The Cousins(3)

Didn’t happen. Even though Mom never wears it herself.

My grandfather died when Mom was a senior in high school. Two years later, Mildred disowned all of her children. She cut them off both financially and personally, with no explanation except for a single-sentence letter sent two weeks before Christmas through her lawyer, a man named Donald Camden who’d known Mom and her brothers their entire lives:

You know what you did.

Mom has always insisted that she has no clue what Mildred meant. “The four of us had gotten…selfish, I suppose,” she’d tell me. “We were all in college then, starting our own lives. Mother was lonely with Father gone, and she begged us to visit all the time. But we didn’t want to go.” She calls her parents that, Mother and Father, like the heroine in a Victorian novel. “None of us came back for Thanksgiving that year. We’d all made other plans. She was furious, but…” Mom always got a pensive, faraway look on her face then. “That’s such a small thing. Hardly unforgivable.”

If Abraham Story hadn’t set up educational trusts for Mom and her brothers, they might not have graduated college. Once they did, though, they were on their own. At first, they regularly tried to reestablish contact with Mildred. They hounded Donald Camden, whose only response was the occasional email reiterating her decision. They sent invitations to their weddings, and announcements when their kids were born. They even took turns showing up on Gull Cove Island, where my grandmother still lives, but she would never see or speak to them. I used to imagine that one day she’d waltz into our apartment, dripping diamonds and furs, and announce that she’d come for me, her namesake. She’d whisk me to a toy store and let me buy whatever I wanted, then hand me a sack of money to bring home to my parents.



I’m pretty sure my mother had the same fantasy. Why else would you saddle a twenty-first-century girl with a name like Mildred? But my grandmother, with the help of Donald Camden, stonewalled her children at every turn. Eventually, they stopped trying.

Mom is looking at me expectantly, and I realize she’s waiting for an answer. “You got a letter from Mildred?” I ask.

She nods, then clears her throat before answering. “Well. To be more precise, you did.”

“I did?” My vocabulary has shrunk to almost nothing in the past five minutes.

“The envelope was addressed to me, but the letter was for you.”

A decade-old image pops into my head: me with my long-lost grandmother, filling a shopping cart to the rim with stuffed animals while dressed like we’re going to the opera. Tiaras and all. I push the thought aside and grope for more words. “Is she…Does she…Why?”

My mother reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope, then pushes it across the table toward me. “Maybe you should just read it.”

I lift the flap and pull out a folded sheet of thick, cream-colored paper that smells faintly of lilac. The top is engraved with the initials MMS—Mildred Margaret Story. Our names are almost exactly the same, except mine has Takahashi at the end. The short paragraphs are typewritten, followed by a cramped, spidery signature.



Dear Milly,





We have, of course, never met. The reasons are complex, but as years progress they become less important than they once were. As you stand poised on the threshold of adulthood, I find myself curious to know you.





I own a property called Gull Cove Resort that is a popular vacation destination on Gull Cove Island. I wish to invite you and your cousins, Jonah and Aubrey, to spend this summer living and working at the resort. Your parents worked there as teenagers and found the environment both stimulating and enriching.





I am sure you and your cousins would reap similar benefits from a summer at Gull Cove Resort. And since I am not well enough to host guests for any length of time, it would afford me the opportunity to get to know you.





I hope you will accept my invitation. The resort’s summer hire coordinator, Edward Franklin, will handle all necessary travel and logistics, and you may contact him at the email address below.





Very sincerely yours,





Mildred Story





I read it twice, then refold the paper and lay it on the table. I don’t look up, but I can feel my mother’s eyes on me as she waits for me to speak. Now I really have to pee, but I need to loosen my throat with yet more water before the words can burst out of me. “Is this bullshit for real?”

Whatever my mother might have been expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “Excuse me?”



“Let me get this straight,” I say, my cheeks warming as I stuff the letter back into its envelope. “This woman I have never met—who cut you out of her life without looking back, who didn’t come to your wedding or my christening or anything related to this family for the past twenty-four years, who hasn’t called or emailed or written until, oh, five minutes ago—this woman wants me to work at her hotel?”

“I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way, Milly.”

My voice rises to a near shriek. “How am I supposed to look at it?”

“Shhh,” Mom hisses, her eyes darting around the room. If there’s one thing she hates, it’s a scene. “As an opportunity.”