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  Liz gestures toward the first dressing room, and I don’t mind stepping up. The other ladies are looking a little shy. I remind her of my name, and she looks through the plastic-wrapped dresses to find mine. She hands it to me by the metal hanger, and I slip inside the generously-sized dressing room. I strip off my jeans, sweater and concert tee, then stand to scope out my appearance in the mirror. Despite everything else in the shop looking classy and elegant, the harsh fluorescent lighting in here leaves a lot to be desired. It makes my skin look almost sick, highlighting the patchwork of turquoise veins crisscrossing under my pale flesh. And my scars look ugly, deformed, and purple.

  Nevertheless, I turn toward the dress and strip away the plastic. Sonnet gave us six styles to choose from, and I chose one with a halter top, ruched bodice, and a flowing chiffon skirt. It’s a beautiful coral color, which I’m sure looks amazing on all the other ladies, but I’m not sure it’s the best color for me. It’s just a tiny shade pinker than my hair. Oh, well. For a beach-themed wedding, I’m sure it will be great.

  I hike the dress up my hips and slide the halter over my head. The zipper is on the side. Who in the world thought side zippers on women’s dresses should be a thing? Had to have been a man. When you have boobs, you can’t see past them and have to feel around, blindly tugging at the zipper and praying to every god in every religion that you’re not going to zip up part of your boob. Ridiculous, right?

  There’s no way I can suck in my gut, get my boobs under control, and work the zipper at the same time. Guess I’ll need to get some help. I peek out the door and motion to Sonnet. She’s not having her fitting today because her dress isn’t in yet, so she’s just standing there with her arms crossed under her chest, looking a little bored. She’s not exactly known for her patience, and maybe that’s just another reason why we get along so well.

  “A little help?” I ask, trying not to flash Ken or Liz with the girls, which are in no way contained in this bodice. I’ll have to buy a strapless bra, I think to myself. I really can’t think of anything I would rather buy less, but apparently I will do a lot of things I don’t want to do for Sonnet.

  Sonnet slips inside and waggles her eyebrows at me as she raises her fingers to my zipper. She tugs on the material while I cup my girls, trying to lift them to where I’d like them to stay once the dress is zipped. Then I suck in my breath and hold it while Sonnet raises the zipper.

  “There!” she exclaims, stepping back to admire my reflection in the mirror. “Damn, girl, I didn’t know you had all those curves, and I see you in a swimsuit three times a week!”

  I laugh. “It’s probably the ugliest swimsuit on the market, though.” Yeah, the dress is actually pretty flattering. I’m used to seeing myself in my lab coat, jeans, and ugly swimsuits. I don’t think I’ve poured myself into a dress since my last interview, and I haven’t worn a formal dress probably since my high school prom.

  “I don’t think you even need a bra,” Sonnet remarks, her eyes drifting from my chest region back to my face.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, girl, you fill that baby out, wow!” She lifts her hands to her own breasts. “I got nothin’. Oh well, Drew doesn’t seem to mind.”

  She laughs and steps back out to join the other two ladies. It sounds like they are modeling their dresses out in the open. I take one last look in the mirror before joining them. I’m still not sure about the color, but the style of this dress is so va-va-voom. Like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. You know, the famous white dress that flutters up around her thighs when she steps over a grate in the sidewalk.

  Before making my debut outside the dressing room door, I entertain an involuntary and much unappreciated (though thankfully fleeting) thought about what Trooper Asshat might think of this dress.

  Once everyone is finished with their dress fittings, including Sonnet’s former roommate Sophie, who showed up approximately twenty-five minutes late, we all head across the street for lunch. As we are passing through the crosswalk, I notice traffic is beginning to thicken. Most of the parking spots have been snatched up now along the Avenue, especially this close to the beach. Then I catch sight of Browseabout Books, just down from where we are crossing.

  “Hey, do you mind if I stop in the bookstore for a second?” I ask. “I want to pick up a couple of books for my new niece.”

  “Oh, of course!” Sonnet grins. “I almost forgot about that. So exciting! Yeah, I’m sure it will take us forever and a day to even figure out what we’re going to eat, anyway.”

  With this many women and Ken in tow, I don’t doubt it. Ken doesn’t seem to mind, though. He’s chattering along with Karen and Sonnet like he’s one of the girls.

  I duck inside the bookshop and immediately feel at home. I’ve always loved this place. Ever since I moved here, I have made it a point to stop in any time I’m down on the Avenue, and naturally, this visit is no exception.

  Every time I’ve had a date and we’ve ventured down here, I’ve always taken the guy into Browseabout with me. If they scoffed—and trust me, many of the cops I’ve dated have professed their utter disdain for the written word—it was a pretty good indication we were not going to get along. As a matter of fact, after the fiasco known as Todd, I’ve thought about just starting all my dates in the bookstore so as not to waste any of my valuable time on some fool who hates to read.

  A display near the front of the store immediately catches my eye. There’s a little sign reading “Local Author” and an artfully arranged circular stack of picture books with a cute gray and white bunny against a soft lavender background. In a cutesy script it reads “Bonnie Bunny Learns the Truth.”

  Intrigued, I pick it up and flip through the pages. The illustrations are adorable, and it tells the tale of a little bunny who is adopted into a family that lives near the beach. The scenes depict the family showing the bunny around her new home. It is absolutely perfect for Harmony!

  A saleslady with short blonde hair and a toothy grin nudges me on the shoulder. “Finding everything you need?”

  I nod as I turn to smile at her. “This is so cute. Local author, huh? That’s great!”

  I immediately conjure up a vision of a sweet little lady in her seventies with white hair, a soft smile, and really snazzy clothes. She probably moved down to the beach from New York to retire with her husband, who is still handsome and affectionately dotes on her every chance he gets. Then I glance at the inside flap and see a photo of a tall, broad-shouldered man with his back to the camera, staring off into the sea under a fading sun. It’s not a little older lady at all. Huh.

  “A man writes this?” I ask the saleslady.

  She nods, her eyes wide with excitement. “Yes, and he’s very elusive. He always sends his assistant into the store with our copies, and he refuses to do a signing here, even though we’ve approached him several times. We don’t know his real name or anything. He writes under the name C.J. Evans.”

  “Wow, how odd,” I remark, closing the book. “My brother and his wife are adopting a little girl, and this book is perfect.”

  “You should check out the rest of his books, too. The illustrations are just so precious. He apparently does them himself.” She leads me down an aisle where the children’s picture books are, and the top shelf of one case is full of C.J. Evans books. There’s one about a raccoon and one about a mouse. Another with a sea turtle catches my eye. I pull it out and decide to purchase both of them for Harmony along with the matching stuffed animals. Then I better get myself over to the party, I think. I don’t want Sonnet to think I’ve forgotten her!

  “So, you grew up around here, right?” I ask Sonnet as I steer my car south down the highway toward Fenwick Island.

  She nodded. “Yep, Andrew and I went to high school together, actually.”

  “Wow, you guys were high school sweethearts? How sweet!” I can’t imagine actually speaking to anyone I went to high school with up in Buffalo, New York, where I’m from. I was the most ridiculous
geek in high school—a headbanger ten years too late, and so nerdy, it was probably painful for people to look at me with my coke-bottle thick glasses and stringy red hair. And freckles. I still have a fair number of freckles, but for the most part, I cover them up with this expensive makeup for scars that I specially order online.

  “No, no, not high school sweethearts at all,” she chuckles, slapping her knee as if it’s the funniest joke she’s heard all day. She’s not usually the type to burst out laughing, so I am a bit taken aback by her reaction.

  “Okay, then.” I furrow my brows in confusion as I watch the wind flutter the leaves on the trees, showing their silvery undersides as we’re passing by them.

  “We hated each other, to put it mildly,” she explains. “We were nerds, always fighting over the top spot in the academic rankings. We had quite a cutthroat battle over the title of valedictorian.”

  Wow, she was a nerd too. No wonder we get along so well. “So how did you get past that?” I ask. “And more importantly, who came out on top in the valedictorian contest?”

  I only had to watch the sly grin spread across her face to know the answer to my question: she won. There’s something else we have in common.

  “You know where we live now? In Bethany?” She points out the window as we’ve just come over the Inlet Bridge and are approaching Bethany Beach.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing your house, but yes, I knew you guys lived in Bethany.”

  “Right. So a couple years ago, we both got letters saying we’d inherited a house. It was Andrew’s great aunt’s house, but she was my next-door neighbor when I was growing up and pretty much a grandmother figure to me. I was over at her house all the time, and Andrew was over there quite a bit too. She didn’t have any children of her own, so she left the house to both of us. We were pretty shocked when we both got letters from her attorney after not seeing each other for ten years. And we are almost 100% positive she was trying to set us up! She was a wise lady, that Great Aunt Penny.”

  “Wow, that’s an unbelievable story! Pretty amazing, though,” I say with a chuckle.

  “It sure is,” she says wistfully, her eyes drawn out of the car at the passing scenery of Bethany Beach. “I gave up my dream of getting a PhD for him.”

  “You did?” I look over at her, and she seems reluctant to meet my gaze. I wouldn’t have thought Sonnet was the type of person to give up her dreams for anyone. She’s a real go-getter. If she approached her education like she did perfecting her freestyle, then I’m sure she had a 4.0 all through college.

  “He didn’t want me to,” she explained. “He definitely wanted me to go to MIT.”

  “MIT?” I gasp. “Wow.” My girl is smart!

  “Yeah, and I did try it out, but it wasn’t right for me. I just knew my place was here in Delaware. He had started his business, and I didn’t want him to give that up to move to Boston with me.”

  “So you gave up your dream, but he didn’t have to?” That doesn’t seem fair, and as much as I try to keep the distaste for that sexist notion out of my tone, I’m sure it found its way in there.

  “You make it sound like he did something wrong,” Sonnet replies, her voice as soft as I’ve ever heard it. “You ever hear the old proverb, ‘where one door closes, another opens?’” I nod. “It was like that. I didn’t like it at MIT, and I wasn’t perfectly happy at NASA either. But the moment I stepped into the classroom, I knew it was the place for me. And if I hadn’t coinherited that house with Andrew and fallen in love with him that summer, I would have never found my actual dream job, which is teaching. My students are amazing, Brynne. I get to inspire so many kids—so many little girls—and even though I’ve only had a couple classes graduate so far, I know of at least eight girls who decided to pursue degrees in STEM fields, and they all said I inspired them to do so.”

  “That is amazing. Well done!” I cheer as I take a right on Route 54. My brother’s camp, Miller’s Adventure Outpost, is off a narrow road that almost looks like you are driving into the marsh, but then it winds around over a bridge and onto a little wooded peninsula.

  Sonnet is quiet as I steer the car over the narrow bridge that spans the lowest part of the land. I think it’s amazing that Sonnet and Drew figured out a way to both follow their dreams and still be together. I think that’s been the issue with all the men I’ve dated. Between my crazy ER schedule and their crazy cop schedules—it was just too hard to see each other. Which is why I’ve vowed to not only start my dates in the bookstore but to also stop dating cops altogether. Maybe I need a nerdy/geeky guy like Sonnet apparently found in Drew. I need someone who meshes more with the intellectual side of me.

  I see my brother’s SUV parked in front of the wooden shelter. It looks rustic, but in the back is a fully outfitted kitchen. He envisions hosting camps for children out here someday. I know he’s never thought of it as a wedding venue, but I think it could work.

  “Hey, Benj!” I shout over to him as Sonnet and I curl out of my car. We meet right at the edge of the shelter. “Ben, this is Sonnet; Sonnet, this is Ben.”

  He grasps her hand firmly with both of his. “It’s so great to meet you! I didn’t know my little sister even had friends!” He tries to keep a straight face but then bursts into uproarious laughter.

  Sonnet laughs too, and I roll my eyes, naturally. “This place is beautiful!” she gasps as she scans the vicinity, taking in the tall, swaying pines and the thick growth of brush that will be green by the time of her wedding. There’s even a grove of bamboo behind the shelter.

  “Thank you!” Ben smiles proudly. “So, we don’t have tables and chairs. You’d have to rent those. We set up some very rustic picnic tables in the summer, but those probably aren’t going to serve your needs. Here, let me show you the kitchen.”

  We pace through the open area with its concrete floors, and I look up at the heavy wooden beams that form the frame of the ceiling. I can envision them scalloped with tiny flickering lights, maybe hanging baskets of flowers. It’s basically a blank canvas.

  I haven’t been in the kitchen since Ben got all the appliances delivered a couple months ago, but I’m wowed as soon as we move through the double doors into the huge space. There are gleaming stainless countertops and an industrial-sized cooktop, not to mention a double oven. It’s impressive. Of course, I don’t want Ben to know how impressed I am, lest it go to his head, but I’m having trouble keeping the broad grin off my face.

  If I didn’t mean to give my brother a big head, Sonnet foils my entire plan by gushing about how much space there is. “And everything looks so clean and professional! Have you even used this stuff yet?”

  Ben shakes his head. “Nope, we don’t even have anything on our schedule until the end of May, so if you used this on May fourth, it’d be the inaugural flight for this kitchen!”

  Sonnet’s eyes expand. “Wow, I don’t know if I should do that—I mean, shouldn’t you have the honor?”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “Actually, my wife and I are adopting a little girl, and we’re going to be so busy in the next month getting ready for her and then settling her in, we aren’t really going to have a chance to do much here. I have a grounds crew that takes care of the place, but I will not be here much. You’d be doing us a favor by breaking in the equipment, to tell you the truth.”

  “Seriously?” She looks over to me and elbows me in the side. “Why didn’t you tell me your brother is SO NICE?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s all an act,” I fire back, giving Ben a fake mean look. “Did you guys upgrade your facilities like you were hoping to?”

  “We sure did,” Ben answers, still beaming. “Come on, I’ll show you that too.”

  After another twenty minutes, we’ve toured the entire island. I guess it’s technically a peninsula, but that low area where we drove in with the bridge makes it feel more like an island. There’s a nice beach on the south end, and everywhere we look tall pines are scaling into the clouds. It looks
stunning now, but it will be even more beautiful in May when the foliage has grown in.

  We end the tour close to my car. Sonnet extends her hand to shake Ben’s again. “Thank you so much for showing me around. I wish my fiancé could have made it today, but he had events at his business. I love this place; it’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “Well, thank you,” Ben says, nodding. “I’m pretty proud of it, if I do say so myself.”

  Sonnet scrunches up her nose a little uneasily. “So how much would you charge us to rent it out for the weekend of May fourth?”

  At first, Ben only chuckles softly and smiles. Then he shakes his head again. “I wouldn’t charge you anything. I’m just glad someone can use it in what’s still the off season for us—and like I said, break in the kitchen and new facilities. You’re actually doing me a favor.”

  “Are you sure?” she gasps. “We have to pay you something. I mean, we’ll be using your electricity and water, and—”

  “No, really. Brynne’s had great things to say about you, and I really do believe in karma. I’ve been blessed with a new daughter, and I want to pay that good fortune forward to someone else who deserves it. Looks like it’s going to be you!”

  “Well, thank you so much, Ben! I’m excited, and I know my fiancé will be too. I’ll get your contact info from Brynne, and I’ll get up with you when we get closer to the date to make all the arrangements.”