“Since freshman year! I’m the one who convinced her to spend the summer here!”
Amelia panicked. Had Kelly been with Nick and then turned to her?
“You’ve been dating her? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“No, I wasn’t with her! She’s barely been around this entire month. And now I know why.”
“What’s all the screaming about?” Nadine appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Nick. “Mom’s just been fucking Kelly.”
Nadine, her olive skin burnished even darker from a month in the sun, turned white.
“Stop it,” Nadine said. “That’s not true.”
“Tell her,” Nick said.
Amelia looked helplessly between the stricken faces of her two children. “I’m sorry.”
“How could you do this to Dad?”
Ah, yes—there it was. Nadine had always been very much a daddy’s girl, which had been adorable when she was a child. But it became less adorable as Nadine grew older and forgave Otto for every misstep while blaming Amelia for everything. It did not matter that for all the summers in recent memory, Otto had made it clear that he preferred twelve-hour days of fishing to any time spent as a husband or father. Otto, who drank from the moment he stepped foot in the house at six at night until he passed out. She had been sleeping on the foldout couch in her studio at the house in Boston for years and had moved into one of the extra bedrooms on the second floor at the beach house—not that her children thought anything of it. She didn’t know what she had done wrong as a mother to make Nick and Nadine think of herself and Otto only as their caregivers, not as individuals with their own needs and frailties. Maybe that was how all children were until they became parents themselves. Amelia never got the chance to find out.
And so Nadine, in her furious defense of her father, came at Amelia.
“I hate you!” she screamed, lunging for her. Amelia jumped aside, and Nadine grabbed the serving bowl of seafood paella and threw it to the floor. Shrimp, mussels, lobster, risotto, and glass flew everywhere. Nadine was not finished; she started for a shelf filled with plates but Nick restrained her.
Amelia realized, as Nadine tried to tear apart the kitchen, that she had given her daughter the perfect excuse to turn her adolescent rejection of her mother into something far more damning. And something much more permanent.
Marin wondered if she could go home early without seeming rude. How could she spend the night making small talk, waving miniature American flags and watching fireworks, knowing that Amelia was oblivious to the fact that her life was about to be shattered?
She didn’t agree with Kelly’s decision not to tell her that the cancer was back, and she especially didn’t agree with her choice not to tell her that her doctor had given her such a grim prognosis. If it were Marin’s spouse, she would want to know, to have time to prepare. If Amelia knew how few nights she had left with her wife, Marin doubted she would waste one of them at this stuffy party.
A waitress passed around crab cakes with aioli sauce served on red, white, and blue herringbone-patterned china. She bit into one and spotted Nadine heading toward her. Oh God, just who she didn’t want to talk to.
“So this is it. Your last night,” Nadine said. She held an hors d’oeuvres plate in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
“That’s right.”
“Too bad we didn’t really get to talk very much. Hopefully the trip wasn’t a total wash for you.”
Marin frowned. “Not at all. Why would it be?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I have no idea. I came to meet my grandmother. And I did, obviously.”
“You came here with a woman you’d never met before so you could both meet your grandmother? I would imagine you have a pretty full life back in New York City, complete with grandparents from the people who actually raised you.”
“It’s complicated,” Marin said.
Nadine nodded, raising her glass of champagne to Marin’s glass of ice water. “To complications,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure.” Marin glanced at Rachel across the room, hoping she’d catch her eye and come rescue her.
“Although you know what I bet you don’t have in New York City?”
Losing patience, Marin simply shrugged.
“An enormous beach house,” said Nadine.
“Excuse me?”
Amelia joined them, smiling at the sight of her daughter and granddaughter together, oblivious to the fact that her daughter was basically accusing Marin of being a sleazy opportunist.
“Hi, girls. Come out back. There are tables by the pool.”
Nadine smiled at her mother. “Lead the way.”
“Oh, Marin—since you have a handbag, can you take this home for me?” She slipped her one of the china plates.
“What’s this for?”
“Mosaics,” Amelia whispered with a wink.
“Oh, Mother,” said Nadine impatiently. “Is that any way to behave at your age? Stealing from a dinner party?”
“Do you think Sandra Crowe is going to miss one plate? Look at this place. Besides, she appreciates Kelly’s art. She’d be flattered.”
Nadine shook her head.
Amelia touched Marin’s arm to bring her along.
“You know what?” Marin said. “You two go on ahead. I’m going to find the bathroom.” Actually, she was going to find Kelly.
An idea was forming, one she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But she realized she wasn’t choosing the thought—the thought was choosing her.
Sandra Crowe’s guests, several dozen of them, gathered by the pool. Red, white, and blue paper lanterns were strung all around the veranda, and glowing paper lanterns floated in the pool. Rachel sat with Nadine and two couples visiting for the weekend from New York and Connecticut. The man to Rachel’s left spent a full twenty minutes telling her all the ways Provincetown differed from the Hamptons. He went through it in such meticulous detail, it was as if his assessment were the result of a long scientific study.
She half listened, all the while thinking of the way Luke had looked into her eyes. Had he been about to kiss her? What would have happened if Thomas hadn’t knocked on the window?
Rachel’s talkative new friend mercifully wandered off to visit another table. She wasn’t alone for long. Sandra Crowe slipped into the seat next to her.
“I have been so looking forward to meeting Amelia’s granddaughters and I’ve barely had time to look in your direction,” she said. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Yes! This is such a great place you have here. I love your house.”
“I love your house,” Sandra said, touching her arm. She wore a pile of gold bracelets that made a clinking noise when she moved her hand. Rachel wasn’t sure what Sandra meant but then realized she was talking about the inn.
“Oh, it’s not really my house,” she said.
“Damn right it’s not,” chimed in Nadine from the other side of the table.