“Yeah.” Dad brought his hand up to the back of his head.
“That’s great,” Cora said. “I’m going to have to check it out again.”
Dad grimaced. “Oh, uh, thanks.”
Time to get out before more awkwardness commenced. “Okay,” I chirped. “Thanks, Dr. Bradley, see you Monday!”
I hustled my dad toward the Jeep. Ethan twisted toward me from the front passenger seat. “How was your first day?”
“Just dandy. Except for the fact that we seem as set on polluting space as we are on polluting Earth.”
Ethan looked alarmed. “That sounds bad.”
“You’re not wrong.” I wanted to ask Dad what he’d thought of Cora, but if he thought I was trying to set him up, he’d probably never speak to her again. Instead, I had to be subtle. I had to arrange for them to be in each other’s presence by seeming happenstance. Adults were very fragile. You had to make everything seem like their idea.
At Golden Doors, Dad and I were swiftly separated. The adults whisked him off, while Ethan and I were corralled into helping with dinner. Cooking fell into the teens’ purview at Golden Doors; as far as I could tell, the adults never made dinner, instead treating themselves to a cocktail hour while the kids cooked everything.
“It’s their greatest scam,” Shira told me as we husked corn, pulling the silky strands away from yellow and white kernels. “It’s why they procreated.”
“I think they’re playing an even longer con,” Iris said from further down the counter. She and the other triplets chopped heirloom tomatoes, dark red mottled with green, each segment so juicy I struggled not to grab them all. “They say we’ll be rewarded by forcing our own offspring to cook for us down the line. But really it’s a psychological trick to condition us into wanting kids so they’ll have grandchildren.”
This caused the older teens to exchange terrified glances. It causedmeto stare at Iris in wonder. I liked anyone who thought in terms of generational long cons.
Dinner was crusty French country bread, tomato-basil bruschetta, grilled corn gazpacho, and peach salad with goat cheese. Everyone filled their plates before heading outside to picnic tables. I found myself crammed in at a table with Ethan and the rest of the cousins his age—his brothers, green-haired David and artsy Oliver; wide-eyed Miriam; and the New York pair, Shira and Noah.
Dad sat with Ethan’s parents as well as the OG Mr. and Mrs. Barbanel—ninetysomething Helen and her husband, Edward.Helen Barbanel led the prayers. At our table, Shira offered to let me light our two white pillars, and when I declined did so herself. The rest of the prayers were familiar, even if I’d forgotten some of them. But I remembered how much Dad always liked the blessing for children, even if we hadn’t done it forever.
I’d been nervous about Shabbat, but this was so normal, so easy. Dinner stretched long, the sun sinking below the horizon in a dying burst of color well past eight. Afterward, everyone idly milled about, some sipping drinks, others playing cornhole. Without the sun, the temperature dropped rapidly. It was still mid-June, not even officially summer until next week, and this close to the water the sea breeze cooled everything down.
Shira, Miriam, and I sat on lounge chairs and plucked dark red cherries from the bowl on the coffee table. “There’s a party tonight,” Shira said. “If you want to come.”
“I absolutely want to come. I have no plans basically forever.” I bit into a cherry, closing my eyes at the sweetness, then opening them to admire the deep, opaque ruby of the fruit.
“Can I come too?” Miriam asked from Shira’s other side.
Shira frowned at her fifteen-year-old cousin. “I don’t know…”
“Please,” Miriam said. “I’ll be so well-behaved.”
“Hm.”
“What time it’s at?” I asked.
Shira checked her phone. “We’ll probably leave in half an hour.”
“Nice. Let me say bye to my dad and change into something warmer.” And cooler.
I found Dad talking earnestly with Ethan’s parents and grandparents around the firepit. I perched on the edge of his Adirondack chair, listening for an opening in their conversation.
“And do you really thinkEthanshould give the talk?” Ethan’s father was saying, looking incredulous. “If your funding depends on it?”
“I wouldn’t say the fundingdependson it,” Dad said, laughing this off, though I gave Ethan’s dad a sharp look. I wouldn’t have been thrilled by my own father sounding so surprised by my capabilities—probably because he often was. “I’m the one submitting the proposal. But Ethan has been doing the research on Frederick Gibson, and it’s just a little talk, part of mine—it’ll be a good experience for him.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Ethan’s dad said. “But don’t feel like you have to let him.”
“I don’t,” Dad said.
“What talk?” I asked.
