June 4, 1995
Dear Diary,
I know, I know. I’m officially 18. I can vote. I can do adult things (if my mother will let me). I am a grown-up, more or less. Well, LESS when I’m here in Destin, which is why I’ve decided I am not too mature to keep my traditional diary. Someday when we are old, gray, wrinkled (all but Tessa, of course), and have grandkids, we will remember these halcyon days. (Take that, Mrs. Livingston. I used an SAT word, probably one that got me into UGA by the skin of my pretty teeth.)
Anyway, another summer has just begun, and I swear on a stack of sandy flip-flops, this will be the best one of our whole lives.
We rolled Mom’s Explorer into the driveway, packed with four of us (Dad was following because, as always, he’ll go back and forth from Atlanta while we are living the beach life) at five in the afternoon. The Wylies were already here! Uncle Artie pulled an all-nighter from Ithaca with Tessa driving half the trip while Kate and Aunt Jo Ellen slept. Tessa got to be in charge of music and ol’ Artie now knows every word of every song on CrazySexyCool. (He’s the best!!)
Of course, Tessa came flying down the steps in cutoffs, screaming and jumping around like a gorgeous banshee withKate behind her, not jumping but whipping her glasses off so she looked her best for Eli, who stared at Tessa.
Le sigh. Some things never change. (Speaking of things that never change, Peter is meeting us here, coming next week. Plenty of time for me to perfect my tan andfinallyget his attention. I haven’t seen him since Christmas when he came to visit and told us he’s decided to be a cop! Talk about CrazySexyCool!)
Three months. That’s what we get. Three whole months of this before real life swallows us up and by real life, I mean college. Well, for some of us.
Kate, of course, is going to Cornell on a genius discount, which is what Tessa calls her mountain of scholarships. Amazing, but not surprising. And Tessa, in true opposite twin style, didn’t even take the SATs! She said she wants to have fun, meet amazing people, see sights, have fun, get super tan, serve cocktails and food, and have fun. Did I mention the fun?
Anyway, she’s going to do all that because, naturally, she got a job with Carnival Cruise Lines! While the rest of us are struggling through freshman English, she’ll be sailing the Caribbean like a queen. Well, a waitress, but still. I thought Uncle Artie would be upset (Maggie would behead us if we opted out of college and Uncle A’s aprofessor!) but he just told her to pack sunscreen and call every Sunday ’cause, “You only live once, Theresa!”
No wonder those two are so close. I couldn’t dream of having a relationship like that with either of my parents, who rule by fear and judgment. Well, Mom does. Dad seems a little distracted these days.
And what was going on with him and Uncle Artie? Dad barely said hello to him. I heard them talking on the porch after dinner and they weren’t laughing or planning a fishing trip, like always. When I walked past, they both shut up fast like they were busted or something.
Not so the moms, though. Aunt Jo Ellen brought out their favorite limoncello she got from their friends that own the Italian deli. Mom said no in typical Maggie style (which was something like, “Jo, it’s all sugar and empty calories!”).
To which Aunt JE filled a glass and stuck it into her hand and said, “In Destin, we drink, Mags.”
And they did, both of them giggling their way down the boardwalk to assure us that all is well in the world. Only Aunt Jo Ellen can get Magnolia Fredericks Lawson to snort with laughter. Tonight it was because she did an impression of someone from their sorority who married a guy who invented a ketchup lid.
All part of the reason I love coming here so much.
Who am I kidding? Peter is the reason.
Oh, the big news Tessa whispered to us is that she has a friend of a friend of a friend (only Tessa) who supposedly knows a guy who’ll be here this summer visiting his grandparents and he has a sailboat! We can go out on it! As always, fun awaits us for another unforgettable summer of walkin’ on sunshine!
Love,
Viv
Maggie closed Vivien’s decades-old diary and held it against her chest, the echo of her daughter’s eighteen-year-old voice still in her head.
It drowned out the other voice she’d heard in her sleep not an hour ago. Roger’s deep baritone had awakened her from a dream at dawn. Her late husband had been desperately trying to tell her something, but he couldn’t get the words out.
Pushing the remnants of the dream away, she set the diary on the coffee table in front of her, letting her mind drift back to 1995. The last summer…the summer it all ended.
At least until this one.
Maggie had been forty-eight when Vivien wrote those words. So heartbreakingly young, and so sure she knew everything a woman needed to know about life. What she had actually known, it turned out, was almost nothing at all. At least not where her husband had been concerned.
What had Roger been trying to?—
“Morning, Mags!” Jo Ellen padded in from the small balcony, a watering can in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. “I was just chatting with my plants. The hibiscus says hello. And Basil? The little guy that Jonah gave me? Thriving! I think I’ll put a gardendown in the side yard. I was just looking at it from the balcony, and I think I could grow veggies! How’d you sleep, dear?”
“Not as well as you did, apparently,” Maggie said dryly, but she was used to Jo Ellen’s daily optimism, especially the morning overdose of it. “Aren’t you tired from the wedding yesterday?”
“My feet, back, and the hips I’m trying to ignore are complaining, but my heart?” She let out a happy purr, half contented cat, half nearly-eighty-year-old clearing her throat. “My Tessa is finally married! Oh, that girl. She always surprises and delights me.”
A flash of Tessa as Vivien had described her at eighteen—a gorgeous banshee—made her smile. “It was a beautiful day for Tessa,” Maggie said. “Well worth the wait.”
