Page 117 of The Summer We Started Over

“But we’ll be good mothers,” Eddie promised. “We’ll take good care of Bobby. Jeff and I will be the best parents we can be. And Auntie Bare and Grandpop will always be there for him, too.”

“So the thing is, Dove, if you can hear us, we promise we’ll take care of your little boy.”

For a moment, it seemed as if Dove was speaking to them. Her breath was raspy, and her jaw moved. The doctor had said she would be in no pain because of the morphine drip.

“Is she going?” Barrett whispered to Eddie.

Eddie reached out and took Barrett’s hand. They each held Dove’s hand.

“Dove,” Barrett said, “we’re all holding hands, like we did when we ran and jumped into the swimming pool.”

“The three musketeers,” Eddie said. “And you get to go first this time.”

—

A nurse came into the hospital room, put her hand on Dove’s wrist, looked at a clock on the wall, and wrote something in a notebook.

Eddie was sobbing, standing bent double with her arms pressed into her belly.

Barrett’s voice shook. “What do we do now?”

“Now you both go home,” the nurse said. “Be glad you have each other. Be with your family. Drink a lot of water. Sit by the ocean. It’s not going to stop hurting right away. You have to accept it, the pain. It’s like having a baby.”

Eddie choked out, “Thisis how it feels to have a baby? Well, give me a hysterectomy, because I’m never doing that.”

“Me, either,” Barrett said. She looked at Eddie. “I’ll be a spinster, living with a dog and a horse.”

The sisters smiled weakly. Barrett walked over to Eddie and hugged her, and they stood like that, crying and laughing and hurting.

“Is there someone you want to call?” the nurse asked.

Eddie nodded. “I’ll call our father now.”

—

By the time William arrived at the hospital, both women were numb. It helped, in an odd way, for them to have so much paperwork to deal with. Dove had efficiently left her strongly worded wishes. She wanted to be cremated. She did not want Bobby to know that she was being cremated. She wanted to be scattered in the ocean and she didn’t want Bobby to attend.

Eddie closed the Book Barn and removed its presence from Facebook. Barrett closed her shop for a week. She added the wordsReopening after Labor Dayto herClosedsign, even though she couldn’t imagine that would really happen.

Nothing seemed real.

When it did seem real, they went to one another and wept.

The hardest thing was telling Bobby that his mother had left on her trip. The first day he seemed happy enough, but by the third day, Bobby asked when his mommy was coming home from the trip. Several times he cried. Twice he went into a full-scale tantrum that left him exhausted and sad. They did their best to keep him happy. Bill and Dinah took him on the fast ferry to the Cape, played miniature golf with him, returned to Nantucket on the fast ferry, and bought him a hot dog and potato chips for the trip home. Jeff took Bobby for a ride in his truck one afternoon. They drove on the beach to Great Point, where Jeff held Bobby’s hand tight as they looked at the hundreds of fat, grunting seals. Another day, Paul brought Bobby to his workshop to show him how he carved his wood into the shapes of boxes, bluebirds, and bookends. Paul gave Bobby a very small carving of an angel. He gave Bobby sandpaper and taught him how to smooth the wood.

In the evenings, the family ate comfort food—pizzas, chicken baked in cream sauce, twice-stuffed potatoes, tubs of ice cream.

After a week, they were notified that the urn was ready. The sisters waited until sunset. They stood on the beach at Cisco and looked at the calm, mysterious water sliding onto the sand.

“Take off your shoes,” Barrett said.

“What?” Eddie looked confused, but she put the urn down in the sand and slipped out of her sandals.

Barrett unstrapped her own sandals. She held out her hand to Eddie.

Together, they walked into the water, which was still warm from the summer sun. Eddie carried the urn in her other hand, holding it tight against her chest. The sand shifted beneath their feet. With eachstep, they went deeper into the ocean, and they felt the water grow colder against their legs.

Eddie stopped walking. The waves were up to their chests. “More?” she asked Barrett.

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