I looked down at my hands. “It’s just weird, you know? I spent so many years certain that I didn’t want children, that I didn’t want that life. So why now?”

Mom looked at me, eyes bright. “Honey, I know that you’re a different generation, that you come from a time where women are supposed to know their own minds before they know someone else’s, love themselves before they can love a partner. And I respect that. But when you are so close to a person that you are contemplating spending your life together, things change.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, when you were with Thad, you didn’t want children and neither did he. That was fine. Harris didn’t want to get married and, when you were with him, you didn’t either. But being with someone new means necessarily shifting parts of your life to fit in with parts of theirs. Parker wants children. Changing your mind about wanting them too isn’t a crime, honey. It’s a part of being in a relationship.”

I could tell she was about to get up, leave me alone with thoughts I didn’t want to listen to. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you just sit with me for a while?”

She pulled me into her side, and I rested my head on her shoulder.

And so we sat, two Southern women who’d grown up in this same house in this same town on this same street—but who, somehow, wanted completely, entirely different things.

Parker SOUTHERN COAST

I HAD VERY DEFTLY PROVEN that the conversations you never want to have are inevitable. I wanted to say Amelia was overreacting. In the moment, I believed that she was. And so I huffed out, walked away, mad that she couldn’t bend just a little, as though giving birth to and raising children that weren’t biologically hers were a small favor to ask someone.

I realized hours later, about halfway out to the middle of the ocean, in my dad’s boat, alone, that I had probably overreacted. Okay, definitely overreacted. I had also played this all wrong. What better way to show the woman you love that you love her no matter what, that you love her more than the life you had envisioned for yourself, than to escape to the sea? Nothing says I’ll do anything for you quite like getting the heck out of Dodge.

What if she was looking for me? The water was dark and still, the sky bright with stars and a full moon whose reflection off the water increased the ethereal feeling. It also felt ominous. My stomach churned with the knowledge that I had done the wrong thing and that it might cost me the love of my life.

The other love of my life, anyway. It hit me like a punch in the face (probably from Mason) then. The other love of my life. Yeah, it was hard for me to move on. But Amelia was having to live with the fact that, no matter what, there would always be this other person between us. Roles reversed, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do it.