French Braid(16)

“Why would I have to be inside?” Lily asked.

“Because it’s raining.”

“It is?” Lily looked toward the kitchen window. “Well, darn.”

“Maybe you could stay home for once and we could all play board games. They’ve got every kind of game here. Monopoly, Parcheesi…You should see what’s in my closet!”

“Oh, Trent and me will think of something,” Lily said offhandedly. She reached for the strawberry jam.

Mercy studied her. Then she said, “Have you heard from Jump since you got here?”

“How would I have heard from Jump?” Lily asked. “He doesn’t have my address.”

“Yes, but you were going to write him as soon as you’d figured out the mail situation.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Lily said. “And even if I had, I doubt he’d have time to answer before I got home again.”

She smoothed jam across her toast. Mercy raised her eyebrows at Alice and took a sip of coffee.

After breakfast, Robin went into town to cruise the hardware store, and David got busy with his veterinarians, and Mercy tidied her bedroom while the girls did the breakfast dishes. “All I can say is, it better not be raining tomorrow,” Lily told Alice as she dried a plate.

“What’s happening tomorrow?”

“It’s our last day, silly. I’m spending the whole time with Trent. We’re going to sit out on his patio; I’ve already got it planned. Next door to guess-what. The gazebo.”

Alice dunked a skillet in the dishpan. “Well,” she said, “I haven’t mentioned gazebos to Trent, so don’t hold your breath.”

“That’s okay, I’m thinking it will just naturally occur to him. We’ll be sitting there; he’ll wonder what I’m looking at; he’ll turn and see the gazebo…”

Alice had a sudden image of Lily glancing meaningfully from Trent to the gazebo, Trent to the gazebo, the way Cap liked to gaze from the humans sitting around the table to the roast beef on the sideboard. She snorted.

“What?” Lily demanded. “What’s so funny? You don’t believe me? The two of us think alike, I tell you. He’s every bit as romantically minded as I am.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Alice told her.

“Alice, I mean this. If Trent doesn’t propose before I leave here I’ll just die. I really will die, I swear.”

“It’s not going to happen, Lily.”

“Yes, it will,” Lily said, “because it has to. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Then she tossed her dish towel onto the drainboard and stalked out, even though the dishes weren’t anywhere near finished.

The only game David wanted to play was Go Fish, it turned out, which was fine with Mercy but not so much with Alice, because Go Fish could drag on so long. It certainly did today. They must have flipped the deck half a dozen times, and they were still at it when Trent showed up. “Come play cards with us, Trent!” Mercy told him. She seemed to think they were back in the olden days, when suitors would agree to such things. Trent tactfully pretended not to hear. “Ready, babe?” he asked Lily, and she nodded and followed him out the door. She was carrying her towel-and-swimsuit roll, as if she imagined the weather might change.

Alice waited till David was absorbed in drawing cards, and then she asked her mother, “Do you think they’re chaperoned, in that house?”

“Chaperoned!” her mother said. She sounded amused, as if Alice were the one who was back in the olden days. “Goodness, they’ve got his whole family around. I hardly think they lack for company.”

So Alice gave up. Anyhow, it was her turn to play a card.



* * *



—

On Friday, the sun returned. Everybody took heart. Lily went off with Trent, and Alice and Robin had a swim, and Mercy sat on her towel with David. Alice suggested to Robin that they try swimming to the opposite shore, but he told her it was too far. Secretly, she was relieved.

After a while Bentley arrived, so she left the lake to the two men and headed toward dry land. She found David and Mercy beginning a sand castle, and she spread her towel next to them and sat down to apply her tanning mix.

The sand here was normally too loose for sand castles, but yesterday’s rain had made it easy to pack it into David’s bucket and turn out cylindrical towers. As soon as Mercy discovered that, she went back to the cabin and returned with more equipment—teacups and Jell-O molds and square Pyrex storage containers—so that they could build a whole city. Mercy could get very caught up when it came to making things. She collected branching twigs for David to use as trees; she began constructing a city wall with pebbles. Her face shone with sweat and Skolex cream, and her hair slipped loose from her topknot without her noticing.

The rest of Bentley’s crew came down, his wife and their gang of children. Tania, the wife, spread their towels nearby while the children went to play in the water. The little ones were content to stay in the shallows but, wouldn’t you know, Charlie had to plunge straight in and swim out toward the men and then beyond them, kicking up a storm.

This apparently reminded Robin that he hadn’t taught David to swim yet. “Son?” he called from the water. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Davy? Come on out, son!” But David kept his back to the lake and went on planting twigs. “Tell your boy he should come out!” Robin called to Mercy.