“Better hop,” Blake said to Colin, nodding at a motorboat that was approaching the docks. “We were supposed to be on two minutes ago.”
“Right,” he replied. To me he said, “Good seeing you, Saylor.”
“You, too.”
Blake didn’t say anything as they headed down the walkway, now at a faster clip, to meet the boat that had just arrived. Jerks, I thought, just as my phone rang. It was the toll-free number I’d come to recognize, and I smiled before I even answered it.
“Good morning, ma’am! My name is Chris and I’m calling to talk about your home’s defense against the coming storm season. Do you have a moment?”
“I do,” I said, settling into a beach chair I’d picked and stretching out my legs. “Go right ahead.”
“Perfect! Well, I’ll begin by telling you a little bit about... okay, sorry about that. We’re only open for a half day today for the holiday, but Juan still thinks someone sitting home feeling patriotic might bite.”
“Could happen,” I said, pulling some sunblock out of my bag. “So only half a day, huh? Are you off too, or just going to another job?”
“Driving the Yum truck around all the beaches until five,” he said. “Then I promised Silas I’d come by the Station for backup in case he needs it before the fireworks start. Butthen, I am free and clear.”
“Which will be when? Like, ten or so?”
“Probably,” he said, and I laughed. “But still, it’s something. Which is good because everyone knows the Fourth is my favorite holiday.”
“Just like your dad, huh?”
“You remembered,” he said. I remember everything, I wanted to say. “Yeah. My mom always talked about how much he loved the fireworks. The Fourth was one of the times we always remembered him, with the whole sparkler thing.”
“What sparkler thing?”
“You haven’t heard about that?” he asked. Then, before I could reply, he said, “Well, I guess you wouldn’t have. It’s kind of a lake thing.”
So many lake things. Even if I’d had a whole summer, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t learn them all.
“When my dad died, my grandparents planned thewhole funeral,” Roo explained as I hoped against hope Juan was gone on a long errand this time. I wanted to hear this. “Church service, very formal and sad. But my mom felt like it didn’t capture him as he really was, you know. So that evening, she had a service of her own.”
“With sparklers?”
“Hundreds of them,” he said. “She, Silas, Celeste, and Waverly bought every box they could find in the entire county. When people arrived, they got a handful and some matches. Then, after everyone said what they wanted to, they lit them all at the same time.”
“Wow.”
“I know.” He was quiet a second: I could hear buzzing on the phone line between us. “The thing about sparklers? They’re cool but quick. You light them, they go like crazy, and then it’s all over. So it always seemed fitting to me, you know, that they did that for my dad. A big life lived, gone too soon. That sort of thing.”
I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Like my mom, too.”
“Well... yeah,” he said. “After she passed, they did it again. Same beach, same crowd. And every Fourth since, that I can remember anyway.”
“Sparklers.”
“Yep. All year we buy them up wherever we see them. It’s one of our few family traditions.”
Out by the pool, the sun was growing stronger, people arriving to the chairs around me with their beach bags andfloats. “I was already sad I was missing the fireworks with you guys,” I said quietly. “Now I’d give anything to be there.”
“You will be, in spirit,” he said. “And if you’re watching from the Tides, you’ll probably see it. Hard to miss, especially if you know when to look.”
“Which is...”
“At the very end, when the last big blasts are over,” he finished for me.
I pulled my legs up to my chest. “I’ll be watching,” I told him. “And Roo?”
