“A snack bar?”
“It has four and a half stars. Famous for its lobster roll,” Rachel said, holding up a photo on her phone.
“Fine,” Marin said, hating how miserable she sounded but unable to switch gears. The sun, the sand, the beautiful day—none of it could cut through the cloud over her heart.
The snack bar was a long wooden counter in front of an open kitchen. It had a soda-fountain machine, a display of soft pretzels, and popcorn like at a movie theater. A hamburger was $5.25. Marin couldn’t remember the last time she’d paid less than ten or eleven dollars for a burger. Fish sandwiches, clam cakes, crab cakes, hot dogs…even cotton candy. The entire place screamed Fun! Enjoy!
They all ordered the same thing: the twin lobster rolls with French fries. Only Rachel ordered dessert—churros.
When their order was ready, lobster rolls placed in paper plates, sodas balanced alongside salty piles of fries, they carried it on trays to a table on the deck.
“This is the first day it really feels like summer,” Blythe said, smiling and looking around at the panoramic view of the beach.
“This food tastes like summer,” Rachel said, biting into her lobster roll.
Marin slumped back in her seat, reached into her handbag and searched for her phone. She had made a deal with herself that she wouldn’t check her e-mail until they had arrived in Provincetown. But this stop in Rhode Island counted—didn’t it?
She cupped her hand around the screen, shielding it from the sun beating overhead. Updated just now.
Nothing.
“Oh my God, Marin!” her mother shrieked.
A bird was on her tray—a slender seagull. And then the seagull was flying away with her lobster roll.
“What the fuck…” Marin said.
In that instant, a second bird swooped in and snagged Marin’s other one.
Rachel, mouth full, stifling laughter, simply pointed to something behind Marin’s back. She turned. There, propped up against a Coca-Cola vending machine, was a large handwritten sign: Please be careful with your food. We cannot be responsible for it once it has left the counter. Caution: Seagulls will take your food!
Marin, inexplicably, felt her eyes fill with tears. “I’m not even hungry,” she said.
“Oh, hon—here. Take one of mine.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “I knew we shouldn’t have stopped.”
“Marin wouldn’t eat lobster until she was in college,” Blythe said to Rachel. “When she was little, we used to go to a fancy seafood restaurant in Center City and she would stand by the lobster tank and sob.”
“Aww!” said Rachel.
Marin rolled her eyes.
By the time her mother and Rachel were finished eating, Marin realized she was, in fact, hungry. But for some reason, she couldn’t admit it.
They piled back into the car.
Chapter Eleven
To Blythe, the enormous white wind turbines in the distance were like churning arms, beckoning her. For the past hour, the surrounding scenery of sailboat-dotted waters, narrow bridges, and tree-lined highways had made her feel she was enveloped in a fantasy world. With the sunroof open, the classic-rock station playing songs she remembered from her teen years in the early 1980s (Rachel and Marin refused to believe Bono had once been godlike to girls everywhere), she felt the type of nearly pure joy she’d thought was behind her forever. And the only thing preventing it from being absolute happiness was the palpable misery of her daughter.
Yes, of course it was all a shock. Was Blythe in the wrong? Completely. But she had to believe that Marin would forgive her eventually. To believe otherwise was unthinkable. Marin said she didn’t understand why Blythe had invited herself along. One of the reasons was that she didn’t want her simmering in her confusion and anger while on a trip with a bunch of strangers.
The other reason she had insisted on joining the girls on their trip? Frankly, she was curious. This woman, Amelia, was her daughter’s grandmother. It seemed almost impossible that some stranger had such a close connection to her daughter. Of course, logically, she always knew it was so. But it felt no more real than other facts about the universe that she didn’t think about on a day-to-day basis. Now that this person, this grandmother, had been unearthed—well, Blythe had to meet her. What facets of Marin might be evident in this other woman’s face, in her personality?
And yes, it would also bring her back to the man who was Marin’s biological father. But she would not think of that now.
She stared at the back of Marin’s head, her glossy dark hair pulled into a careless knot at the nape of her graceful neck. She was checking her phone. Again.
“Have you heard from Julian?” Blythe asked, knowing she shouldn’t. But this silence from Marin was new and unbearable to her. Shutting her out of the breakup with Greg, the disaster at her office. And now whatever was going on with this new man.
“Leave it alone, Mother,” she said.
“What’s his deal?” asked Rachel. Blythe nodded. Yes, you go, Rachel! Ask away. Marin won’t ignore you. She’s too polite.
Marin sighed, shifting in her seat.
“We met at work. The firm had a strict no-dating policy—I was his subordinate—and someone found out and we were both asked to resign.”
“Yeah, I mean—I gathered some of that from the article online. Totally sucks. Does he mind that you’re skipping town in the middle of it?”
Marin shook her head. “He doesn’t want to talk to me right now.”
“He doesn’t?” Rachel and Blythe said in unison.
Marin shot Blythe a look. “No. He needs time to…process it.”
“That’s a bit selfish, if you ask me,” said Blythe.
“No one did.”
“Do you think he blames you?” asked Rachel.
“I don’t know,” Marin admitted.
“That’s ridiculous!” Blythe said. Her vehemence startled even herself. But really, to hear Marin speak like that—it was so defeatist. So unlike her. “Your father said the firm overreacted.”
“Oh, my father said?” Marin replied sharply. “Tell me more about what my father thinks.”
The comment hung in the air, and a silence followed for what seemed like an endless stretch of driving.
At nearly three o’clock, seven hours after they’d left New York City, Rachel turned the car onto Commercial Street in Provincetown.
She smiled. Could this quaint, narrow street brimming with colorful storefronts, buildings no more than three stories high, be as much a part of her as the brassy beauty of Los Angeles? Yes. Yes, it was. She felt it.
People were walking everywhere, spilling off the sidewalks, flanking her slowly moving car in couples and groups, a few bikes rolling by, announcing their presence with tinkling bells. Up ahead, a pedicab. Inching along, she drove half a block. To her left, Cabot’s Candy. Her right, a small art gallery. Inch by inch. They passed the large, red-brick post office. The white clapboard library. A café called Heaven.