Chapter 34
The sky outside melts from strawberry sorbet into a deep huckleberry purple.
Daniel proposes that we paint one of the smaller bedrooms, since we’re here.
So we do—after putting our clothes back on—and it’s a movie-montage-like hour of painting and giggling and screeching as we chase each other with paintbrushes.
We admire our handiwork, and I wipe a dot of eggshell paint from his chin, and we kiss in the middle of the empty room.
“Worth it, even though it can only be one night?” he asks, his arms around my waist. I know he’s referring to the conversation we had in the pool, when we forced ourselves to stop, but the words still send a pang of disappointment through me.
“Worth it,” I say. “Even if it can never happen again.” I say it lightly, teasingly, secretly holding my breath and half hoping he’ll say that it can.
“Hey, never say never. I sure hope you’ll call me next time you’re in town.”
“Yeah.” I remove myself from his arms. I have no idea when that will be, but I don’t want to get into all that right now. “We better get out of here before we get lightheaded from paint fumes.”
Outside, the dark sky flecked with stars, we share one last kiss under the magnolia tree.
“Well,” Daniel says, “see you at the barbecue tomorrow.” This makes us both laugh way too hard. We bike down the street together, and then he goes his way and I go mine.
Gramps and Wally and I arrive at Daniel’s mom’s house around one the next afternoon. We agreed it would be a faux pas to arrive at a party early when we barely know anyone there.
Arriving fashionably late was a good call; people are swarming in and out of the house, chattering and laughing, so we slip in basically unnoticed.
I’m excited to meet Daniel’s family, but I also don’t want to make a big deal out of, well, the fact that I’m meeting his family.
Gramps, on the other hand, appears to be brimming with excitement, calling out a robust hello to everyone we pass. We’ve barely reached the kitchen before he’s surrounded by people who want to pet Wally.
I find Daniel pulling water glasses out of a cabinet and stacking them on a tray.
“Hey, Mallory,” he says lightly.
“Hi. Thanks again for inviting—”
“You brought the girl home!” A woman I can only assume is Daniel’s mother joyfully clasps her hands over her bosom, which is wrapped in a KISS ME, I’M A CHEMIST apron.
I widen my eyes at Daniel. The girl?
He answers his mother with a laugh. “Mom, this isn’t—there is no—I mean, Mallory is a girl, yes, but—”
He’s interrupted by two slightly older guys, each holding a bottle of beer, who clap him on the shoulder and then bombard me with a chorus of “Mallory!” All I can do is gape at them as they shower me with “Finally”s and “We meet at last”s.
Daniel’s protests go completely ignored by his brothers.
As they carry on, Daniel’s eyes meet mine with a knowing twinkle.
I’m pretty sure if anyone caught the smile passing between us, they would know our secret immediately.
As his brothers elbow one another, each trying to shake my hand first, his mom swats them with a dish towel, shooing them away.
“Sorry about them,” she says to me. “I’m Annette.” She covers my hand with both of hers, which are small and warm. “Very nice to meet you, Mallory.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Thank you for inviting us.”
“I’ve heard all about you and your grandfather. Where is he?” She turns to her three sons, all of whom tower over her, and says, “What are you all standing here for? Someone needs to get the burgers on the grill.”
“I got it, Mom.”
“Leave it to the master.”
“Give me the tongs back!”
Daniel grins at me as his brothers retreat to the backyard, arguing all the way. “So yeah, those are my brothers.”
Gramps manages to extract himself from the group of dog lovers.
“Annette, this is my grandpa, Leonard.”
“Thank you for having us in your lovely home,” Gramps says, shaking her hand.
“Of course.” Annette reaches up and grips Gramps by the shoulders, giving him a motherly squeeze. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“And I’m sorry for yours. I knew Callum—not well, but he was a kind man.”
Annette nods gratefully, and then resumes bustling around behind the kitchen island.
“Anything I can help with?” Gramps asks as Wally sits alertly at his feet, watching us with his dark, shining eyes like he’s part of the conversation.
“Yes,” Annette says. “You can get yourself a cold beverage and settle into a chair out back. And help yourself to some food, too. It’s all out there.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice.”
“See you in a minute,” I say to Gramps, and he and Wally trot off to the back door.
Annette arranges pita chips around the perimeter of a chip-and-dip tray with what appears to be baba ghanoush in the center. Daniel ducks around her to grab a drink from the fridge.
“Mallory, can I get you a—” he begins, but he’s interrupted by one of the brothers, returning from the backyard.
This one has dark-brown hair and a deep, Florida tan. The other one—the grill master, apparently—looks more like Daniel, though his hair is a darker reddish brown.
The dark-haired brother waves Daniel away and says to me, “Can I make you a cocktail, Mallory?”
“That sounds amazing,” I say. “What can you make?”
“What can’t I make?”
Daniel rolls his eyes.
“My wife likes a Dirty Shirley.” He gestures across the room with his beer bottle; I turn and see a pretty woman with shiny black hair wearing a Lilly Pulitzer dress, talking to an older relative. “Can I make you one?”
“Sounds delicious.” I lean my elbows on the kitchen island as he pours grenadine, Sprite, and vodka into a cocktail glass.
“I’m Jeremy, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” An exaggeration, but it feels like the right thing to say. They seem to have heard about me, which is weird.
As he mixes my drink, Jeremy makes small talk, asking about where I’m from and what I do. It becomes apparent that despite his rowdy-older-brother act when we first arrived, Jeremy is a serious, earnest guy who’s only too happy to discuss his job as a realtor in extreme detail.
Daniel hovers, and once I have my syrupy-sweet drink, we cross through the living room to the back door.
The McKinnons’ house has cool tile floors underfoot, a giant TV surrounded by brown leather couches (they’re the biggest sectionals I’ve ever seen; I imagine Annette bought them to accommodate three enormous teenage boys and their friends), and a back door leading out to a screened-in pool.
There are a handful of kids splashing and shrieking in the pool—Daniel’s nieces and nephews, I suspect—while three grown-ups sit in lounge chairs sipping drinks and talking, occasionally glancing around to make sure the kids are still alive.
Daniel leads me across the pool deck to the other door, which opens onto a paved patio that’s decked out with a gas grill and built-in countertops, with a huge teak table, a red-and-white-striped umbrella open above it.
I follow Daniel to the food spread, where he hands me a paper plate.
I quickly realize that this is not your average family barbecue. These people are foodies.
There’s a platter of sticky-looking ribs that give off a heavenly aroma; a huge piece of salmon on a wooden plank, topped with some kind of green pistou sauce; a plate, resting on a bed of ice, containing scallop crudo surrounded by thin slices of lemon; a bowl of pale-orange gazpacho with diced cucumbers and chives on top; a platter of caprese salad made with juicy, colorful heirloom tomatoes and plump, hand-pulled shreds of mozzarella cheese. And that’s only one half of the table.
“Wow. Your family likes food,” I say.
Daniel spoons some caprese salad onto his plate. “Doesn’t yours?”
“Eh,” I shrug, “my mom likes lentils, beans, any and all pulses really, plus mushrooms and kale, whatever vegetable has the most prebiotics in it. Anything with the word flax , she loves. She uses agave instead of sugar, no matter the recipe. Adds chia seeds and walnuts to everything.”
“For the omega-threes?” Daniel ventures, now selecting an ear of corn.
“Exactly.”
“May she outlive us all,” he says.
“She will.”
“And your dad?” Wordlessly, Daniel offers me a scoop of pineapple and melon fruit salad. I nod, and he adds it to my plate.
“My dad would be content to eat scrambled eggs and toast for every meal for the rest of his life.”
“Hmm. Can’t say I feel the same.”
“Yeah, he’s a special duck.”
We find Gramps sitting in one of the many folding chairs that have been set up in the grass. He’s happily tucking into a plate of caprese salad and chatting with an older man with a handlebar mustache.
“Bet you’ll be happy to see your parents again,” Daniel says as we settle into chairs near Gramps.
“Yeah.” I try to keep my voice light and breezy. “I do love them, silly as they are.” Remembering that Daniel lost his own dad, I add, “And I’m lucky to live close to them. I bet you miss your dad.”
He chews, swallows, and nods. “Every day.”
“What was your favorite thing about him?” I pop some salmon into my mouth—it’s buttery, rich, and perfectly seasoned. I almost feel bad for Daniel that he’s a vegetarian.
He thinks for a moment. “He was a pretty reserved guy, except when it came to sports. He knew everything about our home teams, even trivia about things that had happened before he was born. He taught me how to play catch and how to bat—and when my brothers and I played sports in school, he was there for every single game. Literally, never missed any of our games from elementary school through high school. And he never got upset with us if we lost or did something dumb. He was always willing to talk strategy, to rehash a certain play over and over.”
He takes a long drink of his soda and then continues, “I think my favorite memory with him was when I was eight. August seventh, 1999, it was just Dad and me at a Rays game, and we saw Wade Boggs make his three thousandth hit. We’d been going to the Rays games since before I could remember, but that day, we felt like we had a real victory, like there was hope for our little team yet.
” He pauses, looks up at the puffy white clouds overhead, and then blinks.
“The next big moment for the Rays came almost ten years later. Dad and I watched that game from his hospital room.”
I’m about to reach over to squeeze his knee consolingly, but the man with the mustache comes over and says, “Did I hear you talking about Callum and that Rays game? Do you remember the time he got thrown out of a game for yelling at the umpire?”
Daniel groans at the memory. After the man has finished his story, Daniel introduces him as his uncle Terry.
Other family members gather around and add their own stories, until I have a pretty good idea where Daniel got some of his personality traits from—namely his mischievous sense of humor and his gentlemanly manners.
The party grows a bit rowdier as the afternoon wears on.
The way his family shrieks with laughter and interrupts one another in their eagerness to share stories reminds me of my family, the way they behaved at Gramps’s birthday party.
It makes me think Daniel’s clan would get along with mine.
But I squash that thought, because it’s pointless.
Daniel gets swept up in a lively conversation with his cousins. Wally is curled under Gramps’s chair, fast asleep. Gramps and I look at each other.
“How would you feel about making dinner together and then watching an old movie tonight?” Our last night , I think but don’t say.
“Watch what you’re calling old. To me, they’re just movies.” Gramps grins.
“We could stop by Foxy’s for dinner stuff on the way home. Maybe I’ll try out Lottie’s recipe for broccoli cheddar soup.”
“Sounds wonderful. And I’m sure Foxy will be delighted to see you.”
“Hey,” I laugh. Then I glance over at Daniel. A pang zips through me. It’s not really goodbye. I’ll be back to visit, I just don’t know when.
Gramps stands and says, “I’ll meet you at the car. I’ll take Wally for a little walk to let him do his business.”
“Okay. Be right there.”
Daniel notices me hovering and excuses himself from the group.
“Heading out?” His voice is low, and I wonder if I’m projecting my own feelings or if I detect sadness in his words. I nod.
“Thanks for—” I break off. It seems silly to keep thanking him for everything. For all that he’s done for Pebble Cottage, both as the property manager and as a friend. For inviting me to his friend’s party and this one. For befriending Gramps. And for…
His hands are in his pockets, and the few inches between us feels palpable.
I would like nothing more than to reach out, even just to nudge his arm with mine, but I get the sense that he prefers it this way.
Whether to avoid giving his family something to gossip about, or to avoid the temptation of anything more happening between us, I don’t know.
As for me, I’m weirdly relieved that we’re saying goodbye here, in front of an audience.
I don’t know what would happen if we were alone.
It’s going to be hard enough to leave, holding on to the memory of last night, and if anything else were to happen, I don’t know if I’d be able to say goodbye.
“We’ll be in touch,” Daniel says, and my heart lifts annoyingly. “About the house.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll reach out when I have a lead on possible tenants,” he continues.
“Okay.” So I guess this is it. “Talk soon, then.”
“Definitely,” he says, and I feel a weighty meaning behind the word, but I know that’s all I’m going to get. Before I can overthink it, I reach up and wrap my arms around him. He squeezes back, and I think I can feel his relief that I didn’t leave without a hug.
“Bye, Rosen.” His breath riffles my hair.
I don’t want to let go, but I feel like the longer I hold on, the harder it will be.
I pull back, gripping his hands for a fraction of a second.
Something in me is fighting against this, against saying goodbye.
It feels wrong. But I have to go back home; I have no choice.
And dragging it out will only make it hurt more.
I rip off the Band-Aid: “Bye, McKinnon. See you around.”