The sun started to set. Lauren could feel the breeze off of the ocean through the open kitchen window. Outside, her parents and sister were sitting at the table by the pool. Her mother had insisted on dinner together. Lauren agreed it was a good idea. After Ethan’s innocent but nonetheless provocative question—“Do you like my mom?”—she was determined to hit the reset button on her sisterly relationship.
Lauren grabbed the box of leftover muffins and doughnuts from the restaurant and brought them outside to the table littered with crumpled takeout wrappers from Sack O’ Subs, her father’s and sister’s empty beer bottles, and stray kernels of corn from her mother’s tomato and corn salad.
Her mother picked up a doughnut. “Does Nora have someone baking on the premises? These don’t seem very fresh.”
“She gets a delivery every day,” Lauren said, slipping back into her chair. “The muffins are great. People buy them in bulk all year round.”
Beth sniffed. She was a pastry snob. But Ethan’s eyes lit up.
Her father stood and began clearing dishes.
“Wait. Before you go, Dad, there’s something I wanted to mention to all of you.” She didn’t know if she should bring it up, had been debating doing so all dinner. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that the filmmaker showing up at Nora’s house hadn’t been a coincidence. And even if it had, he was getting too close for comfort. All day she had braced herself for him to appear at the restaurant. He didn’t.
Still, not wanting a false sense of security, she texted Henny and asked if her renter had left yet. He’s here for the week, she wrote back. Why? Do you know someone else who wants the room? Give them my number.
If Lauren wasn’t talking to him, what was he doing in town all week?
“So, um, this annoying thing happened at work the other day and I just wanted to tell you guys so we’re all on the same page.” Her mother and sister looked at her expectantly. “It’s not that big of a deal but this guy tracked me down at work and said he’s doing a documentary. About Rory. Obviously, I told him to leave me alone, and hopefully that’s the end of that. I doubt he’d approach any of you but if he does, I just want you to be prepared.”
Her mother looked horrified. “Oh, Lauren. How intrusive!”
“Everyone’s out to make a buck,” said her father.
“Prepared for what?” Stephanie said.
Lauren looked at her. “To tell him to leave you alone—that you’re not talking to him.”
“Why is it your business if I talk to him?”
“Why would you want to talk to him?”
“I just wonder why you think you get to dictate who we talk to. We knew Rory too, you know.”
Lauren’s heart began to pound. “This has nothing to do with you, Stephanie, and you know it. So just stay out of it.”
“If someone wants to talk to me, then clearly they think it does have to do with me. You don’t own what happened, Lauren.”
“Fine, you knew Rory too. So you know the last thing he would want is some exploitative film about him.”
“Girls, please,” Beth said. “This is not worth arguing over. Lauren, of course you’re right. The last thing you need is someone dredging all of that up again. Stephanie, you have to respect your sister’s wishes on this.”
“Well, it’s too late for that,” Stephanie said, looking pleased with herself. “I already spoke to him.”
Lauren stared at her, dumbfounded. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“You better not be serious, Stephanie.”
“Ethan, buddy, come with me to see if there’s any ice cream in the freezer,” Howard said.
“I am serious.”
“You’ve really crossed a line this time!” Lauren turned to her mother. “I’m sorry, but she has to go. I can’t live with her all summer.”
She pushed herself up from her chair so hard it toppled to the ground.
Howard made it so damn hard for her to admit when she was wrong.
He didn’t say anything while they put away the dinner plates, but his silence spoke loud and clear to Beth. This was a big mistake.
Fine. Maybe she was naive to think a summer under the same roof would magically make the girls best friends again. Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted Stephanie move into the Green Gable and then insist to Howard that they do the same. But the reality was that they wouldn’t have had to move at all if Howard hadn’t lost their home. She’d spent decades working beside him in that store, the last few years strategizing with him on how to keep things afloat. And yet he never thought to mention he’d taken out a second mortgage.
That was the thanks she got for giving up her dream of having her own catering company to join him in his family business. To stand by his side like a good wife.
“I bought tickets to Florida for next week,” he said suddenly.
“What? Why on earth would you do that?” Beth, stacking dishes in the cabinet, stopped mid-reach. She set the plates down on the counter.
“Bill and Lorraine invited us. They’re having a retirement party. Bill just bought a boat.” Bill and Lorraine were friends from the country club they used to belong to. Howard and Beth had dropped out of the club a few years earlier. Money had become tighter, and Beth stopped enjoying the annual cycle of social events after losing Rory. She had suddenly become high profile, exposed. It was a fraction of what her daughter experienced but enough to take away her pleasure in large gatherings. Bill and Lorraine had also left the club, trading their house in Villanova for a home on a golf course in Frenchman’s Creek, Florida.
“Why didn’t you talk to me about it first?” There was no way she was flying off to Florida. She didn’t want to travel, and she certainly didn’t want to go put on a happy face when everything was falling apart. “This isn’t a good time. We have so much to figure out.”
“I know. But now I’m thinking Florida might be worth looking into.”
“Looking into? In what sense?”
“We’d get more for our money out there. And there’s no income tax.”
“Well, we have no income. So that’s not a huge plus.”
“Can you try to be positive for once?”
“Howard, no. I’m not moving to Florida.”
“You can’t even be open to the idea? Give me one good reason why not.”
“For one thing, I have work. The foundation—”
“Let Lauren get more involved! She needs to get off this damn island. If you stop enabling her, maybe she will.”
She shook her head. “You just get to make all the decisions, don’t you?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Maybe I would have if you’d leveled with me sooner! And what about Ethan?”
“What about him?” Howard said blankly.
“Don’t you want to spend time with your grandson?”
“Of course I do. But Beth, you and I have to rebuild. And Stephanie’s going to have to step up. And you know what? Lauren has to get on with her life. Even if we weren’t selling the house, she should be looking for an apartment. It’s outrageous to heat this place all winter for one person.”
“You’re so hard on them,” she said, feeling heartbroken. “You’re not perfect either, you know.”
“Never said I was. But I did say, from day one, that Lauren was too young to get serious with that boy. Didn’t I? She was so bright, had so much going for her. Now look at her.”
“She’s going to be fine,” Beth said, a whisper.
Howard shut the dishwasher, pressed the buttons so the room filled with the hum of the machine.
“I’m leaving next Thursday. Flight’s at noon out of Philly,” he said, tossing the sponge behind the sink. “I hope you’ll be with me. But I’m going either way.”
Matt didn’t feel like he had a ton of reasons to pat himself on the back lately, but getting the footage of that kid was a stroke of genius.
He barely noticed that the room had fallen dark as the sun set, the only light coming from his screen. Again, he played the clip of Ethan kicking the soccer ball around the beach, the sun-dappled ocean behind him, seagulls fluttering nearby like birds in a goddamn Disney film. Of course, it would have been a thousand times better if he’d been able to get footage of Rory playing ball as a kid, but he’d lost that opportunity when Mrs. Kincaid died shortly after he interviewed her. She’d kept promising to send him some childhood photos and video clips, but it never happened. At least now he could use this kid as juxtaposition. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough work-around.
He jumped to footage of Rory’s high-school athletic field: General H. H. Arnold Field, named after aviation pioneer Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold, the only officer to hold a five-star rank in two different U.S. military services.
Matt couldn’t have scripted it better.
ENTER TO LEARN, GO FORTH TO SERVE. Matt had filmed the words carved into the entrance to Lower Merion High School the day he interviewed Rory’s coach and he’d looked at the footage again and again since then, the coach’s haunting question now his own: How many thousands upon thousands of kids have walked through the doors of this school over the years, and how many have actually taken that motto to heart?
He switched back to the clip of Ethan. A pounding on the door startled him. He blinked in the darkness.
“Matt, open up. Henny told me you’re in there.”
He stood from his desk chair and walked slowly to the door. The external door, an add-on to the original house, didn’t have a peephole.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Okay, calm down.” He swung open the door to find a sweaty and disheveled Lauren Kincaid. She wore a Nora’s Café T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers. Her hair was loose, damp tendrils clinging to the side of her face. Her cheeks were flushed.
She marched into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Can you turn a light on?” she said.
He was already reaching for the switch. When he turned back, he found her standing with her arms crossed peering at his computer screen.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked. The screen was paused on a shot of the beach. Ethan wasn’t in the frame.
“You have some nerve. I tell you I don’t want to do your movie and so you start harassing my family?”
“In my defense, I didn’t harass your sister. I ran into her by chance at a bar and when I told her what I was doing in town, she was game for an interview.”
Lauren leaned back against the desk, facing him. “I don’t know how people like you sleep at night.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong, that’s how. Honestly, Lauren, I’ve gone into this project with the best of intentions. I admired your late husband. I want to pay tribute to him.”
“Mm-hmm. And who does that benefit? Not Rory. You. It benefits you.”
“This film will benefit a hell of a lot more people than it will me.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Of course you do. Because that justifies you stonewalling me.”
Her mouth dropped open. “And, what, you think my sister has some pearls of wisdom for the greater social good?”
“Hey, she wasn’t my first choice. But you said no. I’m doing the best I can here.”
Lauren seemed to consider this. He waited for her to take the bait. It was difficult not to smile when she finally asked, “What did Stephanie say?”