Happy Fourth of July!” A waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne in Sandra Crowe’s foyer.
“Fancy, fancy,” Nadine said.
There was no kitschy Fourth of July décor in sight. The house was all white and beige and cream.
“It’s a good house,” said Amelia. “Strong bones. Not my taste, but these high ceilings do make for a dramatic space. So where’s your piece, hon? I can’t wait to see it.”
Kelly glanced around. “The dining room, I think? Sandra will show us, I’m sure.”
“Unbelievable what rich people will waste their money on. Never fails to amaze me,” said Nadine.
Kelly threw Amelia a look and said, “Okay. Well, then—I’m off to find the bar. Anyone else need a vodka shot?”
Amelia wanted everyone to get along. It was Kelly’s favorite summer holiday. And now Nadine was being sour and threatening to spoil it. Her daughter obviously had mixed feelings about being back, and that was understandable. Kelly just had no patience for it, which was unlike her.
Something was up with Kelly. Amelia had been eager to talk to her all day about Blythe’s revelation. She’d been involved with Nick! But Kelly had made herself scarce, skipping the parade and instead taking a long solo bike ride to the beach. When she finally got back, she had barely enough time to shower and change for the dinner party, never mind have a long conversation. And now they were at the party and she was already drifting away.
Maybe she was just trying to give Amelia space to reconnect with Nadine. But it was impossible to entirely focus on Nadine when it was Blythe and Marin’s last night. She hated to admit it to herself, but Blythe’s confession that morning affected the way she felt toward Marin; she wasn’t just the product of an anonymous sperm donation. She was a love child. Nick’s love child!
“There you are!” Sandra breezed into the entrance hall, her outstretched, beckoning arms covered in chunky gold bracelets. “The guest of honor!”
She gave Kelly the European two-kiss greeting. Then she turned to Amelia and took one of her hands in both of hers. “It is so lovely of you to make it. Thank you for sharing your magnificent, talented wife with me. I am in love with the piece—in love.”
“Amelia taught me everything I know,” Kelly said.
Sandra clapped her hands together. “You two are adorable.” She turned to Nadine and introduced herself.
“Oh, I’m sorry—where are my manners?” Amelia jumped in and made the round of introductions.
“Are you ready to see my mermaid?” Sandra said. “I’ve named her: Ariel. The Little Mermaid! One of my favorite movies,” she said.
“The cartoon?” said Nadine incredulously.
Amelia bit her lip to keep from smiling.
“What do you think?” Sandra asked Kelly. Amelia knew what Kelly was undoubtedly thinking: that Sandra had turned her mythical Siren into a Disney character.
Before Kelly could respond, Sandra said, “We’re still on for you to do the window in my master bathroom, right? If anyone here tonight tries to steal you away from me, you just let me know. They’ll have to wait their turn.”
Amelia squeezed Kelly’s hand.
“Sure,” said Kelly.
“How soon can you start?”
“I have one piece before it. But I can come measure the window soon and we can talk about color and design.”
“Fabulous! This weekend?”
Kelly hesitated, then said, “Sure. Why not.”
Sandra snapped her fingers at Tanya. “Gather everyone in the dining room.”
Amelia, Kelly, Nadine, and the girls followed Sandra across the foyer into a cavernous room with a marble table that could seat twenty. On the farthest wall, behind the head seat of the table, was Kelly’s mosaic. It looked absolutely magnificent, dramatic in the space. The room, painted oxblood, picked up all the deep tones of the piece.
Waiters handed them flutes of champagne. Behind them, voices of the other party guests filled the hall.
“Everyone, gather round,” Sandra sang out, moving a chair out of the way so she could stand at the head of the table. “I’m so delighted to have you all here to celebrate the Fourth of July. Tonight, we have a special guest, the brilliant artist Kelly Hanauer. This fabulous piece behind me is her work, so, Kelly, why don’t you come up here and tell us a little bit about it.”
Kelly looked at Amelia, a deer in headlights.
“Might as well get it over with,” Amelia murmured to her.
“If I’d known this was going to be a dog-and-pony show, I would never have come.”
“It’s the price of doing business, my dear,” Amelia said. “I’ll hold your drink.”
Kelly reluctantly walked to the front of the table and stood next to Sandra.
“Thanks, Sandra. I’m so happy to see it in this space—you gave her a perfect home. As you can all see, the design is a mermaid, and she’s formed from a combination of materials including stones, shells, mother-of-pearl, stained glass…”
Across the room, Amelia saw Nadine and Marin talking. Amelia’s vision blurred, and for a fraction of a second, it was Nadine and Nick.
Her heart beat fast at the thought of the last time she’d seen her children together. They’d come at her like wolves, Nick shouting, Nadine crying and breaking things. Had she deserved it? Yes. When parents hurt their children, purposefully or not, they get what they get.
The first fear, her immediate thought when Nick discovered her with Kelly, was that he would tell Otto. Oh, how foolish she’d been. As if her marriage mattered at all in the big picture. By that time, it was already over. They were both drifting, going through the motions. Still, the horror she’d felt at the thought of him learning of her affair. It was funny how much time one wasted worrying about the wrong things.
In the end, Otto had forgiven her. And when he died, she’d genuinely mourned him. Without her family, because Nick was gone by that time and Nadine did not come home to bury her father. Even for that unjustifiable, selfish act, Amelia blamed herself. She had set the family adrift, and so in the end it all came back to her.
Yes, Otto had forgiven her. But Nick…
“I love her,” he’d spit.
“Love who?” Amelia had asked, genuinely bewildered. The conversation took place in the kitchen the day after Nick had walked in on her and Kelly.
“Kelly!”
“What? Since when?”
“Since freshman year! I’m the one who convinced her to spend the summer here!”
Amelia panicked. Had Kelly been with Nick and then turned to her?
“You’ve been dating her? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“No, I wasn’t with her! She’s barely been around this entire month. And now I know why.”
“What’s all the screaming about?” Nadine appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Nick. “Mom’s just been fucking Kelly.”
Nadine, her olive skin burnished even darker from a month in the sun, turned white.
“Stop it,” Nadine said. “That’s not true.”
“Tell her,” Nick said.
Amelia looked helplessly between the stricken faces of her two children. “I’m sorry.”
“How could you do this to Dad?”
Ah, yes—there it was. Nadine had always been very much a daddy’s girl, which had been adorable when she was a child. But it became less adorable as Nadine grew older and forgave Otto for every misstep while blaming Amelia for everything. It did not matter that for all the summers in recent memory, Otto had made it clear that he preferred twelve-hour days of fishing to any time spent as a husband or father. Otto, who drank from the moment he stepped foot in the house at six at night until he passed out. She had been sleeping on the foldout couch in her studio at the house in Boston for years and had moved into one of the extra bedrooms on the second floor at the beach house—not that her children thought anything of it. She didn’t know what she had done wrong as a mother to make Nick and Nadine think of herself and Otto only as their caregivers, not as individuals with their own needs and frailties. Maybe that was how all children were until they became parents themselves. Amelia never got the chance to find out.
And so Nadine, in her furious defense of her father, came at Amelia.
“I hate you!” she screamed, lunging for her. Amelia jumped aside, and Nadine grabbed the serving bowl of seafood paella and threw it to the floor. Shrimp, mussels, lobster, risotto, and glass flew everywhere. Nadine was not finished; she started for a shelf filled with plates but Nick restrained her.
Amelia realized, as Nadine tried to tear apart the kitchen, that she had given her daughter the perfect excuse to turn her adolescent rejection of her mother into something far more damning. And something much more permanent.
Marin wondered if she could go home early without seeming rude. How could she spend the night making small talk, waving miniature American flags and watching fireworks, knowing that Amelia was oblivious to the fact that her life was about to be shattered?
She didn’t agree with Kelly’s decision not to tell her that the cancer was back, and she especially didn’t agree with her choice not to tell her that her doctor had given her such a grim prognosis. If it were Marin’s spouse, she would want to know, to have time to prepare. If Amelia knew how few nights she had left with her wife, Marin doubted she would waste one of them at this stuffy party.
A waitress passed around crab cakes with aioli sauce served on red, white, and blue herringbone-patterned china. She bit into one and spotted Nadine heading toward her. Oh God, just who she didn’t want to talk to.
“So this is it. Your last night,” Nadine said. She held an hors d’oeuvres plate in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
“That’s right.”
“Too bad we didn’t really get to talk very much. Hopefully the trip wasn’t a total wash for you.”
Marin frowned. “Not at all. Why would it be?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I have no idea. I came to meet my grandmother. And I did, obviously.”
“You came here with a woman you’d never met before so you could both meet your grandmother? I would imagine you have a pretty full life back in New York City, complete with grandparents from the people who actually raised you.”
“It’s complicated,” Marin said.
Nadine nodded, raising her glass of champagne to Marin’s glass of ice water. “To complications,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure.” Marin glanced at Rachel across the room, hoping she’d catch her eye and come rescue her.
“Although you know what I bet you don’t have in New York City?”
Losing patience, Marin simply shrugged.
“An enormous beach house,” said Nadine.
“Excuse me?”
Amelia joined them, smiling at the sight of her daughter and granddaughter together, oblivious to the fact that her daughter was basically accusing Marin of being a sleazy opportunist.
“Hi, girls. Come out back. There are tables by the pool.”
Nadine smiled at her mother. “Lead the way.”
“Oh, Marin—since you have a handbag, can you take this home for me?” She slipped her one of the china plates.
“What’s this for?”
“Mosaics,” Amelia whispered with a wink.
“Oh, Mother,” said Nadine impatiently. “Is that any way to behave at your age? Stealing from a dinner party?”
“Do you think Sandra Crowe is going to miss one plate? Look at this place. Besides, she appreciates Kelly’s art. She’d be flattered.”
Nadine shook her head.
Amelia touched Marin’s arm to bring her along.
“You know what?” Marin said. “You two go on ahead. I’m going to find the bathroom.” Actually, she was going to find Kelly.
An idea was forming, one she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But she realized she wasn’t choosing the thought—the thought was choosing her.
Sandra Crowe’s guests, several dozen of them, gathered by the pool. Red, white, and blue paper lanterns were strung all around the veranda, and glowing paper lanterns floated in the pool. Rachel sat with Nadine and two couples visiting for the weekend from New York and Connecticut. The man to Rachel’s left spent a full twenty minutes telling her all the ways Provincetown differed from the Hamptons. He went through it in such meticulous detail, it was as if his assessment were the result of a long scientific study.
She half listened, all the while thinking of the way Luke had looked into her eyes. Had he been about to kiss her? What would have happened if Thomas hadn’t knocked on the window?
Rachel’s talkative new friend mercifully wandered off to visit another table. She wasn’t alone for long. Sandra Crowe slipped into the seat next to her.
“I have been so looking forward to meeting Amelia’s granddaughters and I’ve barely had time to look in your direction,” she said. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Yes! This is such a great place you have here. I love your house.”
“I love your house,” Sandra said, touching her arm. She wore a pile of gold bracelets that made a clinking noise when she moved her hand. Rachel wasn’t sure what Sandra meant but then realized she was talking about the inn.
“Oh, it’s not really my house,” she said.
“Damn right it’s not,” chimed in Nadine from the other side of the table.
Rachel was momentarily startled, but the sweet smile on Nadine’s face contradicted her sharp tone.
Sandra turned to her. “Nadine, do you know how many times I’ve offered to buy that house? And now they’re not even running the inn—probably because it’s too much work. And really, at your mother’s age, who needs that much work? Don’t you agree?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“You tell your mother that when she’s ready to unload it, I will write her a check for the asking price.”
“We’ll talk,” said Nadine.
Rachel, having nothing to add to the real estate conversation, glanced at her phone to check the time. She was itching to leave and looked around for any signs that dessert was on its way out.
Was it too late to head over to Paul’s party? She was ready for some fireworks. And she wasn’t thinking of the ones in the sky.
Marin watched Kelly from across the table. The way Kelly talked and laughed and toasted the holiday, Marin almost wondered if she’d imagined their conversation at the A-House. She wanted to believe she’d imagined the conversation.
Finally, Kelly excused herself, and it was the opening Marin had been waiting for. She trailed her into the house, calling out to her in one of the beige living rooms.
Kelly turned around, startled.
“Jeez, Marin. You scared me. What are you doing?”
“Following you.”
“Obviously.” She tugged her long hair out of its ponytail and shook it loose. Her cheeks were flushed under the smattering of freckles.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said irritably. “Go back to the party.”
“Kelly, I’m really afraid you’re not dealing with this news at all. How can you be here talking and laughing like nothing is wrong?” Her eyes filled with tears.
Kelly put her hands on Marin’s shoulders. “Marin, keep it together. It’s the Fourth of July. The official start of the summer season. And it’s your last night here, so please—if I can have a good time, so can you.”
“What if it’s not my last night?” she said.
“Meaning?”
“I’m thinking of staying. I know you don’t want to tell Amelia what’s going on right now. But I want to be here when you finally do.”
Kelly gave her a quizzical look, wrinkling her pert nose and narrowing her eyes.
“Stay for how long?”
“A month. Or maybe until the end of the summer. I don’t know exactly. I’m just not ready to leave. Would that be okay with you?”
“Don’t do this because of what’s going on with me.”
“It’s not just that,” Marin said, and she realized it was true. She wasn’t ready to get back to the mess of her own life yet. “I like it here.”
“Well, in that case, I’m all for it. I told Amelia we should have kept the inn open this summer. She is happiest with a full house, and to have it filled with family? It’s a dream come true.” Kelly stepped forward and hugged her. “Having you here for the summer will be good for all of us.”
Marin exhaled in her embrace, feeling good about her decision.
“Marin—hey. Are you heading out?” Rachel had somehow snuck up behind them.
Marin did want to leave. She was exhausted.
“Yeah. Soon.”
“You girls should go to the pier and get a good spot for the fireworks. We’ll meet you there soon.”
“No fireworks for me. I’m going home,” Marin said.
“I was thinking of stopping by Paul’s party,” Rachel said.
Kelly looked at her phone. “It’s probably winding down. It’s almost fireworks time. Come on, Marin. It’s the best part of the day. I’m going to round up Amelia and your mother now.”
When she was gone, Marin turned to Rachel.
“What’s the deal with Paul’s party? Everyone we know is here.” Oh—not everyone, she realized. Marin sighed. “For God’s sake, Rachel. Stop chasing that guy.”
Rachel looked stricken. “What do you mean?”
“Paul’s party? Luke? I mean, it’s obvious every time I see that guy he’s ready to jump into my pants.”
“Oh my God, you’re disgusting!”
“I’m disgusting? Okay, fine. Disgusting, but accurate.”
“You’re just jealous!” said Rachel.
“Of what?”
“Your boyfriend dumped you so you don’t want anyone else to be happy!”
Rachel turned on her heel and stormed off. Marin felt a small flicker of regret—had she been too harsh? But she was too worn out to care.
“Oh, good—you’re still here,” Amelia said, rounding the corner and entering the room with Kelly close behind. “Kelly said you’re going home without seeing the fireworks? I won’t hear of it. Come along. You don’t mess with tradition.”
Kelly touched Marin’s shoulder. “Come on, kiddo. Carpe diem and all that.”
Marin was about to protest but…where had she just heard that expression recently? It was Paul—that first day at the A-House. When he told Marin that Kelly was a cancer survivor.
She followed them out the door.
Marin hadn’t spent much time at MacMillan Pier, though she passed it every single day. Right in the center of Commercial Street, it was where the ferry came in from Boston and where you could catch a whale-watching tour. There were quirky little art studios and a pirate museum. But tonight, the pier had one purpose and one purpose only: serving as one of the penultimate stops for the daylong Fourth of July extravaganza. Nine hours since the parade started, and the revelers were still going strong.
Personally, Marin was over it.
Amelia and Kelly set up folding beach chairs they’d picked up at the house on the way over. They wore red, white, and blue foil Uncle Sam high hats that were being handed out, and an artist painted a small American flag on Kelly’s cheek.
Rachel perched on a narrow plank that bordered the walkway and the beach, facing the water, still pouting about what Marin had said to her, yet clearly craning her neck and looking around for Luke Duncan. Well, at least she couldn’t say Marin didn’t warn her.
“I’m going to walk to the water,” Marin said to Amelia.
“Okay, hon. If you see Paul or Bart, send them over.”
Marin threaded her way through the crowd. Someone was blasting the Sia song “Chandelier” and something about the song and the pier and the water gave her a flash of déjà vu. It was a memory of a late-winter evening in New York, sometime well past midnight, walking along the East River promenade with Julian. He held her hand, something they had sworn never to do in public. But in that moment, he clearly had not cared; he had reached for her hand, and her heart soared.
She shook the thought away, trying not to wonder what he was doing for the Fourth. She’d thought about it earlier and Googled where the Manhattan fireworks would be this year. Where she would have been, had life not laughed in her face.
“Hey, Marin!”
She turned at the sound of her name and saw Luke Duncan making his way toward her with long strides. It was no wonder Rachel had such a crush on him. His eyes were the brightest blue, the stubble on his jaw gold even in the fading light of the setting sun.
“I thought that was you,” he said, grinning.
A perfect, dimpled smile.
“It’s me,” she said.
“How was the dinner party?”
“What, do you have our whole itinerary memorized?”
He laughed. “No. I saw Rachel earlier. She told me you were all heading over to the East End.”
“Yeah. It was fine.”
“Not exactly a glowing review. Rumor has it Sandra Crowe is usually quite the hostess.”
“What’s your deal?” she said.
He cocked his head. “I didn’t realize I had a deal.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time flirting with me when Rachel is clearly interested.”
“Rachel? We’re friends. She’s—I mean, she’s a kid.”
“She’s twenty-two.”
“Exactly.”
Marin sighed. “Okay, well, then maybe you should stop leading her on.”
Luke ran his hand through his hair, wrinkling his brow in a way that was so adorable it almost cracked through Marin’s annoyance. Almost. “I’ve never been anything but friendly toward her.”
“Whatever, Luke. But FYI, this”—she waved her finger between the two of them—“is never going to happen.”
He laughed.
“Is this amusing to you?” she said.
“No. It’s just—I’m not hitting on you, Marin. Obviously, you’ve got a lot going for you. But I’m not looking for anything. I left enough complications behind in Rhode Island. Sometimes it’s just nice to talk to someone who’s close to my age and isn’t a gay man.”
Marin turned red.
“I’m sorry. I feel like an ass.”
“Don’t. I’m sure ninety-nine point nine percent of the men who talk to you are hitting on you. I just want to put your mind at rest that I’m not one of them. That probably goes for any of the other guys out here.”
She laughed. “Okay, then. But—you still shouldn’t lead my sister on.”
“Point taken. Friends?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Friends,” she said, placing her hand in his. He pulled her into a quick hug. When she stepped back, still feeling more than a little silly about her assumption, she spotted Rachel a few yards or so behind Luke—too far away to hear their conversation, but close enough to see them embrace. Rachel looked stricken, and before Marin could wave her over, she turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Marin couldn’t take any more drama.
She said a hasty good-bye to Luke and headed back to the house to go to sleep just as the sound of fireworks erupted behind her.