Page 17 of The Summer We Started Over

When they were older, their mother took a job at a fine jewelry shop. Sabrina was much happier and even less interested in the responsibilities of motherhood. It was understood that the Grant kids would spend after-school time at the Fletcher house, even though Dove’s parents weren’t always around.

Eddie, Barrett, and Stearns spent countless hours in the Fletcher rec room, watching DVDs, eating chips and cookies, playing video games, singing and jumping around to the karaoke machine. Dove’s parents never complained when they left the rug littered with Cheez-It crumbs or candy wrappers. The Fletchers had a housekeeper who came three times a week when they were at school. When the four were in their early teens, they did their homework together in the rec room while Stearns lay on his stomach on the floor, reading graphic novels.

Occasionally, they helped themselves to the Fletchers’ liquor cabinet, tasting not only gin and vodka but crème de menthe and cognac. Dove had become an expert in refilling the bottles so her parents didn’t notice, but Eddie, Stearns, and Barrett hated the liquor. It burned. Ittasted like fingernail polish remover. They favored chocolate milk and sinful Cherry Cokes.

For years, the four were an informal club, and if they’d had a motto, which they didn’t, that would have been too cheesy, plus there were four of them, not three, it would have been “One for all, and all for one.”

As they grew older, the relationships changed, shifting slightly. Stearns was brilliant. His mind raced through lessons and lectures and books. He aced his tests and worked Rubik’s Cubes under his desk while listening to his teacher. He clowned around in class to disguise his boredom. Dove’s father told Eddie that Stearns would either win the Nobel Prize in physics or be the next Robin Williams.

By fourteen, Stearns was also heartbreakingly handsome. He shot up to six feet and let his butterscotch hair fall around his face like a rock star. He was a wizard with computers. He helped friends troubleshoot their video games and laptops, and when he was fifteen, he was hired for the weekends and evenings by a computer shop in North Adams. When he had time to hang with his sisters and Dove, it was always Dove he sat next to. His gaze lasted longer on Dove’s face than on his sisters’. Dove’s face shone with a special light when Stearns entered the room.

“Do you think Stearnsreallylikes Dove?” Barrett asked Eddie one evening. “I mean—that way?”

“I hope so,” Eddie replied. “They could get married and she’d be part of our family.”

One afternoon, the Grant sisters came home from school to find Stearns’s bedroom door locked. The first time, they tiptoed away, assuming he was sleeping, maybe with a flu. The next time, they banged on the door and called his name.

When Stearns opened the door, they saw Dove in his room. Sitting on his bed.

“You guys!” Eddie stood just inside the room, too surprised to know what to say.

Barrett tried not to laugh. “Stearns, you have lipstick all over your face.”

“We’re talking about homework?” Dove said, her voice rising onhomework,as if she was asking a question.

“This is cool,” Eddie began awkwardly.

Barrett added, “But you won’t pay attention tousanymore.”

Stearns reached out and took Barrett’s hand. “Come sit down. Let’s talk.”

The four sat cross-legged on the floor, the way they did when they played poker or Monopoly.

Eddie folded her arms over her chest defensively. “So what’s going on?”

Dove patted Eddie’s arm like a mother soothing her baby. “You guys, everything is changing. You’re going to college in September, Eddie, and then I’ll go and then Barrett.”

“What about Stearns?” Eddie realized as she spoke that she hadn’t noticed where her brother was applying for college, and she experienced a sudden stab of guilt, before remembering how she’d been too busy cooking dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, because their mother was never around.

“I’m taking a gap year,” Stearns told her. “I’ve got a sweet job at a computer company in Troy. I’ll make a ton of money. I may not go to college.” He smiled, embarrassed, adding, “I may not finish high school. But I’ll make enough to help you both pay your tuitions.”

“But what about Dove?” Barrett asked. “Are youwithDove?”

Stearns sounded serious when he answered. “I’m with Dove. Totally. I’m saving up for a bike so I can get to Amherst to see Dove.”

“You get Dove.” Barrett spoke slowly, realizing what that meant. “I don’t know if I’m jealous or happy.”

“Come on, Barrett, it’s not like this is a shock,” Eddie said. “We’ve known they’d be together for years. But she’s still ours.”

Stearns put his arm around Dove’s shoulders and pulled her against him. “Maybe mostly mine.”

—

Slowly at first, and then suddenly, like an iceberg cracking and plunging into the sea, their lives as they had lived them for years vanished.

It was March, Eddie’s final year in high school. Stearns was a junior, acing classes effortlessly, and Barrett was a sophomore.

During lunch period, Barrett got a text from Eddie.

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