stride when the moon and stars came out. “I called earlier, but the nanny said you weren’t home yet. Then I got distracted with a project I’m working on. I hope it’s not too late. I know you’re usually up till all hours.”
“It’s fine,” Abby assured her. “Is everything okay? You sound stressed. Is something going on with Gram? Or Dad?”
“Gram’s amazing. She’ll outlive us all. And Dad is off someplace building something. I can’t keep track of him.”
“He was in California last week,” Abby recalled.
“Then I guess he’s still there. You know he has to oversee every single detail when one of his projects is being built. Of course, then he loses interest, just the way he did with Chesapeake Shores.”
There was an unsurprising note of bitterness in Jess’s voice. As the youngest of five, she, more than the rest of them, had missed spending time with their dad. Mick O’Brien had already been making a name for himself as an architect and urban planner when he’d designed and built Chesapeake Shores, a now-famous seaside community on the Chesapeake Bay. He’d done it in partnership with his brothers—one a builder, the other an environmentalist. The town had been built around land that had been farmed by Colin O’Brien, a great-great uncle and the first of the O’Briens to arrive from Ireland in the late 1800s. It was to be the crown jewel in Mick’s body of work and the idyllic place his family would call home. It hadn’t turned out that way.
Mick and his brothers had fought over the construction, battled over environmental issues and even over the preservation of the few falling-down historic buildings on some of the property. Eventually they’d dissolved the partnership. Now, even though they all coexisted in or near Chesapeake Shores, they seldom spoke except on holidays, when Gram insisted on a pretense of family harmony.
Abby’s mother, Megan, had lived in New York since she and Mick had divorced fifteen years ago. Though the plan had been for all of the children to move to New York with her, for reasons Abby had never understood, that hadn’t happened. They’d stayed in Chesapeake Shores with their mostly absent dad and Gram. In recent years, one by one they had drifted away, except for Jess, who seemed to have a love-hate relationship with the town and with Mick.
Since moving to New York herself after college, Abby had reestablished a strong bond with her mother, but none of the others had done the same. And not just Jess, but all five of them had an uneasy relationship with their father. It was Gram—who’d been only a girl when her family had followed their O’Brien predecessors to Maryland—with her fading red hair, twinkling blue eyes, ready smile and the lingering lilt of Ireland in her voice, who held them together and made them a family.
“Did you call to complain about Dad, or is something else on your mind?” Abby asked her sister.
“Oh, I can always find something to complain about with Dad,” Jess admitted, “but actually I called because I need your help.”
“Anything,” Abby said at once. “Just tell me what you need.” She was close to all her siblings, but Jess held a special place in her heart, perhaps because of the big difference in their ages and her awareness of how their mother’s departure and their father’s frequent absences had affected her. Abby had been stepping in to fill that gap in Jess’s life since the day Megan had left.
“Could you come home?” Jess pleaded. “It’s a little too complicated to get into on the phone.”
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know,” Abby began, hesitating. “Work is crazy.”
“Work is always crazy, which is exactly why you need to come home. It’s been ages. Before the girls came along, you used work as an excuse. Then it was the twins. Now it’s work and the twins.”
Abby winced. It was true. She had been making excuses for years now. She’d eased her conscience with the fact that every member of her family loved visiting New York and came up frequently. As long as she saw them all often, it didn’t seem to matter that it was almost always on her turf rather than Chesapeake Shores. She’d never stopped to analyze why it had been so easy to stay away. Maybe it was because it really hadn’t felt like home after her mother had left.
Before she could reply, Jess added, “Come on, Abby. When was the last time you took a real vacation? Your honeymoon, I’ll bet. You know you could use a break, and the girls would love being here. They should spend some quality time in the town their grandfather built and where you grew up. Gram could spoil them rotten for a couple of weeks. Please. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“Life-or-death important?” Abby asked. It was an old exchange, used to rank whether any crisis was truly monumental or only a temporary blip in their lives.
“It could be,” Jess said seriously. “At least in the sense that my whole future’s at stake. I think you’re the only one who can fix this, or at least the only one I’m willing to ask for help.”
Struck by the somber tone in her voice, Abby said, “Maybe you’d better tell me right now.”
“You need to be here to understand. If you can’t stay for a couple of weeks, then at least come for a few days. Please.”
There was something in her sister’s voice that Abby had never heard before, an urgency that suggested she wasn’t exaggerating her claim that her future was at stake. Since Jess was the only one of the five siblings who’d been floundering for a focus since reaching adulthood, Abby knew she couldn’t turn her back on her. And admittedly a break would do Abby herself a world of good. Hadn’t she just been bemoaning her workaholic tendencies earlier tonight?
She smiled, thinking about how wonderful it would be to breathe the salty Chesapeake Bay air again. Even better, she would have uninterrupted time with her girls in a place where they could swing on the playground her father had designed for the town park, build sand castles on the beach and run barefoot through the chilly waters of the bay.
“I’ll work something out tomorrow and be down there by the weekend,” she promised, giving in. She glanced at her jam-packed schedule and grimaced. “I can only make it for a couple of days, okay?”
“A week,” Jess pleaded. “I don’t think this can be fixed in a day or two.”
Abby sighed. “I’ll see what I can work out.”
“Whatever you can arrange,” Jess said at once, seizing the compromise. “Let me know when your flight’s getting in and I’ll pick you up.”
“I’ll rent a car,” Abby said.
“After all these years in New York, do you actually remember how to drive?” Jess teased. “Or even how to get home?”
“My memory’s not that bad,” Abby responded. “See you soon, sweetie.”
“I’ll call Gram and let her know you’re coming.”
“Tell her not to go to any trouble, okay?” Abby said, knowing it would be a waste of breath. “We’ll go out to eat. I’ve been dying for some Maryland crabs.”
“No way,” her sister countered. “It’s a little early in the season, but if you want steamed crabs, I’ll find ‘em somewhere and pick them up for Friday-night dinner. We can eat on the porch, but I’m not about to stop Gram from cooking up a storm. I say let the baking begin.”
Abby
