The Rest of the Story(15)

“Does it feel hot in here to you?” Mimi asked as I thought this. I was about to say no, and try not to do it vehemently, but then she was over at the A/C unit, adjusting it from 67 to 65. “That’s better. I hate a warm house. Have a seat.”

She was already doing just that, lowering herself onto the leather couch and putting her soda into the built-in cup holder on its arm. Even though the couch was huge, I didn’t want to crowd her, so I moved to the blue one.

“Now, let’s see,” Mimi said, pulling up a list of recorded programs. “What are we in the mood for?”

As I looked at the screen, scanning the titles, it was clear there was only one answer to this question: home improvement. Everything listed—Fix and Flip, Contractor: You!, From Demo to Dream House—shared this same subject. I said, “I take it you like renovation shows.”

“They’re my therapy,” she replied, scrolling through the titles before picking an episode of something called 3 Flip Sisters. “Have a hard day with everything breaking down all around you, then come and watch somebody else fix something up nice. I can’t get enough.”

She sighed contentedly, taking a sip of her soda as the show began. “One family,” intoned the announcer as the screen showed a trio of blond women, all with long hair, wearing matching plaid shirts, “three opinions, one firm deadline. This is 3 Flip Sisters.”

Just then my phone beeped in my pocket, the first noise it had made since my dad texted from the airport an hour earlier to say he and Tracy were boarding their plane. This time, it was Ryan. She’d been incommunicado since arriving at Windmill a couple of days after the wedding.

Testing testing. Anyone out there?

I smiled, quickly typing a response. Your phone works? I thought you were in the middle of nowhere.

I am, she replied after a moment. But if I climb this hill and stand on one foot, I have a signal. For now anyway. What are you and Bridget doing?

I filled her in, as succinctly as I could, while the TV showed a montage of the sisters and Bill and Shelley looking at various properties. By the time I hit send, they’d settled on a ranch house with hideous green linoleum floor in the kitchen that Angie, the sister Realtor, said was priced to sell.

“They’ll end up putting an arch in there someplace, mark my words,” Mimi said as the TV cut to a commercial. “Paula loves an arch.”

My phone beeped. Holy crap. Is Bridget’s grandpa okay?

Haven’t heard from her since she left, I wrote back. So not sure.

Are you okay? What’s it like there? I’ve never even heard you mention having another grandmother.

Even though Mimi was on the other couch, a fair distance away, I tilted the screen to be sure she couldn’t see it. The desire not to hurt her was that strong, even as I knew that I, too, could have claimed injured feelings, considering. Where had she been all this time? It was one thing if my mom had kept her at arm’s length—notoriously private, she got even more so when she was using—but five years had passed since her death. Had my dad run interference, thinking Mimi and all the rest of the Calvanders would be too much for me to handle?

Plus, my mom had never talked much about her family. It was Nana—my grandfather died young in his forties—who was consistently there for holidays and birthdays. Other than the funeral, which was a blur, the only trip I’d ever taken to my mother’s home was so long ago I didn’t even remember it. Yes, I had the Lake Stories, but they were never about people as much as a place.

“Arch!” Mimi said, pointing at the TV. “What did I tell you?”

Sure enough, on the screen, Paula was gesturing at a small, cramped living room as a computer graphic showed what it would look like with that shape as an entryway. “You told me,” I said.

She cackled, and I looked back down at my screen at Ryan’s question. What was it like here?

Unclear, I told her. Stay tuned.

I heard thumping, then footsteps crossing the kitchen. A moment later, a tall, thin guy with red hair, a baseball hat, shorts, and a faded NORTH LAKE T-shirt passed by in the hallway, his phone to his ear.

“Jacky,” Mimi called out, and he stopped, turning to peer in at her. “Didn’t you hear me calling you before?”

“I was taking a shower,” he said, sliding his phone into a back pocket.

“Well, say hello to your cousin Saylor.” She nodded at me. “She’s staying awhile.”

It was a testament to the dimness of the room, and the dark blue couch I was on, that Jacky hadn’t even seen me until she said this. He looked surprised as he lifted a hand. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said. “It’s Emma, actually.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mimi told me, her eyes on the TV, where I saw someone was now carrying a sledgehammer. “I keep forgetting you changed it.”

But I didn’t, I wanted to say. I’d always introduced myself as Emma, even as a kid: my mom was the only one who called me Saylor. Could you literally be a different person to different people? I was pretty sure I was going to find out.

“I’m going out to the raft,” Jacky told Mimi. “Back for dinner.”

“We’re having burgers,” she replied. “I made the patties already.”

“All right,” he said, then started toward the door again, drawing his phone from his pocket.