Long after she looped it around a cleat in a double figure eight, she kept right on clutching, because they had made it. Serendipity was safe. She tipped her head back, found Orion in the sky, and muttered a little thank you to whatever god or ghosts had let them squeeze into that tiny, sheltered bay. Pretending her heart wasn’t beating halfway out of her chest, she examined the bay as if she sailed through narrow passes with no engine as backup in the middle of the night all the time. God, they’d done it. They really had. The bay was theirs, and theirs alone. A high ridge of land curved around that little scoop of water, protecting Serendipity from the wind, the waves, and from the view of casual passersby. She’d barely dropped the mainsail and jumped into the cockpit when her sister caught her in a hug. “We did it,” Meredith murmured. There wasn’t a trace of triumph in her voice, only relief. “Yeah, we did it.” The two of them stood there, hanging on to each other like they hadn’t done since first or second grade, and it struck her that this was what her granddad meant by getting back in touch.
