She blinked, hearing this. “Well... that is kind of what Mimi said.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not. At least, I don’t want to be.”
We were both quiet a moment. Up at the house, the screen door slammed.
I picked up my drink, taking a sip. “So tell me about these boys.”
She smiled. The change in subject was like that in the weather, the equivalent of a sudden cool breeze. Everything just felt different. “They’re nice. Roommates at East U, just finished their freshman year.”
“How’d you meet them?”
She wiped her mouth with a paper towel. “Where I meet everyone: the Station.”
“You work there every summer?”
“Since I was fourteen. That’s how it goes with a family business. You pitch in as soon as you can,” she replied. That sounded familiar. “Trinity only ever worked the arcade and the snack bar, which is why she’s so narrow-minded about Lake North folks. But like I said, working the pumps is different. You meet everyone there.”
I put down my fork. “When my mom used to talk about this place, she never mentioned there were basically two different lakes. I had no idea.”
“Well, it probably wasn’t a bad thing as far as she was concerned, right? I mean, she did meet your dad that way.”
She stopped talking then, clearly not sure whether this topic was all right to return to or still needed to be avoided. Taking out the guesswork, I said, “Do people here hate him?”
She turned to face me. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. Why would they?”
I shrugged. “Because he was a rich yacht club boy. And he took her from here, and then she died.”
“Because she was an addict,” she replied. Immediately, she put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, shit, Emma. I can’t believe I just said that. I’m—”
“It’s okay.” I bit my lip, then took a breath. “She was. The truth hurts, but there it is. I just wondered if everyone thought that might be Dad’s fault, too.”
“No.” She said this so flatly, so quickly, I immediately believed her. “Look, again, I don’t mean offense or to dishonor anyone’s memory. All I’ve ever heard was how much everyone loved Waverly. But they also know she had problems long before and after he came along. I mean, that night with Chris Price, your dad wasn’t even here.”
Chris Price. It took a minute. “Roo’s dad,” I said finally.
She nodded. “He was her best friend. And she was with him that night, you know, when the boat crashed.”
I didn’t know. For all the stories, she’d never told this one. “What happened?”
Just then, though, I heard it: boys’ voices, coming from the lawn above us. When I looked up, there were Roo and Jack, climbing out of a beat-up VW that had pulled up by the back steps.
“Yo!” Jack yelled. “I hear there’s no plan for tonight. What gives?”
Bailey, too annoyed to even answer, just sighed and went back to her dinner. As she did, I watched the boys disappear into the house before re-emerging in the bright kitchen above, where they grabbed plates and descended on the chicken that remained. Clearly, the moment had passed to get the answer to my question and the story I’d not yet heard. Now, I turned back to the lake, looking past the church and that big white cross, over to the other side. From the way Trinity acted, it was another world. But really, how different could it be?
Eight
“Moment of truth,” Bailey said, tying the boat up tight. “Who are you tonight: Emma or Saylor?”
Emma was the logical choice, of course. It was the name I knew, the one I’d always answered to as long as my mom wasn’t the one calling. And she’d been gone five years now, almost six. Maybe I could just say she took Saylor with her. At the same time, though, she had picked that name based on the summer here when she’d met my dad. So if I was going to go by it, this was the time and place. Emma was the rich cousin from Lakeview who organized things and worried. Saylor, well, she could be anyone.
Even and especially this girl I was tonight, arriving at a pavilion adjacent to a yacht club in a new-to-me outfit and more makeup than I’d worn, well, ever. That was Trinity’s doing.
“I’m huge and can’t wear anything,” she’d said as she dragged me onto the back porch that was her and Bailey’s bedroom. “Just indulge me.”
What this meant, I discovered, was standing there in my normal, chosen outfit of cutoff shorts and a JACKSON TIGERS T-shirt while she assembled other options on the unmade bed. Apparently, she had quite the wardrobe, pre-pregnancy, as well as a signature look: just about everything she owned was short, had cutouts, or both.
“This is really not my style,” I told her, after she’d badgered me into a silky blouse, run through with gold thread, over a tight black skirt. “I don’t think I can even sit in this.”
