Page 16 of Songs of Summer

“That’s what I thought,” she scoffed. Larry was always busy at work these days.

“What about the kids?” he tried.

“The kids? They’ll reach out if their debit card balance gets low. Beyond transferring money, you should be fine.”

She was being sarcastic, but it wasn’t far from the truth. Like most parents of college-age kids, the only way she got hers to call her was by emptying their accounts or changingthe Netflix password. Her daughter was OK enough, an emerging filmmaker who still said “I love you” before hanging up the phone, but her son hadn’t offered her a kind word in years. He was emerging, too, she feared, an emerging a-hole.

Veronica’s role as a mother, the one she previously touted as the job of a lifetime, was barely a walk-on part anymore. Her status as a wife felt equally nonexistent. V had no idea what she would do with the rest of her life. She didn’t play golf or tennis or cards. She had no hobbies beyond stealing a Marlboro Light from the pool boy every week and sneaking out behind her prized rosebushes and forsythia to smoke it.

“Will your spinster sister be there?”

“That’s not nice, Larry. And she is no longer a spinster.”

“It’s funny to me that you jump to defend that woman when she blew off our wedding and never met our children.”

For a long time, Veronica had considered that last part unforgivable, but their mother’s death had left a void that only her sister could fill.

“Blood is thicker than crypto,” she retorted, proud of her comeback.

Even though she might not speak to Bea, she would still walk through fire for her. She was pretty sure the reverse was true as well. That familial obligation to go to bat for a sibling had been drilled into them by their parents. Despite all the trouble they’d had, remnants of that early training still existed.

Maybe this invitation, given that the bride was Bea’s best friend, meant that her sister was ready to talk. To forgive. Hope springs eternal, Veronica thought, before wondering if she was reading too much into the situation. Her stomach filled with knots as she placed the last packing cube in her Louis Vuitton suitcase and zipped it shut.

Track 8

Rock the Boat

Maggie

Jason quizzed Maggiewhen he dropped her off at the airport like a dad sending his kid on her first solo flight. Truth was, the Wheelers weren’t big travelers, partly on account of being tethered to the store. And even as an adult, Maggie preferred to stay close to home. She sometimes worried she was holding Jason back in that department. If he were to write another letter to himself—a Dear Jason at Fifty—his desire to travel would probably still be top of mind, along with a coveted doctorate of ethics degree from the University of Leeds in England. She’d seen an application for the program once on his work computer. When she’d asked him about it, he explained it was a pre-Maggie dream. I thought you said you could barely remember anything pre-Maggie, she noted.

“It was before we went from friends to lovers,” he whispered, as if there were someone else there to hear. She knew he felt funny keeping their relationship a secret. Any secret felt ethically questionable to him, even before they were sleeping together. Now that they were pre-engaged, the ideaseemed even more egregious. It was a good thing she was going it alone this weekend. If she didn’t find her birth mother before the wedding, she might have to crash it, since it was the only place she knew Beatrix would be for certain. Jason, with his finely tuned conscience, would make a lousy wedding crasher.

“I know we are on the way to the airport, but you can still change your mind.”

“I’m sticking with the plan. If I don’t find her before Saturday at dusk, I will be on the beach on Fire Island, eavesdropping on a wedding. I even brought a dress.”

“Just saying, she will be back in her office in Gambier in a year. You’ve waited this long.”

“You know me. I can’t wait a year. I would practically hold my breath till then. All forward movement in my life would come to a standstill.”

“Fine.” He reached his hand into his backpack, digging around for something.

“Here, I printed out the Fire Island Ferries schedule for you.” This made Maggie laugh.

“You didn’t have to do that. I have it on my phone.”

“What if your phone dies?”

“When was the last time I let my phone die?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Correct, because it never happens.”

Maggie was one of those people who charged her phone when it hit 80 percent and filled her gas tank at the halfway mark. She took the paper with a smile. Jason was sad that his summer school gig prevented him from coming with her, so the least she could do was humor him with his silly precautions.

“You should be boarding by eleven,” he added. “Did you decide how you’re getting from the airport to the ferry?”

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