Maine Characters

Chapter Three

Lucy

Breaking the news to Dawn was brutal, and Lucy is exhausted from an afternoon of emotional boot camp. She doesn’t have the energy to play hostess, but in a limp voice, she explains who’s who.

Vivian stiffly shakes hands with each one. “Hi.”

“Nice to meet you,” Paige says tightly.

Caleb cocks his head. “Hey.”

Vivian fixes him with a coy look. She’s not flirting with him, is she?

Lucy doesn’t have energy for the bonfire, but her best friends insisted she shouldn’t be alone right now (Vivian doesn’t count as soothing company). She had to agree. If nothing else, maybe carrying out this tradition would be a cathartic way to honor her dad’s memory. Paige unloads the burgers and corn into the fridge.

“You’re barbecuing?” Vivian asks.

“And lighting the bonfire if the weather holds,” Caleb says.

It had turned into a lovely afternoon.

Vivian rubs her arms. “It’ll be so nice to warm up in front of that.”

“It’s too bad the boiler went on the fritz for you,” Lucy says.

“Another thing to fix up before it goes on the market,” Vivian notes lightly.

The atmosphere gets even more strained.

“I’ll miss this place,” Paige says.

Vivian takes that as her cue to leave. “Well, nice to meet you both. I’ll be upstairs.”

“You don’t want to join us?” Caleb asks.

Lucy and Paige both glare at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s transfixed. She can’t believe this.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to crash your party,” Vivian demurs.

“You wouldn’t be,” he says.

Lucy could strangle him.

Vivian gives a tentative smile. “Well…I guess I could use a bite to eat.”

Lucy scowls and walks out to the deck.

The annual bonfire started when Lucy was in middle school. Hank would grill cheeseburgers, hot dogs, skewers of vegetables, corn, and chicken breasts slathered in barbecue sauce. She’d set out fruit punch, a cooler of popsicles, and a whole buffet of s’mores paraphernalia for after dinner. There were streamers and sparklers and cans of bug spray. When night fell, they’d pile into the boat to watch fireworks explode overhead.

The tradition felt permanent, as regular and predictable as birthday cake and Christmas trees. This felt especially true the summer after Lucy and Patrick had gotten engaged. It was Patrick’s, what, eighth or ninth year at the bonfire? He and Hank didn’t have much in common besides her, though they managed to stir up discussion over Game of Thrones . Lucy hung back for a moment, taking in their silhouettes backlit by tall stretches of flames. She thought about them returning to this same spot, both grayer each year. It felt inevitable, and that certainty made her flush with pride.

Now Caleb carries Adirondack chairs down from the garage while the girls build the bonfire. Vivian makes a trip to the kitchen. Paige puts on a classic rock playlist and tips her phone into a bucket they’ll use as a makeshift speaker. Flames lick the warm July air. The lake buzzes with boat parties.

“You okay?” Paige asks. Her heart-shaped face wrinkles in concern.

Lucy grits out one brittle syllable. “Nope.”

“Caleb shouldn’t have invited her. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“Too late now.” Lucy sighs.

She pulls a seltzer from the cooler, deliberates, and shoves it back into the ice. She grabs a beer and a bottle opener instead and pries off the cap harder than strictly necessary. The Allagash label is printed with the outline of pine trees and sloping mountains. “ From Maine, with love ,” it says.

“How long is she sticking around?” Paige asks.

Lucy takes a swig of the cold spiced beer. “I don’t think she’s leaving until she puts the house on the market. I’m trying to stall her. Maybe I can get her to change her mind.”

“You think she could be swayed?”

“Honestly? No. She doesn’t care what I think.”

“You can always stay with me, you know.”

If only it were that simple. Nora is teething—there are more pleasant places to be at five o’clock in the morning than on her best friend’s couch. Besides, the pep talks Paige (and Dawn) have given about her exciting new chapter as a single woman only make her want to defend Patrick more fiercely.

Vivian returns with bags of potato chips. Lucy wishes she’d disappear already.

Stiffly, she asks Lucy, “How’s your mom doing?”

“Terribly.”

“Really?”

“He’s dead .”

Vivian flinches. “No, I mean, I didn’t know that he and your mom were still close.”

“They weren’t, really. But still.”

In fact, Dawn avoided Hank whenever she could. She didn’t date much, either. At first, the demands of single motherhood left little time for it. Later she rarely bothered trying. Lucy didn’t blame her. Gossips still painted her as the other woman thirty years later. Neither Dennis Fletcher, the electrician she once dated for eight months, nor Wayne Rouillard, the fireman she dated for four, ever stood much of a chance.

Caleb sets down another armful of logs. Vivian glances at his biceps bulging under their weight. Lucy slumps back in her seat. Nobody seems to know quite what to say, and she’s in no mood to stoke conversation. Paige checks her chest-length hair for split ends, avoiding any interaction with Vivian out of loyalty to Lucy.

“Oh, we’re short a chair, aren’t we? Here, you can take mine,” Vivian says to Caleb, rising.

He shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“You’re the one doing all the heavy lifting.”

“I’m comfier down here,” Caleb promises, settling onto the earth next to her.

He stretches his legs out toward the bonfire and takes a casual swig of beer, trying to make the lie look convincing.

They hear a car pulling into the driveway.

“Who else did you invite?” Lucy asks, frowning.

“Hooray, it’s the third long-lost, secret child,” Vivian deadpans.

Lucy gives her a withering look. “That’s not funny.”

Paige winces. “I’m sorry, he was asking how you were doing, and—”

Lucy is split in two at the sight of Patrick ambling down the hill toward the firepit. They’d vowed “in good times and in bad,” and here he was, just like he’d once promised. She wants his comfort—needs it. At the same time, though, she’s afraid to lean on a man who took “?’til death do us part” so loosely.

“Who is this?” Vivian asks.

“Patrick, Luce’s husband,” Caleb says.

“Soon-to-be ex-husband,” Paige corrects.

Lucy isn’t sure what it means that neither of those labels sounds quite right.

“It’s sort of complicated,” she explains.

“Is it?” Paige asks, poorly masking her alarm.

Patrick has never liked being the center of attention. He greets them with a half-hearted, “Happy Fourth of July.”

He stops two feet away from her and shoves his hands in his pockets, as if coming any closer would be uncomfortable. Then, maybe because he sees how miserable she is, he leans down for a tentative hug. She’s grateful that he lets her be the first one to pull away.

Then he braces himself on the arms of her chair and studies her tenderly, taking in her puffy eyes and the uneven skin she stopped bothering to care for weeks ago.

“How are you holding up?” he asks softly.

He’d texted her the same question a few hours ago, but she hadn’t gotten around to answering. She was afraid that if she started to write back, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

She shrugs, conscious of her friends watching them. “You know. Not well.”

“She showered today,” Paige points out. “That’s something.”

He nods, pushing off her chair. “Good. And you must be Vivian?”

With a coy smile, she extends her hand. “Unfortunately.”

It’s surreal to watch them meet. Patrick studies her intently, like he’s searching for traces of Lucy in Vivian’s features. She wonders what he sees.

“Want a beer, man?” Caleb asks.

“Please.” Patrick scans for a place to sit, ultimately choosing to stand a foot back from the rest of the group. Raising his bottle, he says, “To Hank.”

“To Hank,” Caleb and Paige echo.

“To Dad,” Vivian says tightly, staring down at her white sandals.

Lucy is barefoot. Given how little Vivian respects Hank, she doesn’t want to see Vivian mourn, not when she had the best of their dad and the audacity to make Lucy feel so small. She sometimes resented her dad for his absence, but compared to Paige, who hasn’t seen her dad at all since elementary school, she felt lucky. Grateful. Loved. Vivian has been undoing all of that from the minute she got here. Lucy drains her beer.

“To Dad,” she says as her vision begins to blur with tears. “I loved him so much.”

Vivian

This is the most depressing party in the world. Vivian’s been to more entertaining funerals. Lucy and Paige speak quietly enough that she can’t make out more than a word here and there—and she’s pretty sure that’s on purpose. The bits she does catch are fraught: “miss him…selling…hate this.” They clearly don’t want her to join them, but even if they did, she wouldn’t know what to say. The bonfire flags in the breeze, so Caleb stokes the embers until they glow a vivid orange and yellow again. When he announces he’s going to get the coals started, Vivian jumps at the chance to talk privately.

“Need a hand?” she asks, though she doesn’t know the first thing about how to barbecue.

He brushes dirt from his palms. “No, but you’re welcome to join me. Although, I mean, I guess this is your house and your stuff. So, obviously you’re welcome. That was dumb. Um, do you mind if I use your barbecue?”

His verbal stumbles are endearing. Surprising, too. He has thick chestnut hair that glints with copper in the sun, a strong jaw with a hint of scruff, broad freckled shoulders, and long legs. If he lived in the city, his dating app profile would come with a waitlist attached.

“As long as I get a cheeseburger out of this deal, use it anytime.”

As they head up the hill, she says, “It’s Caleb, right? You used to work at the pub?”

“Still do, part-time.”

“We…” She gestures between the two of them as he hauls the barbecue out of the garage and rolls it onto the driveway. “Met. A few years ago.”

He laughs to himself and shakes his head. “You think I wouldn’t remember that?”

She shrugs. She still certainly remembers what happened that night.

“It was four years ago,” he says, grinning as he hoists a half-full bag of charcoal briquettes. “I wondered if you’d ever come back.”

“It was the end of the summer. And then…”

“No, no, I get it. I’m glad you did come back. I just wish you were here under better circumstances.” He tips the briquettes into the barbecue’s chimney, stuffing the bottom of it with crumpled sheets of the Boston Globe. Grumbling, he adds, “It was a dollar cheaper to do this before the Journal Tribune went out of business. Wanna do the honors?”

“The honors?”

She’s not playing dumb—that’s never been her style. She hates being clueless.

“You light it here,” he says, handing her a matchbook and showing her where to hold the flame to the wads of newspaper. A spark tingles down her spine when their fingers brush for the first time in years. “And then we’ll wait for this to burn before we add more coals and then the food.”

She strikes the match. The flame catches. For a moment, they both watch the edges of the paper furl and char.

Clearing her throat, she asks, “How do you know Lucy?”

“Um, kindergarten. We all grew up around here, went to the same schools.”

She narrows her eyes. “When we met, did you know who I was?”

“I knew Hank had another daughter, but I didn’t put the pieces together, I swear.”

They watch smoke curl through the air.

“What’s it been like, meeting her? It must be wild, I can’t imagine it.”

A low groan slips out. “Complicated. She hates me.”

“Nah, Luce is too nice to hate anyone.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” It comes out more bitterly than she likes.

He glances behind them, toward the bonfire. “I don’t know if I should be saying this, but she used to dream about meeting you. She wanted you to be real sisters.”

Vivian is surprised by how much that hurts to hear. “Can we actually not talk about this?”

With a regretful nod, he says, “Absolutely. I’m sorry.”

While he tends to the barbecue, she casts around for any question she can shove at him, anything safe and mild that’ll let her regain control of herself again.

“So, you’re part-time at the pub now—what about the rest of the time?”

“There we go,” he says.

“What?”

“Work—a New Yorker’s favorite question.”

She laughs. “And that’s a bad thing?”

“I’m just teasing you. I work at Adventure Cove. You know it?”

“Actually, no.”

“Really? It’s such a tourist trap, I thought you’d be well acquainted.” He gives her a playful wink.

“Oh, low blow! Come on,” she says, lightly slapping his arm.

She’s grateful to him for lightening the mood.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he chuckles. “It’s an adventure park over in Waterboro. White-water rafting, ropes courses, and zip-lining in the summers; tubing, skiing, and snowboarding in the winters. I teach and lead groups through the courses.”

That explains his lean physique, more muscled now than he was back then. Thousands of hours spent belaying people across ropes courses and careening down snowy slopes would do that.

Vivian has no interest in any physical activity beyond unloading cases of wine, but even if she did, Hank would’ve discouraged her from visiting. They rarely ventured beyond Fox Hill Lake, ostensibly because nowhere else could compete with their slice of paradise. Of course he was keeping Vivian in hiding. He was squirrely whenever they ran errands together. On multiple occasions, they bumped into people he knew, and each time, he’d try to slither out of the conversation before someone asked, “And who’s this?” As a kid, she usually wandered off, bored by adult conversation and not reading into his weirdness. But after she overheard him on the phone, she made a point of introducing herself to people around town, loudly and clearly enunciating “Vivian Levy, Hank’s daughter” as he stiffened beside her. The rush of spiteful pleasure never lasted more than a moment, though. They’d both be moody and distant for the rest of the day.

Caleb says, “And I still do a few bartending shifts when I can. I’m saving up to travel. I’m dying to backpack across Southeast Asia for a few months.”

“Whoa.” She can’t imagine the impulse to leave home for that long. Her whole life has been in the city.

“What’s new with you?”

“Since we last spoke? New apartment, new job…” New relationship, too, but she shouldn’t give Oscar any airtime. “Work is kind of nuts, but I love it.”

“Of course you do,” he teases. “What else is going on?”

“Outside work, I’m into, um…I really like to…”

She casts around for a legitimate hobby worth mentioning. She always means to catch the new exhibits at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, or at least gallery-hop through Chelsea, but her hectic schedule makes that pretty much impossible. It’d be silly to talk up her love of painting; it’s been ages since she made anything. Beyond that, her schedule isn’t compatible with most workout classes, and the same Sally Rooney novel has sat untouched on her nightstand for six months.

“I like wine,” she finishes lamely.

“You like wine, ” he echoes, amused.

“I mean, I know a lot about it. I’m a somm.” She grins through her defense, feeling the ease of their connection sweeping back in.

“Somm?”

“Sommelier.”

He rolls the French word around on his tongue. “ Some-all-yay. Remind me, what exactly does that entail?”

Most people Vivian meets who aren’t that confident in their knowledge of wine—which is to say almost everyone—attempt to hide that fact. Embarrassed, they fluff up what they do know, requesting a dry red, not realizing every single red she carries is dry; nobody pairs sweet dessert wine with dinner. She doesn’t blame them. The industry is notoriously opaque. Bottles from Burgundy, for example, are never labeled with the type of grape they’re made from, because it’s assumed that anyone who drinks it already knows the red is pinot noir and the white is chardonnay. Caleb lays out the question with unselfconscious curiosity. It’s refreshing.

“I recommend wines to the restaurant’s guests.”

“Based on what goes with their food?”

“Among other things.”

“Like?”

“What they’re in the mood for. What they already like. Their budget. Whether they want something familiar or brand-new. You learn to pick up clues based on what they’re wearing, how they carry themselves, how they talk to you—all that can inform what you recommend, like if you think they’d rather have Champagne in a flute or a coupe, that kind of thing.”

He whistles. “That sounds complicated.”

After her string of miserable days, his awe makes her feel like herself again. “Especially when you have twelve hundred wines in your cellar.”

“Wow.”

Vivian likes that he’s impressed. Up here, people build houses, wire electricity, repair boats. By comparison, her skills are frivolous. She studied art history with a plan to work at a gallery after college. To celebrate her twenty-first birthday, her parents took her out to Daniel to splurge on the nine-course French tasting menu with world-class wine pairings to match. She was hooked on it all, from the choreographed movements of the servers to the exquisite flavors, and wanted to know more. The more she learned, the more she saw wine as art you could drink.

Soon she was prepping for her first somm certificate. She began working as a cellar hand, and by twenty-seven, she had reached the top of the ladder, master sommelier. In order to receive that diploma, she needed to blind-taste six wines. With only a few sips, she’d have to accurately spit out the grape varietal, country, region, and vintage. She’d spent years honing her palate to the point where she could sense the volcanic soil in a nerello mascalese from Sicily or taste the autumn mist lingering in a Loire Valley chenin blanc. Her dedication paid off—almost nobody reaches master somm so young.

“So, what would you recommend for me?”

There’s a challenging tilt to his chin, like he’s daring her to analyze him up close. His powerful-looking shoulders and taut calves spark desire low in her belly. She ignores it.

“To pair with this meal?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know you that well, but…”

He smirks. “Sure.”

He’s making her heart race, not that she’d ever let him catch on. “Okay, a red, for sure. With a burger, nothing’s better than a cabernet sauvignon. Full-bodied, big flavors, dark fruits. I noticed you sneaking bites of green pepper and—”

He withdraws his hand from the platter, snickering.

“I know it sounds weird, but cab sauv typically has this really lovely green pepper note, too.”

“Nice,” he says, nodding as if that’s the end of her spiel.

“Oh, we’re just getting started,” she says, relishing the pleasure of being on her own turf after forty-eight hours at sea.

Amused, he gives a slight apologetic bow. “By all means, go ahead.”

“So, if we’re talking cab sauv, the classic choice would be a bottle from Bordeaux in France. We could go for Chateau Lafite Rothschild—it’s to die for—but I’m guessing you’d rather not drop a thousand dollars on a few drinks.”

He nearly chokes on his beer.

“Right, no. It’s the Fourth of July, so let’s go with something homegrown, right? In the US, California cab gets all the glitz and attention. It’s flashy. And unless I’m wildly mistaken, you’re not that kind of a guy.”

“No.”

“Jeans instead of a tux.”

“Yeah,” he says, pleased.

“So let’s look at the Walla Walla Valley in Washington. It’s kind of flown under the radar for a while. Now one of the winemakers out there, Drew Bledsoe, I think he used to play for…” She squints and crosses her fingers. “The Patriots?”

Caleb lights up. “No way, really? He was a quarterback. I had his jersey as a kid.”

She’s thrilled to be nailing this.

“There we go. I only know of him because of work—don’t you dare test me on other athletes.”

He grins. “Patrick Mahomes? You gotta know Travis Kelce.”

She rolls her eyes. “Drew moved back home to Walla Walla and actually makes some of the best cab sauv in the world. Like, he’s won international awards.”

“Whoa, really?”

“Yep. His cab has notes of blueberry, blackberry, cherry, with a little bit of a floral element on the palate, too. And it’s half the price of a bottle from Napa.”

Caleb gives a slow clap. “That was unbelievable. Sold.”

Warmth spreads through her chest. Neither of them breaks eye contact. “That’s my job.”

Once everything is cooked, they carry it all back to the firepit. Lucy is sitting sideways across an Adirondack chair with her knees slung over one arm and a drink in her hand, looser than Vivian’s ever seen her.

“Here we go again…” Vivian mutters, steeling herself for another awkward encounter.

“Take it easy. She’s had a rough go of it.”

“Wait.” She nudges his shoulder with hers. “Can we not tell Lucy that we know each other? At least not yet. Things are already so bad between us.”

“I don’t know…Is it a big deal? I don’t think she’d care.”

She doubts that. “Please? Things are tense enough already.” She can see the wheels turning in his head.

“For Lucy’s sake, fine.”

Vivian exhales. “You’re the best.”

Lucy

Lucy hasn’t been this drunk since Halloweekend back in college. At some point while she stewed, watching traitorous Caleb flirt with Vivian from afar, somebody must have gone up to the house to retrieve a bottle of Hank’s favorite Scotch. At first, the amber liquid scorched her insides as it slid from her throat to her stomach, but now she’s only pleasantly warm and woozy, like she’s wrapped in the fleece blankets she and Patrick used to share on frigid nights.

It got late. The sun went down in a flaming ball of tangerine. Paige went home to Kyle and Nora, and now Lucy’s alone with Patrick on the boat, tethered to the dock, gently rocking over midnight blue waves. Depending on how she squints, he’s either her ex or her husband. Without thinking, she burrows under his outstretched arm and leans against his chest.

“Do you really think we should be sitting like—” Patrick starts.

“Why are men supposed to like Scotch?” she asks, nose-deep in her Solo cup. “It’s like getting punched in the face by a tree on fire.”

He laughs, which makes her feel glowy and alive again. “Don’t drink it if you don’t like it.”

She tips her head back to look at him. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Yeah.”

“I do kind of like it.”

He laughs. “I can tell.”

A loud crack! bursts over the lake. With a jolt, she sits up—slopping some of her drink down her front—and sees a spray of white light over dozens of scattered boats. Fireworks! How could she have forgotten?

“Oh, look!” she says, pointing, as if he could possibly have missed it.

“Yeah.”

She feels him watching her, though, not the sky.

Lucy settles back against him and threads her fingers through his. The fireworks shoot up and explode into big, beautiful pinwheels. Bang! Bang! Bang! In their wake, clouds of smoke linger, then fade. She finds herself watching that more closely than the pretty bursts. The haze doesn’t linger long, and she imagines it settling over the lake, swirling into the water the way ashes would. She can’t hide her tears for long.

“Hey, hey,” Patrick says softly, rubbing her arm.

“He’s not here to watch with us.”

“I know. I wish he could be.”

“No, no, it’s not just that.”

She sits up, and in a thick, trembling voice, tries to spell it all out: It’s the fireworks, the gunpowder, the lake. It’s Vivian threatening to dump the ashes out of spite. It’s missing the funeral, missing the chance to say goodbye, missing the chance to even tell Hank that Patrick left her. It’s being a failure of a wife, and now failing at wanting to move on. It’s sobbing in Patrick’s arms, exactly where she’s supposed to be, except he doesn’t want her anymore.

“Lucy, hey, breathe,” he says.

Most of her words are unintelligible smears at this point anyway. She sucks in air.

“You’re not a failure.”

“You’re done with me.”

“That’s not—” He sighs. “I’m sorry for hurting you. I really am.”

“You are?”

“Of course I am.”

It doesn’t compute. He left her.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“Because you shouldn’t be alone right now,” he says softly.

“Yeah, but do you actually want to be here? This isn’t your job anymore.”

Lucy can hear the nastiness in her tone but can’t rein it in. She tries to anchor herself by focusing on his green eyes. The problem is, he has four of them.

Then her face puckers again. “I don’t even know if you’re an organ donor.”

He frowns. “What?”

It takes a few tries, but eventually, she ekes out, “I’m your wife and I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen if you die.”

In Patrick’s pupils, fireworks crackle emerald and gold.

She wipes her nose. “I’m still your wife, you know. Legally.”

“I know.”

“You made a face.”

“I was trying to remember if I’m an organ donor. Luce, I don’t even know. Here, let’s find out.”

He digs his wallet out of his pocket and shines his phone on his driver’s license. In the bottom right corner, the card is printed with “ORGAN DONOR” next to a little red heart. She’s just sober enough to clock that he’s talking to her like she’s a child, but drunk enough that she doesn’t care.

“Now we both know,” he says gently.

“I think I’m an organ donor, too.”

“That’s great.”

The sky lights up in what must be the grand finale, and as they watch, she settles against his chest. He strokes her hair. Lucy closes her eyes and lets herself sink into the sensation—but then it abruptly stops.

“Hey,” Caleb says cautiously, standing above them on the dock. “I just wanted to see how everything’s going over here.”

“A little sad,” Patrick says. “But we’re managing.”

“We’re both organ donors,” she explains.

“Huh?”

“Just go with it,” Patrick says. “I need to run up to the house for a sec. Can you sit with her?”

In his absence, her arms and legs break out into goose bumps. Caleb takes over on Lucy duty.

“I brought you the rest of your dinner,” he says, stepping into the boat. “And some water.”

She picks up what’s left of her drink and sloshes it toward him. “I’ve got my liquid dinner.”

“It might help to put some more food in your stomach.”

She snorts. “Like what you made with your…your…” She tries to think of a coolly biting insult but comes up short. “Your cheeseburger assistant over there?”

“I was being friendly, nothing more,” he says calmly. “But hey, maybe keep your voice down a bit when talking about her. She’s right over there.”

“Sure, I’ll be careful with Vivian’s feelings,” Lucy whispers sarcastically. “ That’s important.”

Caleb gently removes the liquor from her grasp, trading it for solid food and water. It’s not just the burger she abandoned earlier after two bites—he also added a hot dog in a golden toasted bun drizzled with ketchup and a bright yellow ear of corn shining with butter. She sinks her teeth into the burger, not caring that a little juice runs down her hand. The patty is rich with flavor and grilled to perfection; the cheddar is a hearty, gooey delight; a fat red tomato and a leaf of lettuce round out the satisfying bite.

“Are you okay with him being here?” Caleb asks. “Things looked…cuddly.”

“Yeah, and?”

Drunk people can play dumb, too.

“I just want to make sure you’re doing all right.”

Lucy’s vision fills with tears again. “I’m not. Of course I’m not. But I have a really great burger, and you, and Paige, and probably the last fireworks I’ll ever see here, and…” She hiccups. “The burger is actually incredible, though.”

This is more than dinner. It’s proof she still has someone besides Patrick who will care for her when she’s too much of a mess to fend for herself. Happy Independence Day.