“I don’t know what to do after graduation.” She takes a swig of her beer. “Eric’s gonna live with Zach, isn’t he? Is that what he said?”
“Maybe,” I say.
She doesn’t often look worried, but she does now. “Chris? I don’t know how…it’s just…” she stammers. Estelle is not one to stammer.
Chris stops her. “Do you want to come stay with us in Maine for a while?”
She brightens and looks relieved. “Could I? With…James?” She looks at me.
“Estelle, of course,” I say insistently. “You’re welcome anytime at all. It’s your home, too.”
I realize that they’ve never had anywhere to go home to during summer and college breaks. It was always up to Chris to corral them somewhere, figure out a plan for each time away from school. Even after my own parents died, James and I had a home base with Aunt Lisa. Not that we liked her all that much, but we still flew back home to familiar territory and had some semblance of family. It’s pretty normal for kids to stay with their families during their off times, to always have a backup place to stay.
The Shepherds have never had that, but they do now.
“James wants to talk to you about redoing the front porch, expanding it and adding in a larger patio area. Then…he’s thinking about grad school or an architecture internship in Boston.” She strums her nails on the table surface and looks around. “It’s going to be fucked up, being apart from Eric, but it has to happen, I guess, so I’d feel better…being with you. We won’t be in your hair, and you can just kick us out anytime you want.”
“We would love to have you,” Chris assures her. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells.”
“I’m not walking on fucking eggshells.” Estelle sticks out her tongue. “Have we met? I don’t do eggshells. I’m just telling you that we won’t interfere with your exceedingly loud sex life this time around.”
Chris covers his face with a hand. “Oh my God, did you have to throw that in?”
She polishes off her beer and clunks it loudly on the table. “I did. And that means you don’t get to interfere in my exceedingly loud sex life either. This is going to be beautiful!” She grins and blows me a kiss, and then she makes a dramatic show of kissing my brother—with a lot of tongue.
When James can breathe, he looks bashfully at me. “Sorry, Blythe. Sorry…but since Estelle can’t keep her voice down and I heard all of that, thank you. You guys are the best.”
“And because you’re so fabulous and all that,” Estelle says, “maybe you won’t mind that Zach invited Eric, James, and me to go skiing with him and his family in Jackson Hole. We’d leave in a few days, cutting this trip short.” She squeezes her eyes shut and crosses her fingers after she drops this bomb.
“Oh.” I’m hit with disappointment, but…well, they’re college kids who want to go skiing.
James glares at her. “We totally don’t have to. He just asked us tonight.”
Rather quickly, Chris answers, “I think you should go. You’ll have an awesome time, and it’s been ages since you’ve been skiing.”
I’m about to say something, but Chris rubs his fingers against my arm. He has a reason for thinking this is a good idea. I just don’t know what it is.
“Really? You won’t be mad?” Estelle claps her hands. “Fuckin’ bitchin’, James! We’re going skiing! Sexy snow-bunny outfits for me. You slipping your cold hands under my—”
“Hey, hey!” Chris rolls his eyes. “Don’t make me change my mind.”
She makes an overly serious face. “Yes, brother dear. Understood.” Then, she stands and yells toward the stage, “Sabin! Woohoo!”
I turn in time to catch him winking at his sister before he launches into a song. This might be a small bar, but they’ve got a stage light shining on him. This is his element, and I feel an onset of relief to see him as he is tonight. Despite a rough afternoon the other day, he is still the Sabin with all the strength and character I know he has. It’s just good to be reminded of that.
He spends over an hour doing crowd-pleasing cover songs, including “Sister Christian.” He dedicates it to Estelle and even lets her sing loudly and off-key into his mic. While it might be a drunken audience, they are wholly enthusiastic, and Sabin easily gets them all to sing along with him.
It’s a happy group tonight, and I don’t want this all to end, but at twelve thirty, Sabin announces that his set is over. I can barely hear what he’s saying over the audience’s applause and particularly over Eric’s thumping on the table. We all join in though, and it creates one of the only embarrassed expressions I’ve ever seen from Sabin. He thanks the crowd and hops off the stage to grab a seat with us.
Chris jumps up and stands behind him, putting his hands on Sabin’s shoulders and shaking him. “Who’s my rock-star brother, huh? That’s right! This boy! So proud of you, man.”
Sabin pats Chris’s hand. “Thanks.”
“We’re gettingmarrieeeeeeed!” Eric hollers.
We all whip our heads to Eric and Zach.
“You’rewhat?” Sabin asks.
