“I’m coming!” But no one heard. At that moment, Badger, her father’s beloved Irish setter, bounded inside with a look of wild glee on his face and a trail of muddy pawprints in his wake.
Her mother threw up her hands. “That dog! He was supposed to be crated.”
“He was.” Julia’s father, a crisp vision in white linen, lunged just in time and secured Badger’s leather collar. He scruffed the dog playfully, his tanned face crinkling with joy as Badger wagged against him. “How’d you escape, Houdini?”
“Alan, your suit,” her mother protested.
“It’s all right, honey. I’ve got him.” Somehow her father managed to steer Badger through the kitchen and into the rear mudroom without getting a speck of dirt on himself. “Come on, you mangy mutt.” Her father’s patience knew no bounds.
Anne shook her head and turned to Eliza. “I swear, if it came down to me or that dog…” It was then that Anne noticed Julia standing in the doorway.
Julia wasn’t sure what to expect from her mother; she’d seen the towering vases of hydrangeas lined up on the tables outside, knowing she hadn’t had a hand in a single arrangement. She deserved an earful.
“Well, well.” But her mother’s expression softened when she noted the mint-green dress. She crossed the marble tiles in no time and planted a kiss on Julia’s forehead. “Oh, honey. You look lovely.” Pippa was skipping in small circles around them, swinging an overstuffed drawstring purse, which flew out of her hand and landed with a sharp thud on the floor.
Their mother spun around. “Pippa Mae, dare I ask what you’re hiding in that handbag?”
Pippa snatched up her purse and pivoted away, but Eliza caughther midskip and spun Pippa around to face her mother, as if presenting a gift or a felon, Julia was not sure. “Show your mother.”
Their mother shook her head as she emptied the contents of the purse across the island counter. “Oh, Pips. Really, now.” Julia stole a peek over her shoulder. There were two gray rocks, one that looked like a real toe-breaker if dropped. A feather from the chicken coop. An open bag of M&M’s, half melted. A leaking sparkly purple gel pen. And a miniature brass sculpture of a sailboat that their father immediately scooped up from the pile as he returned to the kitchen sans Badger. “Hey now, I’ve been looking for this for weeks.”
“But I need all of it!” Pippa wailed, her eyes roving territorially across her loot. She was such a little hoarder.
Julia hid her smile as her mother dumped it gently into a small pail that Eliza miraculously procured from thin air. “We’ll save it for later, honey. Your purse is a party accessory, not a backpack for a two-week excursion.”
With everyone finally accounted for, Anne’s eyes flashed. “Picture time,” she declared. Even their father slumped a little.
Eliza gathered the four of them in the living room by the bay window. Behind them, the afternoon light was pink and still promising, casting a rosy glow on all four Lancasters. Julia leaned in to her mother. “I’m sorry I didn’t help with the flowers,” Julia whispered. “I lost track of time.”
Her mother regarded her with a knowing smile. She looked vibrant, her blond hair swept up elegantly, eyes twinkling. “You were out in that swamp again, weren’t you?”
Julia stiffened. How her mother seemed to know everything confounded her.
But if her mother knew it had anything to do with Sam Ryder, Julia was given a reprieve. “It’s all right, baby girl. Next time.”
Julia felt her insides relax. Anne Lancaster was a rock, a force of nature. But she bent and flexed gracefully like the reeds in theirwetlands, sure of her position in the family. Despite the fact that her mother sometimes drove her absolutely crazy, somewhere deep in her bones Julia ached to be just like her. Love could be so conflicting.
Julia watched her mother’s gaze flicker toward the bay window, where suddenly, the first guests alighted on the patio in their summer whites. The women looked like cranes, stepping gingerly in their heels across the flagstones. “Hurry! Everyone smile for the camera.”
Pippa wriggled in between them, her recovered purse repacked, and accidentally stomped Julia’s toes with one of her block heels. Julia yelped.
“Sorry,” Pippa squeaked. At that moment Badger galloped through the kitchen, somehow sprung from his crate once again and awash with fresh mud. Upon locating his people in the formal living room, he spun on his hindquarters and thundered in, antique tables and lamps wobbling in his wake. “No!” Anne cried. “Stay down!” The family braced themselves, but it was too late.
Badger leaped into their fold, knocking against Pippa’s tulle skirt, dragging his muddy tongue across Alan’s face. Everyone sidestepped and shouted. The camera flashed once, then again, and Julia’s father roared heartily, “Let the party begin!”
ThreeRoberta
Roberta Blythe opened her mailbox and peered inside. “Ah! Something for both of us.” At her feet, Maisey thumped her black tail expectantly.
Each time the UPS driver delivered a package, he left a dog biscuit in the mailbox for Maisey. Lately, Roberta had been shopping online with such frequency that the dachshund had come to expect something whenever they got the mail, which Roberta was more than a little ashamed of. She handed Maisey the biscuit and withdrew her package: the shape and weight of the hardcover book inside made her heart feel light. If a little guilty.
Despite the fact that Roberta believed in small business and loathed the Internet, she’d recently buckled and done something she’d sworn she’d never do: she’d made peace with Amazon. It had taken her years to arrive at that commercial-giant juncture, but ultimately, it was bigmouth Jimmy, from her physical therapy class, who was responsible.
Since her knee surgery back in February, Roberta was confronted by the likes of Jimmy Barkhausen three times a week at the orthopedic rehab center. All through the winter and spring, she’d been forced to listen to him rave about the many things he found inspiring (he was one of those expressly grateful types who thrusthis good cheer on people), one of which was Amazon. According to Jimmy, it had changed his life. As with most things Jimmy said, Roberta initially tuned it out. If pressed, she supposed he was likable enough, a retired attorney, which gave them something in common, since she herself had been retired from the probate court bench for a good fourteen years now. But Jimmy talked too much and treated the rehab class like something of a social club, a place to hunker down and chew the fat. Roberta didn’t want to hunker down with anyone, let alone chew the fat. She wanted to get in and get out of there. It was no secret that many in town considered her a bit of an introvert, which suited her just fine.
As Jimmy had railed on about the wonders of Amazon, a business so diversified that it sold everything from toilet paper to good literature, Roberta had focused instead on her rehab exercises. Her knee was healing nicely from ACL surgery. Nicely enough, she hoped, that she wouldn’t have to keep coming back to rehab three times a week to do these god-awful stretches. The few occasions Roberta left her house, her errands took her to only three places: the local IGA market, the pharmacy, and the town library. And those she visited during off-hours, so as not to have to see people.
So when Jimmy mentioned that he didn’t even have to get in the car and drive to the mall for jeans or to the pharmacy for his favorite brand of aftershave, it captured her attention. She tipped her head slightly in his direction on the trampoline in the corner. It was what he said next that made her put down her weights altogether.
