I couldn't wait until release day, so here's how A Promise on Sunset Shores begins. Lailah is sixteen weeks along, and her best friend Chanel is about to call with some news.

From Lailah's journal

Sixteen weeks.

The app on my phone says the baby is the size of an avocado. I told Jeff that, and he said, "A Hass avocado or one of those big Florida ones?" and I said, "Jeffrey, I don't know, the app didn't say," and he looked it up anyway. That man.

Lord, I felt something this morning. Not a kick. Lower, like a goldfish turning over in a bowl. I was standing at the stove flipping French toast, and I had to put the spatula down and hold on to the counter.

I'm here. I'm finally here. The husband I prayed for. The baby I stopped asking for. The café full of women who call me sister.

So why am I scared, Lord?

"Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it." Habakkuk 2:2.

I'm teaching that tonight. I should probably believe it first.

At 5:42, Lailah was alone behind the counter of the empty café, counting index cards for oil night, when her phone buzzed against the sugar canister. It was Chanel, on FaceTime. Lailah propped the phone up and tapped it without looking.

"I'm counting, baby," she said. "Talk fast."

"I can't talk fast. I'm a pregnant woman in crisis."

Lailah looked up. Chanel's face filled the whole screen. She was lying on her back on an exam table at her doctor's office in New Jersey, with paper crinkling under her and her hair tied up in a silk scarf the color of a traffic cone.

Chanel had been Lailah's best friend since their freshman year of college, when they pledged Zeta Phi Beta together and survived it by sharing one jar of peanut butter for six weeks. She lived in New Jersey with her husband, Steven, and she had never once in twenty-some years called with a small piece of news.

"Why are you on a table?" Lailah said. "What happened? Is everything all right?"

"Everything is not all right. Everything is decided."

"What's decided?"

Chanel turned the phone around. A woman in blue scrubs smiled and waved, and behind her was an ultrasound screen, a gray-and-black storm with two little bright curls in it.

Lailah had known about the twins for a month. Chanel had called her from the parking lot of that same office at twelve weeks, screaming so loud Lailah had to hold the phone away from her ear. But today was the sixteen-week scan, and the tech had said that with a little luck, today she might be able to tell what they were.

Lailah dropped the stack of index cards. They fanned across the floor under table six.

"Chanel. Did she tell you?"

"She told me," Chanel said, turning the phone back to her face. "A boy and a girl, Lailah. One of each. The tech said the girl is kicking the boy in the head. She's not even born yet and she's already handling him."

Lailah laughed so hard she had to sit down on the step stool. "She's yours, all right."

The rest of the story comes out Wednesday, November 11.

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