Chapter 7
SUMMER
Ismoothed the bright turquoise cloth across the patio table.
I always smiled when we brought it out. It was Mom’s.
She was all about bright colors. We had several tablecloths, including an orange one that I swore could blind you if it caught the sunlight just right.
Mom said family meals were celebrations and should look like a party.
I wasn’t sure about that, but it was our tradition.
Every Sunday, we brought out the festive tableware.
“I went with the pink,” Becca said, bringing out plates, napkins, and matching cups.
“River will be thrilled,” I said with a laugh.
“She gets her love for bright colors from Mom,” Becca said. “She turns clashing into a sport.”
“Just like Mom.”
I looked down at the beach. River and Ocean were flying their kites and laughing like the little hooligans they were.
Ocean’s was a shark. River’s kite was an enormous rainbow.
Another sign of her vibrant personality.
They ran in opposite directions along the hard wet sand, kite strings taut, faces tipped up as they taunted each other.
“That’s the look,” Becca said.
I glanced at her and saw she was watching them too with a soft smile on her face. My sister was strong. I loved her for being my big sister, but I loved her even more for being the amazing mother that she was. Those kids had no idea how lucky they were.
“What look?” I asked.
“The one you get when you watch them.” She nudged my arm. “Like you made them yourself.”
“I basically did,” I said. “I was in the delivery room for both of them.”
Which was true. Their father couldn’t be bothered. I felt so fortunate I was there for their very first breaths. I was their aunt, but I also felt like a second mother.
“Damn, it’s smells good, right?” she said.
“Always does,” I answered.
Dad was making his not-so-famous grilled fish soaked in lemon, butter, and garlic. He’d been making the dish for us since we were little. It never got old.
Sunday dinners were voluntary, but mandatory at the same time.
We never had to ask if someone was available.
We just knew we were going to be sitting at the table on Sunday evenings.
With me and Becca living together, it was easier to just have Dad come over to our place, which was technically his place, but he had passed it on to us.
By the time the food made it to the table, the kids had washed up and were ready to eat.
“Elbows,” Becca said, without looking.
Two sets of elbows came off the table.
My father set the last dish down, stood back, and looked at all of us the way he sometimes did at the start of dinner like he was making sure everyone was present and accounted for. Then he sat down, unfolded his napkin, and smiled.
“Thank you for having me,” he said. Which was what he said every Sunday, like we’d invited him.
“Dad, it was your house,” Becca said.
“It’s your house now. And you’ve done better things with it than I ever did.”
He looked around the patio—the hanging lights Becca and I had strung up last summer, the pots of seagrass along the railing, the sun-bleached wooden sign by the door that said no peeing off the porch in letters I’d painted myself.
The sign was necessary with a young boy who assumed as long as no one saw, it was perfectly okay to pee on the grass.
“I’m not sure your mother would have loved the sign,” he added with a laugh.
“Your mother?” River repeated like the idea of Becca having a mother confused her.
And it would, considering she never met our mother.
“Your grandma,” Becca said.
River nodded as if Grandma Mae was a different person than Becca’s mother. “Is she the one in the photo in the hallway? With the surfboard?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“She looks like Aunt Summer,” Ocean said.
Dad looked a little sad. “She does,” he agreed quietly.
The conversation moved away from Mom. River and Ocean steered the conversation from one topic to another. They had a lot to say about everything. Keeping up with their conversation was next to impossible. It was easier to smile and nod along.
At some point my father refilled everyone’s water. “I’ve been walking in the mornings with some of the folks at my building. There’s a woman named Sheryl who does the loop twice. She’s invited me to walk with her.”
I looked at Becca, making sure she was okay with the news.
We always knew it was coming. We wanted him to be happy.
But wanting something and then actually getting it was very different.
I had a flash into the future. A woman sitting at the table for Sunday dinner.
A woman at Thanksgiving and the kids’ birthday parties.
A woman that wasn’t our mother.
“Have you taken her up on the invitation?” I asked.
“I have,” he said. “She brought muffins to the common room on Thursday.”
Dad had moved out of the beach house and into the retirement community a little over a year ago. And I moved into the house. Becca was perfectly capable of living alone, but Dad and I just kind of decided one of us needed to be around to help with the kids.
I looked at Becca, gave her a slight nod to encourage her to ask questions.
“Dad.” Becca set her chin in her hand. “Do you like Sheryl?”
“I like her muffins.”
“Dad.”
He pointed at her with his fork. “I am simply telling you about my morning exercise routine. If you want to read into that, I can’t stop you.”
He was trying not to smile, and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I hadn’t seen that kind of smile on his face in a long time.
“Good for you,” I said.
Ten years was a long time to move through the world without the person you’d promised your heart to. He deserved muffins. He deserved the whole bakery. He deserved to have someone love him and take care of him like only a wife could do.
Would it be weird? Absolutely. But if she was a good woman and she loved my dad, I was good with it.
“Eat your rice,” he said.
Becca and I both smiled and returned to our meal.
After dinner the kids disappeared inside and came back in their pajamas. They settled onto the outdoor daybed with their books. River was only seven, but she was going to be an avid reader. Dad stayed outside with them while Becca and I cleared the table.
“What do you think?” Becca asked quietly.
I rinsed while she loaded the dishwasher.
“I think we have to keep an open mind.”
“Nervous?” she asked.
“If she breaks his heart, she swims with fishes.”
We both burst into laughter.
Dad walked in. “What are you girls laughing about?”
“Nothing,” we both said in unison.
“I heard something interesting today,” he said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Sheryl and I were on the putting green and we heard there’s a certain family back in town. I just noticed all the lights are on next door, so I guess that means it’s true.”
I kept my eyes on the dishes.
“Rumor’s true, then,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question. He had the information. This was what he had done when we were younger and were busted. He gave us the chance to come clean. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but he knew something. Obviously not everything, but definitely something.
“I saw him last night. On the beach.” I dropped forks into the silverware holder. “Colt is here.”
“Haven’t seen that family in a while,” Dad said.
Becca was watching me. She was clearly surprised I hadn’t told her. To be fair, there hadn’t been an opportunity.
“He’s here for business,” I said. “A cruise line opening a headquarters.” I reached for the next dish. “They’re planning to put in a port.”
“What?” he gasped. “A port. Here. On our shore.”
“I know,” I murmured.
He looked at me and shook his head.
“I know,” I said again.
“What’s happening?” Becca asked.
I told her, watching their faces as I explained what was going to happen to our happy little home.
Becca looked at me like I’d told her someone was coming to bulldoze our actual house. Which wasn’t entirely out of the question, now that I thought about it.
“A cruise port,” she said. “Here.”
“That’s what he said.”
She put her hands on her hips. “He can’t do that.”
“He’s already done it, apparently. He said the deal is done. First of the year, they break ground. They’ll be running cruises next summer.”
Dad leaned against the counter with his arms crossed and his jaw set. He was looking out the window in the direction of the Anderson house.
“Mom would be losing her mind right now,” Becca said softly.
“I know,” I said.
We all went quiet for a moment and let that sit. The loss of her was always there, just below the surface, and certain things had a way of pulling it back up.
Our mother had spent the better part of the nineties planting herself directly in the path of a resort developer who had decided that Surfside Cove was going to be the next Monterey.
She’d organized town halls. She’d written letters and made phone calls.
She’d stood on the steps of the city planning office with a hand-painted sign and a thermos of coffee for three days straight in February when the weather was miserable and everyone told her she was wasting her time.
She hadn’t been wasting her time.
The resort developer eventually moved on to somewhere else. Surfside stayed exactly what it was. Small. A little rough around the edges. Ours.
Dad always said it was the first time he ever really saw her. He’d known her since they were teenagers, had been friendly with her for years, but it wasn’t until he watched her stand up for a cause that he understood exactly who she was.
He told us that story every few years. I never got tired of hearing it. I wished I could have known her longer than the seventeen years I got with her.
“She fought so hard,” I said.
“Thirty years,” Dad said, still looking at the window.
“She spent thirty years fighting for this town. Every time something came along that threatened to change what made it worth living in, your mother was the first one standing up.” He exhaled slowly through his nose.
“She gave everything she had to this place.”
“And now some rich asshole wants to take it away,” Becca hissed, glancing toward the back door where the kids were still settled on the daybed.
“The permits aren’t approved yet,” I said. “Maybe there’s still something that can be done.”
“You think the city planning office is going to stand up to that kind of money?” Becca scoffed.
“Prick,” he said quietly.
“What’s a prick?” Ocean asked.
“Never mind!” Dad, Becca, and I said at the exact same time.
Ocean looked at each of us in turn, clearly unconvinced but smart enough to know he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. He got a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water.
The three of us stared at each other.
Ocean gave us all strange looks before he walked back outside.
And then, despite everything, we all started laughing. Becca pressed her hand over her mouth. Dad shook his head and looked at the ceiling.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forget there are little ears around.”
“It’s fine,” Becca said. “They lived with their father. They’ve heard a lot worse than prick.”
Their father who’d abandoned them. It was sad he wasn’t in the picture, but then again, it was probably for the best. He was a shitty husband. Manipulative and a real pig. His dropping out of their lives sucked, but Dad stepped up. He was trying to fill the empty space.
“What do we do?” Becca asked.
I looked out the window at the dark bushes on our side that divided our property from his. The Anderson house sat next door with all its lights on. He was there.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t want to sit around and watch it happen,” Becca said.
I agreed with her, but I wasn’t sure I had my mother’s courage.