“Not when you were fifteen, I didn’t,” Eleanor clarified.

  Alicia cried, “You insisted I attend a coed college instead of Smith because, you said, it’s more fun if boys are around. You said I should marry the man that makes me dizzy with love!”

  “I’m completely lost,” Eleanor said quietly.

  “You were always, like, ecstatic if I brought a boy home to dinner, especially if he had a motorcycle and a dragon tattoo. But I was too scared to sleep with anyone, and then I met Phillip. Phillip made me feel safe. He treated me gently. And you thought he was boring!”

  “I never said Phillip was boring,” Eleanor said. She smiled, just a little. “Although, he is boring.”

  Alicia cried, “You see! I’m not what you wanted in a daughter. You wanted Janis Joplin and you got Jane Austen. You let us go to concerts where there were all kinds of drugs and slimy people. You were so cool, so lenient.” Alicia fell back onto the sofa, tears exploding from her eyes, sobs wrenching her body. “Phillip isn’t boring,” she said. “I’m boring. That’s why he’s having an affair.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Eleanor said. “I’m afraid I was trying to be a better mother than my mother was to me. My mother was a strict authoritarian. She had rules for everything. How to hold a fork. When to speak to an adult. Why I needed to improve my posture. I couldn’t even seem to breathe correctly for her. She was mean. She made me feel trapped. I wanted to be a happy mother, a friend to you. I went through my life feeling like a disappointment to my mother. I wanted you to enjoy being with me.”

  Alicia wiped her face and calmed down. “You must have hated it when I loved Phillip’s mother so much.”

  “I did,” Eleanor said. “I still do.”

  “I’m going to make some cocoa,” Ari said. She wanted to leave the room to let her mother and grandmother have some privacy, and because she needed to think her own thoughts. This would not be a good time to tell her mother she was pregnant.

  But when she returned to the kitchen, she found that her mother’s emotions had moved from sorrow to anger.

  “Who is she?” Alicia asked Eleanor. “Is she an island girl?”

  “We don’t know who she is,” Eleanor told her daughter. “She has a blue convertible. She lives on Dionis Beach Road.”

  Alicia whipped around to face Ari. “You saw her. Who is she?”

  “Mom, I don’t know her name. She’s young, not as young as I am, but young—”

  “Younger than I am, right?” Alicia ignored the cocoa. She rose and stalked over to the window, looking out at the sea and the gray sky.

  Ari set the tray of cocoa on the coffee table. Eleanor gave Ari a slight nod as she took her mug. They had done what was necessary, and it was terrible. But they weren’t the ones who had betrayed Alicia.

  “Maybe you should call him, Mom,” Ari suggested. “Maybe call and tell him you’re on the island and you’d like to see him.”

  When Alicia turned from the window, her face was composed again, although her carefully blushed cheeks were tracked with tears. She was quieter now, and somehow shut off, somehow emotionally shielded. She returned to the sofa, picked up her cocoa, and sipped.

  Ari and her grandmother waited.

  “I’m not going to call him,” Alicia announced. “I’m going on a trip.”

  “What?” Ari asked.

  “Where?” Eleanor asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you.” Alicia had regained her poise and slipped into her Queen of England mode. “I’m going on a fabulous trip. I’m going first-class. I’ll be gone for weeks.”

  “Mom,” Ari began.

  Alicia arched an eyebrow and sweetened her voice, which meant she was totally furious. “Why shouldn’t I go on a trip? My own mother won’t discuss selling this rattrap of a house so that I can enjoy life. No, she sits here with millions spread around her and doesn’t think of me. My husband is enjoying life with another woman and my daughter prefers to live with her grandmother. Where am I in this family? Who respects me? Who cares for me?”

  “My darling,” Eleanor said quietly, “don’t make any quick decisions that you’ll regret.”

  “Why not?” Alicia asked. “Everyone else does.”

  “Mom,” Ari cried. “We love you!”

  “I don’t want to be with you,” Alicia replied. “I don’t want to be with any of you.”

  Ari was shocked. “But what if there’s an emergency?”

  “You’re an adult,” Alicia said coldly. “I’m going to use the bathroom and then I’ll call a taxi.” She went out of the living room and down the hall.

  “Wow. I didn’t see that coming,” Ari said to her grandmother.

  Eleanor smiled. “I didn’t, either. But you know, I hope she goes through with this plan. It will do her a world of good and give Phillip the slap in the face he deserves.”

  “But what about me?” Ari whispered.

  “How helpful do you think your mother would be, especially now?” Eleanor asked gently.

  Ari smiled ruefully. “She wouldn’t greet my news with cries of joy.”

  “Nor would she be delighted to know she would be called ‘Gram.’ ”

  Ari closed her eyes and leaned back against the sofa. It was almost a pleasure to focus on her father’s affair. It took her mind off her own problem. She wasn’t prepared to be a mother yet, not emotionally or practically. For a moment, she thought she was going to throw up again, right in the living room.

  “Hey-ho!” a man called. The screen door slammed shut and Cliff strode into the living room. In his tennis whites, his skin tanned and blushed from the sun, his shoulders wide, his smile brilliant, he looked like the very model of a healthy, happy man.

  “Uncle Cliff!” Ari said, shocked.

  “Cliff? What are you doing here?” Eleanor asked.

  Cliff looked affronted. “Excuse me. Do I have the wrong house? You do resemble my mother. I usually stop by on the weekends.”

  “Uncle Cliff,” Ari cried, “we’ve got a terrible problem.”

  “Really?” Cliff asked, eyebrows arched.

  Alicia returned to the living room. Her face was again perfectly blushed, her mascara darkened. “What are you doing here?” she asked Cliff.

  “What are you doing here?” Cliff shot back. “Where’s Phillip?”

  “Probably with his girlfriend,” Alicia said.

  “What?” Cliff asked.

  “My father’s been seeing a woman on the island,” Ari told him quietly.

  “You mean, like playing tennis?”

  “No,” Alicia said. “They’ve seen him go into her house.”

  “Have you called him?” Cliff asked.

  “Why, no,” Alicia said sarcastically. “That never occurred to me.” Her shoulders slumped. “Whenever I have tried to call Phillip, I only get voicemail. I haven’t seen much of him this summer. He said he was working.”

  Cliff’s pose of hail-fellow-well-met evaporated. He went pale. “That jerk!” Blinking, he looked at Ari and at his mother and back at Alicia. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going on a trip,” Alicia said. She was beginning to cry again.

  Ari wept, too. Her mother hated being embarrassed. She always tried to look perfect, and now she stood before them shaking, with tears running down her cheeks, streaking her mascara, her shoulders slumped, nearly falling to the floor in her misery. Ari started to go to her mother, to hug her.

  Cliff crossed the room. He pulled his sister to him, hugging her tightly, her face nestled against his chest, as if protecting her from the rest of the world.

  “You know, Leeci,” he murmured, “it’s not the end of the world. Men do stupid things like this all the time.”

  Ari and Eleanor stared at each other wide-eyed. They’d never heard Cliff call his sister by a nickname before. They’d never seen him so tender before. With the age difference between them, Alicia had considered him a pest. In the past few years, when the family got together, Alicia was haughty and Cliff was devil-may-care. But they were adults now, and clearly they cared for each other.

  “Listen,” Cliff said to Alicia, “I’m taking you up to Boston to my apartment. We’ll get drunk. I’ll make some diplomatic inquiries and find out what the bastard is up to.”

  Alicia sniffed back her tears. “I want to go on a trip,” she said, sounding like a child.

  “Well, we’ll go on a trip! First stop, Boston,” Cliff said. “Come on, kiddo.” He kept his arm around his sister’s shoulders as he led her to the door.

  Astonished, Ari and Eleanor watched them go.

  “I always thought Mom disliked Uncle Cliff,” Ari said, trying to puzzle it all out.

  Eleanor spoke slowly, thinking it through. “Even when they were children, I never thought they were close. I do think Cliff idolized her when he was little. His sophisticated big sister.”

  “Maybe he’s been waiting all his life to be her hero,” Ari said.

  “Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “I think you just may be right.”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Ari suggested.

  “Yes, let’s,” Eleanor agreed.

  The rest of the day they spent quietly, struggling with their own thoughts and emotions. That night they ate sandwiches and went to bed early. From her bedroom, Ari heard the sounds of Masterpiece. She was glad her grandmother had something elegant to soothe her thoughts and let her escape from reality for just a while. Ari googled topics about pregnancy and Planned Parenthood until her head swam and her wrists ached. She was exhausted. She’d never been so glad to fall asleep before in her life.

  Sixteen

  Monday, Beach Camp was fun, as always, but after the children left, Cal asked if he could talk with Ari privately.

  “Sure,” she said. They were in the community school building. Sandy and all the young volunteers had left.

  “Let’s just sit here,” Cal said, sitting on one of the small round tables.

  “Okay.” She perched on the table facing him.

  “I have an enormous favor to ask you. Please feel free to say no.”

  “Well, that’s intriguing,” Ari said.

  “I always check the forecast at the first of the week. It looks like we’re in for four solid days of rain.”

  “Okay. Sounds challenging.” Ari knew how this happened during the summer, and she’d always felt so sorry for vacationing families who couldn’t go to the beach, where the sand was soggy and the windy air cold.

  “Exactly.” Cal cleared his throat. “There are other camps, too, and they’ll be going to the library and the museums, any place inside, and it will be a squirrel cage. So I wondered…someone told me your grandmother has a big house with three floors. I was hoping we could have a scavenger hunt there.”

  “Oh.” Ari was stunned. It took a moment for her to process his ask. “Wait,” she said, holding up her hand. “Let me think.”

  Quickly she envisioned her grandmother’s house. It was large, and if you counted the attic, there were three floors. Fifteen children could roam up the front stairs and down the back stairs. Somehow they could shut off Eleanor’s bedroom. Ari’s, too. Those rooms were too personal for strangers.

  Then she thought of the children. All those children, all day in the rain. On the one hand, she understood. Poppy’s house was too small for a scavenger hunt for the camp.

  On the other hand, it was a weird thought: fifteen children, maybe a volunteer, and Sandy and Cal, all relative strangers, roaming her grandmother’s house. It was too intimate, too invasive.

  “I don’t know,” Ari answered. “I need to ask my grandmother.”

  “Thanks for even considering this, Ari,” Cal said. Leaning in, he hugged her—quickly, but firmly. She could smell summer on his neck and a faint trace of raspberry juice from their afternoon snack.

  Ari worried about Cal’s request as she drove home, and she worried about her mother and father, and she worried terribly about talking with Peter.

  “Hello!” she called, walking in through the kitchen door. The delicious aroma of beef stew stopped her in her tracks. It was, she thought, the best part of this unnerving day.

  “Hello, darling,” Eleanor called back. “I’m in the living room. I made a stew. Look at the clouds. A storm is coming.”

  Ari kissed the top of her grandmother’s head. “I’m going to take a shower, then I’ll set the table. The stew smells heavenly.”

  Over dinner, Ari discussed Cal’s request with her grandmother.

  To Ari’s surprise, Eleanor said, “Yes, why not? Not the attic, though. It’s already too disordered and chaotic. Children would get lost in there and never find their way out. Also, as you said, not my bedroom or yours or my sewing room. But we’ve got two guest rooms and a bathroom with a hamper and that old painted standing cupboard. Shadow likes to hide in there. He knows how to open the door. We’ll have to shut Shadow up in my room or he’ll be terrified. How about the basement? It’s got my exercise room and equipment.”

  “You’re fabulous,” Ari said.

  “The house is fabulous,” Eleanor told her. “It has seen many parties during its life. I think it will be glad to see one again.”

  * * *

  —

  At Beach Camp the next day, Ari told Cal her grandmother had given them the okay.

  “That’s great!” Cal said, spontaneously hugging Ari as gray clouds rolled into the blue sky.

  Wednesday dawned cold and windy, with a sky threatening rain. They managed to give the kids some outdoor time in the morning, but by noon the rain was beginning. They had games organized in the community school room, and jumping jacks and other fun exercises to loud music. But Thursday the rain came down in buckets, hurled sideways by a howling wind, and by late afternoon, the children were antsy from being indoors. They drove them in the two minivans to the library, but another camp van was parked right in front of it. The foyer of the Whaling Museum was lined with adults and children trying to buy passes. Finally, they drove out to the Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum, which was fascinating but small. Some of the children were too young to appreciate the roped-off ancient rowboats and fought to watch the video of the Andrea Doria sinking.

  “Thank God we’ll have your house for them to stretch out in tomorrow,” Cal whispered to Ari.

  Ari nodded uncertainly.

  That evening, at seven-thirty, a knock came at the door. Eleanor had been informed that Cal and Sandy wanted to come over to hide the items for the scavenger hunt so they wouldn’t have to do it in the very early morning.

  Cal had showered and changed from his wet camp clothes and looked handsome in a pair of khakis and a blue shirt.

  “Nice to see you, Mrs. Sunderland,” he said, shaking Eleanor’s hand. “It is awfully good of you to allow us to entertain the children here.”

  Sandy smiled and thanked Eleanor when Eleanor offered her hand.

  “We’ve made maps of fifteen places which my grandmother and I think will make good hiding places,” Ari said.

  Eleanor handed out the maps and walked through the house with Cal and Sandy to show them exactly what she meant, in the second-floor guest bedroom, in the crowded closet, behind the muddle of deck shoes and waders. Beneath the bed. Behind the bureau, hanging from the wood filigree surrounding the mirror attached to the bureau.

  The other second-floor guest bedroom was still reserved for Cliff, who insisted that one day he’d clear it all out. It was crammed with his tennis and sailing trophies, his stacks of CDs, spy novels, and old cameras, including a Polaroid from the high school days when he thought he’d be a photographer. On his desk were a massive computer and boxes of floppy discs, and boxes, boxes, of love letters from girlfriends and not-quite-pornographic photos of those girlfriends tucked into a manila envelope—Eleanor picked that up and took it to her off-limits room. Cliff’s closet was hung with Nantucket red trousers in several sizes, and navy blue blazers he’d outgrown, and a sword— “A sword? Where did that come from?” Eleanor asked as she carried it out of the room and put it high on a shelf where no small hands could reach. Cliff had also saved stacks of magazines: Nantucket Today, GQ, Esquire, Sailing. Burgees and pennants covered one wall. Another wall was lined with shelves holding high school and college albums and photo albums and plastic boxes filled with tennis balls and a life vest that hadn’t fit him since he was ten.

  “Maybe he’s planning to marry eventually and have children,” Eleanor mused.

  “Well,” Ari whispered, “he’s almost forty, so he’d better get busy.”

  Cal and Sandy found more hiding places: inside an Indiana Jones leather hat lying upside down on a shelf, in a pottery pencil holder Cliff made in sixth grade (why had he kept that?), boxes of old clothes meant to be taken to the dump someday.

  Next, they went through the main level hiding objects—inexpensive items like Slinkies, yo-yos, plastic mermaids and ogres, small boxes of Play-Doh, a ball and jacks, a rope bracelet, a bag of marbles.

  When they were done, Eleanor asked, “Would you like to sit down a moment and have a drink? Lemonade? Wine?”

  “Yes,” Sandy said. “Please.”

  “I’ll bring some lemonade,” Ari told them.

  In the kitchen, she filled four glasses with ice and lemonade, set them on a tray, and headed to the living room. Just at that moment, her cellphone, tucked into her pocket, trilled. She’d turned the volume up in case Eleanor needed her when Ari was at camp. Now she sent the call to voicemail. Peter’s voice roared from the phone.