This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2024 by Alice Hoffman

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN-13: 9781662522031 (digital)

Cover design by Ploy Siripant

Cover image: © fotograzia / Getty; © Ninette Bahne / Shutterstock

Love makes you do unexpected things. It’s never what you think it will be. It can break your heart or it can save you when you least expect it to, which was certainly true for Isabel Gibson. She had vowed never to come home again, but just like people said, she’d finally come back from New York after twelve years in exile. Now she was here to stay, and it was clear to everyone, love was the reason.

When the Gibson sisters were girls, they’d promised their father they’d take over his beloved Once upon a Time Bookshop, vowing that nothing would ever change. Fiction would always be on tables up front, nonfiction would be near the window, and children’s books would line the shelves of the fairy-tale room. But everything changed when the girls’ mother died, and after that the shelves were always dusty and the books were a hodgepodge and Isabel decided the last thing she wanted was to spend her life in a bookstore. Isabel was only ten in that terrible year, but that was when she stopped believing in fairy tales. Her father came home from the hospital every day during that last sorrowful month of their mother’s life and he’d locked himself away to weep. That was when Isabel decided that love was dangerous. It made you weak and left you at the mercy of fate. That was when she stopped going out to the marshes with her best friend, Johnny Lenox. She already knew she would fall in love with him, and she’d decided to stop it before it had begun. She was never going to lock herself away and cry. She was never going to lose what mattered most, not if nothing mattered at all.

Even then, Isabel dreamed of escaping to New York. She wanted a city where no one was fazed if they spied someone crying on a street corner, a place where no one knew your name. She wanted to be free, without connections that would tie her down and only hurt her in the end. After her mother’s death, she would sit in the marsh with paper and ink and create cloudy images of avenues and buildings she’d never seen. At seventeen, she made a list of everything on the island she had loved most of all: her mother; her father; the bookstore; her sister, Sophie; and Johnny Lenox, to whom she no longer spoke, even though he did his best to follow her around, sometimes appearing in their garden early in the morning, so that she had to close her curtains so she wouldn’t see him out there waiting for her. Isabel took the list she’d made and set it on fire, watching it burn in the kitchen sink. By the time she ran the water, there was nothing left but black ash.

As soon as she graduated, she packed her bags. She ignored Johnny, who had trailed her down to the docks. Don’t follow me anymore, Isabel told him. Don’t you get it? There’s nothing between us. She didn’t hear what he shouted back to her as the boat left the island. The wind was too high, and, anyway, at that point Isabel had already turned away.

In Manhattan, she attended art school while living in a tiny apartment in Chelsea where she never learned the names of the other tenants on her floor. Don’t say hello or goodbye. Don’t fall in love, don’t break my heart, don’t take me to dinner, don’t ask me who I am. Over the years, she married and divorced the wrong man and spent day after day painting images of Brinkley’s Island. The Wild Wood, Red Rose Cottage, and always, whether it be in shades of gray or blue or green, the marsh where the heron’s tree stood. She told herself she was happy in New York, but if Isabel was so happy, why did she dream about the island each night, and why was the light turned on in Johnny’s house on the marsh in every one of those dreams?

She’d come back to Brinkley’s Island only twice during those years in New York, both times for funerals. The first one was for her father, when he was laid to rest beside her mother in the old cemetery on the North Road. Isabel had stood in the back of the huge crowd, quietly crying, until she spied Johnny watching her, at which point she steeled herself and wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands. She reminded herself that crying did no good at all and looking back at Johnny didn’t help either. She didn’t even stay for the funeral dinner at the cottage, where long tables had been set up in the garden and I’ll Miss You Forever Cakes were served—a sad farewell recipe of their mother’s, angel food cakes left unfrosted, with local fresh fruit as a topping.

The second time Isabel returned it was to attend a funeral for her sister Sophie’s husband, Matt, who drowned in the eighth month of Sophie’s pregnancy. Isabel was late; she blamed traffic and a ferry delay, but her excuses were worthless as far as her sister was concerned. Sophie wouldn’t even look at her until they were leaving the service.

“You’ve never been here for me” was all Sophie had to say. “You needn’t bother to be here now.”

The sisters then declared they would never speak again, and Isabel had gone off to the bar at the inn, where she’d had too much to drink. At the end of the night, she had wound up madly kissing someone who had the decency to walk her to her room and depart, leaving her to sleep it off. That someone was Johnny Lenox. In the morning, Isabel recalled bits of their conversation. He had told her that she belonged on Brinkley’s Island, and she had insisted she was just fine where she was. She had escaped through the back door of the inn and headed to the harbor, certain she would never return.

But years later, Sophie’s daughter had written a note to Isabel with a single word: Help. Sophie had broken her leg and the bookstore was failing. In the wake of Isabel’s divorce and her failures in New York, she’d packed up, brought her dog Hank along, and come home. Johnny’s father, Jack, was the ferry captain, and Johnny worked alongside him and so he immediately spied Isabel. Johnny was tall, with dark hair that was far too long, and his eyes burned right through her. That was when Isabel knew. There would most certainly be trouble ahead.

Just when she’d thought she was going back to New York, Johnny had appeared in the garden, just as he had when they were young. Isabel went out to where the flowers that her mother had planted still bloomed.

“Do you remember what happened on the night of Matt’s funeral?” Johnny asked.

“I got drunk. And I disappointed everyone,” Isabel answered.

Johnny shook his head. “You fell in love with me.”

Isabel was hopelessly unromantic, but standing there beside him near the lilies, she felt racked by something she didn’t understand. She felt as though she was in danger.

“I cannot fall in love with you,” she told him, but Johnny grinned and assured her she was wrong.

“It’s too late,” he said. “You already are.”

Hank had managed to get out of the house, and he ran over to leap into Johnny’s arms. That was the moment when Isabel realized she could have a different sort of life, even after all this time. Love had waited for her. All she had to do was say yes. “My dog seems to have fallen in love with you,” she said, but they both knew that was not what she meant. It was Isabel, after all this time, after all her mistakes, who was in love, and for the first time she knew exactly what she wanted.

After five years of living on Brinkley’s Island, Isabel still hadn’t moved in with Johnny and try as they might they couldn’t seem to manage to get married. They had taken out a marriage license three times, but each wedding had been thwarted by disaster. On the morning of the first wedding, Johnny’s father, Jack, had a heart attack. The couple then spent what was to have been their wedding night at the hospital in Hensley, the town across the bay. On their second wedding day, an unexpected hurricane arose from the sea, and all day there was flooding, and the tent set out for their reception was picked up by the wind and tossed into the marsh. The third year they tried a winter wedding, but temperatures dropped below zero and the pipes in the bookstore burst, so what might have been their wedding day was spent carrying out books wrapped in blankets to ensure they wouldn’t be damaged.

Isabel was beginning to wonder if fate was trying to convince her to remain single. She never had been very good at love, after all. Her first marriage had been a disaster and perhaps that had been matrimony enough for a lifetime. Her ex, Roger, had been having an affair during the time he said he was out running in the mornings; he’d been found out when Isabel discovered love notes in his pockets. Yesterday was heaven, someone had written to him, and that was the end of the marriage. The divorce had been painful, and they’d never spoken again, although now that Roger had remarried, he seemed to have forgotten the bad blood between them. Isabel received holiday cards addressed to the bookstore, all with photographs of Roger and his new wife, Felice, in romantic spots around the world. We’re wishing you a great year, Roger would write, and then Felice would sign her name with a heart, which made Isabel laugh, for the love letters she’d found in Roger’s jacket pockets had all been signed the exact same way.

Now, when Isabel went to visit Johnny in the evenings, she would make her way through the pine tree forest she and Sophie had always called the Wild Wood when they were young. The girls used to take along several Never Get Lost Oatmeal Cookies just in case they made a wrong turn and blundered into the wilderness, and Isabel kept that tradition alive so that Johnny now had a jar that was always filled with cookies on his kitchen counter. At dusk, there were owls hooting and bats flickering over the treetops. At the end of her walk, Isabel passed her favorite spot in all the world, the heron’s tree, the place her mother had always said was magic. Make a wish, she’d say when they climbed the tree to look out to the endless sea.

Isabel had made her wish and it hadn’t come true. She wanted the people she loved to live forever. She wanted love to never die. Now she wondered if some people were meant to be alone, and if that was the reason all three weddings had been canceled, but as soon as she saw the Lenox house out on the farthest point of land, she always felt she was where she belonged. Now that Mr. Lenox had moved into the new assisted living facility on Shore Road, Johnny was alone in the old house, replacing windows and installing solar panels. The garden still grew in a patch of salty earth and there were blackbirds in the thornbushes and Johnny still slept in his boyhood bedroom while remodeling the attic that would one day be their bedroom. “I always wondered what it would be like to sleep here,” Isabel said the first time she’d stayed over. She had no idea why she felt so shy standing on the threshold of Johnny’s room. It was as if she were a girl again, her emotions transparent.

Johnny leaned to kiss her in the doorway. “It should have always been like this,” he told her.

Isabel had tried to sell the bookstore after her father’s death, but thankfully she had been prevented from doing so when Sophie had the building declared a landmark in court. The original building had been a barn, built in 1670 by the island’s founder, William Brinkley, who had lived alone with no other company for a dozen years. The sisters had added a bakery, and now on weekends there was often a line out the door. Their mother’s secret recipes brought the crowds; people couldn’t get enough of their favorites, especially I Must Be in Heaven Chocolate Brownies or Blue Moon Blueberry Muffins. Visitors came from Portland and Boston on hot summer days, and they continued taking the ferry over all through the fall. They sprawled in the grass with their new books and their sticky treats or made themselves comfortable in the old wicker chairs where Isabel and Sophie used to curl up to read when they were girls. The bookstore celebrated holidays with huge crowds in attendance. Halloween meant iced pumpkin-flavored Treat Me, Don’t Trick Me Cookies and Good Witch Gingerbread, along with readings of stories written by Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. Christmas was known for its Please May I Have Some More Apple Cookies, accompanied by a recitation from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. On May Day there were Double Bunny Hop Coconut Macaroons and Cheshire Cat Peanut Butter Cookies, along with a twilight presentation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a glorious evening when families sat beneath the stars.

The bookstore was known for its fairy-tale room, which was a popular spot not only with children but also with adults who longed to reread the stories they’d grown up with. Violet, Sophie’s daughter, who was nearly seventeen, had painted the room jewel blue, then had set up a cozy tent where children could read while their parents shopped. This past winter, Isabel had decorated the ceiling with swirls of constellations, using a silvery paint that glowed in the dark. When she was done, she turned off the lights and remembered what she had loved about being an artist. The room was glittering. It was filled with magic.

“You should take up painting again,” Sophie told her sister when she came to view the newly painted sky.

“I’m too busy with the bookstore,” Isabel was quick to reply. She hadn’t painted in years and was somewhat embarrassed to have ever thought she could be an artist. “Anyway, I’m not good enough.”

“Yes, you are! I never knew why you quit.”

Isabel shrugged. “My teacher in New York said he was doing me a favor by telling me the truth. He said I’d never make it.”

“He was an ass and so are you if you believed him,” Sophie said warmly.

The sisters had slept in the bookshop when their parents allowed them to camp out in the store. Isabel remembered how it felt to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. She almost felt that way now when she and Sophie went out together and stood on the porch. It was twilight and the birds were singing the last songs of the day. She could see the fairy-tale room through the window, glimmering in the falling dark. Despite everything Isabel had told herself about having no talent, she couldn’t help but wonder if her sister might be right. She could start with pen and ink, and then maybe watercolors. She’d sit in the marsh where no one could see her, and maybe she’d remember what it was like to be an artist.

Isabel had been preparing for their fourth wedding for some time, writing out the menu to include local oysters and chowder and ordering flowers from the Daisy Shop on Center Street. Her neighbors continued to encourage her, giving her advice even when they weren’t asked for their opinions.

“Fourth time’s the charm,” people on the street often called out to Isabel.

They sounded as if they believed it, but she couldn’t help but notice most of them were crossing their fingers for luck. Isabel, herself, had always vowed she didn’t believe in luck. She was a practical, rational person. All the same, she’d taken to wearing a blue string tied around her wrist, for she’d been told it would bring her good fortune on her wedding day, and who was she to debate with the experts in town?

She often stopped off to see Johnny’s father at his new apartment. It was a perfect walk for Hank, long enough for him to run off plenty of energy as he dodged through the tall grass on the side of the road, but not so long that he would refuse to walk back home. When that happened, Hank would lie down in the middle of the road, unmoving, until Isabel managed to flag down a passing car or truck to hitchhike back to the bookstore. Today Mr. Lenox was sitting out on the lawn in an old wicker chair as he fixed a fishing rod. “Hey there, girl,” he called to Isabel. “I hope you brought me something good.”

Isabel waved and held up a paper bag from the bakery. She always brought the same thing. Do Right Spice Cookies, sweetened with applesauce so that Mr. Lenox’s diabetes wouldn’t flare up. She’d known him all her life; he’d been a good friend of her father and had come to play poker on a weekly basis when her dad was alive. Now the poker games were held out here on Shore Road. Johnny often joined the group of older men. He told Isabel that he enjoyed hearing their stories, tales of shipwrecks and of huge fish caught and sometimes lost, if they’d ever existed at all. He also wanted to be available to drive his father’s friends back to town on nights when they drank a little more whiskey than they’d planned to have. He made certain to stick to ice water on those nights.

“Four more days,” Isabel said to her father-in-law-to-be as she pulled up a chair for herself, then plunked down to watch Hank run after a squirrel he’d never catch. She wondered if her pearl engagement ring was the problem. She’d been told her pearls could be bad luck.

“I hope you’re not going to wait to have your wedding until after I’m dead,” Jack Lenox said crossly. He knew that young people thought they had all the time in the world.

“You will not be dead,” Isabel told him sternly. “You’re coming to our wedding, whenever it is, even if it’s twenty years from now.”

“It’s scheduled for Saturday,” Mr. Lenox said. “I think I can last that long.”

Isabel broke off a piece of one of the cookies. As soon as she did, Hank came to sit beside her, drooling, ready to wolf down any crumbs. She was beginning to think she had put a jinx on the wedding and that bad luck in love was her fate. “If it happens.”

“You’re thinking negatively,” Mr. Lenox admonished Isabel. He informed her that a famous philosopher had written that people lived their lives forward and only understood them when they looked backward. But by the time that happened, there was usually very little time left. Life would slip away before you knew it so you had to live every day as if it was your last, for it just might be. Today would soon be the distant past, and you would have to strain to remember what you did or who you spoke to.

“I’ll always remember that on June first I was talking to you,” Isabel told him. “Four days before my fourth wedding we were sitting out here on the lawn, having our favorite cookies.”

When it was time for Isabel to leave, Mr. Lenox became even more grumpy, as he always was when she left him. He always said he couldn’t think of anyone else who would be a better match for his son, married or not. People didn’t care about traditional legal bonds the way they used to back when he was young. They’d come to understand love was all that mattered.

“You don’t have to be married to move in with Johnny,” Mr. Lenox told Isabel. He adored her, but she’d hurt his boy when they were young, and he hoped Johnny wasn’t failing to heed the warning signs once again. He wondered if Isabel could make a commitment—after all, she’d run away before when times got tough. One of his buddies had confided that people were taking bets on the upcoming wedding and the odds were fifty to one that it would never go forward. “I thought you loved being out on the marsh, but you’re not there,” Mr. Lenox said.

“Someday,” Isabel said. “When the time is right.”

“Wake up, girl,” Mr. Lenox warned her. “Someday is now.”

On Isabel’s way home, a rain squall came up. The pale sky turned dark in an instant and wet gusts shook the leaves from the trees. Isabel and Hank were muddy and drenched as they ran down the road. Luckily, a truck passed by. It was the pastor, Tim Warren, and he pulled over, then leaned to open the passenger door. “Hop in,” he called.

Hank jumped into the back seat; then Isabel got in, apologizing for being soaking wet. Tim Warren had grown up on the island and Isabel, Johnny, and Sophie had gone to school with him before his life took a wrong turn. It was a long time ago, and you can’t blame a person for being a teenager. Tim had served time in prison for dealing drugs down in Boston, then had come back in a shabby suit, carrying a single suitcase, after attending divinity school. Everyone knew him as a good man who had lost himself for a decade or so before finding himself again.

“Ready for Saturday?” Tim said.

They exchanged a look. Any conversation about the wedding date seemed like dangerous territory.

“Sure am,” Isabel answered uncertainly.

“Glad to hear that.” Tim nodded, which was his way of saying I’m here for you if you need an old friend.

When they got home, Isabel and Hank dried off on the covered porch. Sophie soon came out to watch the falling rain. The sisters had already begun the Marry Me, Marry Me Wedding Cake for the fourth time. It was another of their mother’s recipes, one Susan Gibson had baked for more than twenty brides on the island. Women still came to the bookstore on their wedding anniversaries to leave vases of flowers on the porch in honor of Isabel’s mother. The cake consisted of three tiers of angel food cake and vanilla icing, with fresh strawberry jam filling spooned between the layers. By now, Isabel knew the recipe by heart. Yesterday they had gone strawberry picking at the Jeffreys’ farm, where the most delicious strawberries in the state of Maine were said to grow.

Isabel toweled off the dog and let him inside, then sat beside her sister on the porch. That was when she realized something was amiss. The look on Sophie’s face was worrying. It’s here again, Isabel thought. Bad luck. Something we don’t expect. “What’s wrong?” Isabel asked.

What they had always feared most—that one day what had happened to their mother would happen to them—was always in the back of their minds. Today, while Sophie was in the bath, it had come to pass. She’d reached down and felt a lump in her breast.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she told Isabel. All the same, her breathing sounded shallow in her chest.

“You’ll be fine,” Isabel assured her, already in a panic that she was trying to hide beneath a veil of logic. “I’ll make an appointment at the hospital.” They wouldn’t wait to schedule a visit with a doctor in Portland, which might take weeks. Instead, they’d go to the small hospital in town right across the bay, where Sophie could be seen the next day.

“Don’t tell anyone else,” Sophie pleaded. “Especially Violet. Not a word.”

The rain had stopped, and they both gazed into the canopy of the treetops. All the world looked darker now; the leaves on the trees were black and damp, the sky a swirl of clouds.

“That’s what our parents did to us,” Isabel reminded her sister. “They kept secrets. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“For now, yes. Until I know for certain. And don’t tell Johnny.”

“Johnny’s trustworthy.” Isabel felt her love for him. She wondered if she loved him too much. “He won’t tell anyone.”

“That’s the problem. He’s too honest,” Sophie explained. “If Violet asks him where we are, he won’t be able to lie.”

The sisters went inside and wrapped the layers of wedding cake in wax paper, and not knowing whether or not the cake would be unwrapped before Saturday, they cut tiny slices for themselves. Their mother had told them that cake was always helpful: you can have it for breakfast or lunch, you can have it while you’re celebrating or when your heart is about to break, and you can always share it with someone you love.

Hensley was a small town that was nearly deserted in winter, but now, in June, the restaurants and shops were all jam packed and the narrow lanes were filled with jostling crowds, with most people headed for the ferry to the island. The hospital was on Main Street, and as Sophie and Isabel walked along, they were grateful not to run into anyone they knew. They found their way to the waiting room and sat side by side, not speaking. All the same, they held hands.

When Sophie was sent to have a mammogram, Isabel had one as well. Some experts recommended that a woman wait until she turned forty before having one, but because breast cancer ran in the family and Isabel and Sophie had gone to high school with the mammographer, Bonnie Seymore, it turned out there was no problem fitting Isabel into the schedule as well. All they needed was a doctor’s request, which was soon enough sent down from the oncology department from Dr. David Bloom. The sisters took turns getting mammograms and cursing the machine that squashed them in place, with each trying for the worst curse possible. Isabel won hands down when she dropped the f-bomb sixteen different ways, topping Sophie’s shouts of “Thunderation” and “Bloody hell.” After the radiologist’s readings they were sent up to Dr. Bloom’s office, still knowing nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Bloom said when they sat down across from him at his desk. He was a no-nonsense man with liquid black eyes, younger than they had expected, not more than thirty. “Who is the patient?”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell us?” Isabel said. There was traffic noise from the street as more tourists arrived in town for their holidays, but nothing outside the room mattered anymore, not today, not at this moment.

Sophie raised her eyes to the doctor. She knew the answer as soon as he looked at her with deep compassion. Sophie was the patient. He’d spied something suspicious on her mammogram.

“We’ll do a biopsy,” Dr. Bloom told Sophie. It was Isabel who dissolved into tears, too stunned by fear to speak. The doctor handed Isabel a box of Kleenex, but he didn’t pay much attention to her. David Bloom had recently relocated from New York, and he was a little awkward at times like these, and often too brutally honest. At the moment, he was focused on Sophie. “Can I call you Sophie?” he asked.

“Please,” Sophie said. “Do.”

“You’ll have the biopsy tomorrow, Sophie. Then we’ll know what to do.”

The sisters spent the night at the Hensley Hotel, sharing a king-size bed and calling up for room service. They ordered chicken soup and toast, food they had craved when they were young and had come down with colds or the flu. But now they found they could only eat a few bites, and if the truth be told, the restaurant at the hotel wasn’t known for its great cuisine. Sophie said they might as well splurge and so they added a huge slice of chocolate cake to the order, but it wasn’t half as good as their mother’s Midnight Chocolate Cake, made with chocolate chips and mocha frosting, a treat so delicious people fell in love after eating one bite. Unfortunately, the hotel kitchen’s chocolate cake didn’t change the sisters’ mood of despair, and they barely touched it.

Isabel went out into the hallway to phone Johnny. She had told him that she and Sophie were attending a booksellers’ retreat and would be staying in Boston overnight. He didn’t believe a word. Now, as he stood at the helm of the ferry, he could hear the boat’s horn both on the intercom above him and through the phone at the very same time. He knew exactly where Isabel was.

“Baby, you’re lying,” he said.

“I didn’t want to.” Isabel felt remorseful already.

“Then don’t.” Johnny was always matter of fact.

“In the future I won’t,” Isabel vowed.

“But you’re all right?” Johnny asked in a low voice as if his question was a secret as well.

“I am,” Isabel said. “More or less,” she added, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

“Then your punishment will be that any food you order at the Hensley Hotel will be terrible,” Johnny told her.

“It already was,” Isabel admitted. “We had room service.”

“Do you want me to bring you a pizza from the ferry snack bar? It would be better than anything you can get there.”

“We’re fine,” Isabel said.

“Are you?” Johnny asked. “This isn’t about Saturday, is it?” he wondered.

“Saturday?” Isabel.

“Our wedding. Or have you forgotten?”

“I have definitely not forgotten,” Isabel told him, although it was obvious to them both that she had.

“Just don’t forget to come back,” Johnny told her.

“I won’t,” she said, and Johnny could tell she was telling the truth. At least about that.

Sophie then called Violet and asked if she would close up the bookstore and grab dinner for herself, something Violet said she was more than happy to do. Violet told her mother that she had a book to finish and now she could eat while reading and not be considered impolite. She was involved with Jane Eyre and she said she felt a strong kinship with the woman in the attic. She wondered why Jane would fall in love with someone who was so obviously wrong for her. If Violet had been the one to write the novel, she would have had the two women leave together at the end, triumphant, but she had a feeling that was not where the story was headed. Isabel and Sophie exchanged a look. They both knew that stories didn’t always end where you wanted them to. They thought about the letter their mother had left for them to read before she passed away. I love you more than pancakes, more than ice cream, more than pickles, more than my life.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Sophie told her daughter. She’d left a Kiss Me Twice Carrot Cake for dessert, one that Hank was drooling over as he eyed the platter.

Isabel noticed there had been no mention of the hospital or what they might have to face. Isabel had found out about their mother’s illness accidentally, in the worst way possible. She had gone for a glass of water. There in the hallway she’d heard her mother say It’s too soon for me to leave them. She’d stood outside her parents’ door and heard the word cancer. It had taken all this time for her to forgive her parents for not telling her and Sophie, even if they were trying to protect their daughters. There was no protection from some things, only courage, only truth.

“I’ll tell her when I know for sure,” Sophie vowed when she saw the look on Isabel’s face. “No need to worry her if it turns out there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Whatever you do, I’m with you a hundred percent,” Isabel assured her sister.

They had wasted too many years being furious with one another for no good reason, quarreling over small mistakes, unable to speak about what really mattered. Sophie had forgiven her sister for abandoning the bookstore and her family. People made mistakes, and sometimes they weren’t aware of how bad their choices were until they lived through them and came out on the other side.

“I’m lucky to have you,” Sophie said.

“I’m sure I’ll do something else stupid, and then you’ll be angry at me again,” Isabel said sadly.

“If you do, I’ll forgive you all over again,” Sophie assured her. “We can fight and still love each other. That’s what sisters do.”

In the morning, Isabel sat in the waiting room of the oncology center while Sophie went in for her biopsy. David Bloom came to sit with Isabel before the procedure, which was a surprise because he had seemed to be a cold fish during their meeting in his office. He didn’t seem that way now. He had been thinking about Sophie all night. He often appeared distant, but it was only because he was so focused and he tended to disappear into his work. His grandfather had been a doctor in Brooklyn, and David had gone house to house with him when he was a boy, back when there were house calls and an eight-year-old boy could sit in the kitchen of a house on Bedford Avenue and hear his grandfather comforting a wife or a widow or a daughter.

“I read your family history,” Dr. Bloom said. “Just so you know, I’ll do everything for her.”

“So will I,” Isabel said, relieved that she and David Bloom were in agreement. Everything and anything for Sophie, to make certain this hospital wouldn’t be the end of her story.

Sophie took Isabel’s advice. She remembered the whispers behind locked doors in their childhood, and so she told Violet as soon as they got home.

“The survival rate is better all the time,” Sophie said before explaining what her treatment would consist of. Violet listened, but when her mother was done speaking, she got up from the table and left the room without a word.

“Come back here,” Isabel called, but Sophie shook her head and said, “Let her go. She needs time to process this. We would have acted the same way if we’d been told. That’s why they kept it a secret for so long. The truth is a hard thing to put someone through.”

Violet came back down the narrow stairs in the middle of the night. Her mother and aunt were waiting up for her in the living room. While Violet was up in her room, the sisters had made their mother’s fruitcake and it was still in the oven. It was so rich and thick it had to bake for three hours, and now it was almost done. It was the cake that had a secret ingredient, an addition Isabel had come to understand the first time she baked this recipe, on the night she decided not to leave the island.

Isabel went in to check on the cake while Violet sat down on the couch with her mother and cried, and when Isabel returned, she brought them slices on their favorite blue plates. They all loathed fruitcake, but they loved one another and that was all they needed now. That had been the secret ingredient all along.

Isabel and Johnny didn’t get married that Saturday. It seemed wrong to go forward with a celebration so soon after Sophie’s diagnosis, and frankly, no one was surprised when they called it off. Slices of the Marry Me, Marry Me Wedding Cake were given out with every book purchase on Saturday instead, and the top tier was brought over to the assisted living complex in time for Mr. Lenox’s poker game with his buddies on Sunday.

The treatment for Sophie’s cancer lasted ten months. Surgery, then chemo and radiation. She lost her hair in November. Some fell out, and then they shaved the rest right there in the kitchen, with a towel thrown around Sophie’s shoulders. Isabel and Violet cut their hair short in an act of solidarity, and they threw the snippets of hair into the yard so that the birds could wind strands into their nests. They all wore woolen hats through the autumn into winter to keep their heads warm. Two local women who were members of the Thursday Night Book Club, which had been meeting once a week for the past five years at the bar of the inn to discuss that week’s fiction pick, were hired to help out at the bookstore while their children were in school. The bookstore closed at three on weekdays to accommodate the young mothers, and on weekends the bookstore didn’t open at all, unless someone desperately needed a book right away, and then Violet quickly made the sale before ushering them out of the shop.

At Christmas, the twelve other women in the book club offered to work without any pay other than tins of cookies, so that the store could be open for the crowds that descended on weekends during the holiday season, and to ensure that local people could choose the perfect gifts. Violet baked cupcakes and tea cakes, and anyone who didn’t show up early in the day would likely find everything in the bakery case had sold out.

Sophie worked in the bookstore when she felt well enough, but she often looked lost, a bleak expression on her face, and she wound up taking long naps on the couch. It was a terrifying time, one in which the future was not discussed.

Most often Isabel went with Sophie to the hospital in Hensley, but sometimes Violet took the ferry with her mother, and occasionally the pastor, Tim Warren, would be the one to accompany her. Sophie often brought a Make the Most of Life Pink Lemonade Cake for the staff at the radiology department, a sharp, citrusy loaf that had a sugar-syrup frosting to contrast with the first bitter taste, so the cake grew sweeter and sweeter with every bite.

During the coldest week in January, when the harbor froze and the ferry couldn’t run, Isabel and Sophie stayed at the Hensley Hotel again so that Sophie wouldn’t miss her treatment. This time they brought their own groceries. That was when Isabel realized what had been going on right under her nose for all these months. One morning she woke up to find that Sophie was missing. Her sister’s phone and purse were still beside the bed. Isabel threw on her clothes and took the stairs down to the lobby and that was when she saw Sophie and Dr. Bloom having breakfast in the hotel dining room. Sophie was usually nauseated after her chemo and, in fact, was currently ignoring her french toast, but the real giveaway was that David Bloom paid no attention to his food. They were both too busy gazing at each other, as if there was no one else worth looking at, as if all they saw was each other.

Isabel was waiting for Sophie in the lobby. “David Bloom,” she said with a smile. How lovely that something good had come of this difficult time, something unexpected and rare.

“I was going to tell you,” Sophie vowed. “It’s just such lousy timing.”

“There is no such thing,” Isabel said, utterly convinced that there was never a bad time to fall in love.

Whoever accompanied Sophie to her chemo treatments would read aloud from a novel, chapter by chapter, occasionally stopping for a bit if Sophie fell asleep in her chair. Isabel made up the list of books, kept in a black notebook marked fiction, with suggestions from the Thursday Night Book Club. They began with Olive Kitteridge, because Elizabeth Strout was both sisters’ favorite writer, then faced the challenges of Wuthering Heights, which, despite Sophie’s claim of preferring Jane Eyre, made them all cry, including their pastor, Tim, who gave a sermon about forgiveness on the Sunday following his reading of the book. Violet and Sophie went through Anne Rice’s vampire books, which they realized were about grief and the unending desire for life; then Isabel and Sophie turned to Great Expectations, simply because it was great, and afterward they read Matt Haig’s Midnight Library, which they all wanted a turn at reading, for it gave everyone hope that the life they were living was the life they were meant to have, and when the last page was read the oncology nurses who had gathered round to listen applauded. Finally, they chose the Blue Fairy Book, a collection Isabel and Sophie had loved as children. And during the very last sessions, Isabel told their own story. Once upon a time, Isabel said on that day, there were two sisters who went into the wild woods and found their way home.

By the time the books had all been read aloud, Sophie’s treatment was over. A year could go by quickly or it could seem to last forever, and this year had done both. Despite her hair loss, many people thought Sophie looked more beautiful than ever. Her eyes seemed huge, and her smile was extraordinary, though it was rare to see and mostly in evidence when she saw her daughter or when David Bloom came to check on her. It was time for the spring reading of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the bookstore. Everyone in town came, and most of the staff of the radiology department were there as well. David Bloom had started to take the ferry back with Sophie after her treatments that spring, and he continued visiting the island when her radiation and chemo were done. David had been seasick on his initial ferry voyages. He was used to keeping his feet planted firmly on earth, and he’d never even been on the Staten Island Ferry while growing up in Brooklyn, but he took Dramamine and soon was used to being at sea. By the time Sophie had finished her treatment, he’d bought himself a small sailboat, nothing fancy, so that he and Sophie could head out into the bay on Sundays when the weather was fine and the water was a shimmer of blue.

David often lingered on the island for so long he failed to get back to the ferry terminal until after the last boat had left for Hensley. When that happened, he would spend the night on a bench waiting for the morning’s first ferry back to the mainland. By then it was clear to Sophie that he was in love with her even though he hadn’t confessed it yet. He was deciding whether or not to lie about his feelings, but he’d never been any good at being anything other than honest, which could be a problem for an oncologist. One night, when he’d already missed the last ferry, David showed up at Red Rose Cottage. When Sophie answered the door, he took a small red box from his jacket pocket. Inside there was a diamond ring. It was classic, old fashioned, and perfect. “It belonged to my mother,” he told Sophie. “I’d like it to be yours.”

“What if I get sick again?” Sophie worried. Frankly, she worried about that all the time. She worried when she sat in the garden, and when she had dinner with Violet, and when she walked through the woods with Isabel.

“No one knows what will happen next,” David told her. He was practical and sensible, but he was also a man in love. Love gives you faith in the future, and that is what he possessed. “Every doctor learns that the future is a mystery, but what I feel for you is not.”

Violet was grumpy and resentful when she saw the ring.

“We’re not getting married immediately,” Sophie assured her. “First Isabel has to get married.”

“I don’t see why you have to fall in love now,” Violet said flatly, for wasn’t it time for her to fall in love? Not that Violet considered anyone on the island worthy of her interest. All the same, having a mother who was clearly head over heels was uncomfortable, but as the days passed, Violet came to understand that she was acting like a selfish child. One morning she found her mother in the kitchen making Fall Madly in Love Cookies, vanilla, with a melted chocolate center. Violet decided then and there that her mother deserved happiness more than anyone she knew. They sat down and ate the cookies and afterward Violet apologized for her recent rudeness, admitting that she didn’t understand why it was Dr. Bloom of all people. “He doesn’t even read novels,” Violet complained.

“No, but he saves people’s lives,” Isabel reminded her. “Isn’t that enough?”

There was no way to argue with that. All Violet could do was to give him his own copy of Wuthering Heights and hope for the best.

The fifth wedding was set for the first week of September. The marshes were already turning gold and the morning air was cool. It was the perfect time of year in Maine. Invitations had been sent out, and everyone who’d been invited had written back that they planned to attend. Everyone wanted to see if this wedding would finally happen. Isabel was more nervous as the day approached. Perhaps this was what it felt like to have cold feet. She still wasn’t living with Johnny out in the marsh. She said it was because Sophie might need her, but that wasn’t the reason. Mr. Lenox had been right all along. She was still afraid to commit. She was afraid love would take everything from her.

“Maybe we should rethink the date,” Isabel said to Johnny as the day approached.

“It’s a little late for that.” They were sitting out on the porch of the marsh house, listening to the gulls calling in the bay. Isabel had brought over several suitcases at the start of the week, but she had yet to unpack them.

“You don’t think all these cancellations were a message?”

“The time wasn’t right. This wedding will be perfect.”

They had only two days left, and there was still so much to do. Tim had already written his sermon for their wedding day, focusing on how life could surprise and astound you when you least expected it to, but the sisters were behind in their preparations. There were cucumber and salmon sandwiches to fix, and Love Me Do Chocolate Chip Cookies to bake, and they needed to frost the fifth wedding cake.

Instead of preparing for the wedding, Isabel secretly worked on illustrating the story their mother had written for her and Sophie when they were children. Over the past year, while Sophie was napping, exhausted from her treatment, Isabel had taken out her watercolors to create paintings for their mother’s story. On the last page there was a blue river filled with silver fish, and each fish had a blissful smile on its face. Today, instead of making certain the wedding dress she’d bought at the Cricket Shop over on Main Street had been dropped off, she was painting a character that looked suspiciously like their Hank, who carried a diamond ring that was exactly the same as the one Sophie wore, which had belonged to David Bloom’s mother. Isabel looked at her painting and all at once she knew what should happen next. She realized the idea of a switch in the wedding plans had been brewing all the while she’d been painting. She went out into the yard and found Violet working on a crown of daisies for Hank. “Are you all right if your mother marries David?” she asked.

“Yes. I told her I was, and I mean it.”

“I don’t mean someday, Violet. I mean now. As a surprise.”

The tent was being put up in the rear of the yard and the workmen yelled to one another and the day was perfect. Isabel and Violet looked at each other, then laughed out loud.

“You’re canceling again,” Violet said to her aunt.

“Just temporarily,” Isabel assured her.

“It’s a good thing you came back to live with us. We needed help.”

That evening, as Isabel made her way into the marsh, Hank ran on ahead, sloshing through the pools that remained even though the tide was receding. Johnny was in the yard when Isabel arrived, wearing his high boots. He’d been out to the oyster beds, walking through knee-deep mud. Oysters would be the first course at the wedding dinner, and Johnny hadn’t minded digging through the mud all afternoon. Isabel went to him and threw her arms around him even though it meant that she, too, would be streaked with mud. She thought of the years she’d spent in New York City, the holidays when she was alone in her small apartment, painting this very spot, time and time again. She couldn’t forget the way Johnny had looked at her when she had left the island right after high school graduation. Even though Isabel hadn’t spoken to him for years, he’d followed her to the pier. He’d called out to her, but she was too far away, and she’d never heard a word. She still wondered what he’d shouted.

They went into his house and slipped off their muddy clothes, locking Hank out of the bedroom even though he howled to be with them. Later, when Johnny went to unlatch the door, Hank leaped on the bed, and then the sheets were muddier than ever.

“We’ve made a mess of things,” Isabel said. She felt like crying even though she was happy.

“We’ll always make a mess of things.” Johnny ran his hand down her bare shoulder.

“I don’t want to get married,” Isabel admitted. There: she had said it. She thought he would either forgive her or walk out the door, but he merely looked at her through narrowed eyes.

“Ever?” he said.

“Just not this wedding.”

“Will this happen every year? Will it become a holiday? Unmarrying day? Do you already know what will stop us this time? Plague, famine, tornado, tidal waves?” Johnny gave her a soul-searching look. “Or is it just that you don’t want to marry me?”

“I want to give our wedding to Sophie. We’re going to surprise her.”

“Are we?”

“Are you against it?” Isabel asked. She knew that she’d hurt him before, and she was pretty certain she was doing it again, but she wanted this for Sophie more than she wanted it for herself.

“Are you sure this is what Sophie wants?”

“It’s her time,” Isabel assured him. “Ours will come.” She saw the way he was looking at her, and she wanted him to believe her. “I promise,” she said.

On the night before the wedding, Isabel and Sophie slept in the bookstore, dragging sleeping bags into the tent that was kept in the fairy-tale room. That week Isabel had painted a quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on the wall above the bookcases. Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round. They’d brought along a lantern and Isabel read the story their mother had left for them, long ago, so they would know how much they had been loved. I love you more than dogs or cats or diamonds or gold, more than anyone else in the world. Isabel kept her paintings stored away, not ready to share them. Not yet. She hadn’t understood their father’s quiet grief when they were girls; she’d always thought he had abandoned them when he locked himself in his room or set off to the bar at the inn. Now she understood he had simply been a man in love mourning his wife.

Early the next day, the sisters went upstairs to dress for the wedding. Sophie stopped short when Isabel grabbed the maid of honor dress that was hanging on her door.

“That’s not yours,” Sophie said.

“It is now. I hope I can squeeze into it.”

“Is something wrong?” Sophie asked, completely confused.

Isabel threw her arms around her sister. “Everything is absolutely right,” she whispered as she threw open the door to Sophie’s room. The wedding dress had been carefully arranged on a chair in Sophie’s room. There was a note attached with a pearl pin that had belonged to their mother. For today’s bride.

“No mix-up,” Isabel said, before slipping into her room.

Sophie sank down on her bed, confused, and she was still there when Isabel came back wearing the blue maid of honor dress Sophie thought she’d be wearing this afternoon. Isabel realized that her sister was crying, and she sat down beside her.

“You switched us,” Sophie said.

“Violet and I thought you’d like the surprise. You do, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, but does David know?”

“We conspired with him. He’s gotten a new suit for himself.”

There was a measured pause, before Sophie said, “David likes things orderly. He has enough surprises at work.”

“He’s not as orderly as you think. And this isn’t a surprise to him. Only to you.”

Sophie turned away. “I don’t even have hair. Why would he want me?”

In fact, Sophie’s hair had been growing in and she looked brand new. She looked like someone who deserved to be happy. “You look like a pixie from the fairy-tale room,” Isabel told her. She had always been jealous of her sister, who was older and prettier, but she wasn’t jealous anymore. She wanted Sophie to have everything.

“But I can’t take your wedding,” Sophie cried.

“It’s not my wedding. That will happen another time,” Isabel insisted. “This one is yours.”

The guests were already filling up the yard, and soon Violet called upstairs. “Hurry up,” she told her mother. “The time is now!”

When David Bloom arrived in his new linen summer suit, everyone applauded. Although there were still some people who believed that a wedding would never occur at Red Rose Cottage, even those people were won over when they heard it was to be Sophie’s wedding. Most of the town had turned out, many of them to witness whether the ceremony would take place. There weren’t enough chairs set out, so the younger guests sat in the grass. Even though Violet had taken Hank for a three-mile walk earlier in the day, he still had enough energy to greet people by leaping on them, then managed to steal a slice of the Fall in Love Fruitcake. There were several mishaps that didn’t destroy the good cheer of the day. A tray of Do I Dare Cheese Puffs burned to a crisp. Mr. Lenox was in a new wheelchair that nearly tipped over in the grass, but fortunately Johnny set the chair right before it overturned. A few customers who had come to the bookstore expecting it to be open wound up staying for the festivities. Then it began to rain. People waited for thunder or a tornado, but it was just a pale light rain that fell, nothing disastrous. Umbrellas were handed out by Mr. Hawley from the hardware store. He had been Sophie’s father-in-law when she was married to his son, Matt, and still considered himself to be family. The ceremony went on, with or without rain, with Mr. Hawley walking Sophie down the grassy aisle between the rosebushes.

Isabel and Violet stood beside Sophie, all holding the bouquets they’d picked that morning, flowers their father had planted when he and their mother first came to the island: cornflowers and delphinium and foxglove. When Violet read from Emily Dickinson, even the most unemotional guests grew teary.

That I did always love,

I bring thee proof:

That till I loved

I did not love enough.

After vows were exchanged, there was a long kiss, one that seemed as though it would never stop, and didn’t until the Marry Me, Marry Me Wedding Cake was brought out. It was the same recipe they’d made four times before, only this time slices were cut with a silver knife and handed out to guests on white plates and Sophie fed David a forkful even though he usually never ate sugar. He could make an exception today, he’d decided. He would eat the entire slice of wedding cake, as a matter of fact.

Johnny got an ice-cold beer for himself and a lemonade-and-vodka punch for Isabel and they stood beneath the maple tree watching the celebration. The rain was easing off and umbrellas had come down. The sky was a vivid blue.

“They had a nice wedding,” Johnny said.

“They did,” Isabel agreed.

“We did the right thing,” Johnny told her.

Isabel was surprised by how sad she felt. “Are you upset it wasn’t ours?”

“Are you?”

“I want to move in with you,” Isabel told him. “Let’s not wait.”

“Permanently?”

“Completely permanently.” Isabel had thought it over and it was time to move out of the cottage. It didn’t matter if each one of their weddings had been canceled. It didn’t matter if they made the same wedding cake every year. She finished her drink and turned to Johnny. She’d found the courage to ask what she’d wanted to know for years. “What did you say to me the day I left?”

Johnny gave her a look. “You didn’t hear me?”

“Not a word. You were too far away. And there was wind. And people were shouting. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you heard me and kept on going.”

“What was it?”

“Let me go with you.”

“That’s what you said? You wanted to go to New York?”

Johnny nodded. “I said I’ll leave this island and never come back if that’s what you want.”

“It’s not what I want. I want to be here with you.”

“Then come with me.” Johnny wasn’t smiling; he was serious now. He seized her hand and when he did, Isabel didn’t have to think twice.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Everyone said that rain on your wedding day would bring good luck, and maybe it was true. Out in the garden at Red Rose Cottage, a band of local musicians played tunes from a list Violet had devised. Every song had love in the title. “All You Need Is Love.” “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” “Crazy in Love.” The Thursday Night Book Club gave the newlyweds the wonderful gift of cleaning up after the party, and Violet said she would look after Hank and stay overnight in the bookstore so that Sophie and David could have privacy on their wedding night at the cottage. Violet had become a little more accepting of the idea of love. Maybe it wasn’t all bad, for it had certainly made her mother happy, despite their terrible year. Violet’s wedding gift to her mother was to type up the story her grandmother had written and Isabel had illustrated. She’d bound the book with a needle and thread. She used blue thread, for happiness and good fortune. “I love you more than a fish loves a river,” Sophie had said when she was presented with the gift, and when Violet threw her arms around her mother, she felt her heart open, because she knew it was true.

Isabel and Johnny left the wedding while it was in full swing, with Hank following along. Johnny was taking Isabel to his favorite spot on the island, which happened to be her favorite as well, the heron’s tree. When they reached the marsh, it was almost dusk, the most beautiful time of day. Johnny and Isabel had wasted a good deal of time, but they weren’t doing that anymore. Hank was out ahead of them, sloshing through the puddles. Isabel had slipped on rubber boots in order to walk through the mud, but she was still wearing her bridesmaid’s dress, and she looked like a blue cloud in the field. Her hair was still choppy from when they’d all cut their hair short during Sophie’s treatment, but people told her she looked younger than she had when she first came back to the island.

“You were never going to stop loving me,” Johnny said. “You realize that, don’t you?”

Isabel laughed. “You sound sure of yourself.”

“Am I wrong?” Johnny had a sober, almost worried expression, so Isabel kissed him for a very long time. Unexpected things happened, and love was one of them.

“I tried not to,” Isabel said. “But I failed.”

“That’s the opposite of failing,” Johnny told her.

There was a figure in the field, and in the falling dusk it looked like a scarecrow, but in fact the crows were boldly circling. Hank dashed toward the figure, whoever it was. There was another figure in the tall grass, whistling for the dog.

“What on earth?” Isabel said. As they drew closer, she recognized the pastor. Tim was waiting for them, and even though the tide was rising he was wearing his good shoes. Beside him was Mr. Lenox, who Tim had carried out to the marsh and who was now waving his arms in the air, urging them to hurry up before the tide was any higher. Two witnesses were necessary to be married in Maine, but it was fine if one of them was a dog. All that was needed was an ink pad and a dog who would put his paw print on the marriage license, and Hank was willing to oblige.

Isabel looked up at Johnny when she realized what he’d planned. He laughed and looked back at her. He’d arranged their wedding, for if it didn’t happen now, he had wondered, then when?

“It’s the perfect time and place,” he said, and he was right.

They were married in the marsh they had run through when they were children, when the island was their whole world. It was still their whole world now. There was no poetry and no music and no wedding cake. No hurricanes came up the coast and no one was stricken with an illness. Tim simply asked if they took one another for the rest of their lives, and when they said they would, he pronounced them to be husband and wife. Then Tim headed back to town, escorting Mr. Lenox safely back home, whistling for Hank so that he could keep him for the night, absolutely delighted to have performed two weddings in one day.

As soon as Isabel and Johnny were alone, they climbed up to the heron’s nest, and from there they could see beyond the marsh out to the sea. It was the hour they’d always loved best, when the silver disk of the moon first appeared in the sky. Afterward, whenever they argued, as all people in love do now and then, they would remind each other that as soon as they’d left to spend the night in their wedding bed, the heron returned to reclaim its nest, and that they’d stood there watching as the night fell all around them, convinced that they were the luckiest people on earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © Alyssa Peek

Alice Hoffman is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including the Practical Magic series, The Dovekeepers, and The Invisible Hour. Her works have been translated into more than twenty languages, nominated for multiple awards, and adapted for the screen. She lives in Boston.

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“I was immediately immersed in The Invisible Hour. It’s a wonderful story of love and growth, but it’s also a narrative engine of great power.”

-- Stephen King, New York Times bestselling author of Fairytale