“He loves her,” she said, her voice gleeful.

I pulled her in the front door, putting my finger to my mouth.

“Harris,” I whispered, pointing upstairs.

Olivia rolled her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed. This is awful to say, but I loved her so much more at times like this, when she had about a half glass of wine in her. Not too much. But my best friend could be terribly serious, and she was so much more fun when she loosened up just a touch. But tonight, I knew I was going to take the fun down several (hundred) notches.

I almost broke down and cried right then and there. How many more times would my best friend walk through my door like this, like she had thousands of times since our childhood? Just before Amelia came back to town, Charles and I had had a very real conversation about our future, and, much to my surprise, I had finally acquiesced. No, we weren’t old yet, but we were getting too old to take care of such a large house. It didn’t make sense, financially or otherwise. Charles felt suffocated by the place that made me feel warm and protected. Robby and Trina weren’t interested in dedicating their lives to a house like Charles and I had. And I wasn’t sure how Amelia was even paying her rent right now.

Charles tried to console me by saying that we could live in the cabin behind Dogwood, that we would still be on our same land. Liv would still be right next door. Nothing would change.

But everything would change. The mere thought of leaving this beautiful home where I had carved my initials in the banister, where my great-grandmother had given birth to my grandmother upstairs, where my grandparents had hosted black-tie affairs and dinner parties that I had watched from the top of the staircase, where my children had taken their first steps, where my sister and I had pulled off the biggest secret of our lives… This wasn’t a house. It was the fabric of my family, woven thread by thread, memory by memory.

I couldn’t share any of that with Liv, I decided. Not yet. Not now. The sorrow was too big to digest. Pulling her into the kitchen and pointing to a stool at the island, I produced a wine opener from the drawer, got two glasses, poured, and handed her one. Then I sat down beside her, and we both swiveled so our knees were almost touching, the same way we had done since we were barely toddlers.

“How do you know he loves her?” I whispered.

Her eyes were glittering. “Did you see them dancing tonight? The whole town knows they’re in love now.”

“I don’t want to tell you this,” I said.

Her face darkened.

“But I think she loves Harris.”

Elizabeth made a skeptical sound and said, “Oh, please. They have nothing in common. It’ll never work.”

But I knew that they did have quite a lot in common. They both loved books and art and music. They both loved New York. She smiled a lot when Harris was around, and, well, that was good enough for me. Not that I was abandoning my dreams of my best friend and me being sort of related. I wasn’t. But I was willing to put my daughter’s happiness above that, I’m happy to report.