The Sea Isle Summer Rental (Sea Isle City #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Meredith had told them it was nice, which was true—just not the whole truth.

Meredith stood at the railing of the rooftop terrace and looked straight out at the ocean.

From up here you could see the whole stretch of it—the white break of the waves, the long flat line of the horizon, the beach still packed with umbrellas and chairs all the way to the water's edge.

The air was warm and salt-heavy, settling on your skin within a minute of being outside.

She'd told her husband, Tom, obviously, and he'd said, "Whatever you think"—which was enough. She had not told the other women. Partly because it wasn't relevant, and partly because Meredith had always preferred to let things arrive before she explained them.

She could already tell it had worked.

"Mom." Sophie appeared in the doorway behind her, phone pressed to her collarbone, her signal that she was mid-conversation and didn't want to be interrupted. "Can I claim the bedroom with the double windows? The one facing the street side?"

"We're doing rooms when everyone gets here."

"I just want to call it."

"That's not how this works."

She disappeared back inside, and Meredith could hear her footsteps on the stairs and then Trevor's voice carrying faintly from the phone as Sophie found a corner to finish her conversation. Trevor was a good kid. Safe, predictable. Meredith wasn't worried about Trevor.

Meredith was more worried about Sophie spending the entire summer with one foot back home.

She turned away from the ocean, taking in the street side.

Below, 59th Street was filling up—people hauling wagons of beach gear, a couple of bikes cruising past, kids in swim trunks cutting through the alley between houses with a boogie board tucked under each arm.

Sea Isle in June had its own energy—not yet the full crush of July, but enough that you could feel the season ahead of you.

A woman in a wide sun hat was power-walking with a coffee in one hand and a leash wrapped around the other, connected to a golden retriever doing its best to move in the same direction.

From somewhere two houses over came the smell of someone firing up a grill.

All summer, Meredith thought. Let's see what we do with all summer.

They'd been talking about it for years—a whole summer at the shore, all of them together, the way they used to do long weekends in their twenties before mortgages and marriages and kids made everything harder to schedule.

Back when they were just five girls who'd met freshman year at Rowan and didn't know yet how much they'd need each other.

She went downstairs to finish unpacking and got distracted by the living area, which made her pause at the threshold.

Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the length of the ocean side, and beyond them was the beach and then nothing but water—wide and blue and close enough that you could track the individual waves.

The kitchen flowed into it without a seam, the kind of open-concept layout that real estate listings called seamless and that actually was, for once.

Quartz countertops, a six-burner gas range, a farmhouse sink deep enough to wash a baking sheet standing upright.

She opened the cabinets one by one out of professional habit—real estate had made her incapable of entering a kitchen without doing inventory—and found them fully stocked.

Not the usual mismatched rental hodgepodge but actual sets: Crate and Barrel dishes, wine glasses that weren't plastic.

The hall closet, checked on a hunch, held White Company linens. She closed the last door and exhaled.

She pulled out her phone and texted Tom a photo of the kitchen.

He wrote back thirty seconds later: You're never coming home, are you?

She smiled and put her phone away.

The others arrived in waves over the next hour—cars double-parked, bags hauled up the front steps, teenagers scattering in four directions before the engines were even off. By the time the last bag was through the front door, the house was loud.

Carrie was in the kitchen, reorganizing the cabinet she'd already reorganized once, moving the glasses Meredith had put away to a lower shelf she found more logical.

Her daughters were gone. Brittany was upstairs, Ava somewhere with her camera.

Lori was on the middle deck with a tray of iced coffees from Shorebreak, calling out to Ethan to grab the cooler from the car.

He ignored her. Jen had taken a corner of the living room to drop her things and was at the windows, staring at the ocean like she was trying to decide if it was real.

Olivia's twins had located the Bluetooth speaker and were arguing over whose phone to connect; Olivia herself stood at the bottom of the staircase with a duffel bag over each shoulder, reading a text, then reading it again.

"Rooms," Meredith said from the kitchen doorway. "We need to do rooms before anyone unpacks anywhere."

"I already called the one with the double windows," Sophie said from somewhere upstairs.

Meredith leaned against the doorframe. "Calling it doesn't count."

"I know. I'm just saying."

Lori came in from the deck, coffee tray still in hand. "This house, Meredith. I need you to know that I almost cried pulling up."

"You did not almost cry," Carrie said, eyes on the cabinet.

"I teared up a little. The rooftop alone—"

"Nobody is going to the rooftop until we do rooms," Meredith said.

Jen raised her hand. "I'd like to formally request a single."

"There are six bedrooms." Meredith shrugged. "We'll make it work."

That settled things enough to get everyone moving. The next twenty minutes were a blur—doors opening and closing, someone asking where the extra towels were, footsteps in every direction.

Jen stood in the middle of the living room, suitcase still at her feet, watching it all unfold. "This is why I have a cat," she said to no one.

Sophie claimed the upstairs corner room, the one with the double windows, before anyone could argue.

Brittany tossed her bag on the other bed—college sophomore and high school senior, close enough in age to coexist. Sophie was on the phone with Trevor before Brittany had even unzipped her suitcase.

Lily and Ava ended up together in the room with the twin beds—Lily's idea, which Ava accepted with a shrug, though Meredith noticed Ava immediately began shifting the furniture while Lily narrated the whole operation from her side of the room.

Max took the converted sunroom off the back of the main floor, smallest room in the house, its own side entrance.

Ethan took the second bed. Meredith suspected Max had chosen the room in about four seconds flat, and Ethan had followed for exactly the same reason—away from the adults.

Olivia got her own room. Nobody questioned it.

Jen looked at Meredith. "So much for my single."

"You'll survive," Meredith said, dropping her bag onto the bed by the window.

Carrie and Lori took the room across the hall. Meredith could hear them negotiating closet space.

Once the bags were mostly where they needed to be, Meredith looked around. "Rooftop."

Nobody needed to be asked twice.

The outdoor staircase opened onto the terrace, and the group spread out across it slowly, the space bigger than they'd expected—each person finding the edge or the railing or a spot at the built-in bar, taking it in.

The outdoor kitchen ran along the front wall: a full grill, counters, a mini fridge built into the base.

A hot tub sat in the corner, jets off, cover still on.

Teak lounge chairs lined the perimeter. And in every direction—ocean to the east, bay glinting to the west, the narrow stretch of the island in between—it was all open sky.

Brittany had her phone up, slowly panning. Lily stood at the railing, looking down at the beach. Lori leaned against the bar, speechless.

"The bar has a sink," Jen said, peering behind it. "And a blender."

"It has a blender," Meredith said.

"I'm just confirming." Jen opened the mini fridge. "Empty, but cold. Someone's going to need to make a store run."

"Tomorrow."

"Tonight," Jen said. "I brought rosé." She held it up. "First order of business is figuring out who has the best blender drink recipe."

"That is not the first order of business," Meredith said.

"It's in the top three," Carrie said.

They stayed up there longer than they meant to. Eventually people drifted back downstairs to finish unpacking, the rooftop releasing them one at a time.

Meredith stopped in Carrie and Lori's doorway on her way past with an armful of extra towels. Lori had wandered back to the deck, but Carrie was unpacking in neat stacks—shirts by color, shorts folded in even halves, toiletry bag hung on the back of the bathroom door.

"You okay?" Meredith asked.

Carrie didn't stop folding. "I'm really good.

" She pressed a shirt flat against the top of the dresser.

"I brought four bottles of wine, two of which are from the Whole Foods sale section because I am trying to be financially responsible.

" She looked up. "And one extremely unnecessary cheese board from the specialty counter because I am also trying to live my life.

" She set the shirt in the drawer. "So, I'm somewhere in the middle. "

Meredith leaned against the doorframe. "The cheese board sounds right to me."

Carrie laughed—a real one. "Good. Because I already opened it."

Meredith left her to it.