But then Amelia came back into my life, and everything seemed light again. At first, it was the prospect of having the babies, of having a piece of Greer back. But then I realized that it wasn’t about Greer. It was about Amelia, about the way she made me laugh, the way my heart sped up when she smiled at me, the way she made me realize that my ability to love didn’t die with Greer.

I turned my head to look at Amelia, shifting slightly in my kayak. She turned, and her eyes met mine. We were so close. “I was okay with being stuck out here alone,” I said. “I’d made my peace with it.”

She nodded.

I looked down at my hands, afraid of what I would find in her face when I confessed, “But I’d rather be with you.”

And suddenly, the silence, which had been so peaceful, became deafening.

When Amelia pushed away from me and started paddling, I knew I had blown it. I shouldn’t have said all that, shouldn’t have put her on the spot. She had a boyfriend; she was planning a future. But how could I not say it? How could I continue to live a life where she didn’t know? I sighed, paddling behind her. There was nothing else to do. I wanted to hang back, but my desire to help her get her kayak up on the dock was even stronger than my desire to save face.

I paddled up ahead of her and jumped out, pulling my boat out of the water. She bumped the dock, and I leaned down to take her paddle and then her hands. I pulled her up, my fingers on her skin feeling electric and jolting. Just as I noticed the way the moon glowed on her beautiful face, she wrapped her arms around my neck. I leaned down, pausing to take it in, the flowery smell of Amelia and the earthy smell of the marsh, the sounds of the night making this patch of earth feel alive and thrumming, the moon bathing us in its light, the stars conspiring to give us this swept away feeling. My lips met hers, slightly salty from the air and the water and, as I kissed her and kept kissing her, never wanting to stop, as I pulled her in tighter and closer to me like I would never let her go again, the bullfrogs silenced, the cicadas stopped singing, the world quit spinning. Everything faded away except for Amelia, me, and this one moment that was so perfect, so right, I knew for sure that neither of us could ever deny it again.

Elizabeth THE FABRIC OF FAMILY

I KNEW OLIVIA WAS GOING to be furious. Positively furious. I wanted to wait until the morning to tell her, but when she showed up at my door with a bottle of chardonnay in her hand and her best scheming look on her face, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to put it off. She was grinning from ear to ear. I was in trouble.