“I would have driven you home last night, but I hear Grady beat me to it.”

“We were leaving at the same time, so he gave me a ride.” She tried to shrug it off and make light of it. “I didn’t have time to hang around much after dinner because I still had so much to do here to get ready for the wedding. For some reason, Grady thought I shouldn’t walk home alone in the dark. I think he spent too many years in the FBI. As if anything ever happens in St. Dennis.”

“Well, we do have a pretty safe town here, and your neighborhood is generally a good one. That business a few years ago, though… all those girls being murdered.” He shook his head. Vanessa knew it was still painful for him and Beck to look back on the killer who’d taken several young lives, including that of the first woman police officer on their force. “But Grady probably knows better than most of us that there’s no such thing as a place that is one hundred percent safe, one hundred percent of the time. God knows he’s been closer to the devil than any of the rest of us have, and I’ve been in law enforcement for more than thirty years.”

“Maybe so, but one of the things that I really like about living here is that I can walk to and from work every day. It’s not just the exercise, and it’s not just that I’m saving gasoline. I like the peacefulness, the quiet mornings before everything comes alive, and the hum of things winding down at the end of the day, know what I mean? This town is so slow to wake up and early to bed most days.”

Hal chuckled. “Well, for another few weeks, anyway. Then we get full into the season and things won’t be slow around here again till September. But I do know what you mean. The rhythm around here is more downbeat than up-tempo.”

“That’s exactly what I meant.”

She turned her head to look out the window as Hal made a left onto Charles Street and headed out toward Sinclair’s Point. They passed marshes where the cattails were growing tall and green again and the migrating birds had already stopped to forage for food and rest. A red-winged blackbird sat atop a reed that swayed in the morning breeze, and a hawk rose on a thermal to see what it could see. Vanessa had never been much of a nature girl, but that had changed when she moved to St. Dennis and Hal taught her to notice things she’d overlooked before.

“If you’re going to live on the Bay, you need to know the Bay, and all its inhabitants,” he’d told her, and took it upon himself to teach her what he thought she should know.

Vanessa took no small amount of secret pride in the fact that she could now recognize several birds by their calls alone, and could tell a wood duck from a mallard, a mallard from a blue-winged teal from a northern shoveler. She knew more about crabs-the Chesapeake being the home of the famed blue claws-than she ever suspected there was to know. She learned to tell a sook-an adult female crab-from a jimmy-an adult male-and the best way to catch them as well as the best ways to cook them. All tiny triumphs, but to her, triumphs all the same.

The car slowed as they approached the entrance to the Inn at Sinclair’s Point, marked by a handsome sign adorned with a painted life-size great blue heron, to which someone had tied a very large bunch of pink, navy, and lime-green balloons.

“I guess this is the place,” Hal said as he made the turn.

“I’m so excited.” Vanessa could barely contain herself. “This will be the first wedding I’ve ever been in.”

Hal shot her a look of surprise but said nothing.

“No, neither of mine were anything like this.” She sighed and wished she didn’t feel the need to explain. “Anyway, I’m excited for Mia and for Beck.”

“I am, too.” Hal parked near the entrance to the Inn. “Let’s get you and your gear inside, then I’ll park over in the lot.”

He got out of the car and walked around to the trunk. One of the staff who’d been hired for the special event appeared to give Hal a hand with the box of favors.

“Give those directly to Claudia,” Vanessa called after the young man who was hurrying up the walk with the box. “She’s probably waiting for them.”

“Will do,” he assured her.

Vanessa gathered up her dress, her shoes, her bag, and stood on her toes to plant a kiss on Hal’s cheek.

“Thank you again. It makes it extra special for me to be here with you.” She swallowed what she knew would be only the first of many lumps that would come and go in her throat over the course of the day. “I don’t thank you often enough for all you do for me, not the least of which is to always find ways to remind me that-”

“You don’t have to say it, Ness.” Hal patted her on the back. “Now go on in and help your almost sister-in-law get ready for her big day.”

Vanessa nodded. “Right. The photographer will be here any minute. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll start taking pictures of the guys first.”

She hustled into the Inn and stopped at the desk to get directions to the suite the bridal party was using for hair, makeup, and dressing. She ran up the wide central stairway and down the hall to the last suite on the right. Mia, Annie, and Dorsey were all in various stages of prep. The hairdresser provided by the Inn had started with Mia, whose long hair had been carefully worked into a French braid, and was just finishing up with Annie and getting ready to move on to Dorsey. Mia’s makeup was almost complete, and the chatter and laughter seemed to be calming everyone’s nerves. Before Vanessa arrived, a cart had been wheeled in with plates of fresh fruit and croissants and coffee, and Vanessa helped herself while waiting her turn. She stepped through the French doors onto the balcony and looked down on the lawn where the actual wedding would take place and the reception tent had been set up. An altar had been erected for the ceremony, and it was now completely covered with garlands of magnolia leaves and white hydrangea, baby’s breath, and pink roses. Shepherd’s hooks lined the aisle, and silver cones hung from the hooks.

“The cones are going to look gorgeous after Olivia finishes with them,” Vanessa called back into the room to Mia.

“I noticed the cones earlier,” Annie said. “What’s going in them?”

“Bunches of peonies and hydrangea.” Mia’s eyes sparkled. “And Olivia is going to scatter rose petals up the aisle and there will be large urns of flowers at the ends of the front two rows of chairs. It’s going to be gorgeous.”

“It will be,” Vanessa agreed, and leaned on the railing to watch the staff set up the guests’ chairs in a fan shape in front of the altar.

She continued to watch all the scurrying below and wondered what it would be like to have a day like this. It was painful to admit even to herself, but secretly, she couldn’t help but envy the fairy-tale wedding, with Mia a bride so beautiful she could have stepped right out of the pages of a magazine, and Beck a real life Prince Charming. In her heart, Vanessa most envied that Mia had found someone wonderful who truly loved her, someone who would love her for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and all the rest of the promises that people made on their wedding day. For Vanessa, none of those promises had been kept. For Mia, Vanessa was certain that Beck would keep every one.

She deserves it all, Vanessa reflected, and I truly am so very happy for her. She deserves to have it all: the dress and the fabulous day and the wonderful guy and the happily-ever-after-and yes, even the one-thousand-plus glazed lemon cookies. Mia has done the right thing all her life, has made all the right decisions, and had the good fortune and the good sense to fall in love with a very special guy who loves her deeply.

Vanessa couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have such a day, such a life. The envy she felt wasn’t the soul-killing, turn-green-and-spit-fire kind, but more a wistful, I-wonder-what-it-would-have-been-like-if-I’d-been-more-like-her envy. And maybe it was also partly because Mia was the person Vanessa wished she’d grown up to be.