This book is dedicated to the four women who were my best friends when I was writing my first novel so many years ago. They were all beautiful, glamorous, generous, and funny. Someone said that a good friend will help you when you’re down, but a best friend will help you celebrate. Believe me, they knew how to celebrate! I decorated the top of a long bookcase with empty champagne bottles.

Strangely, all my dearest friends are people I envy. I even envy my husband. It’s a selective envy—I wish I had Charley’s eyes, or Jill’s quick mind, or Merry’s thick hair, or Dinah’s laugh, or Robb’s soft, seductive Southern voice.

Or maybe by envy I mean admire. Admire to the sun and back.

I’m grateful to all my friends, old and new, young and old, on and off island, who inspire me with their wisdom and their humor and their kindness.

I’m enormously grateful to all the people who work in the glamorous and turbulent world of publishing. My editor, Shauna Summers, is like a book jeweler, finding the flaws and the sparks and patiently guiding me as we polish my novel. I send thanks to the wonderful Ballantine team: Gina Centrello, Kara Welsh, Lexi Batsides, Allison Schuster, and Karen Fink. I am enormously grateful to Jennifer Rodriguez. Kim Hovey, I know you know I love you.

I’m full of gratitude for my literary agent Meg Ruley and her associate Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Company.

Sara Mallion and Chris Mason, techies extraordinaire, thank you for your help!

Charley, Josh, David, Sam, Tommy, Ellias, Adeline, Emmett, Annie—you fill my heart with joy.

I’m grateful to all the bookstores, libraries, and Facebook, where I meet my brilliant (of course!) readers.

Someone once said, “How do I know what I think unless I’ve heard what I have to say?” Writing a novel somehow brings thoughts to the surface that I didn’t know I had. In Surfside Sisters, I write that a certain man didn’t have a lot of money, but his life was his fortune.

That’s how I am. My life is my fortune, and I’m thankful every day.