on the two of you, on whatever you decide to build. Consider yourselves pre-approved by the Mayor for reckless amounts of happiness.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we say together. She waves us off with a soft snort. “Get out of my kitchen before I start crying for real. Go see your house, Ami-girl.”
We walk next door in the late afternoon hush. It’s like the place has been holding its breath all winter: same white clapboard, same blue door, same porch that ate the summers of my childhood with its creak and its sun.
Ami stops at the bottom step. Her shoulders lift with a breath that shakes. “I forgot how good it smells,” she whispers, “lemon oil and salt air.”
“Did you…?” I begin, and then she sees the new doormat. Welcome back , stitched in navy. A small vase of daisies on the rail, stubborn and cheerful. I can hear the little gasp which is adorable. She’s definitely still my Ami!
She pulls keys from her pocket and presses one into my palm. “Front and back. In case I lock myself out. Or in. Or you want to beat me to the coffee.”
I stare at the key like it might burn through my skin. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” she says. “This is my house. And I want you in it.”
We step inside, and it’s like walking into a memory that decided to open the windows.
The floors glow. The windows are washed.
There’s a jar of seashells on the entry table and a list by the phone in Ami’s careful script: plumber Tuesday, porch swing bolts, paint samples—sea glass, heron gray, sand dune .
“You’ve been busy,” I say, grinning.
“Aunt Maggie’s fault,” she says. “She recruited half the street. Don’t open the freezer—I think she stocked it for a hurricane.”
My chest loosens and loosens until I don’t know how it ever felt tight. “Ami?”
“Hm?”
“I missed you.”
She laughs quietly. “I missed you too.”
We wander from room to room, making the kind of plans you only make when you can finally see next month without flinching.
Front parlor to be her writing studio—north light, quiet in the afternoons, a door that shuts so the whole world knows when words are happening.
Back bedroom for guests—Aunt Maggie’s inspection face appears like a ghost in both our imaginations, and we decide on an actual bed frame instead of the terrible futon.
The kitchen—paint the cabinets or leave them? She votes sea glass. I vote her laugh.
We find the porch swing in the shed with its chains neatly coiled, and decide that will be our first project. We measure. We argue. We call a truce and pencil in Saturday—Swing on her list.
On the coffee table, her notebook lies open. A scribble from Aunt Maggie: A town doesn’t change because one person wins an election. It changes because a hundred small hands keep choosing it. My throat tightens.
“Book two?” I ask.
She nods. “And book one is finally real. Contracts signed. They want more. And I want… this.” Her eyes sweep the room. “Words here. Life here.”
“Good,” I say again, because it’s the only word that fits.
We take the long way to the beach, because some things deserve a proper approach. The sky is turning copper, water catching fire in layers, wind off the water like a benediction.
“Can I ask you something?” I say as we crest the dune.
“You can ask me anything.”
“Were you scared? Leaving the job. The city. All of it.”
Ami laughs softly, and the sound is braver than any answer. “Terrified,” she says. “I made a list of everything I could lose and then another list of everything I’d lose if I didn’t come back. The second list won.”
“What was on it?” I ask.
She looks at me like I already know. “You,” she says simply. “And the version of me that only shows up here. The one who isn’t always racing the clock. The one who doesn’t apologize for wanting small-town life and big feelings.”
We stop at the waterline. She slips her sandals off and digs her toes into the cold sand like she’s grounding a circuit.
“I need to say something out loud, Ethan,” she adds, turning to me.
“I didn’t come home to trap you or to speed anything up.
I came home because I finally know what I want, and it’s not louder or shinier—it’s steadier.
If forever with you is slow and paint-splattered and full of porch projects and town drama and helping Aunt Maggie save an old mural, then that’s my kind of epic. ”
Something in me loosens that I didn’t realize I’d been holding since the day she left. I take both her hands and pull her close until the only horizon is her eyes.
“I love you,” I say, because waiting for the perfect moment is a kind of hiding.
“I love you in the morning when the bay is slate and the gulls sound like rusty hinges. I love you when you argue with paint swatches and when you write until your hand aches. I love you when you make the whole town go quiet because you found the exact right words for something none of us could name.” I swallow.
“I want a future with you. Not just summers. All of it.”
She exhales, shaky and certain. “I love you too,” she whispers.
“And I want all of it. I want the swing and the studio and your coffee and the station’s siren at 3 a.m. I want Aunt Maggie’s lemon bars and Mrs. O’Hara’s gossip and whatever we decide to do with that ridiculous patch of lawn that only grows weeds. ”
“Native grasses,” I say, mock offended.
“Please,” she says, grinning, tears glittering. “We both know you’re planting tomatoes in a week.”
I kiss her—slow and honest and relieved. The ocean roars. The town hums behind us like a benediction.
On the walk back we hear the familiar rattle of the ATV and, right on cue, Jake rolls by, one hand on the wheel, the other lifting in a lazy salute. “Evening, boss,” he calls. “City girl.”
“Resident,” Ami corrects, proud as a banner.
Jake grins. “Heard you two were back to fixing that swing. Careful—don’t let Meow-Man here get distracted. Cats are staging revolts in oaks all over the county.”
I groan. “You rescued one cat, Nine Lives Jake , and now you think you’re a legend.”
He winks. “ Chief Meow-ster here promoted me.” The ATV rattles away. Ami is laughing so hard she hiccups, and I decide that sound is my favorite thing in the world.
Dusk lays itself over the street like a soft blanket. We reach home just as the porch light flicks on—Aunt Maggie again, or maybe the timer she set years ago. Either way, it feels like a blessing. Ami stops on the top step and turns, the light catching her face. “I have one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
She fishes for a second key from her pocket—brass, worn smooth.
“This is the deadbolt key,” she says, serious now.
“It’s not just for coffee or for when the pipes bang in January.
It’s for everything. For whenever ‘come in’ is too slow and you need somewhere to land.
For whenever I forget to be brave and you remind me. ”
I hold the keys she’s given me in my fist, metal warm from her hand. “Then take mine,” I say, pulling the spare from my wallet. “Same terms. Especially the part about reminding me.” We trade. It feels like a ceremony no one else needs to see.
“I’m not asking you with a ring tonight,” I tell her. “I want to do this right—slow, on purpose, with a porch I didn’t staple together after two cups of bad coffee. But I am asking for something.”
“What?”
“A vow,” I say. “That we’ll build this together.
That when we argue about cabinet colors or where to keep the weird mugs, we’ll still be us.
That when the station calls me out at midnight and the house creaks and you’re scared, you’ll call me anyway.
That you’ll let Seabrook keep remaking you into the person you love being.
” I take a breath. “And that you’ll let me be your home. ”
Ami’s eyes fill and overflow. She doesn’t wipe the tears away; she just lets them be.
“Yes,” she says. “To all of it. And I vow this too: when the city whispers to me that I’m missing out, I’ll remember what I found here.
I’ll choose us. I’ll choose this house. I’ll choose the small, a hundred times, and never apologize for how big it feels. ”
We stand under the porch light and swear love without witnesses, without a script, without anything but everything we’ve learned since last summer: that belonging is something you practice.
“Tomorrow,” she says, smiling through it, “we hang the swing.”
“And after that,” I say, “we turn the front room into your studio.”
“And after that,” she says, “maybe we start looking. Not buying—just looking. For a little weathered cottage we can rescue together someday. Something with bones and bad wallpaper. A place that isn’t mine or yours yet—just a dream we make real when we’re ready.”
“Roots and wings,” I say.
“Roots and wings,” she echoes.
The porch light hums. The tide pulls and returns and pulls again. Somewhere next door, Aunt Maggie’s radio plays low, and we can almost hear Mrs. O’Hara tell the mailman that she absolutely knew this would happen and has the dates written in her ledger to prove it.
Ami slips her hand into mine. “Come inside,” she says.
We cross the threshold together, and the house settles around us—not a museum, not a question, but an answer we choose again and again.
Not the end of summer.
The beginning of forever.