“How? Why? After all these years?” Anne asks skeptically. “The only times you’ve seen me have been on neutral ground and, then, only because the family diplomat,” she flicks her chin at me, “arranged it. You didn’t go on those trips for me, and if I’m all there is for you in Bay Bluff, you won’t come here either.”

Margo is suddenly pissed. “Where have you been, Anne? Have you never read any of my blogs? Half of them are about you!”

She draws back. “Me?”

“Yes, you. I write about siblings. How we’re permanently connected. What being sisters means. When it works and when it doesn’t. Why being sisters is more than being friends and how we suffer when a sister is lost. Loads of women I know are estranged from a sibling, but I write those blogs because of us. I don’t mention your name—trust me, I wouldn’t do that—but you’re right there.”

She has no reply. Nor do I, actually. But one of us has to speak, so I say, “I didn’t realize.”

“That I was talking about us?” Margo asks in surprise. “Then either I went overboard being obtuse—or you didn’t want to see it. I wrote those blogs to say how much I missed my sister.” She looks at Anne. “You.”

Anne is teary again. “Seriously?”

Margo rolls her eyes. “Must I grovel?” She catches up Anne’s hand. “We will be here. Unless you don’t want us.”

“I do,” Anne cries, looking like she might burst into full-on sobbing. I’m thinking I might, too, my own throat is that tight. But she is suddenly scowling. “As long as you know, I’m not marrying Bill. He can be involved with the baby, he can even live here with us at the house, I have no problem with that, but I am not rushing to lock myself to him just because of a baby. If you did it without a man, Mal, so can I.”

“But Bill loves you,” I remind her.

“Then maybe in time, but not right now.”

She looks at me, then at Margo. There is a sense of expectancy in her that has nothing to do with Bill or the baby. We’re back at the what-happens-now question.

But I do have the answer. I won’t tell them that the words come from Paul, because he doesn’t—shouldn’t—have a place in this circle of three. Nor will I force it on either of them. For one thing, with Tom barely in the ground, this is a time to remember him. For another, forcing isn’t my way. But the idea offers definite direction.

“What if we were to start making new memories?”

Chapter 29