Parker SOUTHERN COAST

I HAD VERY DEFTLY PROVEN that the conversations you never want to have are inevitable. I wanted to say Amelia was overreacting. In the moment, I believed that she was. And so I huffed out, walked away, mad that she couldn’t bend just a little, as though giving birth to and raising children that weren’t biologically hers were a small favor to ask someone.

I realized hours later, about halfway out to the middle of the ocean, in my dad’s boat, alone, that I had probably overreacted. Okay, definitely overreacted. I had also played this all wrong. What better way to show the woman you love that you love her no matter what, that you love her more than the life you had envisioned for yourself, than to escape to the sea? Nothing says I’ll do anything for you quite like getting the heck out of Dodge.

What if she was looking for me? The water was dark and still, the sky bright with stars and a full moon whose reflection off the water increased the ethereal feeling. It also felt ominous. My stomach churned with the knowledge that I had done the wrong thing and that it might cost me the love of my life.

The other love of my life, anyway. It hit me like a punch in the face (probably from Mason) then. The other love of my life. Yeah, it was hard for me to move on. But Amelia was having to live with the fact that, no matter what, there would always be this other person between us. Roles reversed, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do it.

Now I understood that the crux of the situation wasn’t even really about babies. I had been too self-centered to realize that Amelia still worried about being in Greer’s shadow. I had done everything I could to let her know that she was the one I wanted. But maybe I hadn’t done a good enough job. Or maybe there was no use trying to hide something so huge from someone who knows you so well.

I should have been more honest with her. Was I even capable of making the right choice anymore?

That was when I turned the boat around. When I looked down at my phone, I saw I was still too far offshore to get service. But as soon as I did, I texted Amelia immediately. Babe, I don’t know why I got on this boat when all I want is you. I’m sorry. I swear.

Nothing. No dots. She could be asleep. But if she was asleep, then she wasn’t as worried about all this as I was. I looked down again. No dots.

I pushed the throttle forward, tired and distracted and unable to keep my eyes off the phone screen, searching for a response that wasn’t coming.

About the time the house came back into view, the phone rang. It was exactly five a.m. I pulled the throttle to slow the boat and answered frantically, “Hello!”

“Parker, my boy,” George said, not frantically at all. George. Not Amelia. “I just sent you a prospectus. Southern Coast has gone under. It’s being dismantled for parts. We might not want it, but we could pick it up for nothing, headquarter it wherever.”

Southern Coast. Greer and Amelia’s favorite magazine. Now my head was pounding. I was too tired to think about this, too drained to deal with it. But my instincts were sharp even when I wasn’t. I couldn’t let Amelia’s favorite magazine fold. I knew she would want it. Whether she forgave me or not, I wanted her to have it. “We can revamp that one, George. It has to be relocated to a Southern town.” I paused. “Maybe even a small one. It needs Southerners writing for it…” I trailed off. “Let me sit down at my computer, and let’s meet about it next week.”

“Ten-four. Good man. You’ll take the lead on this one.”

I nodded and hung up. It was as clear as day to me that Amelia had to be editor in chief. I couldn’t imagine anyone in the vast numbers of McCann employees who could reenvision it like she could.

An hour later, as I was pacing around the bedroom in the guesthouse, all thoughts of Southern Coast gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about my favorite passage in Greer’s last book. It rang so true I had committed it to memory.

Everyone always thinks that thing is going to happen to someone else. That cancer or car wreck, infertility battle or bankruptcy declaration. Other people’s problems. But we tend to think that the really great things only happen to someone else, too. They never believe they will be the one to become CEO, to start the nonprofit, to get the record deal, to change the world. Other people’s successes. But none of these things belong to other people.

The good and the bad could both be yours at a moment’s notice. Me? The thirty-two-year-old dying of cancer? I could be you. But also me? The young woman who transformed a media company for a new generation? (She said humbly.) I could be you, too. So what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Decide now. And then go out and get it. Decide your own future before someone—or something—decides it for you.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted to propose to Amelia. Badly. It was right. We were right. And as much as the pain of losing Greer was still with me every day, I could have this love with Amelia in a new and completely different way; one didn’t have to outweigh or obscure the other. It was possible.

How I felt right now had also seemed one hundred percent impossible: I was happy. I was so damn happy. I could hear birds chirp again. The sky looked blue again. I had things to look forward to. Only, this woman who was woven into the net of my happiness had sworn, every time I brought it up, that she would never get married again. But hadn’t she broken up with Harris because he had taken marriage off the table? That had to mean something, didn’t it?

And so I realized, for the millionth time, that life and relationships are all about compromise. It had taken this moment, this feeling of desperation, of panic, of wondering if she would ever speak to me again, to realize that I wasn’t the one that had a right to be mad or worried. Amelia was. She had been completely honest with me from the beginning. I should have believed her.

I thought about that house that had nothing of me in it. Yes, Greer and I had bought it together, but it was all Greer. Every couch cushion and picture frame and tiny trinket was hers. Amelia was right; I couldn’t fully have her in my life unless I was willing to let go of the suffocating grip I had on the past—and it had on me.

When I heard a tap at the living room door, I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned and saw Mason, dressed in his old Cape Carolina High baseball uniform, cap on head, cleats on feet, glove on hand. I could feel my eyes get wide as he opened the door.

“You all right, bud?” I asked cautiously.

He was tossing the ball from his hand to his glove, his glove to his hand, like I had seen him do a million times before.

“I thought about what you said.”

Now my mind was racing. What had I said to turn my brother into the high school baseball version of Aunt Tilley?

“You’re right. I wouldn’t still be playing baseball now. So I started thinking about what I would be doing. What would I have wanted to do after a long and successful career setting records on the field?”

I controlled my eye roll. “And?” I asked, still concerned.

He grinned, and the baseball stilled. “And you’re looking at Cape Carolina High’s new baseball coach.”

As impossible as it had felt only a moment before, I actually felt happy. I hugged my brother and slapped him on the back.

“Good for you, man. Good for you.”

He grinned at me, and the sparkle in his eye told me that, for the first time in a long time, my brother was happy, too.

“Okay,” he said, looking at me intently. “I did it. I moved on. It’s your turn.”

“Mace,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, bro.”

“No, but I need you to hear it. I’m sorry that I fought with you that night and I’m sorry that I broke your arm. I’m sorry that I ruined your life.” Ruined your life. I felt tears pooling in my eyes. I had ruined his life and now, it seemed, I had also ruined my own. “I think I give you such a hard time because if I’m mad at you I don’t feel as guilty for what I did. If I blame you for not moving on with your life, it helps me ignore that I haven’t moved on with mine.”

The way Mason was looking at me, I expected a smart-ass response. But, instead he said, “I know all that, Park. I’m your big brother. Of course I know.”

I nodded as he walked back out the door. My phone beeped. For hours, all I had been able to think about was that text that wasn’t coming. And now, as soon as it did, I wished it hadn’t.

I won’t do this. I’m sorry.

I dropped the phone onto the couch and flopped down beside it. Well, damn, of course she wouldn’t. It had taken me until right now to understand that I was asking this woman whom I loved to basically step into my dead wife’s position. Live in her house, work for her company, have her babies. It was absurd. It was insulting.

And now I was going to have to do something huge to prove that I understood where she was coming from. I was going to have to prove that I could fix it.

I picked up the phone again, wanting to say something to her. But no words came. Instead, I opened up my email and typed, to my father-in-law: I need to sell the house. It’s time. You have been so kind to me; you are my family, always. But I can’t move forward by doing the same things I’ve been doing. It isn’t fair to anyone. Thank you for allowing me to marry your daughter. Thank you for letting me work at your company. Thank you for being my family. I am forever grateful.

Not ninety seconds later, I got an email back.

Sell the damn house. I don’t care. But I can’t run my company without you, so suck it up. You have a big raise coming your way.

George

P.S. If you’ll stay on, I’ll give you my velvet slippers you’re so fond of.

I burst out laughing, and then the laughter turned to tears. I was sobbing, loudly, unabashedly, when I heard a small tap on the glass door in the living room.

“Amelia?” I asked as I opened the door.

She smiled and then, when she saw my face, her smile turned to concern. “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “What’s the matter?” I repeated, louder. “Did you think that you could text me that you wouldn’t do this and that I would just be fine with it?”

Now she looked really confused. “Parker, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Your text…”

I thrust my phone in her face.

She read the text. She paused. Studied it. Read it again. And started laughing. Hysterical, tears running down her face, hands over her mouth, laughing. “Oh God,” she said, gasping for breath. “No, no, no. That was a voice text. It was supposed to say, I want to do this. I’m sorry.”

“I want to do this,” I repeated. Then I started laughing, too, with pure relief. Through my laughter, I said, “Well, you can understand my concern.” Then, getting it together, I said, “I want to do this, too. I’m moving out of the house in Palm Beach. I want to make a new life with you.”

She kissed me. Then she sat down on the couch and patted beside her. “Park, I’ve been thinking.”

She was suddenly very serious. And I was terrified for the fiftieth time in the last few hours.

“And?”

She nodded, tears coming to her eyes. “I know I’ve always said I didn’t want children…” She trailed off, her gaze on the water beyond the door.

“Sweetheart, I know you don’t want children, and it was wrong of me to push you into that. I love you no matter what you want to do, and I shouldn’t have tried to change you. It wasn’t fair.”

She nodded. “Okay, yeah, but that’s not what I’m saying. Parker, loving you has changed everything. I want to have a family with you. And, honestly, at first, I wasn’t sure that this was the way. I wasn’t sure that I could have Greer’s babies, that I could have that reminder all the time of the life you had before me.” She paused and cleared her throat, wiping her eyes. “But Greer will always be a part of our story.”

My mind was racing. What exactly what she saying?

“Greer will always be one of the most important parts of your story, and if it weren’t for her, we never would have gotten together. So I think those babies are the bridge. They’re a part of you and a part of Greer, and if I carry them, they’ll be a part of me, too.”

I was stunned completely silent. “Amelia, are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? You don’t have to do this to make me happy.” I paused, trying to wipe the grin off my face, resisting the urge to say, But this would make me very, very happy.

“I want to,” she said. “I’m sure. I want to be a family, Parker. I want to have a future.”

I put my hands on her cheeks and kissed her lips. I put my forehead on hers and said, “Liabelle, that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. And I agree. Those babies would complete this weird, convoluted circle.” I felt invincible. “And, Lia, I’m going to quit McCann.”

“Are you crazy?” she practically shouted. “You can’t quit McCann. We’re going to have a baby, for heaven’s sake. We need health insurance, benefits, salaries.” She paused and took a deep breath. “No one is quitting McCann.” Then she added, “Plus, they’re George’s grandchildren. We’re family forever.”

I nodded, laughing and pulling her close to me. “Okay, okay. You’re right. Health insurance is good.” Then I paused. “Wait. Are you only doing this so that I’ll be the last source for your frozen embryo story?”

We both laughed and then sat there soaking in the quiet, the view, the perfection of this moment when we decided to become a family.

“I’m scared,” she whispered. “What if it doesn’t work again? What if they don’t take?”

“Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together.” I leaned back and looked at her face. And I knew then that this woman who I had loved since I was fourteen years old just might marry me. I would ask her, I decided firmly. Now all I had to do was pray that she said yes.