I never thought I’d be a mother. I never thought I’d be a fiancée again. I certainly never thought I’d move to Cape Carolina or give up investigative journalism for lifestyle editing. While I had always believed that I was the master of my own destiny, perhaps this was written in the stars after all. And while driving away from a city I had come to love had been a little sad, I had to admit that, in Cape Carolina, the stars shone a whole lot brighter.

Parker MEMORIES

WHEN AMELIA WOKE ME IN the middle of the night, I was sure she was in labor. It was our first night in Dogwood, in our new house, in our new bed. It felt different. And the same. It’s hard to explain. We had renovated the entire house. New plumbing, new electrical, new wood, new paint, refinished floors, and new furniture with the old heirlooms still mixed in. You don’t donate a dining room table with George Washington’s initials carved in it.

I jumped up and started putting on my shoes, which was nonsensical since I wasn’t wearing any pants.

“Park, what are you doing?” I turned back. Amelia was lying on her left side, her head propped on her hand, staring at me.

“Get up! What are you doing? Unless you want to have our babies in the same place your great-grandmother had your grandmother, I suggest you hurry.”

“Sweetie, I’m not in labor,” she said soothingly.

I exhaled, unlaced my shoes, and flopped back into bed. “Do you need ice cream? Pie? Jalapeño pizza?” These were the three most common requests of Amelia’s pregnancy. I did my best to accommodate her because she looked so uncomfortable all the time.

“Parker, I want to get married.”

I looked over at the bedside table. It was four thirty. I switched on the lamp so I could see her face. “Amelia, are you having a dream? We are getting married. In November. Remember? You wanted to get married Thanksgiving weekend so the leaves would be falling?”

She nodded. “Yeah. But I’m just lying here thinking about how we won’t all have the same name when the babies are born, and I’d like to be married when they come.”

I would have done anything in the world for Amelia at that moment—except tell our mothers that we wanted to get married now. They were trying to hide their incessant planning from Amelia so as not to stress her out, but they didn’t mind stressing me out. I knew more than I had ever planned to know about flowers. And we were only inviting, like, forty people. I couldn’t imagine if this were a first wedding.

“Babe, I don’t know if we can pull that off,” I said soothingly.

“We won’t tell anyone!” she snapped. “I just want to go to the courthouse and get married.”

“We do have the license already,” I mused, more to myself than to her.