Harper shook her head in disbelief. “Never?”

“Nope,” Dora replied, yanking the blanket back over her shoulder. “I went straight from my mother’s house to Cal’s house.” She waved her hand. “Not counting college, of course. But I lived on campus with a slew of roommates. That doesn’t count.” She sighed. “I’ve always lived where I was told to. I never rented my own apartment. I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

“Where?” asked Carson.

Dora considered this. “I won’t go as far as New York or England, that’s for sure,” she added with a quick smile toward Harper.

Devlin’s face flashed in her mind, their times out on the boat together, cooking crabs, drinking beer, watching sunsets. She thought of the exhilaration she felt running on the beach, watching the changing tides, collecting shells with Nate.

“I’ll stay in South Carolina, definitely. I want a small house, with a tiny bit of land I can garden that needs little to no maintenance. I see now how I isolated myself. And ate to compensate for the void I was feeling. This time, I’m going to reconnect with old friends, make some new ones, rejoin my community. I think I’ll stay right here in the lowcountry. I love it here,” she admitted with heart. “Nate does, too.” Her son’s smiling face came to mind. “He’s better when he’s near the sea.” She took a breath and looked at Carson and Harper.

“Wherever I end up, I’ll keep in touch. I promise. I’m going to need my sisters to get through this.”

Dora and Harper turned to look at Carson.

“What about you, Carson?” Harper prodded.

Carson only looked down and offered a noncommittal shrug.

“Are you okay?” asked Dora.

“No. I’m not okay,” she fired back, almost as a challenge. “I’m pretty far from okay.” She looked at her sisters, her eyes flashing. “You both have support systems in place, imperfect as they might be. You have families who’ve got your back. For me, it’s only Lucille and Mamaw. This house. And now that’s all being blown away like the sand out there in the wind. Predicting what I’ll be doing in the fall feels damn impossible. Forgive me if I can’t get past next week.”

Dora reached over to put her hand on Carson’s shoulder. “You have us, too. Me and Harper are right here. Oh, honey, we know this is a tough time for you. But we’ll be here for you all the way. Hey, you can come live with me,” she said with a nudge of encouragement. “It won’t be fancy, but I’ll help you take care of that baby.”

Carson recoiled from Dora’s hand. “Baby? I’m not having a baby.”

Dora looked confused. “But I thought . . .”

Carson went rigid and her voice turned cold. “You thought wrong.”

Understanding flooded Dora’s features. “You’re considering an abortion?”

“Of course I am,” Carson said, clenching her fists under the blanket. “I’m unmarried, without a job, without a place to live . . .”

“Carson,” Dora said, leaning forward and slipping off her blanket. “What about Blake?”

Carson’s voice trembled with raw emotion. “Don’t go there.”

“Carson, I—”

“Dora,” Harper said in a warning tone. “Can’t you see she’s struggling? This isn’t your decision. Let it go.”

Dora stared at Harper, letting her words penetrate. Let it go. Letting things go without a fight was what she’d been trying to do all summer. But this was so important. She had things she should say to stop Carson from making a decision she might live to regret. Like how hard it was for her to conceive Nate. How she’d suffered one miscarriage after another, staying in bed for months at a time and gaining fifty pounds in the process. How Carson should keep the baby.

Dora looked at Carson, sitting straight, bowed up for a fight, tears flashing in those blue Muir eyes. Then it hit her. She thought of her mother and how she always had a should at the ready at moments like this to keep her daughter in line. Dora didn’t want to tell Carson what she should do. That hadn’t worked out well between them in the past.

Dora wanted a relationship with her sister, one based on love and trust. She thought again of all the phone calls they’d shared while Carson was in Florida and how they’d talked about everything and nothing. Dora wanted her sister to pick up the phone and call her after they left Sea Breeze.

Dora pressed her fingers to her eyelids. Harper was right. Her opinions were not what her sister needed to hear now. Dora’s life might be a shit storm at the moment, but she was beginning to see the light breaking through the clouds. That’s what Carson needed now. Just a sliver of luminosity to give her hope.

Dora looked at Carson and spoke in a calm voice without contention. “A few months ago, I might have told you what I thought you should do.” She laughed in a self-deprecating manner. “I wouldn’t have been shy to tell you my opinions, either.”

“I think I can guess what you’d say,” Carson said flatly.

“Probably. Those are my opinions,” Dora said honestly. “We’re so different. We share the same father, but we haven’t had the same upbringing, the same religious beliefs, culture, lifestyle. The list goes on and on.”

“Even if we grew up in the same house,” said Harper, “we’d all be different.”

“Well, yeah,” Dora conceded. “Honey, I’m stuck in my own mud pile right now. I don’t need to be flinging any of it around. I’m the last person who should give you advice.”

She stopped when she saw the stunned expressions on Carson’s and Harper’s faces. It was slightly irritating, but gratifying at the same time—their shock confirmed for Dora that she had done the right thing.

“What I’m trying to say,” Dora pressed on, needing to get the words out, “is I don’t really know what you’re going through. When I got pregnant I didn’t have to make a choice. I was married. I wanted a baby. And yet I still had problems.”

Carson’s face lost its belligerence, and Dora saw that she was listening.

“I had miscarriage after miscarriage. Each one broke my heart. I wanted a baby so badly and I just couldn’t carry one. I felt I’d failed. And then I had Nate. My sweet, darling boy.”