Henry and his dad had to do some prep work for the bakery that night, so my mother had invited Davy over and Mr. Crosby had given his babysitter the night off. All in all, it was a bit of a mixed group, but everyone seemed to be getting along. Fred showed up, bringing Jillian as his date and bearing two sea bass that my father grilled, and that everyone had effusively praised, making Fred turn even redder than normal. As soon as she had arrived, Lucy had been seized by Nora and Gelsey, and was now running an impromptu backbend lesson on the side of the lawn. Elliott had freaked out when he learned Jeff was a professional screenwriter. They had discovered a mutual love of science fiction movies, and had spent most of the barbecue talking only to each other. My mom had dragged some chairs out to the back lawn, and she hovered near my dad while he sat next to Fred, the two of them laughing about something. Davy was trying to teach the dog—unsuccessfully—to fetch, but he nonetheless seemed committed to his task.
I saw Warren and Wendy holding hands and talking to Kim, and I headed over to join them. “It’s just such a fascinating area!” Kim was saying as I joined their circle. I noticed that Wendy looked particularly patriotic—she was wearing a red-and-white-striped shirt with blue shorts, and had pulled back her hair with a red headband. “We’re definitely looking at getting an animal tech—or maybe a vet—into this pilot we’re developing,” Kim said.
“Wendy’s going to be a vet,” Warren said, and I just stared at him for a moment, beaming at the girl next to him. It was like I barely recognized him anymore.
“Well, we’ll see,” Wendy said with a laugh, her cheeks turning slightly pink. “I’m just starting college in the fall.”
“But you should see her in the store,” Warren gushed, as though Kim was actually interviewing Wendy for a job and needed to hear all about how fabulous she was. “She has an incredible way with animals.”
“Can you help out over there?” I asked Wendy, pointing in the direction of Davy. Murphy was now circling him while he threw the stick. The dog watched the stick arc across the lawn, and then went back to jumping up at Davy, missing the point of the exercise entirely.
Wendy shook her head. “I’m not sure how effective I’d be,” she said, giving me a smile. I noticed she rarely stopped smiling, and Warren hadn’t seemed to stop all night. Before she had shown up, I truly hadn’t been aware my brother had this many teeth.
“It’s still very impressive,” Kim said, taking a sip of her wine. “If we get this show going, we’ll have to hire you on as a consultant.”
Wendy blushed, turning the same color as her headband. “Oh, I don’t know how much help I’d be,” she murmured.
“She’s just being modest,” Warren said. He put his arm around her shoulders a little carefully, like he was still getting used to doing this. “She knows everything there is to know about animals. Tell them what you told me yesterday. The thing about the elephants?”
“Oh,” Wendy said. “Well, Warren and I were talking about…” She paused and threaded her hand through my brother’s, up by her shoulder, and I saw her give his hand a quick squeeze before continuing. “Death,” she said, glancing at him once before looking back to Kim. “And I was telling him about how animals actually have grieving rituals, funeral procedures…. It’s not just limited to humans.”
“Really?” Kim asked, raising her eyebrows. “See, that’s just the kind of stuff that would be great to have on our show. What kind of rituals?”
“So,” Wendy said. She started to talk about llamas dying of broken hearts, of elephants trying to lift their dead babies, of gorillas sleeping in the nests of their dead parents and refusing to eat. And while a part of me was listening, I was really just trying to process a few things. One was that my brother had somehow found someone who liked facts—and sharing them—as much as he did. And the other was that he was talking to Wendy about death—which meant that he was talking to her about Dad, and what he was feeling. I thought about all the times Lucy had asked me if I wanted to talk, all the times that Henry had asked me leading questions about how things were at home, and how I had put them both off—with Lucy, by changing the subject, usually to one involving her love life, and with Henry, by kissing him. I had just assumed that Warren would have been the same way, and the fact that he wasn’t was, weirdly, making me feel a little betrayed—like he’d broken an unspoken agreement that we’d had.
Kim was now asking Wendy if vets ever lived above their offices—this was apparently one of the premises of the show, along with a wacky receptionist—when the first hiss of a firework sounded, and I looked over toward the lake. Sure enough, there was the first firework, streaking across the darkening sky like a comet, exploding with a loud bang and turning into a red, white, and blue light. Everyone on the lawn clapped, and then began moving as a group down toward the dock, the better to watch the show.