Prologue
Dorothy Summer loved all her grandchildren, but she took special pleasure in her youngest son’s five girls.
Those five girls were pistols, had been from birth. And Tim, her youngest and most challenging son, deserved a kick or two–maybe five!–from karma. (He really had been a most difficult child.) She’d raised him in the era when Dr. Spock (the pediatric doctor, not the pointy-eared fellow) was the only one giving child-rearing advice. Dotty could’ve used Dr. Phil’s help.
But those girls…
There was Maggie, the youngest. Could a child be born with a love of black wardrobes, dark eye make-up, and Army boots? From the moment she could walk, Maggie had followed her own path. She’d been a rebel searching for a cause. Why, one summer she ran away to follow a band on tour, only to return and lead a protest against the pollution emitted by Summer Coal Mining, a company run by her father. Signs were waved and Tim was hit on the head. Maggie and several others wound up in jail. Today, Maggie was almost done with her veterinarian training. She still had a penchant for black wardrobes, but she was about to be married (and wearing white, which was a shocker).
Sweet Aubrey was the next youngest. Tim had once boasted Aubrey was his one angel. Surprise! That angel had taken her high school graduation money and hopped on a ship intent upon saving the whales. She’d returned a year later, older, wiser, with arm and leg hair that hadn’t seen a razor since she’d left New York City. Thankfully, Aubrey’s sisters were able to convince her that shaving and deodorant weren’t the evil plan of the establishment. These days, when Aubrey, a botanist working for Bon-Bon Chocolate, walked into the room she smelled of bonbons, not B.O.
Now, the twins, Lily and Violet, were born chatterboxes. One time, Tim and the twins had driven Dotty to see her sister in Georgia, and the girls had talked non-stop the entire trip. Their gift of gab had tickled Dotty pink, but annoyed Tim until he was blue in the face. In their teens, the twins had developed a fondness for poetry slams, pivotal rap, and personal podcasts. Truthfully, Dotty wasn’t entirely sure what a podcast was and she’d never understood why their “slamming” events were always held at night and in a part of New York City Tim said was dangerous. To protect them, he’d tried to keep the twins at home, going so far as to install a security alarm on the door and windows in their room. To his surprise, they always managed to slip away. Today, Lily was a junior state congresswoman and Violet a college professor. It was still hard to get a word in edgewise when they were around.
Any one of those girls could have been the leader of the pack, but it was Kitty, the oldest, who took charge. Kitty was the one who’d first recognized Maggie’s independent spirit and dressed the toddler like a Goth soldier. Kitty was the one who’d swiped Tim’s home security codes and set the teenage twins free every night, along with paying off their bodyguard. Kitty was the one who’d convinced shy Aubrey to follow her heart and test her principles in the Antarctic. When Tim said no, the girls might just as well have been deaf. When Kitty said no, the girls stopped what they were doing.
Why, take that summer after Maggie completed her freshman year in college. She’d walked into the living room at the family’s beach house in the Hamptons and announced she was in love with a heavily tattooed underwear model. Said model reclined on a lounge chair by the pool in his skivvies.
“You don’t love him,” Kitty had said in that steady way of hers, looking up from a medical textbook. “Not really. Not the way you should.”
“No,” Maggie had replied with a good-natured smile.
Kitty had smiled back, but there was a business-like curve to her lips. “It’s June. In July, we go to Tybee Island.” For the annual family reunion. “How does this underwear model feel about you?”
“I don’t know.” Maggie blinked in wonder, as if the importance of his opinion hadn’t crossed her mind. “And I don’t know if he’s worthy of an invitation to Tybee Island.” Maggie’s gaze drifted to the exhibitionist by the pool and then took inventory of her sisters. “He’s just so beautiful. You think he’d be tempted with a kiss?”
On the couch, the twins were arguing over the latest political scandal. In a high-back chair by the window, Aubrey was hunched over her laptop working on her thesis. They were all in college now, each beautiful in their own right. Dark haired, petite Kitty was in med school; Aubrey and the twins, tall and willowy, were doing post graduate work; and sturdy Maggie was still floundering through her general education courses, trying to decide what to do with her life.
“All men are tempted,” Kitty had murmured with a glance toward their father sitting near the fireplace. He was texting someone while wearing his philandering smile, the one that put a crease in Kitty’s forehead. “All men are tempted. And all men fall.” Her words sounded calculated.
No one would look at Kitty and see calculation. At first meet, she appeared to be the kind of woman everyone would call friend–soft-spoken, a gentle beauty that didn’t intimidate, and a way of looking at a person that made you think you were understood. Oh, her warm, dark brown eyes could seem distant when she was deep in thought. And when that was the case, if you asked her a question you might receive a distant reply. And Kitty had a long memory. She remembered when someone disappointed her, as her father had done on repeated occasions. But she was quick to admit when she was wrong, and she was open to forgiving when others confessed their mistakes.
As for her place among her sisters, Maggie often lamented the fact that Kitty was the only one in the family who understood her. Lily was certain Kitty could get her out of any tangle, while Violet was convinced Kitty was the only sister capable of keeping a secret. Aubrey claimed Kitty was frighteningly brilliant; certainly, those standardized tests they made children take nowadays proved that fact.
And men? To their detriment, men seldom saw past Kitty’s quiet beauty. And she let them. In fact, she had a three-date limit to keep them at arms’ length. It upset Dotty that Kitty allowed men to undervalue her. Someday, Kitty would find a man she couldn’t resist. Or maybe it’d be the other way around and a man would discover he couldn’t live without Kitty. In either case, Dotty hoped Kitty would find love before she died.
“Which Summer girl should be our temptress?” Maggie had catalogued their sisters with an appraising eye.
“Normally, I’d say you.” Kitty grinned at Maggie. It’d been her idea to vet young men who tried to get serious with a Summer girl with the Kissing Test. She’d seen firsthand how their father’s infidelity had broken their mother’s spirit and her heart. Her mother was a shell of the woman she’d once been. Kitty didn’t want any of her sisters to fall for a beau with a wandering eye.
“I choose to let the cat out of the bag.” Maggie leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Give it your best shot, Kitty.”
Dotty had witnessed this exchange from a corner of the living room, a yellowed book of photographs in her lap. As the girls’ only living grandmother, one who stayed with them part-time, Dotty was generally considered invisible. And sometimes she became lost in her own muddled memories and faded into the past. But she noted everything that was important. The conversation. The rebellion. The love between the sisters. And on that particular summer day, she witnessed the downfall of one overly tattooed underwear model, a man who didn’t try to resist Kitty’s offer of a poolside kiss.
For all Maggie professed to be in love, she hadn’t shed a tear that day. In fact, she and Kitty had laughed about it. That’s how strong the bond of the Summer sisters was. Or how strong it appeared to Dotty.
But what did Dotty know? She was an old lady on the sidelines. And frankly, Dotty was becoming…well…dotty.