Often, it was the three of them together. Callie, Juliet, and Theo were thick as thieves. But she’d never imagined what that might look like to Callie. She’d never imagined that Callie actually thought Juliet was in love with him back.
“I mean, he’s great.” Juliet shrugged. “But you know, I don’t know if our dreams are aligned? And I don’t feel anything romantic toward him.”
“He wants to open his own restaurant. I don’t see how that’s so different from your dreams?” Callie said, because Theo’s dreams of restaurateuring were everyone’s business. Theo had become obsessed with cooking at an early age, and he’d invited people to his place for “restaurant night” so often that it had become a ritual. “And he’s good. Remember his quiche last month? I’m still thinking about it. If you let yourself fall in love with him, think of all the food you could eat!”
Juliet laughed, then thought of her waist, of the weight she needed to maintain if she was going to be a fashion model. Her smile faltered. “You know he wants his restaurant to be here in Bluebell Cove, right?”
Callie nodded. “Yeah, but…”
“But I’m never going to come back to Bluebell Cove,” Juliet said simply.
Callie looked sorrowful. Juliet knew that Callie had imagined them in one another’s weddings, maybe pregnant together, maybe buying houses on the same street. Callie had pictured their children becoming best friends, while Callie and Juliet struggled to keep up with them. Callie had imagined a simple existence that had nothing to do with Juliet’s dreams.
“What if Bluebell Cove is better than anywhere else?” Callie asked.
Juliet bit her tongue to keep from laughing at such a preposterous idea. “Let’s just enjoy it while we’re here,” Juliet said, before Callie could protest. She squeezed Callie’s hand and turned to watch as the moon ducked behind another cloud, casting them in darkness.
Juliet couldn’t see so much about the future. But she understood that fame and success were waiting for her, just as soon as she got up the nerve to get out of Bluebell Cove.
People like Callie and Theo were already a part of her past. They had to understand that.
Of course, Juliet never could have fathomed what would happen to Callie next. Nobody could have guessed it. And it changed the trajectory of everyone’s lives—and fears—forever.
2
Present Day
Sitting at her window in her Greenwich Village apartment, listening as a group of city dwellers screamed with glee and youth and joie de vivre outside, Juliet found herself thinking about her sisters. Even from a young age, there had never been any question in her mind that she was different from Celia, Wren, and Ivy. Recently, they’d proven that all the more with their recommitment to their hometown. It mystified Juliet. Even Celia, who’d left Bluebell Cove at eighteen and promised never to return, had returned after their father’s death. She’d come back to reopen the Bluebell Cove Inn, transforming it into the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge. Celia had then fallen in love with Landon Brooks, a Bluebell Cove biologist. She’d become someone Juliet struggled to understand.
And Ivy, who’d stayed behind in Bluebell Cove and simmered with resentment for years, had found new ways to forgive Celia. She’d revamped her flower shop and begun to help out at the Eco-Lodge. She’d even fallen in love with someone new! Another small-town guy, Elliott Rhodes. Even Wren, who was out traveling again and therefore mostly unreachable, had spent many months in Bluebell Cove, recovering from and learning to manage her Graves’ disease diagnosis. Ivy had taken her in and doted on her.
For Juliet, their recommitment to family was adorable, quaint, and charming (even though it had come as a result of their father’s death). But what they were up to back in Bluebell Cove was nothing she wanted in her own life. Throughout this time of upheaval and change, Juliet had dipped in and out of town to spend time with her sisters and help out at the Eco-Lodge, learning each time that small-town living was not for her.
The flight from New York to Maine was becoming easier and easier to manage.
But through it all, Juliet always kept her sisters at arm’s length. Although this had been one of the strangest years of Juliet’s life, they still knew little about her. Juliet liked it that way.
Ever since she was a child in Bluebell Cove, Juliet had been entirely herself and self-reliant: rebellious and whip smart and beautiful. Still reeling after everything that had happened with Callie, and knowing there was nothing for her in Bluebell Cove, she’d moved to Manhattan at eighteen to become what she’d always known she wanted to be—first a model, then a fashion designer. Now, despite everything that had happened to her recently, she had no plans to give up on her dreams. Not now that she was in her upper thirties, headed for that dark shadow of age forty. She had no plans to give up on herself now, not when she’d enjoyed “living those dreams” for the better part of twenty years.
This was what Juliet told herself as she sat in the little apartment she’d recently rented, listening for her daughter on the stairs. Danica should have been home by now. She was more than fifteen minutes late. Oh, Juliet hated when Danica was late. It reminded her of her fears.
Now, outside, rain began to pound on the streets and flattened the branches of the oaks and maples. Shivering, Juliet zipped her hoodie to her chin and got up to do a mini workout, something to distract her from her panic. Besides, when she restarted her career in the fashion world—probably after tomorrow’s interview, which she was sure would be a success—they needed her to be trim and sleek and endlessly chic. She’d gained a tiny bit of weight recently. She’d known it, and her husband had been keen to point it out.
Gasping, bent in a horrible crunch to work her abs, she made sure to remind herself: Ex-husband. Alvin was her ex-husband. She was still struggling to call him that in her mind. Maybe this was because she’d kept their break-up a secret from Celia, Ivy, and Wren, talking about her husband and life in the city as though everything was chugging happily along.
She needed her sisters to see her as the successful one. I am the successful one, Juliet reminded herself, filling her lungs with air and allowing the rest of her body to collapse across the carpeting.
Now, she heard a sharp key in the lock, and she bolted to the living room to watch as her fourteen-year-old daughter, Danica, came in, shaking rain from her long, dark hair. She wasn’t wearing her raincoat, and she looked pale and sad. She looked like a cartoon version of a teenager in a bad situation. Juliet fought the urge to throw her arms around her daughter and comfort her. Danica had recently decided she didn’t like to be hugged. Juliet remembered going through something similar at her age. But she hadn’t pondered how painful it might have been for the people around her.
Of course, by the time Juliet had been Danica’s age, her own mother had been dead.
“How did it go?” Juliet asked tentatively.
Danica rolled her eyes and gestured at her soaking-wet clothes. “What does it look like?”
“Why don’t you take a shower?” Juliet suggested, willing herself not to match her daughter’s mood. “I’ll make tea.”
“There’s never hot water in the shower,” Danica said. “Not in this apartment. Not at this time of day.”
