Slightly South of Simple (Peachtree Bluff, #1)

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

But change is the only thing I’ve ever been able to count on in this life, the only thing that hasn’t let me down. And I am quite proud to say that although I may not always have done the right thing, I have survived it all.

But there are no people in the world to make you realize what a spoiled, selfish bitch you’ve become and put you right back in your place quite like sisters. All I can say is that for the state I was in, thank God I have two.

it hit me that I had done this all on my own. I had created a new life for my girls and for myself. But as I took a sip of the perfect latte, I had to consider that just because I had done it on my own didn’t mean I had to do it on my own forever.

The molecules in the air rearranged themselves when Jack and I were together. Anyone around us could feel it, knew from that first night that no matter what the future held, in some small way, the stars aligned for us, the moon rose for us, pulling the tide higher and higher until we were forced back onto our boats. Jack kissed me that night, standing in his thirteen-foot Boston Whaler, our hearts thumping in time, the mosquitoes circling around our bug-bitten ankles under the sweet, sweet full moon of summer.

All I knew was that, like Gladys Knight before me, I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.

That was the moment I realized that what you see in movies, what you read about in books, that isn’t the good part. Not at all. The butterflies make you feel giddy and alive, and that’s sweet. But it’s what happens after that really matters. It’s the time you realize that your love has grown exponentially since that first day, when you discover that being someone’s wife, being in it for the long haul, having someone there beside you day in and day out, is so much better than any roses on Valentine’s Day or any first-date jitters you could ever have.

I had forgotten what a mess new motherhood can make you. How vulnerable you suddenly are. How exhausted. How utterly alone.

Aside from the pain and the feeling that I was going to lose my mind, life was perfect.

It was funny how even now, all these years later, simply hearing a song could put me right back in a moment, right back in the emotions I felt.

“It’s going to be harder than hell. But doing the hard thing, even when it hurts, is what makes you strong.”

I leaned over the railing and looked into the night sky, feeling infinite, feeling eternal, feeling so very small and unimportant in the scheme of this great, wide universe. It was perhaps my favorite feeling.

And that’s when I realized that I might have run from Peachtree Bluff like my hair was on fire, but somewhere in there, a little Southern must have gotten in.

I had spent so much time, understandably, I think, worrying about the outside world, thinking about what people were saying about me and how I looked, that my primary emotion these past few weeks had been humiliation. I hadn’t spent all that much time fully feeling how devastating it was for the person who was supposed to be your everything to cast you off like you were nothing.

The head wants one thing, the heart wants the other. How I wished I could get them to do the same thing at the same time.

But this was the thing about sisters. No matter how much you laughed, no matter how many hours you talked, no matter how many months you got to spend together, it never seemed like quite enough.

Sometimes in the ebb and flow of life, the tide rolling in and out, as Hal would say, we forget to take the time to think about the people who really make us who we are. We forget to say thank you, to tell the people we love that we love them.

But I was old enough to know that what might have been was never as good as what was. It just wasn’t.

But Peachtree Bluff was a town of hidden truths, of stolen moments, a town that had borne the clandestine, the furtive, the surreptitious tales of the sea since well before the Revolution.

But when it mattered, when it was important, this place, this corner of the world that time seemed to have forgotten, would bear the big secrets, the earth-shattering ones, until the tide washed it over and, like time itself, it existed no more.

The moments that sneak up on you, the little surprises that keep you guessing, make life so worth exploring, even when the unthinkable happens.