“It’s just lasagna.”
“There is no ‘just’ lasagna, Mom.”
Anna laughed. “Go wash your hands.”
Bea was already at the sink. Margo, who had come back from the closet and settled into a kitchen chair, said, “Bea. There’s something for you on the counter. From your grandmother.”
Bea dried her fingers on the dish towel and crossed to the counter. She picked up the envelope and turned it over, touching the handwriting with her thumb.
“She wrote me.”
“Yes, she did,” Margo said.
Bea slid her finger under the flap, pulled out the card, and opened it. Anna recognized the expression from her own childhood—the wide eyes, the mouth falling open, the way everything else in the room stopped mattering.
“She remembered,” Bea said quietly. She cleared her throat and read it aloud.
My dear Bea,
I am so sorry this is late. I was in Oaxaca for the first week of February and the mail situation was what it was. Seventeen. I can’t believe it. Your mother was seventeen once too and she was already better than me at everything. Happy birthday, darling girl. I hope you’re painting. I hope you’re seeing the world.
Love, Sam.
Bea pressed the card against her chest and smiled. “This is so nice.”
Margo looked down at her lap rather than at Bea. Or Anna.
“There’s a P.S.” Bea looked down again and read it aloud.
P.S. I’m in Sedona for the month. I took a little place out past Oak Creek. If you ever wanted to come see the red rocks, I would love for you to visit.
— S.
Bea looked up. “She invited me to Sedona.” She held the card in both hands. “I want to go.”
Anna set down the bread knife. She hadn’t realized she was still holding it. In the living room, the men had gone quiet—not a sound, exactly, but the absence of one. Luke had stopped laughing. Tyler had stopped talking.
Joey came through the patio door carrying two empty glasses, took three steps into the kitchen, and stopped. Meg’s knife was still. Nobody was moving.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“Nothing,” Meg said.
Joey set the glasses by the sink and went back out to the patio without another word.
Bea was looking at Anna, waiting. Across the room, Stella caught Bea’s eye—a quick look, the kind they’d been trading since Stella arrived in Laguna. What’s happening? Bea’s face said. Stella’s said I don’t know either, and she shifted her weight against the wall and kept watching.
“Mom?”
“Nothing, honey.”
“It’s not nothing. Everybody got weird.” She looked around the kitchen—Meg standing still with the knife, Margo studying her lap, Stella at the edge of the room, Tyler who had appeared in the kitchen doorway with his beer. “Sam sent me a birthday card and now everybody’s acting like someone died.”
“We’re not?—”
“She invited me to visit. In Sedona.” Bea’s voice wasn’t angry—it was the voice of a seventeen-year-old explaining something to a room full of adults who were being slow about it. “What’s the big deal?”
Anna sighed and looked at her daughter.
