Page 24 of Songs of Summer

The old man (her grandfather?) lightly punched her aunt in the arm, and she took it like a champ. She calmed down, a little, and turned to face her father.

“Daddy, do you remember when I arranged the baby naming at the synagogue for when Bea would be here?”

“I do.”

“And do you remember that she found out and left on a water taxi ten minutes before my boat arrived?”

“Please, Veronica,” he begged, hand to his heart.

“Beatrix. I’m truly sorry. Please come down from there. You’re going to give Daddy a heart attack.”

Beatrix stood tall, precariously so, and Maggie thought, hoped, that she would head back through the open window. But she didn’t. She stood even taller and in a gut-wrenching voice screamed at the top of her lungs:

“You ruined my life!”

Veronica wasn’t having it. It seemed she had already given what she could with her last apologetic plea. She stood equally tall, and shouted equally gut-wrenchingly:

“What life?”

And with that, the old man grabbed his chest and fell to the ground, just as Veronica had prophesied.

Track 13

Peace Train

Beatrix

Shep’s neighbor Ben,his wife Addison, and their old dog Sally stormed into Shep’s house to find Beatrix, Veronica, Matt, and Renee holding a vigil in the living room while the town doctor examined Shep in his bedroom. Bea’s face reddened at their arrival, wondering if they had witnessed her and her sister hissing at each other like two feral cats. Bea had known Ben for years but had met his new wife only a couple of times. The whole incident was so unlike her and, Bea imagined, Addison must think she had completely lost it. Shehadlost it, but certainly not completely. What made it worse was that she had been so excited to spend this time on the island with Paul when he returned from visiting his relatives, and to be such a big part of Renee’s happy ending. When she saw her sister and she pictured how they now would all be relegated to bit parts onThe Veronica Show, she’d snapped. Obviously, she now wished she could do it all over again, given the outcome. Veronica’s face, on the other hand, seemed to show no remorse, though Bea guessed her lack of expression was most likely cosmetic, not apathetic.

“What happened?” Ben asked in an offensive accusatory tone.

“Beatrix gave him a heart attack,” Veronica said drily.

“Fuck you, Veronica.”

“Good comeback, Bea. What is it you teach? English literature? Is that how Shakespeare would have put it?”

“Would you prefer I quoteMacbeth? ‘Go away, rump-fed runion slut!’ ”

Ben stared them both down.

“He can probably hear you fighting from his bedroom,” he said. “Haven’t you both done enough?”

Neither answered him. Bea was fond of Ben, but it sometimes annoyed her that he and Matt acted like they knew what was best for her dad better than she did, and V probably felt similarly. There was, however, no denying that Shep’s neighbors, Matt and Ben, spent more time with him than his daughters did, both in the city and at the beach.

Ben continued to lecture them.

“There were so many times, as far back as when your mother was alive, that I thought to call you two myself and give you a piece of my mind, and I never did. I don’t care who did what to whom—your dad suffers from it terribly, and you know what, your mom passed suffering from it too. Why can’t you just suck it up, play nice the few times you see each other, and then talk behind each other’s backs, like a normal family?”

The sisters shot each other a look from their long-shuttered treasure chest of expressions. It was their “We’ve gone too far” look, one they had perfected decades before when they recognized they were pushing one or the other parent to the brink and should immediately cease and desist.It was funny to Bea that they could still communicate silently like that after so many years of not doing so.

The bottom line was, their dad was old, very old, and no one lives forever. Whether it was today—which from the comforting fact that neither an ambulance nor, God forbid, a helicopter had been summoned yet, made her think her dad was fine—or one day in the future, Shep would not be around forever. V would then be her only family. Except for her husband, Paul.

“Paul. I should text Paul, tell him to come back sooner,” she said out loud, changing the subject.

As she did, Matt pulled Ben aside and whispered in his ear. Ben’s shoulders relaxed, and a small smile crossed his lips before he pressed them together to extinguish it. Bea caught it all. Her gut was already telling her that her dad was faking his condition to manipulate his daughters, and that little exchange between them all but confirmed it.

Ben went to Shep’s bedroom door and knocked, inching it open to peek inside before entering. Neither Bea nor V had been allowed to come in. This gave Bea more pause.

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