Olivia sat at the Barroses’ kitchen table dicing up dried seaweed for the genmaicha-and-kelp blend while Marco took a meeting on the East End. The morning was turning into afternoon, and she was eager to finish before Lidia showed up. She had been avoiding spending time with Jaci and her mother ever since discovering the note.
“You’re still here, love? I would have helped with all this if I’d known Marco was going to be gone so long,” Lidia said, breezing into the room. “I’m starting lunch. Don’t run off without eating.”
“Lunch sounds great,” Olivia said. What else could she say?
“Ma, what are you making?” Jaci said, wandering in. She wore the Long Point T-shirt Olivia had borrowed the day she discovered the note. Was this some sort of sign from the universe? Should she be the one to put an end to this? Two weeks had passed since she’d confronted her mother about telling the Barros family the truth; clearly, Ruth had no intention of setting things right. And Olivia could not be more furious about it.
“Bifana,” Lidia said.
“That’s so heavy,” Jaci said. “Is there any salad stuff here?”
“You’re not worried about your weight, are you? I swear you’ve lost ten pounds this summer.” Lidia was right: Jaci had lost weight since she first met her. Baby weight, she now realized.
“What’s bifana?” Olivia asked.
“It’s like a steak sandwich but with pork,” Lidia said. “I just picked up some fresh bread from Connie’s.”
The three of them sat outside on the porch with the sandwiches and two pitchers of iced tea, one black peach, one green with kelp. Jaci reached for the peach.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t drink that seaweed stuff. Marco is out of his mind,” Jaci said.
“It’s definitely an acquired taste,” said Lidia, smiling at her. “But I’m working on it. I’d do anything for you kids, even start drinking seaweed.”
“You’re nuts.”
“When you’re a mother, you’ll see,” Lidia said.
Olivia chewed without tasting her food.
“It’s not too spicy, is it?” Lidia said.
Olivia shook her head, reaching for her own glass of iced tea. “It’s great.”
Her phone rang. She’d forgotten she’d even brought her phone that afternoon. So often, lately, she forgot about it. A glance at the screen told her the incoming call was from…Dakota? “Excuse me for a minute,” she said to Lidia. She took the deck stairs down to the street level for privacy.
“I’m so glad you finally answered,” Dakota said.
“What do you mean, finally?”
“I’ve left you two messages.”
It was jarring to hear Dakota’s voice in the middle of her new life. Lately, it had been hard for her to remember why she’d been so invested in HotFeed. But Dakota’s chatter brought it all back in a rush: her aspirations, her sense of control, her independence.
“So the bottom line is, I’m leaving HotFeed,” Dakota said. “I’m taking five accounts with me, and I want you to come on board as my partner.”
“Wait—what?” This was unbelievable. Two months ago, she had been the one planning to leave, to steal accounts, to bring Dakota along for the ride. How had her twenty-three-year-old assistant managed to pull off what she had not?
“Unless…you’re not already starting your own thing, are you? I mean, I would have heard about that, right?”
“No, no…I haven’t started my own thing.” Olivia looked straight ahead at the boats bobbing on the water.
“Can you meet for drinks tonight?”
Drinks tonight. In New York. She pictured the view from Rooftop 93 and the after-work crowd at Clinton Hall. “I’m out of town,” Olivia said.
“For how long?”
Olivia turned her back to the water and closed her eyes, trying to connect with her old life. It was calling to her, literally.
“I’m not sure,” she said, opening her eyes and focusing on the alley leading from Commercial to the boatyard. The alley that Marco was, at that very moment, crossing to reach her. “Let me call you back,” she said.
Marco smiled at her and she forced herself to smile in return. All she could think was that she didn’t want to go back to that kitchen table, did not want to deal with the dilemma of her unfortunate knowledge about his sister. She didn’t want to deal with her frustration with her mother. And she didn’t want to continue to live her life in this strange limbo of suspended reality. The summer was going to end, and she would be leaving all of this behind. Any thoughts to the contrary were just a way to avoid the messiness of her professional life. Now there was a clear path to fixing that. It was what she’d wanted all along.
“Hey, you leaving?” Marco said. He was holding a shopping bag. He’d been at a meeting, so he was dressed up, by his standards, in jeans and a button-down shirt. And yet when she tried to transpose the image in front of her to the streets of Manhattan, she could not.
“I was having lunch with your mother and sister but I came down here to take a phone call.”
“Everything okay?” he said.
She nodded, but the expression of concern on his face made it clear he knew she was distressed.
“It was my former assistant. She’s starting her own company and she asked me to be a partner.”
“In New York?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
Marco reached for her phone, took it from her hand. “Don’t run off so fast,” he said. He smiled, but his tone was serious.
“I’m not running off. I mean, at some point I have to get back to my life.”
His dark eyes were as intense and focused as she’d ever seen them, and his jaw was set in that serious way of his, the way that made her want to lean forward and put her head on his shoulder and hold him tight.
“If New York is your life, then what has this been?” He was no longer smiling.
“Marco, come on. You said yourself you don’t get involved with summer people.”
His expression changed so fast, it was like a switch had been flipped. With a nod, he said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t even know where that came from.” He handed her the shopping bag.
“What’s this?”
“Your Carnival costume. No pressure, but for what it’s worth, I hope you stick around long enough to wear it.”
Carnival. It was three weeks away. An awfully long time to carry the secret.
Herring Cove Beach offered a perfect view of Long Point.
At the beginning of the summer, Ruth had been walking along the edge of the ocean when, out of nowhere, she heard the old song “Last Dance,” by Donna Summer. She looked around to find the source of the music and saw a tanned man wearing a lime-green Speedo, a scarf around his neck, and nothing else; on his left shoulder he carried one of those boom boxes that she hadn’t seen in ages. Standing in that sun-dappled spot, hearing that song and breathing that salt air, transported her to the summer of 1978. She felt the freedom, the excitement, the sense that everything and anything was possible. It hadn’t just been her youth; it was the energy of the town—artistic, wild, unpredictable.
It was falling in love with Ben.
When the man passed her by, the music was swallowed by the roar of the ocean, and she was almost shocked to find herself standing alone, a fifty-eight-year-old woman with more of her life behind her than ahead of her.
Today, her mind was planted firmly in the present. Although, the way things were going, that was no picnic either.
So when she spotted Ben a few yards away, she almost thought she was seeing things. She dropped her beach blanket and bag on a stretch of dry sand, adjusted her straw sun hat, and walked over to where he sat facing the water in a folding beach chair. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles baseball cap and was absorbed in a book.
Ruth was standing close enough to his chair to touch it before he noticed her. “This is a surprise,” he said.
“No class today?” she said.
“The class ended,” he said, closing his book. “I thought you knew that.”
She pointed back at her towel and bag. “My stuff is over there. Mind if I join you?” She didn’t wait for a reply before retrieving her things and setting up right next to his spot. “So how would I know that your class ended? I’ve barely seen you.”
“I thought Olivia might have mentioned it because I told her I’m leaving in a few days. And she might be leaving soon too.”
Ruth felt her spirits plummet; it was like a physical pain. “She didn’t mention it. So…you’re both leaving. I thought maybe she’d spend the rest of the summer, since she’s been having such a nice time with Marco.”
“Well, you know about the job offer? Her former assistant wants to partner with her to start their own company. Olivia sees it as the obvious next move.”
Ruth nodded noncommittally, not wanting to admit that Olivia had not spoken to her in weeks. July was quickly becoming August and their relationship was worse than when the summer began.
Ben turned his chair around to face her more directly. “Is something going on with you two? She’s barely been at the house and I suggested she invite you to dinner with us the other night and she said no.”
He wanted her to go to dinner with them? And Olivia had said no? Oh, the news was such a double-edged sword. “We’re having a disagreement about something. We’ll work it out,” she said. And then, to change the subject: “So how was the writing class overall? Worth the extra time out here?”
“I owe you a thank-you for pushing me to do it.”
Ruth beamed. “Does this mean you’re ready to embark on your second career as a playwright?”
“Actually, it confirmed that I was smart to go to medical school.”
“Oh, Ben. I’m sure that’s not true. I read your work all those years ago. It was good!”
He smiled warmly at her. “Ruth, I’m content with my life. And I hope you are too. I really do.”
A seagull wandered close, nearly stepping on her blanket. Ruth started to say that yes, she was content with her life, of course she was.
“I’m not,” she said. “I think we made a big mistake eighteen years ago with the divorce.” Looking up at him, the sun in her eyes, she couldn’t read his expression.
“Ruth,” he said, shaking his head slowly.
“We were both so busy and tired and stressed out. I was spending too much time at work, yes, I’ll admit it. But we made a decision based on the misconception that it would always be that way. The way we felt that year or two—it would have passed. It has passed. Look at us now.”
“Yes, we’ve managed to find our way to a friendship. I’m very happy about that. But it doesn’t mean we should have been married for the past decade and a half.”
“I still have feelings for you,” she said.
“Oh, Ruth.”
“You don’t feel anything?” Decades ago, years ago, she could never have asked such a thing. Her pride would have come first. But she was the older, wiser version of herself. Age did not have many upsides, but maybe, just maybe, wisdom and a little more courage were two of them.
“Ruth, I care about you. I do. But as my co-parent. And as your co-parent, I’m asking that you focus your energy on fixing whatever is going on between you and Olivia.”