KYLE HELPED Alex drag the giant beanbag from the basement to the attic. She didn’t ask Emily like she was supposed to, and Kyle promised to back her up. “No one should be alone in the basement this week,” he said.
They shoved the bean bag through the small attic door.
“Hello?” Taylor asked. “What are you doing?”
“Grandma said I had to sleep up here,” Alex said.
Kyle laughed at her adjustment of the facts, and went over to the attic window where Emily stood looking out. The attic had a view of olive trees, walnut trees, the pear orchard.
He nudged her with his elbow. “Here we are.”
“We are here.” She put her finger on the glass. “I heard my dad saying the other day that the buyer is eventually going to turn all this to vineyards. Adding to the existing vineyards and letting everything else die off, I guess.”
The whole place as they’d always known it would be replaced with something completely different.
“And guess what our project is,” Kyle said. “Tearing down the bunkhouse.”
Emily turned to him. “I’m going to cry.”
He wanted to comfort her, say something good. But then Alex bounced over and stuck her head between them to see out the window. “Uncle Mike and Martie are here!” she said, and sprang away excitedly. Taylor followed Alex out, and Emily and Kyle were alone.
“Grandma said Martie doesn’t even want to sleep here,” Kyle said.
They watched Martie hop out of Uncle Mike’s truck, sunglasses and baseball hat, in a crop top with her phone tucked into the waistband of her leggings.
“I’d probably feel the same if I lived ten minutes away like she does and could be alone in my own room.” She turned to him. “So, hi.”
Mostly all he wanted was to study her. Notice all the things about her he never had, because she’d just been Emily. Like her grayish eyes, and the strong shape of her nose, more noticeable now because of the nose ring. The haircut he’d been so weird about showed her neck, and in the light by the window he could see the halo of fine, light hair on her skin.
She saved the weird moment by stepping toward him to initiate the hug. She felt solid, sturdy. So there. Not text on a screen, or a floating face.
They let each other go and Kyle wanted to immediately hug her again. But he didn’t. He folded his arms, and they looked down at everyone gathered by Mike and Jenny’s truck.
“I talked to your mom for five whole minutes, and it didn’t feel too weird knowing everything I know,” Emily said. “Maybe it won’t be so hard.”
“My parents have to share a room and a bed and everything. Mom tried to get out of it, but Taylor put the smackdown on that.”
“I’ve been trying to imagine if it was my parents,” Emily said. “They would be so bad at hiding it, though. My mom would probably confess right away and they’d have a big, dramatic separation and my mom would write a play about it.”
“And if it was Uncle Mike and Aunt Jenny . . . ,” Kyle started. Then they both kind of laughed, and he said, “Yeah, no, it would never be Uncle Mike and Aunt Jenny. They’re soul mates.”
“If anyone is soul mates, and I don’t even know if I believe in that, it’s them.”
Stay chill, stay chill. Don’t say you think Emily might be your soul mate.
“Even though all this stuff is going on,” he said, “I’m really happy to be here. You know. To hang with you in person and stuff.” He listened to his own words. You didn’t have to say that to family. It was supposed to go without saying, right?
“Me too,” she said in a voice way more casual than his.
At that moment, Taylor looked up at the attic window and waved them down.
“I hope you’ve all been practicing your Electric Slide,” Uncle Mike said to the cousins. “Your dancing at Martie’s birthday was a real disappointment.”
“Dad,” Martie said.
“I’m just saying. This dance party has to be the most epic we’ve ever had. Last one at the farm.”
“My mom brought a margarita machine,” Emily said. “That should help with the epicness.”
Kyle could tell she was being sarcastic, but Uncle Mike said, “I know. She texted me from the store and I was like, yes, we absolutely need that.” Mike looked down at them. “Okay, who’s gonna help me unload this crap?”
Cousins scattered. Martie and Taylor went off toward the swings, and Alex ran after them. Kyle and Emily stayed to unload the big gas grill, one cooler full of ice and beer and soda and cut limes, and one full of food. Kyle watched Emily’s biceps flex as they carried the beer cooler over to the patio. “You’re cut, dude. Have you been lifting this year or is that all from swimming?”
“Both. I like being strong.”
They set the cooler down under the folding table where Grandpa usually set up the bar. Emily folded her hands behind her head and gave Kyle this look, a look so direct and open and beaming out this pure Emily spirit that he almost wanted to hide. That feeling was overridden by how much he wanted to soak it in.
Uncle Mike rolled the grill over. “I’m still perfecting the playlist for Saturday night. So if you guys have songs you want, submit them to me for approval.”
“Not ‘Rock Lobster,’” Kyle said.
“But that’s your aunt Brenda’s favorite,” Mike said with a wink.
Emily rolled her eyes. “We’re aware.”
“Gather ’round, all ye Bakers and former Bakers!” It was Grandma, stepping out onto the patio with a cardboard box. The phone box. He always forgot.
Kyle’s parents followed, along with Aunt Brenda and Aunt Jenny. “Now that all’s ashore who’s coming ashore, phones go in the box. Send your last messages in a bottle now.”
For a second he thought with a start, But how am I going to talk to Emily? Then he remembered she was standing right next to him. He glanced at her with a smile and was the first to go to Grandma and toss his phone in.
Emily went next. Taylor said, “Let me check something real quick. . . .” and Martie looked at Uncle Mike to ask, “But . . . I’m not really staying here, so I’m getting it back at the end of every day, right?”
Grandma said, “I don’t see why. No one else will have theirs at night.”
“Mom,” Uncle Mike said, “come on. That’s not reasonable. You know I have to check in with work. We all do.”
“I will distribute phones to the adults twice per day, before breakfast and after dinner.” She rattled the box and said to Martie, “Once a day for everyone under thirty.”
“You can’t make up new, random rules every time, Mom,” Kyle’s dad said. “Mike’s right about work.”
“I can make up new, random rules. I’m your mother.”
Kyle’s dad tossed his phone in but muttered, “When I need it back, I’m going to take it back.”
Martie threw hers in and stalked off toward the pear orchard. “I’m going to find Grandpa Navarro,” she said over her shoulder. “Yeah, remember him?”
Kyle wondered what that was about, then noticed his mom literally clutching her phone to her chest with this expression on her face.
Of course she’d panic. The phone was her portal to her other life. She turned away from the group and sent a text, then powered her phone off and set it in the box.
While the rest of the adults argued about the rules, Great-Aunt Gina came around from behind the house with her walking stick, still moving slowly from her hip operation. Kyle hadn’t seen her in a year. She looked exactly like Grandpa Baker. Nearly the same height, same long arms and craggy face and basically the same haircut.
“I have an announcement,” she said.
“I’m sure you do,” Aunt Jenny said quietly. “Why bother saying hello when you have an announcement?”
“The dog, Pico, is supposed to be learning to respond only to your grandfather. He’s not a pet to play with. Please don’t undo the months of training we undertook at the convent, and don’t give him table scraps.” She waved her hand. “That’s it, that’s all I have. Carry on saying goodbye to the ball and chain you all seem to enjoy carrying around in your pockets. I’ll be on my walk.”
They watched her disappear around the side of the house.
“You gotta love her,” Aunt Brenda said.
After everyone had turned over their phones, Kyle asked Uncle Mike what Martie was mad about.
“Haven’t you been reading the emails?” He explained that Grandma and Grandpa had agreed to the farm sale without even mentioning it to Grandpa Navarro. He’d heard about it when someone in town asked him what he was planning to do now that he was retiring.
Uncle Mike looked from Emily to Kyle. “This part wasn’t in the emails, but the real deal is that Jenny thinks Eliseo should get some proceeds from the sale, and I don’t disagree, but no one is talking about it. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see a lot of Aunt Jenny and Grandpa Navarro around this week or if you feel like there’s an elephant in the room.”
Two elephants, Kyle thought.
“Well that sucks,” Emily said.
“Is that why Martie doesn’t want to sleep over?” Kyle asked.
“I think that’s part of it. Though also she’s pretty into her own dramas right now. Fifteen, you know.” He said it as if Kyle and Emily were way, way past that.
“I’m going to go check on my dad,” Emily said. “I think everyone forgot he exists.”
Kyle took a step to go with her, then stopped, then started again, stopped. She hadn’t invited him and was already ten feet away and not looking back.
“You okay?” Uncle Mike asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then help me with the propane tank.” Kyle walked with him back to the truck. Then Uncle Mike asked, all casual, “Hey, how’s Nadia? We sure enjoyed having her over at Thanksgiving. I know Martie was disappointed she couldn’t come out for the quinceañera.”
“She’s . . . she’s good. She’s fine,” Kyle said. “But we broke up.”
Uncle Mike turned to him. “You broke up?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. Jenny and me were saying at Thanksgiving how you guys reminded us of how we were in high school.”
Kyle grabbed the handles of the propane tank. “Thanksgiving was a long time ago.”
“Sounds like you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not really. Not right now.”
Uncle Mike showed him where to put the tank and tried to say some meaningful stuff about love and letting go, but Kyle couldn’t engage with it. He finished helping and then wandered around the grounds. Not exactly looking for Emily, but not not looking. He passed the old climbing tree that seemed so small now and thought, Never seeing it again after this week. He circled the pond and wondered if the new owners would keep it or drain it. He walked along the fence that the cousins had repaired a couple of summers ago. The new owners would have no idea a bunch of kids had done that.
Every familiar path and fencepost and tree and branch and twig, all lost.
Nadia. His friends. His parents as he’d known them. The farm. The person he was.
Gone.
Emily would still be there, he assured himself. Emily wouldn’t change.
He headed toward the swing set. Maybe she’d be there, waiting.
She wasn’t, but his mother was.
Kyle watched her from a distance before she noticed him. There was something lonely about it. Her on a swing, holding on to the chains and pushing off with her toes every few seconds. She didn’t seem like a mom.
Then she saw him there, and he was stuck. He had to keep walking toward her. As he did, she wiped her face.
“Hey there,” she said when he got to her.
“Hey.” He sat on the swing next to her.
“Your drive with Dad go all right?” she asked.
“We got here.”
“So did we.”
He pushed his feet into the dirt and got as big a push off as he could, then tried pumping his legs like he had when he was a kid, but now his legs were too long and kept hitting the ground.
“It’s sad, isn’t it,” she said. “About the farm.”
“I thought you never super loved it here.”
She shrugged and dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a tissue. “Oh, you know. It’s hard for me with all the Bakers together. I know I don’t fit in as well as Dale, or Jenny. But it’s not like I can see my own family. What’s left of them.”
Her parents were dead. She had a sister she hadn’t talked to as long as Kyle had been alive, and he’d heard some other extended family existed, but they’d never been a part of their lives and he didn’t know the story there. He wondered what that was like—not being a part of your own family, then also not totally being a part of your in-law family.
He fought against his sympathy. If family life was already so hard, why would you screw it up and make it even harder?
“Your dad is already saying I should go home. He’d rather tell everyone than have to share a room with me.”
“What happened to united front? One last great summer for everyone? Anyway, you were sharing at our house. Ever since Taylor got back.”
She smiled and sniffled. “No, we weren’t. We’d stay up until we were sure you two weren’t coming back out of your rooms, and then Dad made his bed on the couch.”
He almost told her right then that Taylor knew, so she could at least stop that part of the act. But he felt like he couldn’t do that without consulting with Taylor.
“Why are you even here?” Kyle asked.
She leaned back in her swing, gripping the chains, and stared up at the sky.
Then she said, “I don’t think you’ve been hearing me, Kyle. This is my family. This is the only family I’ve known since I was about twenty, when I met Dad. This place . . . these people. They all mean something to me, even though our relationships aren’t perfect. Even though it can all be so difficult. No, I don’t totally fit in, but they’re what I have.” She let out something between a huge sigh and a bellow. “Maybe if I could go back in time a year, six months, three months, I wouldn’t have made the same choices. I don’t know. None of us gets to have a time machine.”
A seed of tenderness sprouted in Kyle. Here she was, finally saying the words he’d wanted her to for so long, words he understood in his own way because of his own regrets with Nadia.
But he didn’t want that seed to take root, because then would that mean he’d have to forgive her? That he couldn’t be angry anymore?
“Nope,” he said, “we don’t.” He jumped off the swing and headed back to the house.