I shrugged. Most of the truth wasn’t up for discussion. “I guess I was just reminiscing.”
“I was so sorry to hear about what happened to her. She was always nice to me, always a happy kid. This was a happy house. It still is, if that helps at all.”
A lump lodged in my throat. I nodded. “It does.”
New families brought their own goodness and craziness into a house and made it their home. I just carried my craziness with me from place to place.
“Want to sit on the swing? I mean, if you don’t have anywhere you need to be? You can do all the thinking about Celia and other things you want. I won’t bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me. I’m the one who seems to keep intruding on your space.” I didn’t ask who he’d been visiting at the cemetery. I didn’t have the energy or the emotional space.
I held the porch railing and my hand fit over the whole wooden rail, but I saw a small hand when I looked, a little-girl hand, and how I reached the other out to Celia the first time I had admitted I needed a place to get away. I was six.
“All this must seem a little weird,” I said.
“A little.”
I followed Cameron up the steps. He sat on one end of the porch swing, pushing himself to and fro the way Celia, Beck, and I had as children and teenagers. Cameron may have swung here as well, I didn’t remember. He’d lived next door to me for a year, and had floated in and out of my life without consequence or thought, the way things and people do when you’re ten. I sat at the other end of the wooden swing.
“What brought you back to Chance?”
The screen door opened and a girl poked out her head. Her long brown hair and freckled face looked familiar, which was impossible, except all kids sort of looked the same to me. A hazard of wedding and bar mitzvah photography.
“Mom said to bring these out.” She held out a paper plate piled with pale cookies dusted in powdered sugar.
“Thanks, Morgan.”
Of course. Cameron had come back with a wife and child. Maybe children. No ghosts for him, only happy, welcoming memories.
“Hi, Morgan. I’m Teddi Lerner.”
“I know who you are.” Morgan’s husky voice didn’t fit her frame, and her tentative smile seemed suspicious. She was one of the girls from the café.
Cameron lifted his index finger and Morgan closed her mouth. “That’s not polite,” he said.
“I saw you at the Fat Chance Café. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you just now. You’re about the same age as my—you’re the same age as Shayna Cooper.”
Shay wasn’t my anything. Not officially.
“Yeah, I am,” Morgan said.
Morgan disappeared inside without a glance or a good-bye. I really needed to work on my tween communication skills, but Morgan might have also needed to work on her manners.
I pulled a crumpled tissue from my pocket and wiped my mouth, politely depositing my gum inside. Cameron and I had played hide-and-seek almost thirty years before. There was no need to hide now.
“May I have one?” I asked. “It’s been a long day. I’m starved.”
Cameron held out the plate. I lifted a cookie and bit into it. My stomach rumbled its approval and gratitude. I patted it as if to say be patient.
“Sorry about Morgan,” Cameron said.
“Please don’t apologize. You’ve been nothing but nice—this morning and now—and Morgan was sweet.” I took another cookie from the plate.
“She has her moments of sweetness, that’s true, but I don’t get credit for any of that. That’s all Deanna.”
“Your wife? I’d love to meet her.”
“No, Deanna’s my sister.”
“You don’t have a sister, Cammy.” I grazed his thigh with a tap of my fist, then drew back my hand. Beneath the khaki shorts hid rock-hard quads. I wanted to crawl into one of the backyard holes we’d dug decades ago.
Cameron chuckled. “I didn’t have a sister until I was nine, then along came Deanna. We lived in Sausalito by then.” He swept invisible cookie crumbs from his hands. “Morgan’s my niece.”
Chapter 9
I KNEW ONE THING for sure. I was humidity-challenged.
Back at the inn, I pulled my sweaty dress over my head and stood in front of the air conditioner, held up my hair with both hands, thereby drying my face, neck, and armpits simultaneously. I turned around to dry my back.
I should’ve rented a car. Although if I’d had a car, I’d have sat on Poppy Lane in cool-air bliss and never ended up on the Stillmans’—Cameron’s—porch. I’d smiled the whole way back as I’d eaten the cookie I’d swiped “for the road.” It was fun hanging out without fear of being reprimanded. The longer Cameron and I talked, the more we both remembered. We’d built forts with webbed lawn chairs and drank from the garden hose; we’d eaten my mother’s blondies that were supposed to be brownies (she’d forgotten the cocoa), and Cameron had even helped Celia and me during our tulip bulb–planting binge for my mother one fall.
I’d asked nothing about his life today so that he’d ask nothing about mine. I’d have only given him my canned answer about my creative job, posh hotels, gourmet food, frequent travel—and depending on the direction of the conversation, might have mentioned dating a nice man.
I cringed. All I could muster was “nice man.” I moved away from the air conditioner, frozen through.
How I missed Celia at moments like this. She’d held the key to my steamer trunk full of emotional backstory. She’d have known what to say.
But I knew the upside to marrying Simon. He was financially secure, handsome, and smart but not snobby. He recycled, he biked, he ate locally sourced foods, he offered his employees parental leave and health insurance. He opened doors, pulled out my chair, gave me the remote, and asked my opinion.
And there was chemistry. It wasn’t heart-pounding, belly-laughing, can’t-catch-your-breath chemistry. It was quiet chemistry. It was B-minus instead of A-plus chemistry.
Coupled with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, I’d negotiate some freedom to explore the world with my camera, and with Simon—that could be enough. I was thirty-nine, for God’s sake, and Simon was almost fifty.
I could call him right now and tell him about Chance. Nettie’s on Lark was a landmark historical property, that would interest him. And that plot out by the mall. Maybe—no. He wouldn’t care that I was back in my hometown for a wedding, or that I didn’t ask him to accompany me. I could tell him about Celia and Shay and spending time with her every summer at his Chicago hotel (which I properly paid for).
A barrage of questions I’d never even thought to ask Simon piled into my brain and landed on top of one another. We spent our time together as if we’d landed on large stones in a rushing river, then we skipped to the next one without falling into the water below. Or even acknowledging it was there.
Inside my thoughts, the view outside of Simon’s window grew dark, the landscape no longer in full view, as if someone had activated their remote control from afar. Again, I was in my underwear, making a phone call. I sat on the bed and scrolled through my contacts.