North Hampton, and then Rye, up the long and curving stretch of Route 1A that leads to the house. It’s the winding road of a fairy tale, of a buddy movie, of an untested future, with the ocean to the right, a great wide unbroken expanse of blue, and beautiful, spacious homes to the left. Legitimate mansions, many of them. She pulls off the main road and down the small access road that leads to Ruby on Rye and into the driveway. There’s room for four cars, but only with a Tetris level of car management. Nobody has parked in the garage for as long as Mae can remember. She’s the first to arrive.
The house, built in the late fifties as a summer cottage for Theresa Shipman’s parents, Lewis and Roberta Perkins, but expanded, renovated, insulated, shored up, is two stories, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an upper deck and a lower patio, both facingthe water. Three steps lead down from the patio to the beach, and a stone wall sits to either side of the patio. Living room, small sunroom, kitchen, dining room. A little square of grass around the side, but the real yard is wide, bountiful Jenness Beach and the ocean beyond.
Theresa’s parents had divided their kingdom among their own three daughters: the brownstone in Boston to Carolyn, the eldest; money to Dawn, the youngest (this was what Dawn wanted); and the house in Rye to Theresa, the middle. Both grandparents died within nine months of each other when Natalie was two, before Mae was born, so she doesn’t remember a time when the house didn’t belong entirely to the Shipmans.
It’s not a mansion like the homes Mae just drove past, with their golf-course-green lawns, their turrets and gables, their location across the street from the ocean. Those houses observe the beach from a distance, while the Shipman house, and the houses on either side of it, a dozen or so altogether, inhabit the beach. Theyarethe beach.
There’s a woman bending over the outside spigot on the house. She straightens when she sees Mae’s car, and a look passes over her face that could only be called—confusion? She’s maybe in her late forties or early fifties, buttoned up, both figuratively and literally, in a pantsuit and square-buckle velvet flats (impractical beachwear, Mae notes).
Mae hesitates before getting out. Has there been a mistake? Has her father accepted a rental for the week and forgotten all about it? Heisgetting older—he’ll be seventy in October. Maybe his memory is starting to go. (If there is a renter, if the family bonding week is off, if she needs to turn around and go back to Colorado, she will ask her father to pay her back for all of the gas she purchased so that she could make haste.) She lowers Leo’s window a few inches and climbs out of the car.
She calls, “Hello!” She tries to make it sound merry but she hasn’t spoken in hours and the word comes out with a dry, desperate croak.
The woman approaches, hand outstretched to shake Mae’s. Very formal for a renter. “Hello there. I’m Nikoletta,” she says. She looks at the window from which Leo’s wide snout is visible. “Oh, what a nice dog,” she says optimistically. “Can I say hi? I love dogs.”
Leo shows his teeth.
“I wouldn’t,” says Mae. “Sorry. We’re—training.”
Nikoletta lowers her hand, clears her throat, and says, “You must be one of the girls. Your father thought you’d be arriving later.”
Mae nods. But why would a renter know she’s “one of the girls”?
“I think I’ve got the lockbox working now. You shouldn’t have any trouble with it, but if you do, give me a call. I’ll come right back. The code is four-three-seven-one.”
“I have a key,” Mae says, confused herself. They’ve all always had a key to the house; Mae keeps hers on her University of Vermont key ring, which she took with her when she moved out of Tony’s place and commenced her month of couch surfing. Much less fun than actual surfing, which Mae and her sisters grew up doing on this very beach. Why would she need a lockbox code?
“Oh, but we changed the locks. Common practice.”
Mae shakes her head. “Sorry?” In what universe is that? “The locks get changed every time a renter comes?”
Nikoletta tilts her head and considers Mae. She has kind brown eyes and the perfect amount of eyeliner, very much not smeared. She looks well-rested and organized. “I’m not—” She seems to reconsider. “Never mind,” she says. “Sorry to bother you. I’m sure your father will be in touch with me later today, once you’ve all arrived.”
“He’ll give you a refund,” Mae says. “If you’re out any money.”
Nikoletta is already walking quickly down the driveway. Shelooks back over her shoulder. “What’s that? Oh, I’m sure he will. Remember! Four-three-seven-one!”
Mae unloads Leo from the car and walks him on the patch of grass at the side of the house. She loops the leash around the railing, and he heaves himself onto the grass, panting like he’s the third-place finisher in the Bolder Boulder 10K. “Be right back, Leo,” she tells him. “Don’t go anywhere.”As if I could,says Leo with his eyes.I’m attached to the railing.Mae digs in the back of the car for Leo’s food and bowls, fills his water, pours the kibble. “This is more brunch than breakfast,” she tells him. “But itisSunday, so we can make that work.”
Where are her sisters? She doesn’t want to be in the house without them. She doesn’t want to face the ghost of their mother alone. She wants to see them, smell them, Natalie’s flowery perfume, Jordan’s expensively practical face wash. She wants to fall into their arms and tell them everything. She wants to sayFix it, you guys. Fix it all for me.
She calls Jordan. “Whereareyou?” she says, feeling very much the coddled youngest who is currently not being appropriately coddled. “Nobody’s here but me.”
The second they pull into the driveway the girls are asking if they can swim. They’ve invented a song too, which goes like this:beach, beach, we want to go to the beach. A songwriting Grammy is not, Natalie is afraid, in their near future, but the melody isn’t bad, and the sound of their sweet little voices harmonizing almost brings her to tears. She’s always been a sucker for the singing of children. Austin plays guitar and sings himself, and the kids seem to have inherited some of his talents the same way they inherited Natalie’s blue eyes and unfortunate tendency toward sunburn.
(“Christian rock?” Jordan asked sardonically the first time Natalie mentioned Austin’s singing, and Natalie had said no, huffily, because she knew Jordan would make fun if she said yes, although the truth is that sometimes Austin does veer slightly into Matt Redman territory.)
Even Caspian is trying to sing along, his legs in the car seat pumping mightily up and down.
(“Caspian, like from the sea?” Jordan had asked when Natalie called to tell her that her nephew had arrived, a perfect little boy to go along with big sisters Scarlett and Evangeline. And Natalie had said, “Caspian as in the prince from Narnia.” The name was Austin’s idea. “Noble, handsome, brave, and merry.” She’d be too busy to put any more thought into it, Natalie knew. Jordan is always busy.)
Jordan loves her nieces and nephew, though, she really does. Both of Natalie’s sisters are phenomenal aunts; she’s so lucky. Even if her beloved mother won’t get to see Natalie’s children grow up, she knows that her sisters will be there. She just wishes that at least one of them would have babies so that her kids would have cousins on their side of the family. As it is things are very heavily weighted toward Austin’s side. He’s the youngest of four boys, and among them they have eleven children, enough for their own NFL team, as soon as the NFL goes coed.
Natalie sometimes forgets she’s not technically a Shipman anymore; she’s a Hanson. But she will always be a Shipman sister.
“Not now,” she tells the singing army in the back seat, turning off the ignition. “Inside first, beach later. We have to unpack. We have to say hello to the house.”
“Hello, house,” says Evangeline.
