Sisterhood Everlasting (sisterhood, #5)

The sixth installment in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series picks up a decade after the previous book, reuniting four lifelong friends now approaching 30 and struggling to maintain the bond that once defined them.

Carmen Lowell is an actress on a New York television show, engaged to Jones, an older network executive who coaches her through the entertainment industry's social games. Lena Kaligaris teaches painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, living alone and quietly pining for Kostos, a Greek man she fell in love with at 16 on the island of Santorini, whose career as a financier has carried him into what she considers a different world. Bridget Vreeland lives in San Francisco with Eric, her boyfriend since adolescence, working as a temp and unable to settle, still affected by her mother's death by suicide years earlier. Tibby Rollins, the fourth friend, moved to Australia with her boyfriend Brian almost two years ago and has grown increasingly unreachable.

When Tibby sends each of them a plane ticket to Santorini for an October reunion, the three friends are electrified. Carmen feels she cannot survive without this gathering. Bridget calls it the answer to a wish she had not dared articulate. They meet at JFK and fly through the night, giddy with anticipation.

At the Santorini airport, Tibby is not waiting. They take a taxi to Lena's grandparents' house in the village of Oia, where they find evidence Tibby has been: roses, groceries, her bags in a bedroom. Hours pass with no word. Around dawn the next day, officers arrive: a fishing boat found the body of a young woman who apparently drowned near the coast. The description matches Tibby.

On their last night before leaving, the three open a suitcase Tibby packed for them containing the ritual objects of their friendship: the original Sisterhood Manifesto, the rules they wrote as teenagers for the Traveling Pants, a pair of jeans they once shared as a symbol of their bond. Beneath these items lies a letter in Tibby's handwriting. She writes that this is their last time together and that the best parts of her live on in them. The implication that she knew she was going to die is devastating. Sealed envelopes addressed to each of them, marked with future dates, accompany the letter.

Lena stays behind, overwhelmed by paperwork. She calls Kostos, who flies from London to help, handling calls from the consulate and police while cooking for her and holding her as she cries. He reveals that Lena's late grandmother Valia once asked why he had never married Lena, and he told Valia he loved her granddaughter. Lena is speechless. Their parting at the ferry dock is wrenching.

Back in San Francisco, Bridget finds that Eric has bought a four-poster bed as a symbol of settling down. Unable to bear the permanence, she packs a bag that night, walks to the ocean, throws her phone into the Pacific, and sleeps on the beach. Over the following weeks she drifts through Northern California on her bicycle. At a clinic in Sacramento, she discovers she is pregnant. On the coast, grief turns to fury at everyone who has left her, Tibby most of all. She opens Tibby's letter early: Tibby acknowledges Bridget's pain but insists she has faith, "the thing with feathers," that makes her different from her mother.

Carmen retreats into wedding planning, moving the date up to April. Lena withdraws into isolation. When her sister Effie visits for Christmas, the sisters erupt into a fight about Lena choosing friends over family. That night, alone, Lena opens Tibby's envelope: Tibby asks her to deliver a sealed letter to Kostos in person and to visit Tibby's mother Alice periodically. These tasks give Lena purpose.

Bridget borrows money from Eric and flies to Australia. At Tibby's address, Brian answers the door. A tiny girl emerges: Bailey, Tibby and Brian's 20-month-old daughter, whose face is a startling replica of her mother's. Bridget stays to care for Bailey while Brian finishes a project. She and Bailey explore the creek, catch crayfish, and chase lightning bugs. For the first time since Greece, Bridget feels something like joy.

In London, Lena puts on a red dress and goes to Kostos's address. A woman named Harriet, Kostos's live-in girlfriend, answers, wearing a sapphire ring. Kostos descends the staircase behind her. Lena takes in the devastating picture, thrusts Tibby's letter at Harriet, and flees. Kostos calls that night, begging to see her. She refuses.

From this low point, something unexpected grows. Kostos writes Lena a letter sharing a memory of Tibby, and Lena writes back. Their correspondence accelerates to nearly a letter a day, filled with drawings and memories. Weeks in, Kostos ventures that it would be lovely to wake up in the same bed. When Lena cannot respond, a terse retraction follows. On the appointed date, Lena opens Tibby's next letter: an invitation to an address in Pennsylvania on April 2 and a plea urging Lena to choose Kostos, because "someday is now, or it is never." The letter confirms what they feared to name: Tibby was terminally ill.

Carmen, meanwhile, catches a long train to New Orleans for a film audition after missing her flight. Across the aisle sits Roberto, a Chilean single father traveling with his young children. Over the journey Carmen bonds with the family, translating for Roberto and exchanging life stories through the night. He looks at her with a respect she realizes Jones has never shown her, and she begins to recognize how hollow her engagement has become.

Lena flies to London to find Kostos, but Harriet reveals bitterly that he has moved out because of Lena's letters. Then Kostos calls: he is standing outside Lena's apartment in Providence, having flown to find her. They laugh through tears at their crossed paths. At JFK, he waits at the gate. They walk toward each other and kiss as though they have waited 12 years.

On a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the threads converge. Brian has moved there with Bailey to the home Tibby planned for all of them, complete with a cottage designated for Carmen and a converted icehouse by a stream for Bridget. Brian reveals the truth to Bridget: Tibby had Huntington's disease, a degenerative neurological condition diagnosed shortly after she learned she was pregnant. She could not tell anyone about the illness without revealing the pregnancy, and she wanted to do both in person during the Greece reunion, after which she planned to enter hospice. She did not expect to die so soon: she drowned because the disease had weakened her, not because she chose to. Bridget calls Eric, who flies to the farm the next day. She tells him she is pregnant. He takes her in his arms.

On April 2, Carmen arrives at the farm and meets Bailey, whose face mirrors Tibby's. Lena and Kostos arrive holding hands. They perform the ritual Tibby prepared for them in Greece, holding it in the barn loft with candles, snacks, and the original Manifesto. Carmen calls off her wedding to Jones, no longer willing to perform a life she does not feel. Bridget and Eric plan to raise their child alongside Bailey. Lena and Kostos show no signs of leaving. Carmen, with no apartment and no plan, feels for the first time like she is home: "We go on together."