“How are the girls in the Sewing Circle?” she asked.

“Oh! Mostly good.” Caroline gave her a quick rundown on a few of the women from the group—uplifting successes, disheartening backslides. Sierra hated to hear that a woman would go back into her abusive relationship or take up a new one, but it happened.

“And Will?” Sierra asked the question lightly, aiming for a casual tone. She wanted to be a hundred percent done with the past, but a part of her still clung to him. “Who’s he dating these days?”

Caroline’s jaw dropped, and Sierra laughed. “What, you don’t think I hear things? Remember, my mom’s the town gossip. She always makes sure I get all the scoop on my ex. Sometimes I think she took the divorce harder than I did.”

“Oh, um, yeah.” Caroline’s eyes darted away, then returned. “Sierra, the reason I called . . . I wanted to let you know about something that happened.”

Sierra felt a slight ping of awareness. “Everything okay?”

“Yes! Absolutely. I mean, nobody’s sick or hurt or . . . Ah, shit. I’m calling to let you know that Will and I are together.”

Well, of course they were, Sierra thought. They’d been together every summer from the beginning of time. The three of them had been inseparable. Big whoop. “And?” she asked.

“I mean, together together,” Caroline said. “Damn it, I’m not explaining this well at all. The thing that happened is . . . we’re in love. It’s that kind of together.”

Wait. What? Sierra frowned at the screen, then lifted the frown with her eyebrows. “You’re in love,” she said, trying not to choke on the words. She tried to picture the two of them—together. In love. It was like trying to picture a chimera—something that didn’t actually exist. The image wouldn’t form. It was always Will and Sierra and Caroline. Not Will and Caroline in love.

“I wanted to tell you before you heard it somewhere else,” Caroline said. “I didn’t want you to be caught by surprise.”

Surprise? It was more like shock. Like a fist to the solar plexus.

She took a drink. “I don’t know what to say.” She took another drink. “Congratulations for banging my ex?”

Caroline winced visibly. “I didn’t plan it, Sierra. But when it started happening, I realized it was real, and it’s not going to stop. I mean, we . . . It’s not a fling. We’re getting serious.”

“Serious.”

“Like it could be permanent.”

Permanent. Her best friend and her ex. Which left Sierra with . . . nothing. “What the hell do you want from me?” she asked. “My goddamn blessing?”

“No. I mean, no. You’re entitled to feel however you feel about the situation. I wanted to tell you myself. We were friends once, as close as sisters,” Caroline said. “And when I moved back, we got there again. I wish . . . I don’t want to lose that, Sierra.”

“Too late,” Sierra said. “It’s already gone.”

She ended the call, freezing Caroline, openmouthed, on the screen. Glaring out at the sinking sun, she gulped at her drink. Now it tasted as bitter as regret.

And that, Sierra knew, was on her. She had chafed with discontent in Oysterville. She’d panicked about the pregnancy, regarding it as a tether that would hold her there forever, when all she wanted was . . . everything else. Freedom and independence. A job that didn’t suck. The world.

This, she thought, flinging the rest of the drink over the balcony railing.

Chapter 28

Caroline went to New York City with a heart full of hope, convinced that she was finally getting back on her feet. Back in the game. Back on track. As she and Willow got off the train at Penn Station and made their way to the Ace Hotel, she felt a whir of excitement.

The hotel let them check in early. Willow wanted a nap. Caroline was too restless to sit still. “I’m going for a little walk,” she said, eager to reconnect with the place that had been her home for years. She went to the neighborhood she used to know like the back of her hand—the shops and bodegas, tiny groceries, modern buildings shoulder to shoulder with old brick and stone warehouses, newsstands, and street carts filling the air with a smoky, oniony scent.

Unexpectedly, the city felt strange to her, disorienting. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d taken a red-eye and was operating on minimal sleep. It was that she was preoccupied with what she’d left behind in Oysterville. The kids—her kids, or soon to be hers—were back there. Will was back there. Her family. Lindy and the Sewing Circle, and C-Shell. Everything she cared about. In one short year, her entire world had shifted.

And yet she cared about this, too. She had a lifelong passion for design, and her workshop created things that were beautiful and useful. The operation itself empowered the women who worked there, fostering their self-respect and optimism.

How could she want both things at the same time? How could she want the love and joy of a family along with the fulfillment of a calling that fed her soul?

She passed the kids’ old school, its play yard surrounded by a chain-link fence and crowded with running, laughing children. She wondered if Addie and Flick ever thought about their life here, what memories they held of Angelique. Caroline made a conscious effort to talk to them each day about their mother. She had thousands of pictures on a photo stream of Angelique, one of the most photographed models in the business. Yet despite the vast collection of shots in every variety, there would always be something mysterious and unattainable about her—secrets and hidden pain, unanswered questions.

Maybe that was why she’d attended church at Saint Kilda’s, a couple of blocks from the school. Maybe it felt safe to her. Maybe there was a sympathetic pastor. It started raining, and Caroline put up the hood of her jacket, one of her own designs. She stood in front of the old Gothic Revival church, thinking about her friend and wishing she could talk to her, just one more time, even. Umbrellas popped up and pedestrians hurried by, but Caroline stood still, reading the schedule of services posted near the door.

A woman brushed past her and went up the steps. Then she paused and came back down to Caroline. “You looking for the NA meeting?”

Flustered, Caroline frowned. “No, I’m . . . A friend of mine used to attend church here.”

The woman shrugged. “Oh, well. Just in case—there’s one at ten and another at noon. In the basement fellowship hall.”

“Wait.” As an idea took hold, Caroline followed the woman up the steps. “Maybe . . . My friend’s name was Angelique. She, um, she died last year. Of an overdose.”

The woman stepped inside the foyer. It was dim and close, and smelled of old stone and fresh flowers. “Angelique?”

“Did you know her?” Caroline paused. “I mean, I guess you can’t really say . . . But she was my friend, and I’m raising her two little kids now.”

The woman was in her forties or fifties. She was slender and well dressed, and had tired eyes. “Come on in. It’s an open meeting.”

An hour later, Caroline sat in the nearly empty meeting room with a woman named Jody and a man she never thought she’d see again—Roman Blake. Jody had been Angelique’s sponsor in NA.

“I thought it was you,” Caroline said to Roman as they put together the puzzle pieces Angelique had left scattered behind her. “She refused to say who was hitting her, and I thought . . .”

“Understandable, I guess,” Roman said. “We weren’t good together. We fought a lot. But I cared about her. I cared about her staying clean.”

She flashed on a memory. “I saw you fighting,” she said, remembering Roman reaching for Angelique and Angelique batting him away. “It was at Terminus, that club a lot of us used to go to.”

He steepled his fingers together, staring down at his large, strong hands. “I remember that night. We weren’t fighting. Or maybe . . . we were always fighting. Both of us addicts, both messed up.” He looked up at her. “But the heart wants what it wants.”

Jody vouched for him. “Everyone in the program knows it’s a bad idea to hook up, but it happens.”

“Yeah,” Roman said. “I’m so damned sorry. Not sorry I loved her. Sorry I didn’t love her enough to walk away.”

Caroline used to think he was brutish and mean, with his big muscles and tattoos. But maybe she should have looked past that rough exterior. “So that night?”

“She . . . I figured out that she was using again, and I was trying to get her back into the program.”

“Did Angelique ever mention other guys? Boyfriends?” Caroline asked.

“When I met her, she said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Said she was too busy with her kids and her career. Said one of her exes went to rehab, and I got the impression she couldn’t stay away from him—or keep him away,” said Roman.