“I bet I know one thing you’ll love about this new house,” she says, throwing her arms wide to show off the sprawling kitchen sitting opposite the living room just off the entryway. I follow her over there. “No more telling us all to get out while you cook.”
“Yes, because you were so ofteninthe kitchen at the cottage.” I spread my hands on top of the mammoth marble island, nod at the pasta arm over the six-burner gas stove. “I want one of those in my own home someday.”
“I’ll get you one,” Laurel says, her brief moment of melancholy from earlier erased. She spins into the living room, collapsing in a heap onto a plush white armchair there. “I’ll buy you a thousand weird wall faucets!”
After thoroughly admiring the first floor, we haul our things upstairs and choose our rooms—Laurel’s at the back of the house, overlooking the beach, and mine at the front, small but with a balcony off to one side. We curl up out there on the outdoor settees and peek over the wrought-iron railing every time we hear tires coming down the road until it is, finally, Gabe and Davi pulling into the driveway behind Laurel’s car.
“Ahoy!” Laurel shouts down to them, the upper half of her body leaned over the railing.
“Hi!” Gabe calls, beaming up at us in khaki shorts and a T-shirt sporting the name of the college where he runs the admissions department back in Denver. “How’s the view?”
“Excellent now!” I call down to him as Davi expels himself from the car behind Gabe, his curly black hair less coiffed than usual.
“Did anyone pack any Dramamine?” he says, voice bouncing off the stucco walls. “I think I left mine in the bathroom at Burbank.”
“Davi!” Gabe booms, throwing a rough arm around hisshoulders and almost lifting him off the ground in the process. Where Gabe is towering and brawny, Davi is stocky. And, currently, a little green. “Forget your Dramamine! Look where we are!”
“I see where we are,” I hear Davi mumble as he squints at his phone, probably responding to a work email even in his current, nauseous state. “I still don’t travel well.”
“You and potato salad,” Laurel says. “Just get in here!”
“I have Dramamine, Davi,” I call down to him as Gabe bounds toward the house, leaving Davi swaying on his feet in the driveway.
We all settle in around the island in the kitchen. I scrub a hand over Gabe’s shorter haircut when he hugs me. Davi takes the pills I gave him and keeps his sunglasses pulled down over his eyes.
“Gabe, we’re thinking you can have the room down here,” Laurel is telling them. “Davi, there’s a room upstairs with blackout curtains that has your name on it.”
“Great,” Gabe says. “But who cares about room assignments? Let’s start catching up.”
“We have to wait until everyone’s here,” Laurel says. “I hate repeating things. Everyone should be here by seven.”
Gabe’s gaze flicks briefly toward me, but I ignore it.
“So what are we supposed to do until then?” Davi asks. “Sit in silence?”
“Well, Dramamine always knocks you out,” I say to him. “So at least we know what you’ll be doing.”
“I told Mia I’d call when we got in,” Gabe says, almost apologetically. Mia is Gabe’s wife, and currently on her own trip with their three-year-old twins and her sister. We all knew that part of even getting Gabe here this week meant giving him time and space to check in with them multiple times a day.
“I do have some emails I should respond to,” Laurel adds a little guiltily.
The kitchen goes silent for a minute, the immediate excitement of being reunited fading from our bodies and making room for reality. That we haven’t all been together—not like this, at least—for years. There have been day trips, birthday parties that only some of us could make it to. But the last time we were all in the same place at the same time was at Laurel’s wedding, and on top of that not being an entire week away together, I think the day she married Stephen is the last thing any of us want to bring up right now.
“Hey, come on,” I say. I need this week to be perfect. Not only for Laurel, but for all of us, so everyone in this room will see how important it is that this group remain intact. “We’ll each take an hour to take care of whatever we need to, and then we’ll reconvene here for drinks, okay?”
“So we’ll sit in silence, drinking?” Davi asks.
It hits me how strange this is, all of us together again not knowing what to do. The transition into this trip used to be exciting, but now it feels like our first night at sleepaway camp, all of us a little unsure. I sink onto one hip, sighing. “We’ll play a game or something.”
“I didn’t mean to make it awkward,” Laurel, who has never once looked as timid as she does right now, says. Her expression pricks at something in my chest, the same thing I’ve been feeling since she sent herI need youtext in the first place. Something she’s not telling me in all her nonchalance about the divorce. “We can catch up now,” she offers.
“No,” I jump in. “You’re right. Repeating things sucks.”
The words are accompanied by a flash of irritation that I know, logically, is unfounded. But emotionally, I am a cracking Hoover Dam, holding back five years’ worth of anger atthe person who’s still missing from this situation. The person who makes keeping this group intact so complicated, because it can’t just be the people in this room,much as I might wish it. For this group to be intact, we still need him. The one who my rational brain reminds me isn’t actually making it impossible for us to talk right now, but whom my animal brain rails against for not being able to get here earlier. Thehimof earlier. The him I don’t want to see.
Everett.
three
