Page 57 of Summer Longing
“Thanks, Tito. Just put them on the counter in there. I’ll be inside in a minute. Ruth is just leaving.”
Tito walked past them and opened the sliding door. Halfway in, halfway out, he turned to Ruth. “I meant what I said the other night about getting out on the boat. You going to take me up on that offer?”
She remembered what he’d said at the party:It would be a shame for you to spend time in this town and not experience the best part of it.Well, she had experienced the best part of it. She thought maybe the best, in many ways, was behind her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to move forward.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Olivia felt guilty for asking her father to come visit. It had not been a very adult thing to do. But something about living under the same roof as her mother for the first time in twenty years had reduced her to a less-evolved version of herself. She knew this stress was what had originally triggered her back spasms, and losing her job had compounded the problem. This was what the back pain was all about.
And yet this understanding failed to make it go away. She didn’t know what to do.
She stared at the ceiling of her makeshift first-floor bedroom. She’d awakened to the sound of Elise and Fern bickering in the kitchen before Amelia arrived to pick up the baby. Just as she was drifting back to sleep, her mother had knocked on the door to announce she was headed out. Olivia had somehow managed to lose a job and gain three roommates. Four, if you counted the baby. This was her life—headed in the wrong direction.
“Anyone home?” The voice, female, seemed to be coming from the kitchen.
What now?Olivia sat up slowly, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and inched into a standing position while holding on to the nightstand. She looked out into the hallway just as someone with a familiar face rounded the corner of the living room. Jaci Barros.
“Jaci,” Olivia said, leaning against the doorframe. “What are you doing here?”
“I won’t bother you. I’m just going to hang out.” She waved a library book she was carrying.
Olivia sighed. “No offense, but ever hear of a coffee shop?”
“Here’s the thing—I’m sort of hiding from my mother, but everyone in town knows me and will narc me out if she tries to find me. I swear, if I have to spend one more minute trapped on a sandbar with my brother digging through boxes of oysters, I’ll die. Please just let me sit here and read for a few hours. Once the tide goes out again I’m off the hook for another day.”
Olivia sighed. “How did you even get in the house?”
“The back door’s open.”
Olivia walked past her into the kitchen and closed the back door and locked it. When she returned, Jaci was settled on the couch opening her book.
“It’s safe here, you know,” Jaci said. “My cousin owned this house for a decade and she didn’t even have keys.”
“Well, I’m from New York, and when I’m alone in a place, I like to remain alone unless I invite someone over. At the very least, I’d appreciate a doorbell ringing.”
“Sorry,” Jaci said sheepishly. “I didn’t think anyone would be home.”
And that made it better? “Jaci, if you don’t want to work with your brother this summer, why don’t you just tell him? I mean, you’re, what, nineteen years old? You’re in school. You don’t really live at home anymore, right? You’re basically just visiting for the summer.”
“It’s complicated,” Jaci said. The expression on her face was pure misery.
“Is it a financial issue? Like, they pay for school so you have to work for them or something like that?”
“No, I have pretty much a free ride at school and I make up for the rest working during the winter.”
“So just tell them you’re doing your own thing.” Olivia didn’t understand what the problem was.
“I can’t let my mother down. It’s hard enough on her that I went away to school. No one in the family has ever left. I’m the first woman to go to college. And everyone is really proud of that but they want me to be the girl who goes to Princetonandthe girl who works on the oyster farm.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“Look, mothers get disappointed sometimes,” Olivia said. “And they disappoint us. It’s just life. Tell her the truth. Tell her what you just told me. When I was your age I told my mother that I didn’t want to work with her.”
It was the last month of her freshman year at Vassar and her mother called to offer her a job at the cosmetics company for the summer. She told Olivia she could work in any department she wanted. “I know you’re interested in PR and we have a lot going on for Liv Free. You could really run with it.” Olivia didn’t consider it for a minute even though it would have looked great on her résumé. She spent the summer waiting tables.
“Did your motherneedyou to work for her?” Jaci said.
“Well, no. But she wanted me to.”
