The Cousins(55)

“You need the right accessories, of course,” Oona says. “Linda?” She raises her voice. “Could you grab a pair of the sapphire drop earrings? And one of those mother-of-pearl haircombs we just got in. Let’s try to re-create the final styling as best we can.”

“My ears aren’t pierced,” I say.

“Clip earrings, Linda!” Oona calls.

I blink at myself. You wouldn’t be a swimmer if you took after the Storys, my father used to say. My mother and sister could never build up that sort of arm strength. They’re far too delicate. I always took that as a subtle insult, which it probably was. A backhanded reminder that the Storys are special, ethereal, and too precious for this world. But I’m tired of hearing Dad’s voice, and Thomas’s, running through my head every time I look in the mirror. Every time I do anything. Maybe it’s time to start listening to someone else.

I meet Oona’s kind dark eyes as she loops her arm through mine and squeezes lightly. “I wouldn’t steer you wrong, Aubrey. I promise. This is beyond lovely on you.”

I still hate my reflection, but the more I look at it, the more it seems like I’m looking into a fun house mirror—a distorted image that doesn’t reflect reality. I don’t know how to see beyond it, yet, but I want to try.

“I’ll take it,” I tell Oona.





We’re too early for Dr. Baxter’s funeral on Wednesday because someone—thanks, Aubrey—insisted we leave an hour early. It took two minutes to get downtown, and they’re not letting anyone into the church yet. So Aubrey drags us, sweating in our funeral clothes, to the air-conditioned Gull Cove Island Library a few blocks away.

“We could’ve gone somewhere that serves coffee,” Milly mutters, dropping her purse onto an empty table. She’s wearing a sleek black dress and heels, her hair pulled back into a high ponytail. Aubrey is in the same dress she wore to brunch on Sunday. I brought nothing appropriate for a funeral and had to borrow a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis from Efram. The pants are too short, and the shirt is just a little too tight. Every time I move my arms, I feel like a button’s about to pop.

“I want to look something up,” Aubrey says, scanning the room until her eyes land on a row of big, blocky monitors. “Did you know that back issues of the Gull Cove Gazette are only online since 2006?”



“I neither knew nor cared,” Milly says, at the same time as I say, “Yeah.”

Aubrey cocks her head at me, and I shrug. “I used their website to research your family before I left. There’s not much about your parents in the past fifteen years, though.”

“Right,” Aubrey nods. “So I need a microfilm machine.” She heads for the monitors, and Milly and I follow, bemused.

“A what?” I ask.

“Microfilm,” Aubrey says, looping the strap of her handbag across a chair in front of the nearest monitor. “It’s, like, pictures of old newspaper articles.”

“They’re inside that machine?” I ask. It looks like a 1980s computer.

She laughs and opens the middle drawer of a towering file cabinet. “No, they’re stored on reels in here. I have to load the reel onto the machine to read it.”

“How do you know all this?” Milly asks, in the same brittle, impatient tone she’s been using ever since our Sunday brunch with Mildred Story.

Aubrey sorts through rows of small boxes crammed into the filing cabinet. “I looked it up on the library website last night.”

“Okay, but why?” Milly asks, as Aubrey extracts one of the boxes. She opens it and pulls out a blue plastic reel about the size of her palm.

“Remember what Oona said at Kayla’s Boutique?” she asks. She might as well be speaking Greek right now, because half of that doesn’t make sense to me, but Milly nods. Aubrey turns toward me to explain. “Oona is a woman whose sister used to date Uncle Anders, and Gran didn’t like her, and she died twenty-four years ago, which is…” She pauses, frowning at the machine until she locates a peg where she can attach the reel.



Milly finishes for her, looking suddenly pensive. “When our parents got disinherited.”

“What’s Kayla’s Boutique?” I ask, and Milly catches me up while Aubrey feeds one end of the film into a chute beneath a glass surface on the machine. Aubrey hits a button, causing the blue reel to spin, and the screen comes to life with the front page of a 1997 issue of the Gull Cove Gazette.

“So you think—what? Those things are related?” I ask, as Aubrey twists a dial to bring up a different page.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I’m curious about what happened. These editions are from November, a month before our parents got the you know what you did letter.” We’re quiet for a few minutes while Aubrey runs through the reel, weeks’ worth of newspapers scrolling in front of our eyes. “I don’t see anything,” she finally says, pressing a button to reverse the film. When it’s all back on the reel, she removes it from the machine and stuffs it back into its box.

My mind’s been somewhere else while the newspaper pages flashed before us. “Do you guys remember that day we went to Dr. Baxter’s?” I ask. “All that stuff Hazel was saying?”