Page 104 of The Book of Summer

“Iamlistening! I’m a great listener! It’s one of my premier qualities.”

Bess scoffs from her corner of the room. Cissy doesn’t catch it, naturally.

“There’s no easy way to tell you this,” Mike says. “So I’ll just come out with it. I can’t move your house.”

“Then I’ll find someone else.”

“No one can.”

Cissy looks disoriented, like she’s in a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon and someone’s tried to blast her with TNT. There are practically symbols circling above her head.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“The bluff is too far gone,” Mike explains. “The soil might as well be quicksand.”

“But you’re testing it in the rain! It’s not always like this!”

“Well, if it never rained again…”

“And the geotubes. Don’t forget about the geotubes! Did you read that they’re going to approve my measure?”

“Yes, you e-mailed it to me three times.” Mike sighs. “Cissy, I really hate this.”

“Listen, move the house all the way to the street. No yard? That’s fine. I can hold my parties indoors. Do whatever you have to do.”

“I can’t move it any closer to the street.”

“Take out the privet hedge! I realize that I said to keep it at all costs but if that’s the cost of saving Cliff House, so be it.”

“Cissy,” Mike says again and takes a few steps closer.

Bess stands in place, ogling. He is a brave man to tell Cissy no.

“You can put in sandbags,” he says, and gently pats her arm. “You can take out privacy hedges. You can do both of these things but the fact is that this land is unstable. A pool, you ask? I wouldn’t put a bowl of good chowder anywhere on this property.”

“But isn’t there any way—”

“See that?” he says, and points toward the door. “My soil-testing kit outside? It’s pouring rain but I’m going to walk out there and grab it. I’m afraid it won’t survive the holiday weekend and I’ll be out fifty bucks. Never mind the kit, though. If I were you…” He looks at Cissy. He looks at Bess. “I’d get out. Now. You don’t have a lot of time left.”

41

Friday Night

The rain has stopped, mostly, but even the lingering drizzle doesn’t impede Felicia Bradlee’s multiboat soirée. And why would it? Bankers and lawyers can rough it in hats and raincoats. They wear their slumming-it shoes. It makes them feel outdoorsy despite so many hours logged in conference rooms.

Bess sits on the bench ofKip’s Folly,a glass of white wine in hand, not a friend to be found. Flick is off humoring guests with work anecdotes and her brusque, infectious laugh. Palmer and Brooks are chasing Amory around, making sure she doesn’t drown in the marina. Bess checks her watch. It’s already past Amory’s bedtime and soon Bess will have no compatriots left at the party. The guest she invited never responded.

If that’s not humiliating enough, even her mother is missing. Cissy promised to attend, RSVP’d even (unlike certain local contractors), but in the end stayed home, leaving Bess to explain her absence.

To Aunt Polly and Uncle Vince: “She’s not feeling well.”

To Flick: “She’s being Cissy.”

And to Palmer: “The engineer told her a big fat ‘NOPE’ on moving Cliff House so she’s hunting down someone willing to give her the answer she wants.”

“Cis, you have to come,” Bess said earlier, as she rooted around her suitcase for something to wear.

She and Palmer picked up new tops and some “darling” wedge heels in town, but diaphanous silk blouses and slick-bottomed shoes weren’t going to cut it in that weather. A gross error in judgment when the party called for the delicate sartorial balance between looking decent and keeping warm, a formula that very much defined life on-island eighty percent of the summer. It’s something Bess should’ve remembered as the woman in the shop swiped her card. Summer People. They have no clue.