Invincible Summer(17)

Lugging this car seat is more trouble than it’s worth, so I say, “All right, Luce,” and free her from all the buckles and chains and shackles. She smiles at me. “Yeah, I bet you’re happy.” I kiss her forehead and scoop her back up. Lucy basically has a master’s degree in being carried. She holds on like nothing I’ve ever seen. Love it.

I unlock the front door with my free side while Lucy clings to the other. “Welcome home, Lucy,” I whisper to her.

“Forget something?”

I turn around in the doorway and there’s the college dropout herself, holding Lucy’s car seat, that smile on those perfectly glossed lips.

I sort of expected her to be depressed, mumbling inco—

herently. I guess this is the way you picture someone when you hear they had some horrific experience and then a nervous breakdown, but you don’t hear any specifics.

“Hey, Melinda.”


She leans forwards and kisses Lucy’s chubby and cracker-crumbed cheek. “She got huge!”

“Nah, she’s a peanut. She has a lot of hair, though.” Right now it’s pulled into curly pigtails. Brown hair. Claudia and Dad and I are now officially the blond minority.

Melinda follows me inside, car seat dangling from her hand. The house looks slightly different. The renters moved the furniture.

“How long have you been here?” I ask, while my parents come in and hug her and tell her how glad they are she’s feeling better. I think maybe what happened was she got sick or something during the year, but no one’s really explained it to me. A few times, I’m sure I’ve walked in on Noah discussing it with our parents, but they always shut up too quickly for me to follow what’s going on. Maybe it’s drugs.

“Came in two nights ago,” she says. That’s so weird. We’re supposed to get in the same day as the Hathaways, kind of magically. We always have before.

“Where’s—”

“Shannon’s having lunch.” She jerks her thumb back toward her house and points, strangely, with her tongue. “He’ll be over here soon.” She looks at me. “Bella’s at ballet camp.”

“She’s not coming at all?” Claudia says, also looking at me.

“Not this summer.”

I want to feel sad about this, and I do, in a way, but a bigger part of me than I’d like to admit is relieved. I don’t regret kissing Bella, but it does feel like something I did when I was a lot younger. It feels like a conversation we never finished, and I think it’s been too long to pick it back up. It’s not the greatest situation, but it’s not as if Bella is my girlfriend, so maybe it’s better for both of us to just let it go. We’re not fourteen anymore.

Noah comes in, dragging sandy Gideon. “Child needs food,” he says. “He’s some sort of hungry Gideon-monster.”

He kisses Melinda’s cheek, so quickly I almost miss it, on the way to the refrigerator to unpack the sodas from the cooler.

My parents have already claimed beers and are outside

on the balcony, talking to each other with their bodies fully facing the sea. I wonder which one of them would jump first.

“We’ve got to baby-proof this place,” I say, when Lucy tries to pull up on the table and cries when she can’t.

“Baby-proofing’s so she doesn’t get hurt,” Noah says. “It’s not for her bruised ego.”

Claudia covers her ears and leans over the counter. “I can-not take any more of this screaming,” she says. She kicks off Gideon, who’s tugging at her jeans to see if she’s okay because the ear-covering concept completely confuses him, I guess. I make a funny face at him, and he laughs and makes one back.

“Let’s get out.” Noah shuts the refrigerator. “Downtown.

We’ll sunscreen the kids, put them on the beach, tell Mom and Dad they have no choice but to watch them. It’ll be cake.

Claudia, tell Gideon to go put his bathing suit on.”

Claudia says, “I am not translating for Gideon until he learns how to say ‘bathing suit’.”

Gideon. I grab his shoulder. Swim beach yes?

Yes he says, and runs to his room where I’ve hauled his little suitcase. I shrug at Claudia. “It’s not that difficult. . . .”

“It’s not about difficult.”

Melinda snaps open a soda, and the hiss reminds us that, if Claudia and I are going to play house, we should do better than Mom and Dad and not argue in front of people who don’t want to hear it.

“Baby sunscreen’s in the red bag,” I say.

Noah gets Lucy in her new bathing suit, and she shrieks while we put sunscreen on her. Claudia looks like her head’s about to explode, so I say, “Claude, go get Shannon, okay?”

She comes back with him, and I can tell she’s way more impressed than I am that he grew about six inches over the year and got some sort of beard-in-training. But he gives me that big smile and says, “How’s it going, soldier?” so I’ll forgive the drippy way he and my sister are eyeing each other when they think I’m not looking. It seems so weird that they’re still doing their imitation of dating even though Bella and I have finished.

Once the kids are ready, Noah brings them to Mom and

Dad on the balcony and says, “Can you watch these two?