Page 25 of Summer on Lilac Island

The lilac earrings Eloise wore during the jewelry workshop felt bulky.

Back at Thistle Dew afterward, she took them off, but the heaviness remained. The workshop had gone well—forty-seven attendees,

many of whom tipped generously—but Eloise hadn’t felt her usual spark for it. She’d been distracted. Everything felt a bit

frizzy.

“Turn that down, please,” she said to Georgiana, who was sprawled on the couch, bare feet propped on the glass coffee table,

computer blaring some trashy reality show. “And move your feet off the table. You’re smudging the glass.”

“I’m giving it some character,” Georgiana said, reluctantly rearranging herself. “Aren’t you going to compliment me on being

the cornhole champion? I’m sure our house will be named a historical monument for it.”

“I heard you did very well.” Eloise used the sleeve of her cardigan to rub the coffee table clean. “How was Clyde?”

“Pretty decent for his first time playing.”

Eloise wasn’t inquiring about how competent a cornhole player he was. She was asking how he was, in light of recent events.

And she was certain Georgiana knew good and well that was what she meant. But Eloise wouldn’t beg for information, wouldn’t

grovel. She made a pot of peppermint tea and brought two steaming mugs out to the couch.

“I asked for Diet Coke,” Georgiana said.

“Go help yourself then.”

Georgiana dissolved back into her computer screen. “What do you know about Ronny?”

It took Eloise a moment to register the question. She was deep into rehashing her phone call with Clyde, dissecting her word

choice, criticizing her tone. Had she been too hasty in suggesting they keep things platonic?

“Do you mean Officer Ronny?” she asked.

“Yeah, that one.” Georgiana said it casually. Too casually, like she had something to hide.

Eloise’s headache mounted. A scraping, a grating. But expressing her disapproval would just make Georgiana want him more.

She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“I don’t know him personally,” Eloise said.

“I heard there was a petition to get him removed,” Georgiana said.

There had been two petitions, actually, but nothing had come of them. Islanders liked to collect signatures for everything,

from banning cruise ships to hiking the ferry tax to banning political yard signs. None had yet been successful. “He’s rubbed

a few people the wrong way, I suppose.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to run away with him, Mother,” Georgiana said, clearly sensing Eloise’s apprehension. “I’m just...

lonely here, I guess. No Rebecca, no friends. James choosing Lillian over me. All that happy stuff.” Her eyes widened, dewy

and doleful. It was a trick she’d mastered as a toddler to get sympathy. Eloise felt herself softening.

“Did James tell you he wasn’t interested?” Eloise asked.

“He won’t say it outright, but I can take the hint.”

Eloise was disappointed in James. She’d thought he’d at least be the type to communicate clearly. It had been a mistake setting

them up in the first place. The odds of it working had been so slim, and now Georgiana would lash out, throw herself at someone

new.

“So what’s Ronny done that’s so bad?” Georgiana pressed.

“What hasn’t he done?” Eloise said. “Giving private tours after dark to tourists. Only the young female ones, I should add. Drinking on

duty, taking that horse of his out racing through the trails. No one’s been this unpopular on the island since...”

“Since me?” Georgiana finished for her.

She couldn’t pretend otherwise, though it upset her how much pride Georgiana seemed to take in her infamy. Eloise sipped her

tea. It singed her tongue.

“You’ve changed, though.” Eloise heard the vacillation in her own voice.

“Have I?” Georgiana said, and she sounded like she might actually want Eloise to answer.

“Sure you have,” Eloise said. “You’ve seen so much of the country. You’ve gotten a diverse array of work experiences.” She

tried to put a positive spin on it for both of them. “And you cared enough about how I might be faring after Rebecca moved

away to come visit for the whole summer.”

“You know that wasn’t the reason,” Gigi said. Eloise wished she would just take the bone sometimes. “I had no other options.”

Eloise had to take a cooling breath. She reminded herself her daughter was not mentally well. These were the sick parts talking,

the scared parts.

“The thing about you, Georgiana,” she went on. “ Gigi ,” she said, wanting to show that she was really trying, even as the truncated name scuffed her lips, “is that you have always

created opportunities for yourself, and you always will. It’s a very good trait.”

Gigi turned down the volume on her show just a little. She seemed to be listening.

“How about being my date for the cruise tomorrow?” Eloise suggested. The Lilac Festival always ended with a big sunset cruise,

the kind of thing islanders grumbled was a waste of taxpayer money but no one would ever hear of canceling.

Georgiana made a face. “I’d rather swim across the Straits of Mackinac without a wet suit than be stuck on a boat with the islanders and all of their nosy interrogations.”

Eloise ordinarily would have chastised Georgiana for speaking this way about their neighbors. She would have told her she

wasn’t invited after all. But this summer was showing Eloise that she needed to meet her daughter where she was. She had to

try from multiple angles, crack open the back doors and the windows and the chimneys too.

“I heard Ronny is DJing,” Eloise said.

Georgiana pushed the hair out of her eyes to better assess Eloise. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Kitty is organizing it and said Ronny offered to DJ for free. Wants to get exposure, whatever that means.” Eloise’s

face pinched. She didn’t approve of DJs. They were so loud, so unrefined. But maybe Georgiana needed a night out of the house.

It might be good for them both.

“I’ll think about it,” Georgiana said.

Eloise took it as the small win that it was. Perhaps now was the right time to probe again about Clyde. Those nonanswers Georgiana

gave earlier simply wouldn’t do.

Eloise blew on her mug to stall for time. “Did Clyde mention if he was going on the cruise?”

“It didn’t come up,” Georgiana said. “But I’m sure he will be.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s dying for another chance with you.”

Eloise’s insides released. Errant darts at a dangerous target. “He’s not.”

Georgiana closed her laptop. The shrill voices from the reality show ceased mid-sentence. “He told me today.”

It was too much for Eloise. The way Georgiana disclosed this information so calmly, so clinically, as if stating that the

electric bill had arrived in the mail. “And you’re just now telling me this?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Georgiana said, tea sloshing on her shirt. “Bring it up right when you walked in? You get so agitated when Clyde comes up.”

“I’m not agitated.” Eloise’s body tingled. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Right.” Georgiana opened her laptop again. The voices resumed. “My mistake.”

***

Eloise’s only prior experience with a man making her agitated was Gus. She could make the sentence shorter. Her only prior

experience with a man was Gus.

Gus had riled her up, it was true. Gloriously so.

He’d been two grades above Eloise. A colossal gulf in elementary school, but they knew each other loosely. (The Mackinac Island

schoolhouse was so small back then, divided into just two rooms: younger students and older students.)

It was Deirdre who had fixated on him first. Ever since fourth grade, doodling hearts with Gus’s initials in her notebooks,

magicking up his name on the Ouija board they used in Paula’s parents’ basement. Eloise agreed he was charming and funny and

dreamy and all the superlatives but saw no point in getting attached to someone she could never have. He always had a girl

next to him in the hallway. Someone older, someone prettier.

Ninth grade came. High school. Though still in the same building they’d been in since kindergarten, it was a big moment. Especially

to Deirdre, who was adamant that this would be the year Gus Jenkins fell for her. How could he not with her grown-out bangs and braces-free smile? It was only a matter of time,

Eloise and Paula assured Deirdre.

The week before school started, the girls went on a much-anticipated shopping trip to the mall in Mackinaw City. Their mothers

accompanied them but opted to linger at the hair salon, entrusting them each with a crisp twenty-dollar bill, reminding them

to bring back the change, that God was watching.

Eloise and Paula had to weigh in on every outfit that Deirdre tried on through the lens of What will Gus say? It was tiresome and shallow, not that Eloise should judge. She worshipped false idols too, growing fond of her reflection

in the mirror, the subtle curves that had started to appear. Her knees were no longer so knobby. In a moment of impulse, she

spent her wad on a pleated miniskirt that Alice would purge from her wardrobe as soon as it was discovered. But the thought

of wearing it even once was enough.

Yanked along by Deirdre’s influence, Eloise and Paula took Epsom salt baths, tended obsessively to zits with toothpaste and

apple cider vinegar, and slathered oily lotions onto freshly shaved legs. (Alice still restricted Eloise to only three razor

widths on each shin. Paula was allowed to shave her calves but not her kneecaps. Deirdre, without permission, sheared her

entire legs, from toes to upper thighs.)

“Don’t complain,” Deirdre told Eloise. “Your hairs are blonde and peachy. Mine are jet black and coarse like a horse’s tail.

Not fair.”

Also not fair in Deirdre’s eyes was the fact that several months into ninth grade, Gus still hadn’t made a move.

“Why don’t you just ask him out yourself?” Paula asked. “Girls don’t always need to wait for guys.”

“Of course they do,” Deirdre said. “It’s called romance.”

Romance also apparently meant laying booby traps for Gus. The first attempt came in the form of Deirdre’s fifteenth birthday party,