“Are you visiting your grandparents?” I asked. I thought I’d met all my neighbors’ grandchildren or at least seen them on Christmas cards.
“She just moved in with her dad,” Kitty said.
“Not only old people live here, obviously,” Mia said, gesturing to me. “Don’t be so ageist, Jo.”
“Yeah, Jo,” Nina added.
Greyson rested her chin on her knees, her fingers twisting together around her legs. “My grandparents are hippies and travel all over in an RV playing music. I asked Dad if we could do that, but he said he’s already spent enough of his life on wheels, so we moved here instead. I asked why we had to live like old people, when Marla and Tom were going around adventuring, and he told me to stop calling Grandma and Grandpa Marla and Tom and go do my homework. But it’s not as bad as I thought. I like the pool, and the beach, and the exercise room has a rowing machine, and—” She paused, and her expression fell. “Am I talking too much? Katie Rose, this girl at my old school, said I talk too much and that’s why no one likes me, but I can’t help it. I think something, and it comes out my mouth. Well, I don’t think, that’s what my teachers say anyway.”
I smiled at Greyson. Sure, she talked a lot, but there was something charming about it. The energy, her constant movement, it reminded me of Sam. “I thinkmorepeople should say what they think.”
“Katie Rose sounds like a real bitch,” Mia said, and Nina leaned forward to give her a high five.
Greyson looked around at us, her face bright again. “Yeah, she kinda is.”
The girls spent the next hour chatting as they stretched out in the sun.Watching Mia and Kitty was like watching a home video of me and Beth, though when I was Kitty’s age, we’d already been without Dad for a year.
After Dad died, I’d gone into isolation. I stopped answering the phone, sat by myself at lunch. For a few years I stopped putting myself out there. Beth, on the other hand, latched on to Mark and her friends. She went to more parties, drove recklessly, stopped coming home on weekend nights. Recklessness was how Mia had come into this world, so it wasn’t all bad. And I marveled at how it was impossible for some of the best things in my life to exist without the worst.
A voice called out Greyson’s name, and all of us turned in the direction of the pool, where a man stood waving his hands over his head.
“Phone’s dead,” Greyson said. “Dad’s gonna kill me.” She jumped to her feet and sprinted up the sand to the pool, hollering, “Nice to meet you!” over her shoulder.
“I didn’t get a good look,” Nina said when Greyson and her dad had disappeared, “but IthinkGreyson’s dad might be hot. Let’s call him Hot Single Dad, as a code name.”
“How is that a good code name? It’s longer than just calling him Greyson’s dad.”
“Yes, but ‘Greyson’s dad’ doesn’t have the same pizazz. You should get his number.”
“Which is it, Nina? Do you want me to get with Hot Guy from the Bar or Hot Single Dad?”
“Why not both?”
I rolled my eyes and turned to Mia and Kitty. “At least you’ll have someone your age to hang out with this summer.”
“I like Greyson,” Kitty said. She rolled onto her back, draping an arm over her eyes. “It’ll be nice to hang out with someone who isn’t Mia.”
Mia kicked sand Kitty’s way. “Please. Don’t act like you don’t follow me around twenty-four seven.”
Five
After Nina left, I ordered wings and sent the girls across the parking lot to the condo activities room to grab a board game. When they returned, they plopped an ancient taped-up box of Sorry! onto the table. Kitty lifted the top off the box, and Mia reached inside, pulling out a small silver boot.
“This is a Monopoly piece.”
“Oh, gimme!” Kitty said, nearly knocking over her chair as she leaned over the table to swipe it from Mia’s hand.
“Jesus,” Mia said. “You didn’t have to steal it from me. I was going to give it to you anyway.”
Kitty turned the silver boot over in her hands before placing it on the green starting space.
“Here, Jo, you can be... what is this?” Mia said, holding a small cardboard pawn depicting a leaping child.
“It’s from Chutes and Ladders,” I said. “You know, I’d bet anything this came from the set your mom and I had when we were kids.” Mia handed me the piece, and I set it on the red starting space.
“Well, I guess that makes me yellow, since there’s no blue piece,”Mia said. “And just to buck the status quo I will choose...” She rummaged around in the box. “The yellow pawn that actually came with the game.” She set down her piece with a snap, a smile breaking through her annoyed expression.
I rubbed my hands together. “All right. Let’s begin.”
