8

“Who’s feeling fun-tastic?” Mrs. Hogan greets us at the door the next night in a pineapple-print sundress and, more notably, Carmen Miranda’s fruit headdress. Cliffy lets out a little squeal of delight. I think he would love to live in a world where everyone was as playful as the Hogans. Iris beams. Greer averts her eyes, embarrassed for herself, Mrs. Hogan, and everyone on earth who has ever considered eating fruit.

“Well, I am now,” I say, giving her a hug and pressing my face into the side of a plastic banana. This banana is reality. I am not in a life with soft, entwined hands and too-close lips. I am in a life with plastic fruit. I need to embrace my reality and recalibrate after that date. In addition to not kissing me, Ethan did not ask for my phone number. I am officially bad at dating, like I need a seminar, and that’s that. “You look fabulous.”

“Just a little something I threw together. Florida’s made Charlie and me eternally tropical.”

We walk into the foyer and take off our shoes. I always think of this house in the feminine; she is one of the oldest houses in Beechwood and she is a grande dame. She is the only residential home right in the center of town, and her neighbors are city hall to the right and the library to the left. She is made of whitewashed brick, and her oversized leaded windows keep everything light. Her floors are a dark mahogany, and the oak staircase was carved by the same artisans who were building the local Episcopal church that same year. She has small rooms off of other rooms for purposes we’ll never know. There’s even a four-foot-tall closet under the front stairs, exclusively for children’s coats. I grew up admiring this house, and I always feel like she demands and deserves my respect. So we take off our shoes.

Mr. Hogan calls from the kitchen, “Where’s my head thing?”

“Right on the table,” Mrs. Hogan calls back. “Come on in. Frannie’s got drinks on the patio. I hope you brought your bathing suits.”

Greer holds up a tote bag in response, and we make our way through the kitchen out to the backyard. There’s an outdoor seating area against an ivy-covered brick wall, and a small outdoor kitchen. Frannie’s standing by the sink transferring a pitcher of piña coladas into a carved-out pineapple with a spout on one side. She looks up and shrugs. “My dad’s invention.” And to my kids, “Hi, guys, you want to swim before dinner? Something tells me it’ll be fun-tastic.” She rolls her eyes and gives me a hug.

My kids run inside to change and I take a sip of my drink. It’s strong, and I make a mental note not to finish it. “So spill it. The date. Where’d you go? All of it,” Frannie says. She, Marco, and Theo were sound asleep when I got back, so I sent them home without the download.

“It was good. Or maybe great. I don’t know. He’s just this perfect guy, like from a movie. The kind who tunes in and isn’t all about himself. He asks follow-up questions.”

“Okay, so he’s a unicorn. Or he’s hideous. Attractive men don’t ask follow-up questions.”

“He’s so attractive. Like with this hair and these eyes.” I really don’t know how to describe him.

“Everyone has hair and eyes, at least at some point, Ali.”

I ignore her. “He’s sexy. He has these beautiful hands, like a construction worker who is also a concert pianist. But something’s off. He didn’t kiss me and I feel like there’s something he wasn’t telling me.”

“Like he’s married?”

“I would be shocked.” And as I say it, I am actually shocked because Ethan walks onto the patio.

I have to be imagining this. I look back at my drink, which is, in fact, strong, but I’ve only had one sip. It’s definitely him and he’s standing at the French doors. He’s in a navy blue T-shirt and white shorts and is holding a bag of ice in one hand and has Brenda cradled in the other arm. He seems relaxed, not at all like he’s just stormed into the Hogans’ house uninvited. My heart is racing, and I try for a deep breath but can’t quite catch it. Now he’s giving Mrs. Hogan a kiss on her cheek.

“What?” Frannie is saying. I don’t take my eyes off of him. “Ali, what? It’s just Scooter.”

“Scooter,” I say. No, no, no, no, no, no. There is no way Scooter is the guy whose gold-flecked eyes I stared into last night. There is no way Scooter owns the beautiful fingers that wrapped around mine in a way that made heat pool low in my belly. Scooter has a mullet and a skateboard. Scooter was suspended his freshman year for stealing a freezer full of ice cream sandwiches from the cafeteria. Omigod. Of course the first guy I go on a date with in fourteen years turns out to be Frannie’s weird little brother. I thought I was getting my life together—checking items off my recovery list—and here I am, a fresh hot mess.

“Yeah, it only took him forty-five minutes to get a bag of ice. Classic,” Frannie says.

Ethan looks up and sees me. It is not an Oh yay, there’s the woman I held hands with last night look. It’s more like the look you’d have on your face if bats started flying out of your toilet.

I don’t know how to organize my face or where to look as he walks toward us.

“Ali,” he says.

“Scooter,” I say. It sort of sounds like an accusation. I’m holding his gaze because I’m a little angry, and I don’t want to let him off the hook. There is no way on earth he didn’t know who I was last night. I mentioned Frannie, and he winced.

“Hi,” he says. There’s a slight cringe to the way he’s looking at me, as if he’s embarrassed to have been caught impersonating a guy who is not Frannie’s brother.

I can see Frannie watching us in my peripheral vision, back and forth, like she’s waiting for the ball to land. Mrs. Hogan calls her over to the grill, and she hesitates before walking away.

“You said Connecticut,” I say.

“I can explain,” he says just as my kids run over, soaking wet. Cliffy throws his wet arms around me with the unnecessary exuberance of a six-year-old boy.

“Cliffy,” Ethan says.

“Hi,” Cliffy says.

Frannie comes back with a What did I miss vibe.

“And these are my daughters, Greer and Iris,” I say, trying to recover. “This is Scooter, Frannie’s little brother. And his dog, Brenda.”

“You know Brenda?” Frannie asks.

I sure do. He must have known who I was all along. I thought he was going to kiss me and he was—what? Tricking me? I need to change the tone of this conversation so that I don’t burst into tears or break something.

“We met at the dog park. Ferris kind of picked Scooter, if you know what I mean.” I give Iris a look.

“Oh my God, Mom. Tell me Ferris didn’t pee on him,” says Greer.

“Yep, picked him out of the crowd. Soaked him down to his socks.” Maybe he deserved it.

Ethan is visibly uncomfortable. His brow is creased, his face is closed, and he looks like he wants to bolt. He turns to the lawn, where there’s a kids’ play tunnel and a bunch of dog toys. “So I’m trying to train Brenda to run through that tunnel,” he says to my kids. “Supposed to be good for her brain. Want to help me?”

“Yes!” says Cliffy, and runs toward the toys.

Ethan follows him. Coward, I think. Greer and Iris look at each other and then at me. “Go ahead,” I say. I really need to not be with my kids right now.

When they’ve run across the lawn, I say to Frannie, “Okay, so, weird about Scooter.”

“You mean about Scooter being weird?”

“No, about him growing up to be a full-sized man.”

“Happens to most boys, I think. But deep down, he’s still the same Scooter who got high and set fire to the basement rug.”

“Huh. I would never have recognized him. I thought—” I don’t know what it is that I want to say here. I thought I was going to run into him again this morning, which is why I hunted around the floor of my closet to find a pair of white jeans and a yellow linen top. As if wearing white jeans to the dog park is a totally rational thing to do. I thought maybe all that effort was going to lead to another date and an actual kiss. I am clearly delusional. “He doesn’t match my vague memory of an undersized kid on a skateboard.”

“We left for college when he was, what? Sixteen?”

“I guess. Wasn’t he kind of a weirdo? Like a skate rat?”

“He’s totally still a weirdo, and he still skateboards,” she says. “But then again, he probably remembers you in hard pants.”

“I was wearing hard pants when I met him, and you didn’t say anything about this.” I gesture to the tank top and skirt that I’m wearing. I wait for her to mention that the skirt has an elastic waist so it basically behaves like sweatpants.

“Progress,” she says.

We’re quiet for a bit, watching Iris crawl halfway into the tunnel to coax Brenda through while Ethan ceremoniously places a bucket hat on Cliffy’s head. Iris and Cliffy crawl through the tunnel, and Greer waves a stuffed bunny. Brenda doesn’t budge.

“It’s nice to see them having fun,” I say to change the subject.

“I was going to say that about Scooter.”

“He seems like the kind of guy who’s always having fun. Looking like that and skateboarding around.” Tricking single mothers into thinking he’s someone else. That’s next-level unreliable.

Frannie gives me a sideways glance. “He’s thirty-six years old and a lawyer, Ali. People even call him Ethan, if you can believe that.”

“Crazy,” I say. I’m watching him squat down and give Brenda a treat for doing absolutely nothing.

“He came because my parents summoned him, but I think mostly he had to get away for a bit.”

“Why?”

“Bad breakup.”

In addition to the tornado of emotions I’m trying to tamp down—anger, sadness, embarrassment—I hate this girlfriend who got to hold his hand whenever she wanted to. And I also feel sorry for her. Down by the pool, Cliffy and Iris chase poor Brenda through the garden. Greer and Ethan are watching and talking, and I would give anything to know what they’re talking about.

“Poor woman.” I can’t imagine having those eyes on you all the time and then not having them there at all. Well, actually, I can.

“I think she broke up with him.” I didn’t see this coming. What more could that woman possibly have been looking for? “She realized he’s not ready to be a grown-up.” Ah.

---

My kids give up on Brenda and jump back into the pool, and Ethan joins us on the patio. “So,” he says, and grabs a beer from the cooler between us. I search his face for the remnants of the easygoing guy from last night, but he’s tense. As he should be.

“Scooter,” I say, with emphasis.

“How weird is he with that dog,” Frannie says. “I mean, who adopts a dog with mental health issues and tries to fix her with circus tricks?”

“Me, I guess,” he says. His free hand is in his pocket and his shoulders are pitched forward. He is not even a little bit comfortable in his skin.

Mrs. Hogan calls to Frannie from the kitchen, and she leaves us there looking at each other.

“I’m sorry,” he says. In the daylight there are still little flecks of gold in his eyes.

“So what was last night? A joke?” I’m loud-whispering, but I sort of wish I were shouting. “Were you messing with me?” This thought tightens my chest.

“I’m really sorry. It was so perfect last night, and I knew it would be ruined if you knew who I was. I was about to tell you a bunch of times, but I didn’t want to give up how you were looking at me. I don’t think you ever looked me in the eye in high school. And I wanted you to.” He takes a step toward me, as if he’s going to take my hand. He’s Ethan again, confident and in command, and I am struck by the fact that time is a powerful thing. It’s made him so strong and sure, and it’s made me unsteady. This must be what they mean by the law of conservation of matter: maybe he found everything I lost.

“Well, now I know,” I say, and sip my too-strong drink. “Scooter.”

“I should have said something after the game, and I was going to when we were on the boat.”

“Boat?” Frannie is back. “When were you on a boat?” She’s looking at Ethan, and then at me. And I see the realization roll across her face. “You said ‘sexy,’ ” she says to me.

“She did?” Ethan asks, eyebrows raised.

“Oh my God,” says Frannie.

Before I can defend myself, Marco joins us on the patio with Theo in a sling. “Is it me, or is this family getting weirder all the time?” He gives me a hug and I bury my nose in the top of Theo’s warm baby head. He smells like cheeseburgers.

Mr. and Mrs. Hogan are assembling plates in the outdoor kitchen and call for us to sit down. I find my palm tree place card and sit to the right of Mr. Hogan, who has now found and donned his fruit hat. Ethan is across from me and I try not to look at him.

Mr. Hogan raises his cocktail. “To Florida!” We all clink glasses.

“And to having Scooter here,” says Mrs. Hogan. “It’s so wonderful to have you back, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Mom. It’s always good to be home.”

“Which is why you’re never here?” asks Frannie. It’s interesting to see this dynamic. I know Frannie as an adult and a mom and a restaurant manager. I don’t know her as an older sister, who’s potentially a little prickly.

Ethan rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his beer.

“His work is in Massachusetts,” Marco says. “It’s not like he can be popping in for Sunday dinner every week.”

Mr. Hogan cuts his steak and admires the piece on his fork. “Well, it was nice when he was a real lawyer and lived in Manhattan. We saw more of him then.”

“I am a real lawyer, Dad,” Ethan says in one breath, like he’s said this a million times already today.

“Of course, I know. I mean like with a firm. Like before.” Mr. Hogan reaches over and pats Ethan’s hand.

“It’s wonderful that you’ve found something to keep you busy, sweetheart,” says Mrs. Hogan. “Just wonderful. And I wish it was closer to home, but no one knows how great it is to start fresh more than we do. Right, Charlie?”

Mr. Hogan agrees. “We sure had fun in Florida.”

I look across at Ethan and see the tension in his face. It’s exactly as he described it, just without the two point five kids. I suspect this is a decade-old conversation in the Hogan family—Scooter, the problem child who didn’t move back home. He leans back and runs a hand through his hair. He catches me watching him and rolls his eyes the smallest bit. It feels oddly intimate, like he and I are the only two people at the table who know how he feels. But I look away because I don’t need to be sharing intimacies with a guy who held my hand under false pretenses.

Cliffy climbs onto my lap and takes off my charm bracelet. He lays it flat, like he always does, and runs his fingers over the events of my life, the tiny charms that my mom designed to document it: fairy, ship, soccer ball, graduation hat, University of Michigan, graduation hat, business suit, wedding dress, baby girl, dog, baby girl, little brick house, baby boy.

Frannie says, “Well, we’re glad you’re back. It wasn’t exactly convenient that you guys went away for the first time ever at the beginning of the inn’s busy season.”

Mrs. Hogan smiles and nods her fruit to her husband. He puts down his glass and says, “Well, that’s something we want to talk about, and partially why we wanted Scooter here.” He looks across at Mrs. Hogan for encouragement and she smiles. I feel pressure on my chest watching this silent communication. Pete and I were never like this. Not even at the beginning. For the most part, our communication bumped off our kids or was rerouted and diffused by my mother. I don’t think we ever talked with our eyes. This is something I should have known enough to want. Comparison is the thief of joy, honey.

Mrs. Hogan takes over. “We’re going back Monday.” And she smiles with the brightness of the tropical sun, clasping her hands together as if she’s waiting for us to cheer.

“I don’t understand,” says Frannie.

“She said they’re going to Florida on Monday,” explains Iris.

“Yes, but why?”

“We’ve talked about this,” says Mr. Hogan. “We think we may have been in a rut. And that trip to the Keys made us feel young again. We found a little house right on the water. So we’re moving to Florida. You all are welcome to visit whenever you like, you included,” he says, with a wink to my kids.

“No one moves to Florida in the summer,” says Ethan.

“We love it there,” says Mrs. Hogan.

“And we’re going to get a boat and learn to fish,” says Mr. Hogan. “So we’re not going to run out of things to do.”

Frannie places her napkin on the table. “Just wait a second. I don’t understand. Are you selling the house? Are you never coming back here? What about the inn? You need to be here for the summer rush at the inn. And what about Theo?”

Mr. Hogan looks to his wife for permission to go on. “Well, that’s the other thing. We’re retiring. Harold Webster is stepping into the role of general manager at the inn.”

“And of course we’ll be up to see Theo,” Mrs. Hogan adds.

“Harold Webster is a beach attendant. He stacks chairs,” says Frannie. Her voice is measured, like she’s using all of her energy to restrain herself.

“Yes,” Mr. Hogan agrees. “He was a very competent beach attendant. And now he’s general manager. And you and Marco are around—you can help fight fires.”

“Marco and I are running the diner. Seven days a week. And we have a baby, if you haven’t noticed.” Her voice breaks, and I think she’s going to cry.

“Honey, this is doable. The inn practically runs itself,” says Mrs. Hogan.

Greer’s looking at me like she wants to run. This is a tense family moment and the chance of tears seems pretty high. We shouldn’t be here for this.

Ethan refills Frannie’s wineglass. “This is a lot,” he says. “I’ll keep doing the legal stuff, but to be clear, I’m not going to be able to be physically here to help.”

“We know, Scooter. You’ve told us a thousand times. You’re not going to help,” Frannie says, and takes a too-big sip of wine and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “What about the house? Are you selling the house?”

Mr. Hogan says, “We’re giving Scooter the house.”

“What?” Ethan pushes himself back from the table.

“And we’re giving Frannie the diner,” Mr. Hogan says. “We’ve had them appraised, and they’re roughly the same value. Your mother and I are keeping the inn, of course, and we’ll keep an eye on Harold from Florida.”

“Wait. What am I going to do with this house?” Ethan asks. “I’m not moving back here.” It comes out as more of a plea than a statement, as if the next thing out of his mouth will be, You can’t make me.

“Sell it. Get married and fill it with kids. Do whatever you want. It’s yours,” says Mr. Hogan.

“I don’t think Scooter’s in any hurry to get married, dear,” Mrs. Hogan says.

Frannie is staring at her plate. Marco puts his arm around her. When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes. “It’s very generous, thank you. I’m just not ready to lose you.” It was the last thing I said to my mom, selfishly. As if her suffering and imminent dying were somehow about me and how unready I was. But it was true: I have never been less ready for anything in my life. I wrap my arms around Cliffy.

“Jesus, Frannie, they’re not dying,” Ethan says. “They’re retiring and moving to Florida. It’s kind of what people do.”

“Then you should sell the inn,” Frannie says. “Take the Beekman offer. It’s just too much to manage without you.”

“Why aren’t you getting married?” Cliffy asks.

“Cliffy.” Greer heaves a sigh. “Personal boundaries?”

Ethan looks around the table and gives Cliffy a sideways smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Apparently, I’m unreliable. Just ask anyone in Beechwood.”