Chapter 35 Isla
THIRTY-FIVE
ISLA
The whole orchard smells like salmon, lemon, and smoke.
Jack’s at the grill with the tongs in one hand and a furrow between his brows.
This morning, we scrubbed down a couple of picnic tables and dragged them to the porch. Winnie dropped off jars of tulips and scruffy peonies, so now there are flowers in mismatched glass, stacks of plates, and cloth napkins that make the whole thing feel put together.
I’m tossing salad in my biggest wooden bowl. Greens, sliced early plums, feta, toasted almonds, red onion, plum vinaigrette. It’s pretty, almost absurdly so, and it’s the kind of effort I wouldn’t have had in me three months ago.
“Those are close to done,” I call. “You might want to take them off before you convince yourself they need another five minutes.”
Jack glances back at me and flips a fillet anyway. “Do you want to be in charge here?”
I smile. “Aren’t I always?”
When he comes up the steps, he slides a hand around my waist. He looks ridiculously pleased with life, and it sends that same strange, warm feeling through my chest all over again.
“Quality control,” he says, stealing a plum from the bowl.
I swat his hand with the serving tongs. “Hands off the goods, Rhodes.”
“I married you for these plums.”
“You married me because you’ve been desperately pining after me for six years,” I say. “The plums were a bonus.”
He leans in and kisses the corner of my mouth.
Gravel crunches down the drive, and then a truck door slams, followed by the high-pitched shriek of a small child who has clearly spotted food.
I set the salad aside and wipe my hands on a dish towel, suddenly hyperaware of every detail. The scrubbed tables. The string lights looped along the eaves. The fact that no one from a board or a bank is coming tonight.
It’s only my people.
Winnie swings out of the truck with a jar of honey in one hand and an armful of flowers in the other.
“You look annoyingly Zen,” she calls. “Is that from sleep or really good sex?”
“Bit of column A, bit of column B.”
It’s been two weeks since that meeting, and for the first time in months, my body belongs to something other than survival. Early June has settled over Mirabelle in warm wind, pollen, and long evenings, and Jack has apparently taken that as a personal challenge.
We’ve had sex down by the river, out in the rows, in my bed, in the guest room, against the pantry door, and once on the mudroom bench in a way that nearly took out the coat rack. I am, to my great irritation, very well rested.
Goldie scrambles out of the back seat with her sunhat askew. “Isla! Mama says I can have three plums and maybe four.”
“Only if you file detailed tasting notes,” I tell her. “We have standards here.”
“I know things,” she says solemnly, then barrels toward the porch.
Reid comes around the truck with a guitar case in one hand and a foil-covered casserole dish in the other. “Brought asparagus.”
I roll my eyes. “Winnie’s endless vegetable agenda.”
Reid frowns. “She’s trying to keep us healthy.”
“It’s a joke, Whitaker.”
He looks ready to defend himself, but Goldie tugs on my shirt before he can get going. “Can I go on the swing before dinner?”
“If your mom says it’s okay,” I say.
Winnie groans. “Fine. If you climb, first branch only. No jumping out of trees.”
Goldie salutes and tears off down the path.
A navy Subaru pulls up behind them.
Elsie climbs out with a casserole dish in both hands. Wells follows, looking equal parts resigned and affectionate.
“I brought pie,” Elsie announces as she comes up the steps.
I’m ninety percent sure whatever is under that foil is either going to be dry in the middle, burnt around the edges, or somehow both. Still, Elsie looks proud of it, and that has to count for something.
She passes off the dish and gives me a quick hug.
Wells lets out a single, amused huff. His gaze moves over the tables, the yard, the rows beyond. “Place looks good,” he says. “Feels settled.”
“High praise from the man who lives in a haunted inn,” I say.
He frowns. “It’s sentient, not haunted.”
“I’m sure the inn appreciates the distinction.”
My dad sits near the end of the table in his wheelchair, watching Jack at the grill like he personally hired him. He looks tired, but pleased in that quiet way he gets when he’s surrounded by people he loves.
We get everyone settled, passing dishes down the table in a line of color and heat: salmon, salad, potatoes, bread, honeys, lemon wedges. As the sun drops, the string lights flicker on overhead.
We squeeze in around the tables.
Jack lifts his glass and clears his throat. “I want to make a toast.”
I groan. “Absolutely not. We already survived your reception speech.”
He ignores me, obviously. “To my wife, who is the fiercest, most stubborn, most beautiful woman I know, and who somehow keeps making this place and the rest of us better just by refusing to give up on it.”
Everyone murmurs and raises their glasses. My face goes hot.
“And to Jack,” I add, because if I don’t say something back, Winnie will never let me hear the end of it. “For being impossible to get rid of. And for being everything I didn’t know I was allowed to ask for.”
That earns me a few soft noises and one extremely smug look from my husband.
Conversation spills over itself after that. We talk about Bobby threatening to ban golf carts from the town green and whether the Harbor Light is ever going to fix their bathroom lock.
Wells and Elsie share a plate of roasted potatoes. Jack keeps refilling my dad’s water before he can ask.
“How’re the hives?” I ask as Winnie spoons potatoes onto Goldie’s plate.
“One of them swarmed last week because Reid walked by in that neon safety shirt.”
Reid looks offended. “That shirt is high visibility, not neon.”
We’re still laughing when a red sedan crunches slowly up the drive and comes to a stop near the fence line.
“Shit,” Wells mutters, looking past us. “Is that Langford?”
I turn.
Beau gets out with one hand in his pocket and a dark bottle dangling from the other. He pauses when he takes in the tables, the lights, the whole cluster of familiar faces on the porch.
The noise drops out of the evening for half a beat.
Then Jack mutters, “Oh, hell.”
“You invited him?” Wells asks, staring at me.
“Yes,” I say, because I did.
In hindsight, I probably should’ve given people some warning. Beau and Wells have history, and none of it is charming. The last time they saw each other was during a party after the inn was given a historical designation. Beau made some comment about Elsie that nearly got him punched in the mouth.
But things are different now, or maybe only complicated in a new way. I still wouldn’t trust Beau with my diary or my bank password, but we wouldn’t be where we are without him. I’m trying, however reluctantly, to be the kind of person who can admit that.
I push back my chair and head down the steps.
“Nice setup,” Beau says when I reach him.
“You came.”
“You invited me,” he says. “I spent ten minutes staring at the email, trying to decide whether you meant it.”
“I did,” I say. “Though you are currently in a probationary period.”
His mouth twists. “I’ll take ‘in progress’ over ‘villain of the week.’”
“Don’t get cocky,” I say. “Greer is still my best friend.”
I wish Beau had never done what he did to the Ashbys, never pushed and maneuvered until leaving Blue Willow felt like the only move they had left. Maybe then I could trust him without that small, permanent catch in my chest.
Maybe then my best friend would still be close enough to call on a Tuesday and ask whether she wanted to come eat dinner on the porch.
He winces. “There are things about the Ashbys that you don’t know, Winslow.”
I narrow my eyes. “Like what?”
“Things we can get into another time. Just know that I’m only looking out for the good of Blue Willow. And I’d really appreciate it if no one lit any black candles with my name on them.”
“No promises.”
He offers me the bottle. “Peace offering. Cranberry reserve. Figured it could sit on the table next to your fancy plums and remind everyone we’re all stuck in this town together.”
I take it. “You’re going to be civil tonight. No side deals. No trying to pitch anyone so they feel trapped at their own dinner. No calling Elsie a chicken, was it?”
“A hen.” He snorts. “Don’t worry, I’m trying something new.”
“We’ll see how that goes,” I say, then jerk my head toward the porch. “Come on.”
When we head back up, the whole table looks at us.
“Evening,” Beau says lightly. “I heard there was salmon.”
“Look who crawled out of the bog,” Wells says.
He folds his arms. The two of them stare at each other for a beat. Then Wells reaches for an extra plate, sets it down at the end of the table, and points. “That’s your seat.”
People shift to make room. Beau sits. The tension eases by degrees, the way a slow leak softens something under pressure. Plates start moving again. Beau passes Goldie the breadbasket without comment. She thanks him and immediately drops a roll in the dirt.
Later, once everyone’s fed and the sharp edges have worn down, Jack puts some old country music on the speakers. The string lights buzz softly overhead. Fireflies begin blinking at the edges of the grass.
Jack drapes his arm along the back of my chair, his fingers absently catching a loose strand of my hair.
This is nice, isn’t it? I’m not actively running worst-case scenarios. They’re still there, of course. Frost. Blight. Debt. Another committee around the bend. But they aren’t the only things in the room tonight.
There’s this, too. The people I love coming together under the same starlit sky.
By the time the plates are nearly empty and Goldie’s head is lolling against Reid’s shoulder, people start peeling off.
Winnie hugs me tight. “Text me if you need help with the tasting shed. I have opinions.”
“Of course you do.”
Reid lifts Goldie into his arms. She goes limp in that boneless, sleepy way kids do.
One by one, everyone else heads out. Eventually, it’s only me and Jack on the porch, the candles burning low, the last of the salmon cooling on the tray.
We sit on the steps with our shoulders touching, looking out over the rows.
“Do you think we’d still have ended up here if I didn’t flake on our first date?”
“You probably would have fucked it up later, Rhodes.”
He laughs, and I think about this ring he slid onto my finger. How panic sat where joy should have been. How I never got to choose him out loud, with everyone watching, on purpose. And how every good thing between us seemed to begin as some kind of emergency.
“I want a real wedding,” I blurt. “A do-over.”
He turns toward me. “Yeah?”
“Not with seating charts and color palettes. Just . . . someday. Here. When we mean it.”
He studies me, his eyes soft in the porch light.
“I meant it the first time,” he says. “But I can absolutely get on board with marrying you again.”
“What about a vow renewal?”
He squeezes my hand. “I like that plan.”
We fall quiet again. The night keeps moving around us. A frog starts up down by the creek. The air smells like cooling stone and the last traces of smoke.
Farther down the hill, a breeze moves through the branches, and a scatter of petals lets go and drifts through the dark. For once, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for something to crash.
There will be more storms. More decisions. More contracts and ladders and empty bank accounts to wrestle. But the orchard is still here. Jack is still beside me.
We’re not only hanging on by a thread anymore.
We get to stay for good.