The envelope arrived on a Tuesday, which seemed fitting since Tuesdays were when bad things happened to me. I got fired on a Tuesday. My college boyfriend broke up with me on a Tuesday. And exactly three years ago, on a Tuesday in June, I walked away from the only place that ever felt like home.
I stared at the cream-colored paper in my hands, my name written in familiar looping handwriting. Harriet Chen. Not Harry, like everyone called me now. Not H, like my coworkers at the marketing firm used to call me before the layoffs last month. Harriet. The full name I hadn't heard in years.
The return address made my chest tighten: The Morgan Family, 42 Lighthouse Road, Cove Harbor, Maine.
I should have thrown it away. Should have tossed it in the recycling bin with the grocery store flyers and credit card offers cluttering my tiny Brooklyn apartment. Instead, I slid my finger under the seal and pulled out the card inside.
You are cordially invited to celebrate the marriage of Rebecca Morgan and Daniel Foster. June 20th. Cove Harbor, Maine.
Becca was getting married. My Becca. Except she wasn't my Becca anymore, hadn't been for three years, and the thought of her in a white dress, promising forever to someone else, made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
My phone buzzed. A text from my best friend Sophie: Did you get it?
I stared at the message. So Sophie knew. Which meant probably everyone knew. The whole crew from those perfect summers in Cove Harbor. The summers when we were young and stupid and thought friendship could survive anything.
Yeah, I typed back. Not going.
Three dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again. Finally: We need to talk. Coffee in 20?
I looked around my apartment. Cardboard boxes still stacked in the corner from the move I'd been putting off. Job applications bookmarked on my laptop. A half-eaten container of pad thai from two days ago. My life was a mess, and the last thing I needed was to dredge up the past.
But I grabbed my jacket anyway.
Sophie was already at our usual spot when I arrived, two iced lattes sweating on the table between us. She looked exactly like she always did—perfectly put together in a way that made my jeans and t-shirt feel like pajamas. But her eyes were worried.
"Before you say anything," I started, sliding into the chair across from her. "I'm not going."
"Harry—"
"Nope. Not happening. It's been three years. I've moved on. She's clearly moved on. There's no reason to go back there."
Sophie took a long sip of her coffee, studying me over the rim of her cup. We'd been friends since freshman year of college, and she had this annoying ability to see right through me.
"Except that Becca specifically asked me to make sure you got the invitation," she said quietly. "And to tell you that it would mean everything if you came."
I felt something crack in my chest. "She said that?"
"Her exact words were: 'Tell Harry I know I don't deserve it, but I'm asking anyway.'"
I picked at the edge of my coffee cup, the condensation making my fingers wet and cold. "Did she tell you what happened between us?"
"No. You never told me either, not really. Just that you had a fight and stopped talking."
That was the understatement of the century. But how could I explain what happened that last summer? How could I put into words the way everything fell apart in slow motion, like watching a sandcastle dissolve in the tide?
"It's more complicated than that," I said finally.
"It always is." Sophie reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. But Becca was your best friend for seven years. You spent every summer together from the time you were eighteen until—well, until you didn't. Maybe this is a chance to get some closure."
Closure. Such a clean, simple word for something that felt anything but.
"I'll think about it," I lied.
Sophie smiled like she didn't believe me, which was fair. "The wedding is in three weeks. There's a whole week of events beforehand. Like old times—everyone's staying at the Morgan house on the beach."
My heart did a painful flip. The Morgan house. God, I could picture it so clearly. The sprawling blue cottage with white trim, perched on the rocky Maine coast like something out of a postcard. The widow's walk where Becca and I used to sneak bottles of wine and watch the stars. The kitchen with the cracked tile backsplash where Mrs. Morgan made blueberry pancakes every Sunday morning.
And the lighthouse. Always the lighthouse, standing sentinel at the edge of the property, its red and white stripes faded by salt and time.
"Who else is going?" I asked, hating that I wanted to know.
Sophie's expression shifted, became carefully neutral. "The usual group. Me and Marcus. Jake and Emma. The Morgan brothers. And—"
"Don't," I interrupted. "Don't say his name."
"Harry—"
"I mean it, Soph. If you're about to tell me that he's going to be there, then this conversation is over."
Sophie bit her lip, which told me everything I needed to know. Of course he'd be there. Lucas Morgan, Becca's older brother, the boy I'd spent seven summers falling in love with, one wave at a time.
The boy who was supposed to be at the lighthouse that night three years ago.
The boy who never showed up.
I stood abruptly, nearly knocking over my coffee. "I need to go."
"Harry, wait—"
But I was already walking away, pushing through the coffee shop door and out into the sticky June heat. My phone buzzed again, probably Sophie trying to call me back, but I ignored it.
I made it two blocks before I had to stop, pressing my back against a brick wall and trying to breathe. People rushed past me, absorbed in their own lives, their own dramas. None of them knew that my whole world had just tilted sideways.
Becca was getting married. To someone named Daniel, someone I'd never heard of, which meant she'd met him after. After everything. After me.
And Lucas would be there. Lucas with his dark hair and darker eyes, his slow smile that used to make my insides melt. Lucas, who I'd loved since I was eighteen years old and too stupid to know that some people aren't meant to stay.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the invitation again. June 20th. Three weeks away.
Three weeks to decide if I was brave enough to go back to the place where I learned what it meant to have a home.
And three weeks to prepare for seeing the two people who taught me what it felt like to lose one.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the city through my thin walls. Sirens and car horns and someone's bass thumping from three floors down. Nothing like the sound of waves I'd fallen asleep to all those summers in Maine.
My laptop sat on the floor next to my mattress, still open to job search sites. I'd been looking for weeks now, sending out applications, trying to figure out what came next. Marketing had seemed like the practical choice after college, but I'd never loved it. Never felt that spark that other people described when they talked about their careers.
The only time I'd ever felt that spark was—
No. I wasn't going to think about that. Wasn't going to think about those summers and what I'd left behind.
But my traitorous brain had other ideas.
I was eighteen when I first met Becca Morgan. We were randomly assigned roommates freshman year at NYU, and from the moment she burst into our dorm room with three suitcases and a smile that could power a small city, I knew my life was about to change.
"You must be Harriet!" she'd said, throwing her arms around me like we'd known each other for years instead of seconds. "Oh my god, we're going to be best friends. I can feel it. Can you feel it?"
I'd felt it. That instant connection, like finding a piece of yourself you didn't know was missing.
Becca was everything I wasn't—confident, outgoing, effortlessly charming. She collected people the way some people collected stamps, and within a week our dorm room was the social hub of our floor. But somehow, despite all her friends, I was the one she stayed up late talking to. The one she shared her secrets with. The one she called family.
"You have to come home with me this summer," she'd said one night in April, sprawled across my bed while I pretended to study. "My family has this house in Maine. It's right on the ocean, and it's magic, Harry. I'm not even being dramatic. It's actual magic."
"I should probably get a summer job," I'd said, even though the thought of spending three months in my cramped childhood home in New Jersey made me want to cry.
"You can waitress at Sal's in town! That's what I do. Come on, please? I want you to meet my family. And my brother Lucas just finished his first year at Columbia, so he'll be there too. You guys would get along great."
I'd agreed because I could never say no to Becca, and because some part of me was desperately curious about this magical house she kept describing.
I had no idea that agreeing to that summer would change everything.
The house was exactly as advertised—a sprawling blue cottage that seemed to grow organically from the rocky Maine coastline. Becca's parents, Tom and Linda Morgan, welcomed me like I was their own daughter. Her younger brother Sam was fifteen and obsessed with fishing. And Lucas—
Lucas was sitting on the porch when we arrived, reading a book with his feet propped up on the railing. He looked up when our car pulled in, and I swear the whole world stopped spinning.
He had dark hair that fell into his eyes, a summer tan, and the kind of face that belonged in black and white photographs. But it was his smile that got me—slow and genuine, like he'd been waiting for us.
"You must be the famous Harry," he'd said, unfolding himself from the chair. He was tall, over six feet, with an ease in his body that made me feel clumsy and obvious. "Becca hasn't shut up about you for months."
"Shut up, Lucas," Becca had said, but she was grinning. "Don't scare her away before she's even unpacked."
"I'm not scared," I'd said, which was a complete lie. I was terrified. Not of Lucas exactly, but of the way my heart was racing, the way I couldn't seem to stop staring at him.
"Good," he'd said. "Because Becca's right. This place is magic. But you have to stay the whole summer to really feel it."
I'd stayed. Not just that summer, but the next one, and the one after that. Every June through August for seven years, I'd pack up my life and head to Cove Harbor. It became more than a tradition. It became home.
Sophie and Marcus started coming the second summer. Then Jake and Emma. By the fifth year, there was a whole crew of us, this chosen family that gathered every summer like migratory birds. We had our rituals—Friday night bonfires on the beach, Sunday morning pancakes, Tuesday karaoke at Sal's where we all worked.
And always, always, there was the lighthouse.
It stood at the edge of the Morgan property, no longer operational but maintained by the historical society. Lucas had convinced the caretaker to give him a key when he was sixteen, and it became our place. Our secret. The spot where we'd climb to the top and watch the stars and talk about everything and nothing.
I fell in love with Lucas in that lighthouse. It happened slowly, the way you don't notice the seasons changing until suddenly the leaves are all different colors. One day he was just Becca's brother, my friend, the guy who made terrible jokes and could name every constellation. And the next day he was everything.
But I never told him. Never told anyone except Sophie, who figured it out the summer I was twenty-one and got drunk and cried on her shoulder.
"You have to say something," she'd insisted. "Harry, the way he looks at you—"
"He doesn't," I'd cut her off. "He sees me as Becca's friend. His little sister's roommate. That's it."
"You're an idiot," Sophie had said affectionately. "But I love you anyway."
I'd decided to tell him. That last summer, I'd finally worked up the courage. We'd been lying on the beach after everyone else had gone to bed, just the two of us and the sound of waves, and he'd turned to me with this expression on his face like he was about to say something important.
"Harry, I—" he'd started, then stopped. "Never mind."
"What?" I'd pushed up on my elbow to look at him. "You what?"
"I've been thinking about what happens after the summer," he'd said instead. "We're not kids anymore. At some point this all has to end, right? We have to grow up, get real jobs, stop playing pretend in Maine."
Something in his voice had scared me. "This isn't pretend. This is real. We're real."
"Are we?" He'd sat up, running his hands through his hair. "Sometimes I feel like we're all just hiding here. Putting off real life."
"Is that what you think I'm doing? Hiding?"
"I don't know, Harry. Maybe we both are."
We'd fought then. Really fought, in a way we never had before. I'd said things I didn't mean. He'd said things that cut deep. And when I'd stormed off, he'd called after me: "Meet me at the lighthouse tomorrow night. Please. We need to talk."
I'd gone the next night. Climbed all those stairs to the top, my heart pounding with hope and fear. I'd practiced what I was going to say. How I was going to tell him I loved him, that I'd loved him for years, that I didn't care if it complicated things because he was worth the complication.
But he never came.
I'd waited for three hours, watching the sun set and the stars come out, and he never showed up.
When I'd finally climbed back down, Becca was waiting at the bottom. And the look on her face told me everything.
"You need to leave," she'd said quietly. "Harry, I'm so sorry, but you need to go. Tomorrow. Please."
"What happened? Where's Lucas?"
"It doesn't matter. Just—please trust me. You can't be here right now."
I'd left the next morning, confused and heartbroken and angry. I'd called Becca a dozen times that first week, but she never answered. Finally, she'd sent a single text: I'm sorry. I can't explain. But we need space. Please don't come back.
And just like that, seven years of summers ended. Seven years of friendship, of family, of home. Gone.
I'd tried to move on. Dated other people. Threw myself into work. Convinced myself I was fine.
But now, lying in my Brooklyn apartment with an invitation burning a hole in my conscience, I knew the truth.
I'd never stopped loving Lucas Morgan.
And I'd never stopped missing the girl I used to be, the one who believed in magic and second chances and the kind of love that could survive anything.
The question was: did I have the courage to go back and face what I'd lost?
Or would I spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I'd been brave enough to try?
