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Kitabı oku: «The Rest of the Story», sayfa 2

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TWO

I’d heard a lot of words used to describe my mom both before and since her death five years ago. “Beautiful” was a big one, followed closely by “wild” or its kinder twin, “spirited.” There were a few mentions each of “tragic,” “sweet,” and “full of life.” But these were just words. My mom was bigger than any combination of letters.

She died in 2013, on the Monday of the first week after Thanksgiving. We’d actually spent it together: me, my mom, and my dad, even though they’d been split up at that point for almost five years. First love against the backdrop of a summer lake resort makes for a great movie plot or romance novel. As a working model for a relationship and parenthood, though, it left a bit to be desired. At least in their case.

I was so little when they split that I didn’t remember the fighting, or how my dad was never around as he finished dental school, leaving my mom to take care of me alone. Also lost to my memory was an increase in my mom’s drinking, which then blossomed into a painkiller addiction after she had wrist surgery and discovered Percocet. By the time my consciousness caught up with everything, my parents weren’t together anymore and she’d already been to rehab once. The world, as I remembered it, was my post-divorce life, which was my dad and me living with Nana Payne in her apartment building in downtown Lakeview and my mom, well, anywhere and everywhere else.

Like the studio apartment in the basement of a suburban house, so small that when you fully opened the front door, it hit the bed. Or the ranch home she shared with three other women in various stages of recovery, where the sofa stank of cigarettes despite a NO SMOKING sign above it. And then there was the residential motel on the outskirts of town she landed in after her final stay at rehab, where the rooms were gross but the pool was clean. We’d race underwater across its length again and again that last summer, her beating me every time. I didn’t know it was her final summer, of course. I thought we’d just go on like this forever.

That Thanksgiving, we ate around Nana’s big table with the good china and the crystal goblets. My dad carved the turkey (sides were brought in from the country club), and my mother arrived with Pop Soda, her nonalcoholic drink of choice, and two plastic-wrapped pecan pies from the grocery store. Later, I’d comb over that afternoon again and again. How she had that healthy, post-treatment look, her skin clear, nails polished, not bitten to the quick. She’d been wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt with a lace collar, new white Keds on her feet, which were as small as a child’s. And there was the way she kept touching me—smoothing my hair, kissing my temple, pulling me into her lap as I passed by—as if making up for the weeks we’d lost while she was away.

Finally, there was crackling chemistry between my parents, obvious even to a child. My dad, usually a measured, practical person, became lighter around my mother. That Thanksgiving, she’d teased him about his second and then third slice of pie, to which he’d responded by opening his full mouth and sticking out his tongue at her. It was stupid and silly and I loved it. She made him laugh in a way no one else could, bringing out a side of him that I coveted.

It was getting dark when I went down with her in the elevator to meet her ride. It bothered me for a long time that I never remembered this person’s name, who picked her up in a nondescript American compact, gray in color. Outside the lobby door, my mom turned to face me, putting her hands on my shoulders. Then she squatted down, her signature black liner and mascara perfectly in place, as always, as she gazed into my eyes, blue like hers. People always said we looked alike.

“Saylor girl,” she said, because she always called me Saylor, not Emma. “You know I love you, right?”

I nodded. “I love you too, Mama.”

At this she smiled, pulling her thin jacket a bit more tightly around her. It was always windier by our building, the breeze working its way through the high-rises, racing at you. “Once I get more settled, we’ll do a sleepover, okay? Movies and popcorn, just you and me.”

I nodded again, wishing it was still warm enough to swim. I loved that motel pool.

“Come here,” she said, pulling me into her arms, and I buried my face in her neck, breathing in her smell, body wash and hair spray and cold air, all mixed together. She hugged me back tightly, the way she always did, and I let myself relax into her. When she pulled away, she gave me a wink. My mom was a big winker. To this day, when anyone does it, I think of her. “Now go on, I’ll make sure you get inside safe.”

She stepped back and I took one last look at her, there on the sidewalk in those bright white sneakers. Nana had been in cocktail attire for dinner and insisted my dad wear a tie and me a dress, but my mom always followed her own rules.

“Bye,” I called out as I turned, pulling the heavy glass lobby door open and stepping inside.

“Bye, baby,” she replied. Then she slid her hands in her jacket pockets, taking a step back, and watched me walk to the elevator and hit the button. She was still there when I got in and raised a hand in a final wave just before the doors shut.

Later, I’d try to imagine what happened after that, from her walking to her friend’s car to going back to the motel, where the pool was empty and her little room smelled of meals long ago prepared and eaten by other people. I’d see her on her bed, maybe reading the Big Book that was part of her program, or writing in one of the drugstore spiral notebooks where she was forever scribbling down lists of things to do. Lastly, I’d see her sleeping, curled up under a scratchy blanket as the light outside the door pushed in through the edges of the blinds and trucks roared past on the nearby interstate. I wanted to keep her safe in dreaming, and in my mind, even now, I slip and think of her that way. Like she’s forever stayed there, in that beat between nighttime and morning, when it feels like you only dozed off a minute but it’s really been hours.

What really happened was that a couple of weeks later, as I was thinking of Christmas and presents and Santa, my mom skipped her nightly meeting and went to a bar with some friends. There, she drank a few beers, met a guy, and went back to his house, where they pooled their money to buy some heroin to keep the party going. She’d overdosed twice before, each one resulting in another rehab stint and a clean start. Not this time.

Some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I tried to picture this part of the story, too. I wanted to see her through to the end, especially in those early days, when it didn’t seem real or possible she was gone. But the settings were foreign and details unknown, so no matter how I envisioned those last weeks and hours, it was all imagination and conjecture. The last real thing I had was her standing on the sidewalk as I pushed the elevator button, her hand lifted. Goodbye.

THREE

Middle of the night phone calls are never good news. Never.

“Bridget?” I said, sitting up as I put my phone to my ear. “Is everything okay?”

“My grandpa,” she managed to get out, her voice breaking. “He had a stroke.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, reaching to turn on the bedside lamp before remembering that it, like most of my other stuff, had already been packed. It had been a week since the wedding: Nana’s flight was midmorning; my dad and Tracy were leaving that afternoon. The next day, the movers would come. All that was left was the bed itself, a couple of boxes, and the suitcase I’d packed to bring to Bridget’s the following afternoon. I looked at the clock: it was four a.m. “Is he okay?”

“We don’t know yet,” she said, and now she was crying, the words lost in heavy breaths and tears. “Mom’s taking all of us kids to Ohio to be with him and Grandma. I’m so sorry, Emma.”

“It’s fine,” I said automatically, although now that I was beginning to wake up, I realized this meant I had nowhere to stay once my dad and Tracy left for Greece. “What can we do for you guys?”

She took a shuddering inhale. “Nothing right now, I don’t think. Mom’s just in her total crisis mode, packing suitcases, and Dad’s on hold with the airline trying to find a flight. The boys are still asleep.”

“I can come over,” I offered. “Help get the boys up and ready so you guys can pack.”

“That’s so n-n-ice.” She took a breath. “But I think we’re okay. I just wanted to let you know, so you can make other plans. Again, I’m really sorry we’re bailing on you like this.”

“That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,” I told her. “Just take care of yourself. Okay?”

“Okay.” She took another shaky breath. “Thanks, Emma. Love you.”

“Love you back,” I replied. “Text me an update later?”

“I will.”

We hung up, and I put my phone back on the floor, where it glowed another moment before going black. Outside, the sky was still dark, the only sound the central air whirring, stirring up the curtains at my window. The last thing I wanted to do was go down the hall to my dad’s room, where he and Tracy would still be fast asleep, and throw this wrench into their honeymoon plans. So I didn’t. It could wait until the morning.

“Well,” my dad said, rubbing a hand over his face, “I guess we just reschedule?”

“No,” I said immediately. “That’s crazy. You guys have had this booked for over a year. You’re going.”

“And leaving you to stay here alone?” Tracy asked. “Emma. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but—”

“You’re seventeen, and this place is about to be full of sawdust and subcontractors,” my dad finished for her. “Not happening.”

Nana, sitting at the table with a cup of tea, had been quiet for much of this debate. But I could tell she was mulling this. “Surely there must be someone we’re not thinking of.”

I sighed—I hated that I was the problem—but not before catching my dad rubbing his eyes again under his glasses. It was his tell of tells, the one way I could always be sure he was nervous or stressed. I said, “She’s right. There has to be—”

“Who?” my dad interrupted me. “Bridget’s leaving, Ryan is at camp, your grandmother is about to be on a cruise ship somewhere—”

“Egypt,” I reminded him.

“Actually, Morocco,” Nana said, sipping her tea. “Egypt is Thursday.”

“Thank you,” he said. He rubbed his face again, then snapped his fingers, pointing at Tracy. “What about your sister?”

She shook her head. “Leaving the day after tomorrow to hike the Appalachian Trail. Remember?”

“Oh, right,” he said, his shoulders sinking. “We only talked about it with her at length three days ago.” As proof, he gestured at the stack of wedding gifts and cards, some opened, some not, that had been piled into some nearby boxes for the movers to take to the new place.

“It was a wedding,” I told him. He looked so down I felt like I had to say something. “You talked to a million people.”

This he waved off as Tracy, seated at the table, watched him, a cup of coffee balanced in her hands. In front of her, right where she’d left them the night before, were their passports, the boarding passes she’d printed out after checking in online to their flights—“just to be on the safe side,” she said—and their itinerary. Doodling at some point since, she’d drawn a row of hearts across the top, right over the word DEPARTURE.

“This is crazy,” I said, looking from it back to my dad. “It’s your honeymoon. I’m not going to be the reason the dream trip gets canceled.”

“No one is blaming you,” he said.

“Certainly not,” Nana seconded. “Things happen.”

“Maybe not now,” I said. “But just think of the long-term resentment. I mean, I have enough baggage, right?”

I thought this was funny, but my dad just shot me a tired look. He took my anxiety personally, as if he’d broken me or something. Which was nuts, because all he’d ever done was hold me together, even and especially when the rest of my world was falling apart.

“We reschedule,” he said firmly. “I’ll call the travel agent right now.”

“What about Mimi Calvander?” Nana suggested.

Silence. Then Tracy said, “Who?”

Behind me, I could hear the clock over the stove, which I always forgot made noise at all except during moments like this, when it was loud enough to feel deafening. “Mimi?” my dad said finally. “Waverly’s mom?”

It was always jarring when my mom’s name came up unexpectedly, even when it wasn’t early in the morning. Like she belonged both everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Nana looked at my dad. “Well, she is family. North Lake isn’t too far. And Emma’s stayed with her before.”

“I did?” I asked.

“A long time ago,” my dad said. He’d stopped pacing: he was processing this. “When you were four or so. It was during the only trip your mom and I ever took alone. Vegas.”

A beat. The clock was still ticking.

“Second honeymoon,” he added softly. “It was a disaster, of course.”

“Well, it’s just an idea,” Nana said, taking another measured sip.

“You have to go to Greece,” I told my dad. “It’s your honeymoon, for God’s sake.”

“And this is your grandmother,” he replied, “who you haven’t seen in years.”

“I do know her, though,” I said quickly. He looked at me, doubtful. “I mean, not well. But I remember her. Vaguely.”

“Okay, stop,” my dad said. He rubbed his face again. “Everyone stop. Just let me think.”

It was one of those moments when you can just see the future forking, like that road in the yellow wood, right before your eyes. I knew my dad. He’d give up Greece for me. After all he’d already sacrificed, a whole country was nothing at all. Which was why I spoke up, saying, “Mimi, at the lake. With the moss on the trees. There’s porch swings on the dock. And an arcade down the street you can walk to. And the water is cold and clear.”

He looked at me, sighing. “Emma. You were four.”

“Mom talked about it,” I told him. “All the time.”

This, he couldn’t dispute. Every now and then, he got to hear the bedtime stories, too. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Your mother’s family is …”

He trailed off, all of us waiting for a word that never came.

“And the high tourist season is just getting started,” he continued. “Which means Mimi is probably too busy to take on anything else.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nana said. “It’s been so long, I bet she’d love to see Emma.”

Sometime,” my dad said. “Not today, this second.”

“But we don’t know that for sure,” I told him. “If she’s really anything like Mom, she’s not much of a planner.”

He looked at me again. “North Lake, Emma … it’s … different. They’re different. It’s not like here.”

“I wouldn’t be moving there,” I told him. “It’s three weeks.”

More silence. More ticking. “You really want me to do this?”

What I wanted was for him to go to Greece and sail that boat across the water there, with Tracy beside him. So I knew what to say.

“Yes,” I said as Nana caught my eye. “Call her.”

All my life I’d thought my mom grew up so far away. But after an hour and a half, we were there.

“Anything look familiar?” my dad asked.

“Every single bit!” I said, my voice bright. “Especially this part right here, the exit ramp.”

He shot me a look I knew had to be sharp, not that I could tell from behind his dark sunglasses. “Hey. Don’t be a smartass. I was just asking a question.”

Actually, what he wanted was reassurance that this would not turn out to be the worst idea in the history of ideas. But the truth was that it was all new to me, and I’d always been a bad liar.

“Wait a second,” I said now as we approached a single red light, blinking, and came to a stop. “There are two lakes?”

He peered at the sign across from us, then smiled. “No,” he said. “Only one.”

It didn’t make sense, though. If that was the case, why was there an arrow pointing to the right that said NORTH LAKE (5 MILES) and another to the left indicating the way to LAKE NORTH (8 MILES). “I don’t get it.”

“What we have here, actually,” he replied, “is one of the great idiosyncrasies of this area.”

“Second only to you using the word idiosyncrasies while sitting at an exit ramp?”

He ignored me. “See, when this place was first settled, it was pretty rural. Working-class people both lived here year-round and came to vacation in the summers. But then, in the eighties, a billionaire from New York discovered it. He decided to build an upscale resort and bought up one whole side of the lakefront to do just that.”

We were still sitting there at the light, but no one was behind us or coming from either direction. So he continued.

“They had a big grand opening for the first summer … and nobody came. As it turned out, the rich folks didn’t want to spend big money to stay at North Lake, because it was so solidly known as a blue-collar vacation spot.” He put on his blinker. “By the second summer, though, the developer figured this out, and incorporated his area as Lake North.”

“Which was the same place.”

“But it sounded like a different one,” he said. “So the rich folks came and bought houses and joined the country club. And from then on, there were two towns. And one lake, that sounded like two, between them.”

Still not a single car had passed or come up behind us at the light. Despite different economies, neither town seemed to have much going on, at least at the current moment. “Let me guess,” I said. “When you came here with Nana in high school, you went left here, to Lake North.”

“Smart girl,” he replied. Then he put on his blinker, and we turned to the right.

It was a short trip. Four stoplights, to be exact, and then another turn onto a two-lane road, past a big sign with blue faded letters that said WELCOME TO NORTH LAKE: YOUR FAVORITE VACATION. Just past it, the motels began.

I lost count after six different establishments, each very similar in appearance. They were all one-story concrete buildings with grass driveways and parking lots, cars in diagonal spots lining the room doors. Most had an office, identified by a hand-lettered sign or an occasional one in neon proclaiming it as such, and many featured flower and rock gardens with yard art out in front. They had names like NORTH LAKE MOTOR INN and LIPSCOMB COURT and THE JACARANDA. Mixed in here and there were trailer parks, but not the kind with big double-wides. Instead, these were the small type you attached to a car and towed, some silver and stainless, others white or painted bright colors. There was so much to see, and all of it new, that even though we were going slowly, I couldn’t process much but a glimpse at a time before the scenery turned to something else.

In fact, I was looking ahead at two mini-golf courses that faced each other from opposite sides of the street—could an economy so small sustain this, I wondered?—when my dad slowed, turning into a drive on our right. It was another hotel, this one a single story of yellow painted concrete and bright blue doors, with a big scripted sign that said only CALVANDER’S. NO VACANCIES.

We pulled in, parking outside the office. As we climbed out of the car, I got my first glimpse of the water, blue and wide. Jutting out into it were a series of long wooden docks. On the one closest to us there were two porch swings hanging by chains, and in the quiet that followed the engine cutting off, I could distantly hear them clanking.

That was the first time I felt it, that twinge of recognition as something from my long-lost past reached out from my subconscious. Splinters, I thought as I looked at the docks again. But as quickly as the memory came, it was gone.

“Matthew? Is that you?”

A woman in shorts and a faded tie-dye T-shirt had come out of the office, the door in the process of shutting slowly behind her. She had white hair cut short, spiking up a bit at the top, and she was small in stature, but formidable in the way she carried herself, like she owned the place. Which, as it turned out, she did.

“Mimi,” my dad said, breaking into a wide smile. “How are you?”

“Better than a woman my age has any right to be,” she told him. As they embraced, I saw she really was very small, with tiny feet, like my mom’s. “You haven’t changed one bit. How is that?”

“Look who’s talking,” my dad said, stepping back to look at her and taking her hands. “You Calvanders, I swear. You don’t age.”

“Tell that to my hips and my knees.” Then she gave me a wink. “And this can’t be Saylor. Can it?”

I suddenly felt shy, and concealed myself a bit more behind the car.

“Emma,” my dad said, correcting my name kindly but clearly, “just turned seventeen. She’ll be a senior this year.”

“Unbelievable,” Mimi said. She looked at me for a minute. “Well, girl, come give your grandma a hug. Lord knows I’ve missed a few.”

I went, still feeling self-conscious as I approached her. As soon as I was close enough, she pulled me into her arms, her grasp surprisingly strong. I returned the hug, a bit less enthusiastically, while towering over her despite the fact that I am hardly a tall person.

After a moment, she released me, then stepped back to study my face, giving me a chance to look at her as well. Up close, I could see the effect of years of the dark tan she’d clearly cultivated in the leathery skin of her neck and face, as well as a penchant for gold braid jewelry (necklace, bracelet, knot earrings) that almost glowed against it. Most noteworthy, though, were her eyes, which were bright blue. Like mine, and my mom’s.

“I’m so glad you came, Saylor,” she told me, now squeezing both my arms. “It’s about time.”

“Emma and I,” my dad said, trying again, “are both really grateful you agreed to let her come visit. We know it’s literally last-minute.”

“Nonsense,” Mimi said. She winked at me again. “You’re family. And you’re not just coming. You’re coming back.”

A car drove by then, the first one other than our own we’d seen in ages. Actually, it was a truck, bright green, and when the driver beeped the horn as they passed, Mimi waved, not taking her eyes off me.

“Dad says I was here before, but I don’t really remember,” I told her, because it seemed like I should start at an honest place, considering. “When I was five?”

“Four,” she replied.

“I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

“I’m good as my word, so I’d welcome that.” Then she turned back to the office door, pulling it open. “But just in case, come inside a second. I want to show you something.”

As I followed her, stepping over the threshold, the temperature dropped about twenty degrees, thanks to the window A/C unit blasting cold air from across the room. I felt like my teeth would start chattering within seconds and saw my dad wrap his arms around himself, but Mimi was unfazed as she walked to the wooden counter, which was covered with a sheet of glass.

“We’re almost out of room here, after so many summers,” she said, leaning over it. “I’m thinking I may have to expand onto a bulletin board or something soon. Not that anybody prints pictures anymore, though, with all this digital this and USB that. Anyway, let me see … I used to know right where it was …”

I stepped up beside her. Under the glass, I saw, were what had to be hundreds of pictures, from old black and whites to dingy Polaroids to, finally, color snapshots. Across them all, as the faces and clothing changed, the scenery and backgrounds remained the same. There was the water, of course, and those long docks, the swings beneath them. The rock garden under the Calvander’s sign. And those yellow cinder blocks, broken up by blue doors. So many faces over so many years, both big group shots clearly taken for posterity and candids of people alone or in pairs. I leaned in closer, looking for my mom, the one face I might be able to pick out. But when Mimi found the snapshot she was looking for, tapping it with a long fingernail, all the people in it were strangers. Small ones.

“Now,” she said, gesturing for me to come closer, “this was the Fourth of July, I believe. Let’s see … there’s Trinity, on the far left, she would have been, what, nine? And next to her is Bailey, she’d be four then also, and Roo and Jacky, who despite the age difference might as well have been twins …”

I wanted to be polite, but was so cold I was losing feeling in my extremities.

“… and then there’s you.” She looked at me, then back at the picture. “Oh, I remember that cute bathing suit! You always did love giraffes. See?”

Me? I bent over the counter. Five little kids—three girls of varying ages and sizes, and two little towheaded boys—sat lined up on a wooden bench, the lake behind them. All held sparklers, although only a couple seemed to still be lit when the shutter clicked. The girl on the far left had on a bikini, her rounded, soft belly protruding; the younger one beside her, long blond hair and a one-piece with a tie-dye print. Then, the two boys, both in bathing suits, shirtless and white-blond, one of them squinting, as if the camera were the brightest of lights. And finally, me, in a brown suit with a green giraffe and the pigtails and home-cut bangs I recognized from other shots of the same period. I was the only one who was smiling.

It was the weirdest feeling, so foreign and familiar all at once, seeing my own face in a place I didn’t recall. I knew the timeline, though. My parents’ marriage was crumbling due to my mom’s drinking and drug use, and by the coming winter, she would be in rehab and we’d move in with Nana. But sometime before all that, lost to my memory, was this trip. I’d clearly known these people well enough to be this comfortable and yet I’d still forgotten them.

“How long did I stay?” I asked Mimi.

“Two weeks, if I remember correctly,” she replied. “It was supposed to be one, but your mama got sick and plans changed.”

Sick, I thought, and only then did I remember my dad. I’d assumed he was listening to this. But he was standing facing the big glass window, looking out at the road, and appeared to be lost in thought.

“Where are all these people now?” I asked Mimi, who was rubbing the glass counter with the edge of her T-shirt, taking out some thumbprints on a low corner.

“Oh, they’re around,” she said. “You’ll see most of them, I’m sure, depending how long you’re here.”

“Three weeks at most,” my dad said now, having at some point tuned back to us. He sounded apologetic. “No change of plans this time, I promise.”

“You know I wouldn’t mind it,” Mimi said. “She can stay as long as she likes.”

There was a creak behind us: the door opening again. With it came a rush of warm, humid air, and an older man in khaki shorts and a golf shirt, a newspaper under his arm, walked in.

“There’s never been peace in that house in the morning, you’d think I’d—” He stopped talking when he saw me, then my dad, standing there. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize we had guests checking in.”

“They’re not,” Mimi said. “This is my granddaughter Saylor, Waverly’s girl. And Matthew, remember, I told you about him?”

The man smiled politely, sticking out a hand to my dad. “I’m sure you did. I’m Oxford.”

“My husband,” Mimi explained. When my dad looked at her, surprised, she said, “Joe died back in two thousand fifteen.”

“I’m sorry,” my dad said automatically. He looked shocked, and I realized again how strange it was he’d lost touch with her entirely. “God, Mimi. I had no idea.”

She waved her hand, batting his apology away. “Life gets busy when you’re raising kids. He had cancer and went quick, honey. And he went here, looking out at the lake, which is just what he wanted.”

We all stood there, taking a moment of silence for this person, whoever he was. Then Mimi looked at me. “Let’s get you over and settled, okay? Then we can send your dad on his way.”

I nodded, and she led us back outside. Oxford stayed behind, settling in an easy chair by the window with a sigh I could hear as he opened his paper.

“I can’t get over how much it looks the same,” my dad said as I went to the trunk to retrieve my suitcase and the small duffel I’d originally packed for Bridget’s. “But the dock’s new, or part of it, right?”

“Two years ago,” Mimi said, shading her eyes with one hand. “Hurricane Richard came through here and left nothing there but a pile of sticks. I cried when I saw it.”

“Really?” he asked. He looked at the dock again. “I figured this place was indestructible.”

“I wish,” she sighed. “A storm can change everything.”

“But you had insurance?”

“Thank goodness,” she said. “Joe always was one to prepare for the worst. So yes, we rebuilt. Luckily, the house and motel stood strong, although we lost a few trees and had flooding in some of the units. Nothing new carpet couldn’t fix, though.”

She started down the sidewalk that ran along the motel, and we fell in behind, first my dad, then me. There were seven units by my count, each with two plastic chairs parked outside, most of which were being used as drying racks for bathing suits or brightly colored towels. Every one had a window A/C unit going full strength as well.

A cleaning cart sat outside the last room, piled with folded towels, rolls of toilet paper, and little paper-wrapped soaps. I glanced inside: a dark-haired girl in shorts, quite pregnant, was wiping down a mirror. She glanced over as we passed before going back to what she was doing.

“We’re filled up this week, which is great for so early in the season,” Mimi was saying as we left the sidewalk and began across the grass to a nearby gray house with white trim. “The economy rules all, as Joe used to say, but most of our yearly bookings hung in even when everything went bust.”

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