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Chapter Sixteen

I am reading Autumn Harvest as quickly as I can on the beach as if my life depends on it.

My beach chair is positioned directly on the shoreline, my feet in the lake, but my mind is elsewhere.

The sun’s reflection on the waves creates a zigzag pattern of diamonds. They spell out one, large letter:

Z.

I consider the book.

Is this really her story? Or was she, as her daughter said, simply an old woman with a fuzzy memory?

I couldn’t sleep, so I woke with the sun and ran at dawn, under a sky of pink and purple. There were a few beach walkers this morning, a woman doing yoga, a few rock hunters, but I was the only one who seemed to be running from both her past and her future.

The beach is still largely empty.

I’m drinking coffee from one of GiGi’s favorite mugs, which is perched in the sand, and states Reading Is Dreaming with Your Eyes Open!

I take a sip of coffee, staring at the faded art on the mug.

I reach up and remove GiGi’s cap that I’m wearing and place it on my lap.

My sister is coming home.

What do I think will happen?

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys will solve The Mystery of Mean Marcus?

That only happens in books, right?

If I work with Marcus, I will likely say or do the wrong thing. I could end up living the rest of my life knowing I helped stick the last knife in my family’s back.

Or, are Jess and I as savvy as the Swans? Can we, too, take down a prolific writer who always seems to get away with his outlandish behavior?

“I think you have your seasons confused.”

I am in shadow.

I look up.

Jess is standing over me, pointing at the cover of the novel I’m reading.

“I’m just confused in general.”

She laughs.

“Welcome to the clown car,” Jess says. “I’m driving.”

I stand, and we hug.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask. “I told you I’d pick you up from the airport in Grand Rapids.”

“I needed a car anyway,” she says.

“Two control freaks,” I say. “I missed you so much.”

She smiles.

“Me, too,” she says. “Let’s try to not screw it up again.” Jess pauses. “Until tomorrow.”

She holds me at arm’s length and looks into my eyes, as if trying to make sure this is all real.

“I’ll try,” I say. “But you know me.” Jess doesn’t laugh. “And I’m sorry about, well, everything, sis. I mean it.”

“I forgive you,” she says. “Let’s start there, okay?”

I nod.

Jess looks around the beach. “It’s good to be back. There’s nothing like Michigan in the summer.”

I look at her to make sure this is all real, too.

“I mean it,” she says. “I can love the ocean and the lake. It’s like having two lovers, one in the city and one in the country.”

“I have a lot to fill you in on,” I say. “A lot.”

“That sounds more ominous than our last conversation,” she says.

“Have a seat,” I say.

“Hey, before I lose this glimmer of nostalgia, I had an idea on the drive here. Why don’t we decorate the cottage for the Fourth of July just like GiGi did. Remember? It was something we all did as a family every summer. We have a couple of days before the holiday. We don’t really celebrate holidays like that anymore.”

“It’s so warm and fuzzy to go to Tavern on the Green for Thanksgiving, isn’t it?” I tease.

“Can you imagine Mom stuffing a turkey and making a pumpkin pie?” Jess laughs.

“I can imagine Mom making reservations at Tavern on the Green,” I say. “Come on. I know where GiGi keeps everything.”

“I had another idea on the ride here, too.”

I look at her. “Yes?”

“Can I surprise you?”

“No.”

She laughs.

“I just want one day of fun—one summer evening in Michigan—before we talk about Marcus and the real world. Is that bad? Just one night?”

I shake my head.

“I think that’s a great idea.”

She smiles. I continue.

“And I think I already know where you want to go.”

I grab my things off the beach and put GiGi’s hat on Jess’s head.

She touches the brim and closes her eyes for a moment.

“C’mon, Emma,” she says. “The Page sisters will show this town how summer and the Fourth of July is done.”

* * *

There is nothing that a Rum Runner from Captain Lou’s in South Haven can’t fix.

Or two.

Captain Lou’s is an old, shingled shack with an outdoor bar and live music on the weekends that overlooks the river and the harbor, where you can sit and watch boats idle by all day long.

Jess motions for the waiter—who has yet to take his eyes off my sister since we arrived—to bring us another round.

“You have a lot in common with VV,” I say.

“Them’s fighting words,” she says. “And after another of these I’ll be ready to fight.”

“Here ya go!” he says. “With a floater. My treat.”

A floater is an extra shot that Captain Lou’s “floats” on top of their famed frozen drink. We need it like we needed the onion rings at Clementine’s—another of South Haven’s famous haunts—which come homemade and piled high on a post as if you just played ring toss with them. My sister said we needed the grease to soak up the booze.

The waiter sets our drinks before us. He is about my age, very tan already, hair bleached by the sun, eyes like the lake. His arms are marble, and his biceps make the sleeve on his T-shirt scream in both delight and exhaustion.

“Anything else?” he asks. “Like my number?”

My sister laughs.

“Subtle,” she says. “Thank you, but I’m not dating.”

“You? Why not?”

“I’m happy being single right now.”

“I could make you happier.”

He smiles, and it’s such a heart-stopping, earnest smile that—even on a perfect summer day in Michigan—the world dims in its brightness.

“Maybe after one more Rum Runner,” my sister says.

He bows and walks away from our table backward, still soaking in my sister’s beauty.

“Cheers again,” she says. “To Michigan!”

I clink her glass.

“What?” she asks, noting my stare. “I just said that to appease him.”

“You’ve always done things to appease others.”

“Like I said, I have a disease to please.”

“But you don’t need to,” I offer slowly so as not to upend the delicate balance of understanding we’ve just achieved.

“It’s hard to unlearn,” Jess says.

She takes a big slug of her Rum Runner and eyes me further.

“I’m detecting judgment,” she continues. “I had nothing to do with his initial response.”

“I know that,” I say, “but you have this aura.”

“I’m just Jess,” my sister says, leaning back with force, her chair scooching away from the table. “What am I supposed to do? Wear a mask?”

She sighs.

“This is what I was just saying to you on the phone, sis. I’m judged every day by women, by men, by…you. By things I say and don’t say. God, it’s exhausting. The last thing I need is to hear it from you when I’m trying to forget our lives for a hot second. Give me a break please.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

It’s too late.

“You’re a book that’s always been judged by its pages. I’m a book that’s always been judged by its cover. Since I was a kid. Girls were jealous. Guys were flirts. And I felt ugly compared to Mom.”

“You? I always felt like Weird Barbie compared to you and Mom.”

“But you always had GiGi, Emma. You always had friends.” My sister looks over the deck at the boats drifting past. “Books were my only friends. You get shut out of the game for so long, you don’t want to even play anymore.”

Her words somersault me back in time.

When my sister and I were young, we shared a room at Eyebrow Cottage.

We could have had separate rooms, but we wanted to be together after being separated at boarding school.

“Summer’s short, like you,” Jess always said, mussing my hair, when we’d arrive and settle into our room. “Life’s long. One day, we won’t be able to do this.”

We would push those two twin beds next to each other in the middle of the room and make our own girl camp. We read books that scared the bejesus out of us—Stephen King, V. C. Andrews—with flashlights under the covers, we did each other’s hair…

We didn’t need anyone else in this world.

And then Jess went through puberty, and a little girl became a beautiful flower.

That’s when the knocking on the front door began, which turned into late-night texts on her phone. Jess began to spend more time with boys than with me.

Oh, I tried to make them see me, but the knocks, the texts were always for her.

And it was so effortless for her. Ten minutes before the mirror, and she could stop a train. My attempt at perfection required an hour and a half, a can of hairspray, an array of makeup and a facade of confidence.

One night when she was on the phone talking to a boy instead of talking to me, I grabbed all my stuff. I didn’t yell, or go to another room. I went to the basement.

“Where are you going, Emma?” Jess asked.

“As far away from you as I can.”

GiGi heard the commotion and followed me to the basement.

“May I ask why you’re so upset?”

“She doesn’t know I exist. She hates me.”

GiGi came over to the old Jenny Lind bed in the corner of the drafty basement and took a seat on the squeaky mattress.

“She doesn’t hate you,” GiGi said, “and you are—and will always be—your sister’s world. But, at this point in her life, her world is very, very different from yours. You’ll understand one day.”

I didn’t want to understand.

Nearly every week after that—and for the next few summers—my sister would randomly appear at night on the basement stoop in her pajamas holding a stack of board games.

“I got Uno, Monopoly, Operation, Clue, Scrabble, Which Witch?, Trouble, Sorry!, a deck of cards for Hearts and—your favorite—Yahtzee!” she’d say. “Your pick!”

“No, thanks,” I’d say, turning back to my book or my journal, head down until I heard the stairs creak and door shut.

I stayed in the basement until my sister began to spend more time away with my parents. When she’d return, we not only had separate bedrooms, we had separate lives.

I had GiGi.

Jess had my parents.

I had friends.

Jess had boyfriends.

Eventually, she just didn’t want to play with me anymore.

I had shut her out.

I open my mouth to address our childhood rivalry—which has always been the wedge preventing us from shutting the door on our past—but my sister now has her chair turned toward the water, her elbows on the railing, chin resting in her hands.

“Remember GiGi’s boat?” she says wistfully, trying to keep the door closed on our conversation.

I nod.

“Why do you think she rarely took us out on it?” Jess continues.

I watch the boats—sailboats, whalers, cigarette boats, yachts—drift on the water.

GiGi had a tritoon named The Ni-Ko-Nong in honor of South Haven’s history and sunsets.

And that was the time GiGi typically took her boat out, summer evenings, when the hordes had returned home for a nap and dinner, the winds had died down, and the lake was hers and hers alone.

Once The Ni-Ko-Nong was out of the channel, GiGi would gun that little boat toward the horizon. She’d venture out about a mile, turn off the motor and float, either reading or filling her journal with notes. She’d watch the sun set, and then motor home—lights on—hat perched atop her head, singing Sinatra’s “Summer Wind.”

I accompanied GiGi out on the boat more than Jess, but—my sister is right—those days were rare. Most times, she’d sneak off on her own, without a word, as if the horizon were the only friend she needed in the world.

“I always thought she just needed her own time,” I say. “I went out with her on occasion…”

Jess lifts her head from her hands and shoots me a glance that reads, Of course you did.

“… rare occasion, but, most days, she’d sneak off by herself.”

“What happened to that boat?” Jess asks.

“Dad sold it, remember? Said it was silly to keep it and pay for insurance, the slip, winter storage and maintenance since no one used it.”

“I really wish we’d kept it,” Jess says. “Sometimes, I think you have to be on the water—way out, like GiGi—to really appreciate the reason you’re here. To get away from the world until it’s just you and the horizon.”

It’s as if she, too, can read my mind, like Mom and Dad.

“Me, too.”

The waiter returns, and Jess keeps her head turned toward the harbor.

“Just the check,” I say quickly.

He walks away, head down.

Such is the magic—and devastation—Jess has on men.

We walk at dusk through downtown South Haven, the streets bustling with resorters. As we walk, our arms and hands bump together, just as they did when we were girls and were so tired from a day at the beach that we didn’t think we could take another step to walk home and ended up sort of leaning against one another to make the other stronger, whole.

We collapse into the porch swing when we get back to Eyebrow Cottage, unable to make it all the way inside, and let the night breeze blow us to and fro.

GiGi’s solar lights suddenly pop on in her garden, and her beautiful flowers—still tended to by her longtime lawn care company, a husband and wife now in their sixties—are illuminated.

The hydrangeas are starting to pop—electric blue and soft pink—and they sit next to GiGi’s beloved peonies, which have already come and gone.

“I can see GiGi tending her garden,” Jess says, as if reading my mind once again. “It’s like she’s still here.”

“She is,” I say.

Jess knocks my leg with hers, a sisterly truce.

“She always loved peonies the most, you know,” I say.

Jess is quiet.

“Thank you for saying that,” she finally says. “Remember what she used to say?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Hydrangeas bloom off old wood and are a wonder of color and endurance. Peonies exhaust their stems with their short-lived beauty. But you can’t have a garden without both.”

I smile.

“See? I listened to her.”

“We were there for everybody else, but not for each other,” I say. “Nobody can tend to our own weeds but us.”

“I thought it was easy for you.”

“I thought it was easy for you, too.”

The lake breeze catches the swing and we rock in silence.

Jess grabs my hand. I put my head on her shoulder and we rock back and forth in twilight. The sky grows colorful.

“The final wink,” Jess says.

“Wanna go play a game?” I ask after the color dims.

She turns to look at me, her face covered with the most wistful smile. This time, she puts her head on my shoulder and whispers, “I’d love that.”

I stand and extend my hand.

“But I still get to pick!” I say.