Jenny killed the engine and turned around, her pink hair vivid against the backdrop of sand and sea. “I’m full of bad ideas.” She opened her door. “Come on.”

Jenny jerked a picnic basket from the trunk and led the way along a path that angled toward the beach. A few lone gulls circled the shore. Otherwise, the oceanfront was deserted.

“I can’t believe I haven’t been here before,” Tina said. “All work and no play.”

“You find a place yet?” Jenny asked.

“Nah. I’ll wait and see if they bring me on full-time. Besides, I’m kind of digging the room service and daily cleaning ladies at the hotel.”

“That’s got to be killing your earnings,” Jenny said.

“Not as bad as you think. It’s pretty seedy.”

“So did Dr. Hunk convince you to go out?” Jenny asked.

I had forgotten all about the doctor interested in Tina. Too much trouble of my own.

Tina glanced at me, realizing I had talked about her with Jenny. She shrugged. “He didn’t show up. Neither did his patient. Whatever.”

I trudged along behind them, realizing that it wasn’t nearly as cold as I had thought. In fact, after a couple minutes, I stripped my gloves and scarf away and stuffed them in the pocket of my coat.

Two days had passed since the test. Last night I had actually talked to Gavin on the phone a while. He told me Rosa was leaving for Mexico this afternoon to meet her brother, but Manuelito would remain behind for the time being, with her cousin.

Her brother had actually been sort of worried about her disappearance, so she still had a job and a place to live.

I didn’t understand how any of this would work. How much could a three-year-old understand about the changes his life had undergone in so short a time? The man he thought was his father was gone, replaced by this man he had never seen. One mother had let him go and another was now taking care of him.

Children were resilient. But I worried for him, if he would carry long-term insecurities from the upheaval. I didn’t know who I would be to him, if anyone at all. It seemed best if I just let them work things out before Gavin and I made any move toward a future together.

A cluster of people were standing together ahead. The glare on the water and the sand made it hard to see more than a shadow. Tina and Jenny glanced at each other, and I knew something was up.

“What have you planned?” I asked, catching up to them, squinting down the stretch of shore.

They surrounded me on either side.

“Well, as your unlicensed, untrained mental health professional,” Tina said, “I made the call that the place that once tried to take you out of this life is the very spot to bring you back in.”

“What are you talking about?” But I didn’t listen for an answer, as I could make out Gavin in the group of people ahead of us. I halted. “What’s he doing here?” And a woman. And a boy. Rosa and Manuel? And another man, holding a camera. A photographer?

I panicked. Were they getting married, here on the beach? And were they dragging me to it? The girls tried to move me forward, but I was rooted to the ground. “What is this?” My voice was strangled.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jenny said. “I know that sound. This is not a bad thing. We promise. It’s a good thing. A very very very good thing.”

“Then why is she here? And — and the boy?”

“Well, that wasn’t our call,” Tina said. “But we went with it.”

“You have to tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to take off running.” And I meant it.

“Can you just trust us?” Jenny asked. “Just this once?” She stood in front of me. “Oh, and let’s fix your ’do.” She spread my hair out along my shoulders.

“Stop it.” I pushed her hands away. “Tell Gavin to come here and explain it.”

“Fair enough.” Jenny whirled around and wolf-whistled. “Yo, Gavin! Your woman needs you for a second.”

He began striding toward us. The others waited a moment, seeming uncertain, and followed at a slower pace.

When he got close enough, I asked him, “What is this about, Gavin? Why is everyone acting like I can’t handle the truth?” It didn’t make sense, any of it. Gavin would have told me if he was going to marry Rosa, for a green card or legal stuff or for real.

He took both my hands in his and brought them to his lips. “I’ve been convinced that I need to act, and act now. We should finish something we started a long time ago.”

“So here?” Jenny asked. “You’re off script.”

“This is as good a place as any,” Gavin said.

My frustration grew. They had all planned something, talked about me without my knowing.

Jenny set the basket on the ground and dug around a minute, finally handing him a little scroll, a paper tied with silver ribbons. I knew it instantly. The proposal he had written me four years ago, after we had gotten pregnant with Finn.

“I had to revise it a little,” he said, and unfurled the page.

Now I understood.

Rosa, her boy, and the other man had approached but stayed a few feet away.

Gavin cleared his throat. “I know now that our lives have changed you may no longer want to get married, but I do. I have wanted to marry you since we went to your Aunt Georgia’s wedding and hid beneath the cake table when we were five, fingers sticky from sneaking frosting, always together, even when we were in trouble.”

Tears squeezed from my eyes as I remembered the first time he’d read from the scroll, seventeen years old, his voice shaking. He wasn’t a whole lot steadier this time.

“We’ve had a lot happen since the first time I asked you this, but it’s shown me how important you are, and how empty my life has been without you. I know I have a lot to prove, not just to you,” he glanced down at Rosa’s boy, who had come up beside him, “but to everybody.”

He took another breath. “I can’t do this without you. I know you don’t have to stay. I can only hope you’ll want to. That you’ll have me. And we all can be together for always. Will you marry me?”

Gavin eyes were impossibly blue, brighter than the ocean behind him, more intense than the sky overhead. I’d grown up looking into them, and they had witnessed almost every tragedy my life had endured. I had promised myself that no matter what happened with this boy, I would see him through it. He was telling me he would do the same, right in front of the people who would be impacted most by what happened today.

The boy tugged on Gavin’s sleeve. “¿Ahora?” he asked.

Gavin nodded.

He dug through the pockets of his coat, like he had when he produced the yellow chicle. This time, though, he pulled out a small blue box, proudly passing it up.

To Gavin.

To his father.

I found I was able to say the words in my mind. Gavin was a father. A father again. He’d never stopped being one. And even if I never got another chance to try it again, I would not stop being a mother.

The ring inside the box was not the one he gave me all those years ago, but a new one, silver with a clear diamond on top. He knelt on one knee, and without prompting, the boy, his son, Manuel, did it too.

Jenny nudged me with her elbow. “I think he asked you a question.”

The seagulls swooped and cawed overhead. The sun was warm on our faces. Everyone turned to me, waiting, expectant. Gavin watched me, patient, and, I could see, utterly unsure of what I might do or say. How could he not know? How could he think for a minute I would want to be without him?

“Yes,” I said, and everyone let out their breath at once. The man by Rosa suddenly remembered his camera and began snapping like crazy, flashes bouncing off the sand. Gavin took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger, the wrong one, and everyone laughed as I switched it to the other side. Manuel found the laughter infectious and threw himself backwards on the ground, giggling his head off and filling his hair with sand.

Gavin stood up and held me close. “We’re going to make this work. We will absolutely make this work.”

Manuel got up suddenly and crashed into us, one arm around each of our legs. I startled at the contact with this unfamiliar child.

“¡Paleta!” he said, and dug through his pockets again, coming up with a handful of suckers in a rainbow of colors.

“¡Paleta!” he said again, holding a yellow one up to Gavin, who took it from him.

“¡Paleta!” He thrust a pink one up at Jenny, to match her hair.

He gave a purple one to Tina, who took it, laughing. “You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”

Manuel stopped beside me. “¿Paleta?” he asked and held a green one out to me.

“But you like the green ones best,” Gavin said.

He tapped my leg with the lollipop. “You like?”

I knelt down next to him. “Okay.”

He pushed the sucker into my hand. “You like!” He got shy suddenly and ran back to his mother, burying his face in her coat.

I stayed down low a moment, looking at the sucker in my hand. I wasn’t sure how much of my love I could give over to a child that reminded me exactly of what I had lost.

“Picnic!” Jenny announced and set the basket on the ground. “I’ve got sushi! I’ve got tacos! And I’m going to let you all eat cake!”

Gavin reached for my arm and lifted me up to stand beside him once more. We turned back to the sea, impassive, ever-changing, and endlessly blue. If I once thought I wanted to get lost in it, to let it take me away from all the hardship, I knew now I wanted to be by its side. We were meant to be here, Gavin and I. Our memories would happen on its shore, the walks, the sand castles, the laughter, and growing up.