Across from them, Kate slept against Johnny, who also had his eyes closed. A small boy lay tucked alongside each of them. They looked like the Hallmark version of family perfection.

The limousine turned onto the beach road.

Tully kissed Marah’s soft pink cheek. “We’re almost home, princess.”

Marah blinked slowly awake. “I love you, Aunt Tully.”

Tully’s heart closed like a fist around those words, and she felt a swell of almost painful emotion. She used to think that success was like gold, worth sifting through mud for, and that love would always be there, waiting somehow on the riverbanks for her when she was done panning. She couldn’t imagine now why she’d thought that, given her background. She ought to have recognized love’s scarcity early on. If success were gold, lying in rivers, love was a diamond, buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth and unrecognizable in its natural form. No wonder it touched her so deeply to hear those words from Marah. They’d been so rare in her life. “I love you, too, Marah Rose.”

The limo pulled into the driveway, tires crunching on gravel, and parked. It took forever for the family to get out of the car, walk into the house. They all immediately headed upstairs.

Tully stood in the empty living room, unsure of what to do. The floorboards creaked. She’d tried to merge into the lane of their nighttime routine, but she kept getting in the way, so finally she gave up.

Kate came down the stairs at last, sighing tiredly, holding a pile of afghans in her arms. “Okay, Tully. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

Kate grabbed her arm and led her through the toy-strewn house. At the kitchen, Kate paused just long enough to pour two glasses of white wine and then they went outside to the chairs positioned in the grass. The quiet gurgling noise of the waves took Tully back more than twenty years, to those nights they used to sneak out and sit by the river, talking about boys and sharing smokes.

Tully sat down in one of the weathered Adirondack chairs and spread the knitted blanket over her. After all these years and no doubt countless washings, it still smelled of Mrs. M.’s menthol cigarettes and perfume.

Kate drew up her blanketed knees and rested her chin on the bumpy summit, then looked at Tully. “Talk,” she said.

“What should we talk about?”

“How long have we been best friends?”

“Since David Cassidy was groovy.”

“And you think I can’t tell when something’s wrong?”