Lauren locked the door to the café behind her and felt the heat of the midday sun on her back. For as long as she’d known Nora, her boss had been mumbling about starting a dinner service, but so far it hadn’t happened. Every day, Nora’s Café closed at three and didn’t open until seven the following morning. Lauren hoped the dinner shift would actually materialize this summer. She relished the idea of working a double—or even a triple. To clock in at six in the morning and not leave until eleven or so at night? She wouldn’t have a moment to think. Just the way she liked it.
She adjusted the belt pack around her waist, making sure her tips were zipped up, then bent down to tie the laces on her Sauconys for the run back to the house.
“Lauren Kincaid!” A man’s voice.
Lauren stood up so quickly she felt dizzy. You’re not eating enough. You’re too skinny.
He looked vaguely familiar, but it took her a few seconds to place him. Had they gone to school together?
“Neil Hanes,” he said. “From Green Valley?”
An old acquaintance from her parents’ country club. She must have been in college the last time she’d seen him. The summers were like that; half of her hometown descended on the island.
“Oh, hi. Sorry, it’s just been a long time.”
“It really has! Probably since that party for your dad’s fiftieth.”
She nodded, her mind flooding with images of the live band, her cocktail dress, and the way Rory had looked in his suit. It’s like a wedding, he’d said. Someday we’ll dance like this and you’ll be my wife.
Neil said something but she’d completely tuned out.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“Oh, I was just saying that I see your parents sometimes in Philly. They mentioned that you live here now.”
She nodded, hoping he wouldn’t bring up Rory, wouldn’t say he was sorry, wouldn’t say he’d heard…
“Are you writing these days?” he said.
“Writing?”
“Journalism. The last time we spoke, you were really into it.”
Vague recollections of a long-ago conversation. “Oh. Right. No, not anymore.” She hated talking about herself. Deflect, deflect. “Weren’t you into journalism too?”
He nodded. “I love reporting. But no money in it. Screenwriting—that’s where it’s at.”
She smiled politely. “Well, nice to see you. I should get going.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. But, listen, I’m here for the summer. We should hang out some time.”
“I don’t hang out,” she said.
She knew it sounded harsh, bitchy, cold. But it was better to just be up-front about it. She didn’t date, would never date. And she didn’t need a new friend. It would take all of her energy just to tolerate her family.
They say a mother is only as happy as her most unhappy child.
That explained why Beth hadn’t felt any real joy in years. Both of her daughters were miserable.
“I left messages for Lauren and Stephanie asking what they wanted for dinner, and neither of them have gotten back to me,” she said to her husband as she poured Worcestershire sauce into a bowl to start her marinade.
“Hon, they’re grown women. Why don’t you and I go out to eat and they can fend for themselves?”
Was he serious?
She set the bottle down. “The point of being here is to spend time together as a family.”
“Well, maybe Lauren and Stephanie don’t share your enthusiasm for that. You’re pushing too hard about living here for the summer.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I want one last summer here before we have to sell the house. Is that so much to ask?”
He sighed.
She unwrapped the flank steak.
“This isn’t just for me, Howard. Ethan should be surrounded by family. He just lost the only father figure he ever had.”
“That schmuck wasn’t a father.”
“You know what I mean. And Lauren has been out here alone long enough.”
“I certainly agree with that,” Howard said, looking out at the beach. “Have you told her about selling the house?”
“I haven’t found the right time.”
“What’s the right time? It’s your house, Beth.”
“And the house in Philly was our house, and you just lost that! So don’t lecture me.”
They’d lived in the old stone house in the suburbs of Philadelphia since before Stephanie was born. Beth had been sure they would live there for the rest of their lives, that her grandchildren would run around the same yard that the girls had grown up playing in.
She still shuddered thinking about the day, only weeks ago, that he’d confessed. I took out a second mortgage… Last-ditch attempt to save the business…
The business.
Howard ran Adelman’s Apparel, a store his grandfather had started as a hat shop in 1932. Saul Adelman had the foresight to lease a space in the shadow of the famous Wanamaker’s department store, a retail behemoth that attracted visitors from all over the country. But while throngs of people went to Wanamaker’s to see the world’s largest fully functional pipe organ or the twenty-five-hundred-pound bronze eagle in the Grand Court, many seemed to prefer a more intimate experience for shopping. That’s where Adelman’s came in, with Howard’s mother, Deborah, acting as a personal shopper long before there was any concept of such a thing. From the 1950s through the 1970s, it was unthinkable for a well-to-do young woman in Philadelphia to go anywhere other than Adelman’s for her trousseau.
But the world changed. Retail changed. Wanamaker’s closed its doors after a hundred and twenty years. The trend toward casual dressing edged Adelman’s out of its comfort zone, and eventually it became impossible for the store to compete with the national chains.
Beth had known it was bad. She just hadn’t known how bad until they’d lost their home.
Now Adelman’s was closed, left half filled with merchandise Howard had failed to unload while he pumped money into the store, trying to hold on long enough to find a buyer. He was stuck with five more years on a twenty-year commercial lease.
Still, regardless of the circumstances, Beth could not stomach the idea of selling the Green Gable. Looking around the kitchen, she could envision her mother at the counter, unwrapping fresh cinnamon buns, still warm from Casel’s grocery. Beth closed her eyes.
“My parents intended for the girls to have this house someday.”
Howard sighed.
“You’ve indulged the girls too much the past few years. Now you and I need to dig ourselves out of this hole, and Lauren and Stephanie need to move on with their lives.”
Was he right? Beth had known it would take time for Lauren to recover from the loss of her husband. It had taken all of them time to get over losing Rory. But it was becoming increasingly clear that her daughter was frozen.
And she was scared nothing would ever change that.