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“Don’t be rude, Mick,” Ruth said. “Hi, Mr. Harrison!”

He had told her to call him Silas from the beginning, but she never did.

“What are you up to this summer, Ruth? In the market for new parents? We might be looking to adopt,” Silas said, smirking. He leaned against the doorframe and took a sip.

Ruth shrugged. “I’m not doing anything. It’s so cool that you can go back to your childhood home every year! Mickey says it’s beautiful. I’d love to see it sometime.”

“Your family doesn’t go anywhere?”

Mickey blushed. Ruth’s mom didn’t have a second home like the Harrisons, or the families of most of the kids from their school. Mickey wanted to interrupt him; she wanted to do a dance to distract them both. She was embarrassed because she thought Ruth might be. Embarrassment can be contagious like that. But Ruth wasn’t. She just shrugged.

“We don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. Ruth had a way of doing that: saying the truth. Mickey’s family wasn’t used to it. The blunt truth, Mickey noticed, raised the Harrisons’ collective heartbeat. Mickey loved it.

Silas swirled his beer.

“You should come with us! What do you say, Mick? Want to bring a friend this year?”

Mickey’s heart surged with a mix of excitement, terror, and jealousy. She had noticed that happening lately: all of her feelings had at least two other feelings right on top of them. It was, unsurprisingly, confusing. Mickey looked at her father, and then at Ruth.

“That would be great!” Mickey said, mostly telling the truth.

“Are you sure?” Ruth asked her, not looking at Silas. The way Ruth did that, asked Mickey like she alone was the authority, made Mickey want her to come something vicious. She nodded.

“I would love to, Mr. Harrison!” Ruth said. She hopped off Mickey’s bed and threw her arms around Silas’s neck, so fast it spilled a bit of his beer. She let go, and he stepped back, flushed.

“Well, you ask your parents, and we’ll go from there,” he said, smiling and close to breathless.

“It’s just my mom,” Ruth said. “She’ll be fine with it.”

“Okay, well, just ask to be sure. Then Lily and I will give her a call.”

“Okay,” Ruth answered. Silas caught Mickey’s eye, and she smiled wide, letting him know it was all right. In fact, it was great. Mickey Harrison had a best friend, and they were going to spend the summer together.

When Silas left the doorway, Ruth squealed and ran to Mickey, wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

“Vacation twins!” she said, before pulling back and looking at her. “Are you sure it’s okay that I come?”

“Absolutely!” Mickey said. “Will your mom really let you?”

Ruth rolled her eyes and fell back on Mickey’s bed. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Give your folks my cell to call, okay? My mom uses it too . . . It’s like a communal cell phone.”

Mickey nodded. It wasn’t until later that week that she remembered she had called Ruth on her home number before, that she even had one. But by then, her parents had already talked to Mrs. Caroway and were satisfied enough with her responses to bring Ruth along.

“Okay, now, let’s go through these clothes for real,” Ruth said, throwing open Mickey’s closet door. “We are summering!”





LILY





“WE DON’T EVEN KNOW her!” Lily said. She hovered between her closet and the bedroom, blindly working the clasp of her necklace.

“Of course we do. She’s been here every day for weeks. Plus, what is there to know? She’s Mickey’s friend,” Silas said, pulling back the covers.

“This is a family vacation, Si,” she said, reclasping the necklace once it was freed and hanging it on her closet door. Mickey used to play with her necklaces, pretend they were hers and she was a princess somewhere far away. She loved the chunky colorful ones, the heavy ones made of clay.

“We used to bring friends all the time. You didn’t start out as family either, you know,” Silas said, leaning into the pillows. Lily stepped behind the closet door to undress. She did it casually, but intentionally. It had been a long time since she undressed in the full view of her husband.

“It’s good she’s made a friend. Let’s let her enjoy it.”

“We have to talk to this girl’s mother,” Lily said through the door.

“I already left her a message.”

“I just can’t believe you made this decision without me.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is. We have plenty of room.”

Lily walked to the bathroom. Her heart was pounding. They never brought another person to the lake house. Not since the summer before Silas and Lily got married. She breathed against the mirror, her palms on the sink.

“Sean is going to want to bring a friend now, you know.”

“Sean would rather die than introduce us to any of his friends.”

It was true. Lily caught glimpses of kids around Sean when she would go pick him up after school, but if he had any real friends, he hadn’t brought them home.

“Well, now we have to ask, thanks to you,” Lily said, pulling a bathrobe around her shoulders. Silas shrugged.