Free Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) by Sophie Moss

didn’t make her feel any better. Scanning the yard for her favorite student, she spotted Taylor under the oak tree, dipping a hard boiled egg into a bowl of blue food coloring. Taylor’s best friend, Jess Casper, was beside her, adding stickers to her own yellow egg. They were both wearing flower crowns and their mouths were rimmed in chocolate.
    Taylor glanced up and grinned. “Look, Miss Haddaway!” She held up her egg. “It’s the same color as a robin’s egg.”
    Becca’s heart softened. When Taylor had first moved to the island, it had been hard for her to make friends. She’d spent most of her free time chasing birds and butterflies through the hundreds of acres of undeveloped marshlands west of the village. She had become fascinated with the wildlife, memorizing the different species by name and coming up with clever little ways to identify each of them by their markings or their calls.
    Sometimes it was hard to believe that the carefree child in front of her now was the same frightened little girl who had survived that terrible shooting in D.C. last fall, but Becca knew that appearances could be deceiving. Taylor still suffered setbacks. At least once every couple of weeks something would happen to trigger a memory from that day.
    It would take years for Taylor to work through the lingering effects of that trauma.
    She had come a long way in a very short amount of time, but how much of that progress would be lost if she had to switch schools again so soon? Would she be able to cope in a class triple the size of what she was used to—one with kids who wouldn’t understand why she still jumped whenever an engine backfired or hid in the closet during a thunderstorm?
    Becca watched Taylor place her blue egg into a wire rack on the table so it could dry. “I want to set up my own meeting with Lydia,” she said firmly. “I know you didn’t think it would make any difference for me to speak with the board on my own about Taylor. But I need to do this. I need to try.”
    Shelley laid a comforting hand on Becca’s shoulder. “We’re going to do everything we can, Becca. But I think we should both be prepared for the fact that we might not win this battle. Our chances were never very good. Now, I think they might be even worse.” She squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s just try to enjoy the day, okay?” She scanned the crowd. “Is Tom meeting us here?”
    Becca shook her head. “He couldn’t make it.”
    “Why not?”
    “A big case came in on Thursday. He had to work through the weekend.”
    Shelley was quiet for a few beats. “He’s been working a lot of weekends lately.”
    “I know. It won’t be like this forever.”
    Shelley’s hand dropped away from her shoulder. “If you say so.”
    Becca felt a tightening in her chest as they turned up the path to the café. She spotted a group of her friends chatting in a circle beside the porch. A few feet away, her father was standing with a cluster of watermen. Their deep voices rumbled through the yard, blending with the cheerful jumble of conversations going on all around them.
    She knew every single person here. She knew each of their parents, their children, their spouses. She knew where they worked, what kinds of cars they drove, what they planted in their gardens each year. She knew who was struggling to make ends meet and whose lives hadn’t turned out quite the way they’d hoped.
    But she also knew that every single person here loved this island as much as she did. They loved the sense of peace that came from living in a place surrounded on all sides by water. They loved spending their weekends out on the Bay with a fishing rod in their hands. They loved the slow pace of life in the village and the way the sky lit up with colors each night as the sun sank into the horizon.
    Colin’s question from the night before floated back: ‘Are you marrying a guy who lives in D.C. because there aren’t enough single men to choose from on the