Page 46 of These Summer Storms

“Who was that?” Greta stiffened at her mother’s curt question as Emily ended the call.

“Twyla Haskins. She and Mike will be here,” Emily responded. “I think that’s—”

“Who told you to invite them?”

The air in the room went still. Emily raised her notepad. “You did.”

“I most certainly didnot.” What had begun as curt was edging into something like shrill, and Greta froze, confused and unsettled by her mother’s displeasure.

“Mom.” Emily stared Elisabeth down, her tone firmer than usual. Irritated. “We read the list out loud. The Haskinses are on it.” A beat. “Uncle Mike…”

“Michael Haskins is not your uncle and I wouldneverhave put him on the list.”

Emily’s gaze snapped to Greta, silently pleading, and suddenly Emily was seven or eight again, about to take the heat for some minor infraction, begging her older sister—a grown-up herself—to come to her defense. To stand with her, shoulder to shoulder, against Elisabeth in one of her chilly moods.

Greta remained silent.

Seeing that she wasn’t going to get Greta’s support, Emily turned back to Elisabeth. “Mom…”

“Stop saying that.”

“What?Mom?”

“Yes. I have no intention of having Michael Haskins here.” Elisabeth was turning a red unbecoming of a born-and-bred New England WASP who rarely showed heated emotion. “This is exactly the reason I askedyour sisterto make the calls.”

The barb landed. “Okay…well…how about this: It’s Dad’s funeral, andIwant Uncle Mike here.”

Greta’s brows rose in surprise. That didn’t sound like Emily. That sounded like…Franklin.

Elisabeth must have heard it, too. “For thelasttime.” Their mother’s tablet landed on the thin Turkish rug—the sound loud enough to shock everyone, because no accidental slip would cause such a clearthud.“It is acelebration.”

Silence fell, fraught and unpleasant, and Greta refused to meet Emily’s eyes as the youngest Storm stood, unfolding from her chair with grace that came from years of lotus position. “Right. How could I forget.”

She left the room, shoving the door open and disappearing into the hallway beyond, pushing it closed with a firm hand—not loud enough to be called a slam, but definitely loud enough to make her point.

Elisabeth leaned down to pick up the tablet.

Greta cleared her too-tight throat. “Mom—”

“You can go, too,” Elisabeth said, a cold, unyielding rescue, as Greta didn’t know how she was going to finish the sentence. “It’s obvious how you all feel.”

Confusion flared, along with the familiar, unpleasant lash of her mother’s disappointment. “What does that mean?”

“We’re done.”

It didn’t feel like they were done. It felt like they were just beginning; not that Greta would say that. In forty years, what thingsfeltlike had never been a part of their relationship.

What thingsfeltlike was reserved for another place. For another person.

Greta hovered on a precipice, frozen in that too-familiar way, afraid that action would upset Elisabeth, afraid inaction would.

Elisabeth made her way to her desk, not looking up as she said, “Was I not clear?”

Swallowing the twin emotions of guilt and excitement that loomed (always intertwined), Greta did as she was told, escaping before Elisabeth could change both of their minds.

It was a trip she’d made hundreds of times in the past—exiting through the door to the north side of the island, with its views of the less exciting part of the Bay. While the port of Providence was too far to see, there was no denying that northward travel would take visitors away from the luxurious promise of the Rhode Island of legend, toward the more blue-collar communities that kept the state running with manufacturing, shipping, and, yes, fishing—but not the glamorous kind.

Maybe that was why the north end of the island had always been Greta’s favorite—as unglamorous as a piece of land boasting a helicopter pad could get.

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