Evan nods as tears glint on his lashes. Is he crying? Or about to? Bess pushes the thought away.
“So,” Evan says, and hops up onto his feet. He brushes off the back of his jeans. “I should take you home. Any more beer for me and you’d have to drive.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Bess smiles. “But I have a bike, remember?”
She points toward the one she found in Cissy’s shed, blue and rusted near the handlebars.
“You Codman broads and your bikes.” Evan picks it up and launches it into his truck. “Nah. I’m driving.”
“Cliff House is, like, a mile away.”
“It’s getting dark. Plus, now that I know you’re in a delicate condition…”
“Why do I feel like you’re going to use that against me?” Bess asks. “As if I don’t have enough problems. Fine. I’ll permit you to drive me home.”
Bess jumps down and walks around to the passenger’s side of the cab. He starts the truck, which sputters and then groans into life. Bess checks her watch. They’ve been at the jobsite for over an hour, probably closer to two, but Bess isn’t ready to leave. She’s not prepared to drive the mile to Cliff House and greet the problems looming over the bluff. So when Evan turns to her and suggests a bite to eat, Bess is quick to agree. And she is grateful that her old friend can still read her in exactly the right way.
30
Wednesday Night
“So,” Bess says as they pull away from the Sconset Café and head toward Baxter Road.
They talked all through dinner—short ribs and burgers, nothing fancy—but despite topics worn to the bone and that dang growling engine, things are still too quiet in the cab for Bess.
“Any idea how I can get Cissy out of the house?” she asks. “That’s why I hauled myself out to bother you at work. Am I a typical girl or what?”
“Oh, you’re hardly typical.”
“I went to you for advice about someone else’s problems and ended up blathering about myself.”
Evan smiles, tight-lipped and forlorn. “I’d say Cissy is very much your problem.”
“Well, you’re right about that. See? Who has time for a baby with my mother around?”
Bess gazes out the window, watching several homes pass before she speaks.
“Seriously though,” she says. “What am I going to do? About my mom. It was enough of a battle when we were on the same page. Now Cissy’s my antagonist. I pack up the dishes, she puts them away. I throw perishables in the trash, she digs them out or buys more. It’s infuriating.”
“Just take what matters, and let Cissy deal with the rest. She’ll come to her senses. She always does.”
“That has not been my experience. And ‘take what matters’? That’s Cissy! And we already know that she’s not going anywhere.” Bess laughs and leans into the headrest. “Oh Lord, I’m in trouble.”
“You can grab the book,” he says.
“What book?”
“That guest thingy everyone writes in?”
“Oh, the Book of Summer. Well, yes, that’s a given. In the ranking of stuff that counts in that house, the ‘guest thingy’ is number two, behind Cissy. Though if she keeps acting this way, I might have to reverse the order.”
“I wrote in it, you know,” Evan says.
“You wrote in it?”
Bess sits upright and then eyeballs him while making a snorting-baby-piglet sound that would’ve caused her to blush had she not been so flippin’ tired. Maybe this pregnancy is affecting her after all.
“Yup,” Evan says. “I sure did. The night of your wedding.”
“Okay, that’s a lie. Admittedly I haven’t read all of the entries, but I’ve read all of Ruby’s and certainly every single one written around the time of my wedding.”
“Not all of them.”
They roll up in front of Cliff House.
“Yes,” Bess says. “All of them. Twice, even. Three times.”
Evan jams the truck into park and kicks open his door.
“Not mine. Because I ripped that sucker out.”
Bess blinks and then hears the crunch of his work boots on the shelled drive. She slides out of the cab, eyes on Cliff House. A million memories worm through her at once.
Back in high school, Evan didn’t usually drive her home, living across the street as he did. But he always walked Bess to the door. Then, later, he could frequently be seen (though never by Cissy) escorting Bess right back out of the house via the butler’s pantry. Hands locked together, they’d creep past the flagpole and around the privet hedge. He’d bring Bess home sometime before dawn.
The flagpole.
Bess gapes. It’s back. Damn it all to hell, Cissy has reinstalled the flagpole in the five hours Bess has been away. It is all so very Cissy Codman, this point she’s trying to prove. The woman is steadfast as anything Star-Spangled to be sure.
“F’ing Cissy,” Bess mutters as she tries to help Evan with the bike.
He, of course, won’t allow it.
“What’s that?” he says.
“What’s what?”
“You mumbled something about Cissy.”
“Oh.” Bess shakes her head and glares accusatorially, as if Old Glory had something to do with it. “The stupid flagpole is back. Does the woman ever stop?”
“Come on, Lizzy C. You know the answer to that question.”
“Right. The very minute she should throw in the towel, is the exact moment Cissy steps on the lunatic gas.”
Her eyes skip back to Cliff House in time to see the grasshopper gait of Cissy scamper by a window. Bess turns toward Evan, who looks exasperatingly hot right then, standing in the fuzzy moonlight, her bike against his hip.
“So what’d you do with it?” Bess asks. “Your Book of Summer entry? I’d like to read it.”
“Sorry, can’t help you there.”
“It was my wedding. My grand event.”
And it was both of these things, but strangely enough they almost eloped.
“Cissy’s driving me bonkers,” Bess said to Brandon one night, or something along those lines. “Well and truly nuts.”
“So let’s scrap the fancy to-do,” he suggested, quickly, like he’d been thinking about it for days. “Go down to the courthouse. Make it official, just the two of us, on our own terms.”
He made it seem so romantic. Just the two of us. You and me. Forever. We don’t need anyone else. She almost agreed to the courthouse nuptials but in the end wanted the Cliff House hurrah, same as her mother, same as Grandma Ruby. If she was being completely honest, Bess wanted it not merely for tradition but also for the guests who might come. She wanted it for Evan, so that he might see her on her very best day.
“You have to tell me what you wrote,” Bess insists. “It’s only fair. Like I said, it was my wedding.”
“Sorry. Don’t have it. And are you sure it was your wedding? Because I could’ve sworn it was your mom’s.”
“Ha, well, you’re not wrong. Lala says she’ll never get married because Cis can’t figure how to be moderate. And if she eloped. Well.” Bess chuckles and lets her eyes wander back to the flagpole. “Forget Hurricane Sandy. The wrath of Cissy Codman would rain down like a hundred-year storm. For Lala, it’s better to live in everyday sin.”
“It usually is.”