Celeste couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to Herring Cove at that hour. Maybe in the early days with Jack, when dinner turned into drinks which turned into a drunken stroll through town and ultimately to the beach. There had been a night or two when they’d made love in the sand. The thought of the way their bodies had responded to each other’s back then—like magnets, like electrified cables—made her yearn for him now. The pain she’d been feeling for the past few days shot up again, just when she thought she couldn’t feel any worse.

“The important thing is to stay in the moment,” Maud said, as if reading her mind.

Maud, dressed in white jeans and a white T-shirt, was barefoot and gathered Celeste, Gemma, and Elodie into a tight circle. Celeste had dressed carefully for the occasion in one of her favorite pale blue tunics she’d found at a thrift shop years ago. It had lantern sleeves and went nearly to the ground, with slits on either side of her legs for easy movement. Elodie wore joggers and a gray cashmere wrap, while Gemma was dressed in denim shorts and a P’town hoodie. They stood as close to the ocean as possible before the tide licked their feet.

“Our intention tonight is to rid ourselves of negative energy and fear,” Maud said. “The universe gives us signs—the stars can point us in the right direction. But the biggest factor in how our lives turn out is the choices we make. And the fact that the three of you are standing together here tonight is a powerful choice.”

Celeste glanced at her sister and they shared a smile.

“I know that all three of you have the intention to be positive, to move forward in life. The challenge is that there are so few rites of passage for adult women,” Maud said. “And it’s a shame, because as we get older, we need to learn how to let go of the past in order to live fully in the present. So tonight, we form an Intention Circle.” She told them to join hands.

“In order to dispel what has been holding us back, we each need to evoke the thing we want most to come into our lives. As we do that, we will pass this ring—a symbol of the past—to each speaker.” She handed the diamond eternity band to Celeste. “Would you like to go first?”