Page 35 of Promise

“Surprise!” Vale announces, waving a bottle of wine and jazz hands at me after I open the door. “We brought book club to you.”

Vale is currently dating my older brother, Cortland. Cort and Stone Sylver were once inseparable friends, but they had a falling out. As Vale and I are the only sisters in either family, and both members of the Sterlets, we called a truce when the rest of the families had already pulled apart.

Now, this cornstalk-blond spitfire is going to be my sister-in-law, because I sense an engagement coming soon. Stone and Cort might not be best friends again, but they’ve formed their own truce because of Vale.

Vale helps herself to enter my house.

“Hey,” Halle offers next, holding out her arms for a welcome hug.

Halle is a lithe red-haired beauty and was my best friend in high school. She returned to Sterling Falls a few years ago as a newly divorced single mom and reunited with her high school sweetheart, Knox Sylver. The rest was a rocky road to happily ever after.

“Actually,” Halle drawls, holding up several gift bags that are obviously for a baby girl. “We’re throwing you an impromptu baby shower. Congratulations, lady.”

These women know my story. How much I’ve longed for a baby. How hard I worked to make it happen. And how much I lost.

While my throat grows thick, I’m too busy smiling at them, grateful for their presence. It’s been too long since I’ve had adult interaction outside of my own family.

Mavis follows Halle, holding another bottle of wine and offering me a hug as well. Her tan skin and elegant bone structure enhance her dark features, which include deep eyes and long, midnight-colored hair with streaks of gray woven in it. She’s tall like Halle, and married to Clay, the second eldest in the Sylver family. As Clay and Knox work together in their family business, Halle and Mavis are close. Mavis is also a nurse and works at County General like me, but in a different department. She’s quieter than the rest of us and an excellent listener.

“Yes,” Genie Sylver announces, bringing up the rear, with a baby carrier in her hands. “Nolan will be asking Mirabelle to prom.”

Genie is the newest friend in the mix. Married to Judd Sylver, who is the chief financial officer for Sylver Seed & Soil, she’s a new nursing mom, so baby Nolan is with her. She has a short, wavy bob with stripes of blonde and brown in a style that seems to match her bubbly personality.

I laugh at Genie’s comment. “You haven’t even seen Mirabelle yet.”

“Don’t need to see her to approve.” Genie winks at me. “I already know she’s perfect.”

Perfect. That’s exactly what I think of Mirabelle, and these amazing friends of mine. We’re going to continue to grow older together, especially Genie and me, with babies roughly the same age.

Only a few months old, Nolan is so much bigger than Mirabelle, but perfect in his own right with a shock of dark hair and blue eyes, which are presently wide-open.

I need mom friends, something I haven’t thought about until this exact moment. Especially friends going through this experience at the same time as me. Not that Vale or Halle or Mavis have forgotten the baby stage with their children, but Mirabelle will need playdates. I need my friends, and gratitude swells inside me.

“And whose fault is it that we haven’t met her?” Vale teases loudly over the others as they rush toward my living room, surrounding the bassinet where Mirabelle sleeps through the commotion.

I’ve been a little preoccupied and overwhelmed with Mirabelle’s arrival and . . . Dart’s.

Soft murmurs follow Vale’s playful chastising, keeping me in the present.

“She’s so sweet.”

“Look at her little nose.”

“What a precious angel kiss,” Mavis says about the harmless red birthmark near Mirabelle’s eyebrows.

“Putting it in my calendar now,” Genie says with a laugh. She’s a calendar creator. “Future prom dates.”

Vale chuckles. “On that note, wine and then presents.” She heads toward my kitchen, helping herself to the glasses while the other women continue gushing over Mirabelle until a masculine throat clears.

All heads turn sharply in his direction.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Dart says, glancing around the group of women he doesn’t know.

He probably doesn’t remember Halle, as she graduated high school with me, making her years younger than him.

Genie is roughly my age as well, but was not part of my friend group back in high school.

And Mavis is a transplant, moving in, then out of Sterling Falls, before settling here again, all in the span of Dart’s absence.