Page 106 of Summer Longing
“Lunch sounds great,” Olivia said. What elsecouldshe say?
“Ma, what are you making?” Jaci said, wandering in. She wore the Long Point T-shirt Olivia had borrowed the day she discovered the note. Was this some sort of sign from the universe? Should she be the one to put an end to this? Two weeks had passed since she’d confronted her mother about telling the Barros family the truth; clearly, Ruth had no intention of setting things right. And Olivia could not be more furious about it.
“Bifana,”Lidia said.
“That’s so heavy,” Jaci said. “Is there any salad stuff here?”
“You’re not worried about your weight, are you? I swear you’ve lost ten pounds this summer.” Lidia was right: Jaci had lost weight since she first met her. Baby weight, she now realized.
“What’sbifana?” Olivia asked.
“It’s like a steak sandwich but with pork,” Lidia said. “I just picked up some fresh bread from Connie’s.”
The three of them sat outside on the porch with the sandwiches and two pitchers of iced tea, one black peach, one green with kelp. Jaci reached for the peach.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t drink that seaweed stuff. Marco is out of his mind,” Jaci said.
“It’s definitely an acquired taste,” said Lidia, smiling at her. “But I’m working on it. I’d do anything for you kids, even start drinking seaweed.”
“You’re nuts.”
“When you’re a mother, you’ll see,” Lidia said.
Olivia chewed without tasting her food.
“It’s not too spicy, is it?” Lidia said.
Olivia shook her head, reaching for her own glass of iced tea. “It’s great.”
Her phone rang. She’d forgotten she’d even brought her phone that afternoon. So often, lately, she forgot about it. A glance at the screen told her the incoming call was from…Dakota? “Excuse me for a minute,” she said to Lidia. She took the deck stairs down to the street level for privacy.
“I’m so glad you finally answered,” Dakota said.
“What do you mean, finally?”
“I’ve left you two messages.”
It was jarring to hear Dakota’s voice in the middle of her new life. Lately, it had been hard for her to remember why she’d been so invested in HotFeed. But Dakota’s chatter brought it all back in a rush: her aspirations, her sense of control, her independence.
“So the bottom line is, I’m leaving HotFeed,” Dakota said. “I’m taking five accounts with me, and I want you to come on board as my partner.”
“Wait—what?” This was unbelievable. Two months ago, she had been the one planning to leave, to steal accounts, to bring Dakota along for the ride. How had her twenty-three-year-old assistant managed to pull off what she had not?
“Unless…you’re not already starting your own thing, are you? I mean, I would have heard about that, right?”
“No, no…I haven’t started my own thing.” Olivia looked straight ahead at the boats bobbing on the water.
“Can you meet for drinks tonight?”
Drinks tonight. In New York. She pictured the view from Rooftop 93 and the after-work crowd at Clinton Hall. “I’m out of town,” Olivia said.
“For how long?”
Olivia turned her back to the water and closed her eyes, trying to connect with her old life. It was calling to her, literally.
“I’m not sure,” she said, opening her eyes and focusing on the alley leading from Commercial to the boatyard. The alley that Marco was, at that very moment, crossing to reach her. “Let me call you back,” she said.
Marco smiled at her and she forced herself to smile in return. All she could think was that she didn’t want to go back to that kitchen table, did not want to deal with the dilemma of her unfortunate knowledge about his sister. She didn’t want to deal with her frustration with her mother. And she didn’t want to continue to live her life in this strange limbo of suspended reality. The summer was going to end, and she would be leaving all of this behind. Any thoughts to the contrary were just a way to avoid the messiness of her professional life. Now there was a clear path to fixing that. It was what she’d wanted all along.
