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Back The Summer Cottage Save as PDF
Chapters (75)
  1. Cover
  2. Back Cover Text
  3. Praise
  4. Booklist
  5. About the Author
  6. Dedication
  7. Quote
  8. Prologue
  9. Part One
  10. ONE
  11. TWO
  12. THREE
  13. Part Two
  14. FOUR
  15. FIVE
  16. SIX
  17. Part Three
  18. SEVEN
  19. EIGHT
  20. NINE
  21. TEN
  22. Part Four
  23. ELEVEN
  24. TWELVE
  25. THIRTEEN
  26. Part Five
  27. FOURTEEN
  28. FIFTEEN
  29. SIXTEEN
  30. SEVENTEEN
  31. Part Six
  32. EIGHTEEN
  33. NINETEEN
  34. TWENTY
  35. TWENTY-ONE
  36. Part Seven
  37. TWENTY-TWO
  38. TWENTY-THREE
  39. TWENTY-FOUR
  40. TWENTY-FIVE
  41. Part Eight
  42. TWENTY-SIX
  43. TWENTY-SEVEN
  44. TWENTY-EIGHT
  45. TWENTY-NINE
  46. Part Nine
  47. THIRTY
  48. THIRTY-ONE
  49. THIRTY-TWO
  50. THIRTY-THREE
  51. THIRTY-FOUR
  52. Part Ten
  53. THIRTY-FIVE
  54. THIRTY-SIX
  55. THIRTY-SEVEN
  56. THIRTY-EIGHT
  57. Part Eleven
  58. THIRTY-NINE
  59. FORTY
  60. FORTY-ONE
  61. Part Twelve
  62. FORTY-TWO
  63. FORTY-THREE
  64. FORTY-FOUR
  65. Part Thirteen
  66. FORTY-FIVE
  67. FORTY-SIX
  68. FORTY-SEVEN
  69. EPILOGUE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  71. AUTHOR NOTE
  72. Reader’s Guide
  73. Questions for Discussion
  74. The Heirloom Garden
  75. Abby

I take a deep breath and continue. “You may not have the tangible assets I do, like this inn and this beach, to start over, but you do have all of the intangibles necessary to become the person you always dreamed—strength, resilience, confidence, realism, independence, kindness, intelligence and souls that are ready to soar. Most importantly, we have the capacity to love greatly, and that is a great blessing and one we should never lose despite how much we may have been hurt in the past.”

I can see some of the women nodding their heads, and that encourages me to keep going.

“Listen, I’m not a life coach, I don’t have a psychology degree, and I don’t know everything that you’ve gone through in your own lives that has deterred you from your dreams and led you right here, right now—be it children, mortgages, illness, caring for your parents, divorce or just plain old bad luck—but I do know this. We are united as women and that means we can do anything, especially together.”

I look back at the inn and can picture Sadie alone in the turret. “We too often let others take our dreams from us. We let fear overwhelm us. We take the path of least resistance. We stop trying to build our own castle.”

I pick up my cup from the beach, walk to the lake and fill it with water.

“We destroy ourselves one small decision and indecision at a time,” I say, trickling the water onto one of the turrets, which slowly begin to collapse, one drop of water at a time. “It happens so slowly—from childhood to adulthood—that we don’t realize what has happened to our dreams and self-esteem.”

I pick up the bucket, walk to the lake and fill it to the top.

“And then one day...” I stop and pour the bucket over the top of the sandcastle, images of Iris and Sadie and my previous life flooding my mind. “It all collapses without warning. We realize our castle—everything that protects us, that we believed would keep us safe—is just a facade that can be washed away in the blink of an eye.”

I take the bucket and fill it with sand. I take a seat and begin building towers for a new sandcastle.

“But you can start over, you can build what you dream,” I say, “and that begins right now.”

Slowly, the women join me—where I tell them all about Scooter—and we build a new sandcastle.

Together.

When it is completed, I place the pink peony I picked on top of the highest tower.

“It’s beautiful,” one of the women says.

“Because it’s ours,” another says.

“To unconventional women!” I say.

“To unconventional women!” the group responds in unison.

Part Twelve

Rule #12:

Boat Rides Are a Shore Thing

FORTY-TWO