The Cousins(12)

“We checked it when we came on board,” I say, eyeing his bag. “Is that all you brought?”

Jonah slings the duffel over one shoulder. “I don’t need much.”

We enter the stream of people leaving the ferry, following the narrow walkway from the boat to the dock. It’s a full-on vacation crowd; despite the cloudy weather everyone is decked out in shorts, sunglasses, and baseball hats. My red dress looks completely out of place, even though I wore it for a reason. It was my mother’s in high school, one of the few things she held on to that I can get away with wearing today. Putting it on felt like getting a subtle dig in at my grandmother for bringing us all this way without acknowledging her children first. They still exist, Mildred, whether you want to admit it or not.

The ferry walkway exits onto a wide cobblestone path flanked by shingled buildings in alternating shades of white and gray. As soon as we reach the road I take a deep breath, then startle a little as I smell honeysuckle mixed with the salty air. Mom’s signature fragrance, but I’ve never smelled it live before.



A row of luggage tents on wheels line one side of the cobblestone path. Aubrey and I find number 243, as we were instructed when a valet took our suitcases, and open the flap. “Here they are,” Aubrey says, sounding relieved as she pulls out a suitcase and backpack.

I go in for mine. Behind me, Jonah lets out a snort of disbelief as I extract two large rolling suitcases, a smaller carry-on, and a bulging laptop bag. “That can’t all be yours,” he says. When I don’t reply, he adds, “Did you pack your entire closet?”

Not even close, but he doesn’t have to know that. Or that the smaller suitcase is nothing but shoes. “We’re going to be here for two months,” I say.

Jonah narrows his eyes as he takes in my suitcases. They’re Tumi with pearlized aluminum casing, and I suppose if you didn’t know my mother bought them secondhand on eBay, they might look a little ostentatious. Especially in the middle of this shorts-and-T-shirt crowd. Gull Cove Island visitors have money—lots of it—but they don’t flaunt it. That’s part of the alleged charm of this place. “Guess Aunt Allison is doing all right,” Jonah says.

“Oh please,” I snap. “You were going to go to some fancy-ass science camp all summer, so don’t judge me for bringing wardrobe options.”

“Except I couldn’t afford it,” Jonah says. Something almost like anger flashes across his face before he composes his features into their usual expression of half-boredom, half-disdain. “And now I get to be here instead.”

I pause before the reflexive response lucky us crosses my lips. I don’t know a lot about my cousins’ financial situations. I know Aubrey’s mom is a nurse and her dad has spent the past ten years trying to write another book, so they’re probably comfortable but not rolling in it. Jonah’s parents’ situation is murkier. Uncle Anders is a financial consultant, supposedly, but the kind who works for himself instead of an actual company. A couple of weeks ago, when I was trying to find any information I could about Jonah’s family online, I stumbled across a short article in the Providence Journal about Uncle Anders in which a disgruntled former client called him “the Bernie Madoff of Rhode Island.”



I didn’t know who that was, so I had to look him up. Apparently Bernie Madoff was a financial adviser who went to jail after cheating thousands of investors in a giant Ponzi scheme. I’d felt a shocked little thrill then—our family had always been strange, but never criminal—until I kept reading. Ultimately, even though a couple of former clients reported him for fraud, all that could be proved was that Uncle Anders gave bad financial advice. It wasn’t a big enough story to make the New York papers, so my mother hadn’t seen it. She didn’t seem especially shocked when I told her. “Nobody with an ounce of common sense would ask Anders to help manage their money,” she’d said.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought he was supposed to be brilliant.”

“He is. But there’s only one person whose interests Anders has ever looked out for, and that’s Anders himself.”

“What about Aunt Victoria? Or Jonah?” I’d asked.

Mom’s lips had thinned. “I’m talking about business, not family.” But from the look on her face, she didn’t think much of those relationships, either. Which might have something to do with the bitter expression Jonah’s wearing right now.

Aubrey gazes around at the teeming crowd surrounding us. “No Gran,” she says sadly, like she honestly expected Mildred to be waiting for us. “Should we just grab a cab?”



“I guess. I don’t see any, though.” I squint against the emerging sun and pull my sunglasses from the top of my head, settling the large tortoiseshell frames across my nose.

“Allison.” It takes the name being repeated a few times—plus Jonah’s furrowed brow—before I look for the source. An old man, white-haired and frail, stands beside me, with his watery brown eyes fastened on my face. “Allison,” he repeats in a low, wavering voice. “You came back. Why did you come back?”

“I…” I glance between the man and my cousins, at a loss for words. People have told me I look like my mother—“surprisingly like her,” they sometimes add with a sideways glance at my dad—but I’ve never been mistaken for her before. Is it the dress? The sunglasses? Or is this guy just senile?