The Husband Hour(30)
Lauren, stunned, stared at her phone, completely at a loss as to how she should respond. She was distracted by hearing her name shouted from across the hallway in the confident bellow of a born cheerleader.
“My sister is famous! She’s the next J. K. Rowling!” Stephanie swung her arm around her.
“J. K. Rowling is a fiction writer,” Lauren said.
“I just have one critique,” Stephanie said. “You gave too much ink to that asshole Rory Kincaid.” That settled it. Lauren would not respond to the text.
The sound of footsteps brought her back to the present day, to the attic, the boxes.
“What are you doing up here?” her mother asked from the top of the stairs.
“You startled me. I didn’t think you were home.”
Her mother’s face was red; she had a streak of white zinc oxide on her nose.
“I just got back from the beach with Ethan,” she said.
“I thought Stephanie was taking Ethan back to Philly.” He still had two weeks left of the school year.
“Tomorrow, apparently.” Her mother crossed her arms, her face tight with consternation. “I feel so bad. She does nothing with him.”
“Well, he’s a great kid. Maybe she’s doing something right.”
Her mother looked unconvinced. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you take him for ice cream? I have to make some progress up here, and Stephanie is too busy working on her tan.”
“Sure,” Lauren said, closing the box. “Mom, just do me a favor? Don’t touch any of this stuff. I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t know why you always refuse my help,” Beth said, eyeing the ribbon of torn tape. “Going through all of that is probably not the best thing for you. I don’t want you getting mired in the past. Sweetheart, you need to move forward.” She teared up.
Lauren shook her head, knowing her mother meant well but also knowing her mother could never understand. “I’ve moved forward as far as I want to, Mom.”
Chapter Eighteen
Two Cents Plain, an ice cream parlor on Ventnor Avenue, was forty years old and hadn’t changed since Lauren and Stephanie used to go when they were around Ethan’s age. The black and white tiles on the floors and illustrated walls gave her a rush of happiness, and the simple joy Ethan got from his waffle cone with mint chocolate chip ice cream reminded her so much of how she used to feel at the shore all those summers ago.
On the walk back, she held his sticky hand but he ran ahead when the Green Gable came into view. Stephanie was on the back deck sunning herself, and he raced toward his mother, calling out to her. Stephanie sat up in the chaise with a wave. Lauren fought the impulse to slink off to her room. Instead, she followed Ethan up through the gate to the pool.
“Hey, big guy. I didn’t know where you went until Gran filled me in.” Stephanie eyed Lauren accusingly.
“Sorry,” Lauren said. “We just got ice cream. Two Cents Plain. The place looks exactly the same.”
Stephanie’s expression softened. “Did you have a good walk?” she asked Ethan.
“Yeah. But I want to ride my bike next time.”
“We can do that. Aunt Lauren and I used to bike to the place where we had cheesesteaks yesterday. Right, Laur?”
Laur. She was startled by the casual shorthand, the way her sister used to speak to her.
“Yeah,” Lauren said, searching for a way to continue the positive thread and coming up empty.
“That’s far!” said Ethan.
“We were a little older.” Steph pushed up her sunglasses and squinted at his face. “You’re getting red. Go to my bathroom and put on more sunblock.”
Ethan scooted off, leaving Lauren and Stephanie in awkward silence.
“He’s a great kid,” Lauren said.
“Thanks.”
“Look,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry I freaked on you the other night. I was just really upset about the idea of a film being made.”
“Apology accepted. I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to upset you. Besides, we really should be coming together to deal with Mom and Dad. Not fighting each other.”
For once, Stephanie was making a lot of sense.
“You mean, the whole selling-the-house thing?”
“Yes! Are they out of their minds?”
“Um, clearly they are out of money.”
“God, why does everything have to go to shit? Why can’t it be the way it was when we were kids? So simple. You know, I was at the Wawa this morning and these teenage girls were there. One was wearing an LM sweatshirt, and I realized it was prom weekend. I felt so old.”
“You’re not old,” Lauren said.
“Remember when I had the after-prom party here and the house got trashed?”
Lauren smiled. Of course she remembered, though it was just one of many memories that had been hidden away in her mental vault for so long. Stephanie remembered it as the weekend she almost got banned from the Green Gable. Lauren remembered it for another reason.
It was a long-standing Lower Merion High School tradition that everyone went to the shore following the senior prom. Once an informal, haphazard migration headed by whoever was willing to stay sober enough to drive on prom night—or who had parents willing to chauffeur—it became a school-sanctioned trip complete with buses leaving straight from the prom and making drop-offs at various Longport and Margate houses.