The Cousins(19)

Milly frowns into the mirror. “I don’t get that name. What’s a Towhee?”

“It’s a bird,” I remind her. She must not have read the welcome packet as closely as I did. “It only shows up on Gull Cove Island in the summer.”

“Cute,” Milly says flatly.

I can already tell that Milly isn’t the team-building type. But I am. I’ve been part of a team almost my whole life—lots of different sports until middle school, when I started focusing exclusively on swimming. Now, as I watch my cousin get ready, it hits me that even though the swim team and Thomas have been the twin pillars of my existence since I was thirteen, I feel miles away from either of them. And not just literally. The loneliness of that settles over my shoulders like a heavy blanket.

I stand and shake myself like I do before the start of a meet, trying to chase away my gloomy thoughts. “Should we get Jonah?”

“Let’s not,” Milly says dryly. “We’ll see him soon enough.”



“He’s not as bad as I expected,” I say, peering into the mirror above my dresser. My ponytail is still intact, so I’m good to go. I went through a brief phase of “getting ready” when I first started high school, until Thomas told me he couldn’t tell the difference. “Every once in a while, he forgets to be rude.”

Milly makes a face. “And then he remembers.”

My phone buzzes and I look down hopefully, but it’s just a message from my father. Again. Mom sent a string of texts earlier asking about the trip, my cousins, and the resort. She also told me she’d be staying with her sister “for a while.” Dad, on the other hand, only sends variations on the same question:

What’s going on with your grandmother?

I ignore the message and stuff my phone into my pocket. My entire life, I’ve dropped whatever I was doing to answer when my father calls. This time, he can wait.



* * *



—

The car that Donald Camden sends for us is a spacious Lincoln, but fitting three in the back would be tight. Jonah volunteers to take the front seat—and then, I suspect, has instant regrets when it turns out our driver is a chatterbox.

“You seen much of the island yet, or are they keeping you too busy for that?” he asks as we pull onto Ocean Avenue. It’s the not-very-originally-named road that runs alongside some of the biggest beaches on Gull Cove Island.

Jonah just grunts, so I lean forward. “Well, we’ve only been here four days,” I say. “We’ve gone to the beach closest to the resort, and we’ve been downtown a couple of times.”

“Did you notice anything missing?” he asks, in the tone of someone about to reveal a delightful secret. Before I can reply, he adds, “Not a single chain store or restaurant. And don’t think they haven’t tried. Starbucks, especially. But we’re big supporters of local business here.”



Jonah, who’s been staring at his phone, revives briefly. “That’s great,” he says, with more enthusiasm than he’s shown for anything so far.

Milly pokes the back of his seat. “Do you hate Starbucks as much as you hate…” She screws her face up, as if deep in thought. “Everything?”

He doesn’t bother answering, and our driver just keeps on talking. “We’re gonna pass a few beaches on your right before we get downtown. That’s Nickel Beach, very popular with families. It got the name because you used to find loose change in the sand all the time. Rumor has it that the man who founded Gull Cove Resort used to bury hundreds of dollars’ worth of coins there every summer so kids could have treasure hunts. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but people did stop finding change shortly after he died.”

It is true, I almost say. It’s always been my mother’s favorite Story tale, how my tycoon grandfather would sneak out in the dead of night every few weeks to replenish the supply of beach change. My father told it to her when they met at a mutual friend’s party after college, and Mom always used to say that she fell halfway in love with him right then and there. It didn’t occur to me until just now that the first thing that attracted her to Dad was the reflected glow of someone else’s generosity.

I exchange glances with Milly, and can tell she’s heard about Nickel Beach from her mother too. But neither of us say anything. It’s too complicated a subject for a short trip.

We pause at a red light, but the driver’s monologue doesn’t stop. He gestures toward a strip of flat, gray sand to our right. “And over here, we have Cutty Beach—”



“Wait,” I interrupt, the name catching my attention. “Did you say Cutter Beach?”

“No, Cutty. With a y.”

“Can we…can I look at it?” I ask. “It was, um, my father’s favorite.”

“Really?” Milly asks, just as our driver good-naturedly says, “Sure.” He pulls over to the side of the road. “Not our prettiest beach, in my opinion, but go ahead and take a gander.”

I get out of the car, Milly at my heels. There’s a strip of grass between the road and the beach, which is small with a crescent shape in the middle. The sand is coarse and rocky, the vegetation surrounding us sparse and dry-looking. Beachgoers with bright towels are scattered here and there, but it’s not as crowded as I would have expected for the middle of the day.