Chapter 9
The sound of a power saw greeted Kate and Vivien before they even reached the front door of Tessa and Dusty’s beach house in Miramar Beach.
“It’s not-so-controlled chaos in here—I would enter at your own risk,” Tessa announced when she opened the front door. She held Olive on one hip, brushing something from the little girl’s blond curls. Sawdust?
“That sounds like more than moving furniture and rearranging a duplex into one place,” Kate said.
“So much more,” Tessa said. “Dusty wants the staircase opened up and it’s…loud. And dirty. And there are three men in there…sweating. Profusely.”
On cue, the saw screamed again. Olive clapped her hands and squealed, “Dusting!”
They laughed at the name the toddler had hung on her soon-to-be father.
“He’s making plenty of it,” Tessa muttered, kissing the top of Olive’s head. “Girls, let’s get out of here. Please. I’m dressed. She’s dressed. We’re ready.”
Kate took in the scene behind her sister—tarps over the furniture, the smell of fresh-cut lumber, and the muffled sound of male laughter from somewhere upstairs.
The house had been two separate units when Tessa and Dusty bought it, back when they were just friends sharing a property and pretending they weren’t falling in love.
Now that they were married, Dusty had wasted no time converting it into a proper single-family home, which apparently required destroying most of the first floor.
“It looks like a bomb went off,” Vivien observed.
“Two bombs. One upstairs and one down. Dusty promised it would take a weekend. That was five days ago and there’s no end in sight.”
Kate reached for Olive, who wrapped her small arms around Kate’s neck and immediately pressed a sticky hand against her glasses.
“Tess-Tess!” Olive announced, pointing at Tessa as if Kate might not know who she was.
“That’s right, baby girl. That’s Tess-Tess. She’s my sister.”
“Sis-tah.”
“Be warned, she’s a human parrot,” Tessa said, grabbing one of her beloved designer totes, which now looked suspiciously like a diaper bag. “I say Pompano Joe’s because we can walk. Now. Before I commit a crime with a circular saw.”
They took off for the beachfront restaurant, laughing and chatting as they strolled down the water-facing road.
There, they found the deck was open and breezy, and scored a table near the railing with a view of the Gulf and a highchair for Olive.
She settled in with a sippy cup and started gnawing on a plastic starfish toy as though it were the featured menu item.
“Look at you,” Kate said to Tessa once they’d ordered iced teas and the breeze had swept away the last of the sawdust stress. “Married. A mom. Renovating a house.”
“Just married. Almost a mom—adoption isn’t final for six to eight weeks—and ‘renovating’ is optimistic.
More like making it work.” She took a sip of tea and grinned at Vivien.
“If you’d have told me back in March when you found me hiding in a guest room at the Summer House, basically homeless and pathetic, that I’d be living in Miramar Beach with a therapist husband and a two-year-old, I would have laughed in your face and called you crazy. ”
“You did laugh in my face, and I thought you were the crazy one,” Vivien deadpanned.
“I was,” she said, “but now I’m just crazy about…her. And the man destroying our home with love and determination.” She handed Olive a piece of bread, tearing it into small pieces automatically, wiping a crumb from the little girl’s chin without breaking eye contact with Vivien.
“Determined to make it perfect?” Vivien asked.
Tessa shrugged. “Just that it is a functioning, safe, clean family home when the adoption agency inspects and interviews.”
Watching and listening, Kate felt something expand in her chest.
This was Tessa. This was a woman who’d spent twenty-five years running from the grief of giving up a baby that no one but their father knew she’d had.
Who’d lived in Ritz-Carltons across the country, planned spectacular events for other people’s milestones, and never planted roots anywhere long enough to need a mailbox.
Now she had that child back in her life—although Roman was certainly no child.
She had Dusty, a former troublemaker from their teenage beach days who now helped people endure grief and grow.
And she had this curly-topped angel who called her Tess-Tess and reached for her like she was the center of the universe.
Tessa Wylie Mathers had finally landed. And she made it look effortless, which was the most Tessa thing of all.
“Why are you smiling like a loon, sweet sister of mine?”
Kate didn’t need to say all that out loud. It would come out like a speech and make them all teary. “I’m just happy,” she said instead. “For you.”
“And speaking of you…” Vivien leaned in, pointed at Tessa, and dragged out the word.
“Yes?” she asked, watching the other two women share looks that said…something. Then, Vivien gave Kate the floor with a subtle nod.
“We want to throw you a wedding,” Kate said.
Tessa blinked. “I had a wedding. Judge Clement. Bad lighting. Stuffed manatee. You were there.”
“A real wedding,” Vivien said. “On the beach. With sunset lighting, lace and lanterns, and a small crowd of family and friends at the Summer House.”
Tessa set her glass down. “Girls. No. That’s sweet, but we did it. We’re married. It’s done. I don’t need—”
“We think you do,” Vivien said.
“Well, I—”
“Always wanted one,” Kate finished.
“Every girl wants a wedding,” Tessa replied. “And if you’re referring to what we used to play as children when Mom let us use an entire roll of paper towels for my veil, that was about forty-five years ago, Kate. I never dreamed of a big wedding.”
“I have the proof that says differently,” Vivien murmured.
“She does,” Kate countered. “She has the Destin Diaries, and you might not remember a certain entry from 1994, but we read it the morning of your civil ceremony.”
Tessa looked from one to the other, her topaz eyes narrowing.
“You were seventeen,” Vivien continued, “and you described your dream wedding in such detail that Kate and I just sat there with our mouths open.”
“Lanterns on the beach,” Kate reminded her. “A long wooden aisle over the sand. White roses. A dress with lace sleeves—”
“I was seventeen!” Tessa laughed, but her eyes were bright. “I also thought I wanted to marry Luke Perry—God rest his pretty boy soul.”
“The point is,” Kate pressed gently, “you dreamed about that wedding. You talked about it like you could see it. And you deserve to have it.”
During the silence that rested over them for a beat, Olive dropped a piece of bread on the floor and picked up her starfish, which apparently tasted better, her big blue eyes moving over their faces with silent interest.
“It doesn’t have to be extravagant,” Vivien said softly. “A ceremony on the beach at sunset. The family. Dusty’s friends. Music, flowers, food—Jonah could cook. The boardwalk at the Summer House is the aisle. You come down it in whatever you want to wear, and we handle everything else.”
Tessa was quiet, which was rare enough that Kate knew she was giving real thought to the idea.
“We’ve been talking about it since the courthouse,” Kate said. “We actually considered a surprise, but nobody should have their own surprise wedding. Even you.”
“To be honest, with Lacey gone, I’m juggling real, paying clients and…
Olive Oyl.” She leaned over and kissed the little girl’s curls.
“I don’t have time to plan a wedding. I’ve got this little one and the adoption process, which requires some time, paperwork, and interviews, and now my house is a warzone. ”
“That’s why we’re planning it,” Vivien said. “You just show up and be beautiful. Which, annoyingly, requires zero effort on your part.”
Tessa’s mouth quirked. She picked up her iced tea, took a long sip, and set it down.
“When?” she asked.
Kate and Vivien exchanged a look of pure triumph.
“Before the summer ends,” Vivien said. “Lacey is looking at the Jags schedule for Roman’s off-weekend.”
“He can’t come all the way from Jacksonville in the middle of the football season,” Tessa said.
“For your wedding?” Kate choked. “He’ll fake an injury if he has to, but your son will walk you down the aisle. Well, boardwalk.”
Tears pooled in Tessa’s eyes. “That would be…something.”
“Something you deserve,” Kate whispered.
Tessa pressed her fingers under her eyes, the move eerily similar to Kate’s own glasses-adjustment habit. They were opposites in almost every way, but the Wylie women shared certain tells.
“I have to tell Dusty,” Tessa said, her voice thick.
“Dusting!” Olive shouted from the highchair, right on cue, and the three of them burst out laughing so hard that the table next to them looked over.
“Perfect timing, Double O.” Tessa picked up a sticky little hand to kiss it. “What do you think, baby girl? You want to be a flower girl? Throw some petals on the sand?”
Olive held up the plastic starfish. “Fow-er?”
“Close enough.” Tessa looked at Kate and Vivien with an expression that Kate hadn’t seen on her sister’s face since the courthouse—raw, unguarded gratitude. “You really want to do this for me?”
“We really do,” Kate said.
Their food arrived and the conversation shifted into logistics. A guest list. Whether the ceremony should be at golden hour or true sunset. Music—live or playlist?
Tessa had opinions about everything, which was exactly what they expected from a professional event planner. By the time they finished lunch, Tessa had sketched a rough layout of a wedding arch and a short action list on a napkin while Olive painted her highchair tray with guacamole.
It was, Kate decided, a perfect afternoon.
The Gulf stretched out beyond the deck railing.
Her sister laughing and planning and alive with joy.
Vivien mediating when they disagreed about flowers.
And Olive, this sweet, unexpected gift, sitting in the middle of all of it like she’d always been there.