Parker laid on his horn for no reason I could discern, and I was grateful for the thousandth time that I wasn’t the one navigating Manhattan traffic in a U-Haul truck that smelled vaguely of old sub sandwiches.

“I’ve never been a father.” He grinned at me. “Wouldn’t it be boring if we just stuck with what we knew?”

When Parker and I had gone, together, to tell George that we were pregnant, that his grandchildren were going to come into the world after all, when we had pitched him the idea of us relocating Southern Coast—and ourselves—to Cape Carolina, he had fallen as to pieces as I’ve ever seen a man. He had to leave the room to compose himself.

But once he returned, it didn’t take him long to spring into action. He had planned to give Parker a big bonus. He would relocate us, buy us a home. But he wanted a huge house, one big enough for him to have his own wing, somewhere that he could come visit his grandchildren for weeks at a time without disturbing us. And, well, we knew just the place.

“Well, at least the house is familiar,” I said now. I had pushed Parker on Dogwood, made him express his opinions, voice his concerns. I had insisted that he take the small third floor with the peerless view and make it into a space for himself. His house in Palm Beach had been all Greer. Dogwood was, by default, all me. But I wanted him to stake his claim there, to make it his own. Some days I knew the details drove him nuts, but I thought he would be glad when he walked into the kitchen and saw the dishwasher that he had researched in Consumer Reports, when he sat at the dining room table and remembered that he had helped choose the art hanging over it, when his bedroom was a mix of soft blues and creams that he had chosen.

“I can’t wait to see the new master bath,” Parker said. Parker had dreamed of having a master bathroom with a steam room and sauna right inside—especially since there wasn’t a gym in Cape Carolina that had them.

I nodded, happy and proud that we had created this home together for our life together. “I think I’m most excited about the kitchen. No, no! I’m most excited about the nursery.”

After Parker and I had told George the news that day, I had to visit one more place in Palm Beach. Walking up the three flights of stairs to that apartment I used to share with Thad didn’t hurt like I’d thought it would. I hadn’t told him I was coming. And if he hadn’t been there, that might have been that. I would have just left that day. I’m so glad he was home. So was Nita, a sprightly, bright-eyed eight-year-old who Thad and Chase were fostering and hoping to adopt.

“She’s so special,” Thad said. “But she has so much to overcome, so many scars.”