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It was one of her favorite things to do in Strawberry Sands. Other than ride horses and play in the lake of course.
“Are you coming to eat?” Nana asked, and Nora turned her head to see her dad walking over. He didn’t look angry, he just looked...sad.
It almost made Nora feel guilty. She’d always loved her time with her dad. Summers by the lake were the best. And her dad let her do pretty much anything. Sometimes they stayed up until three o’clock in the morning watching movies and eating popcorn and drinking soda.
Her mom never let her stay up. Even though sometimes her mom and the man she married, George, stayed up late. They just never let Nora do it with them. It was like they wanted their own private time.
Which was fine with Nora. Except she never got her own private time with her mom.
“I’d like to, but I think I better go home. The horses need to be moved to the back pasture, and I need to fix the fence on the back corner piece.”
That made Nora happy. At least she told herself that. Except, everything was more fun when her dad did it too. She didn’t really want him not to do it. But she didn’t want him there either. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. She held Nana tighter and leaned her head against Nana’s shoulder again.
“All right,” Nana said. “It’ll be Nora and Scarlett and Penelope and me.” Nora could almost hear the twinkle in Nana’s voice. “We might get some nice thunderstorms this afternoon, which will be fun.”
It didn’t matter what happened, Nana had a backup plan for her backup plan, and she always made sure they had fun. She almost asked if they could throw a blanket over the dining room table and have a fort inside if it rained, but Penelope and Scarlett might think that was too little girlish. She’d have to talk to them about it. Just broach it carefully, asking them to see what they thought, before she actually suggested it. She didn’t want them to make fun of her for being a little girl. Even though she still liked to do little girl things sometimes. She was twelve, but she still packed a couple of dolls in her suitcase, just because she didn’t want to spend the whole summer without them. Was it really fair that she had to leave all of her things at the storage unit that her mom rented? She didn’t understand why George couldn’t move out. Why did it have to be her and her mom? They always seemed to get the short end of the stick.
“After I move the horses, I can bring my ice-cream maker, and we can make some ice cream if you’d like.”
Scarlett and Penelope both squealed. Nora managed to not squeal, and she thought she did a pretty good job of keeping the excitement that she felt off her face too. Her dad made the best ice cream in the world. It wasn’t really even ice cream. It was more like custard. Like frozen cream that was just sweet enough to make her tongue dance and her mouth smile.
Sometimes he made raspberry ice cream, and that was the best.
She couldn’t help herself. She said, “Do you have raspberries?”
He smiled, not a gloating kind of smile that he’d finally gotten her to talk, but a true happy smile like he was happy to talk to her. Sometimes her mom smiled a gloating smile, which made Nora determined that she wouldn’t talk to her mom anymore or give in, but she always ended up doing it.
“I do. It’s too early in the season for them, you know that. They’re never ripe until July. But I have two bags that I saved from last summer when we went picking, just because I thought we might want raspberry ice cream this year before they were ready.”
He smiled again like having raspberry ice cream with her made him happy.
She wanted him to be happy. But she wanted herself to be happy too. She would be happy if her parents were together.
Except what was that thing that Nana always said? That she couldn’t depend on other people to make her happy. She had to decide to be happy for herself.
She could just hear Nana saying it now. Even years ago when she wished that her parents were together, Nana had said that. And she knew Nana knew what she was talking about because Nana’s husband left her. She found out from other people that he was a cheater and a liar and he hadn’t been nice to Nana at all.
And yet, Nana never complained about him. And she never blamed him for anything that happened. She just decided to be happy. If only it were that simple.
“Do you get to eat ice cream and cook hot dogs over a fire all the time?” Scarlett said as she hooked her arm with hers and they left the church together.
Penelope walked along on the other side, and she said, “A fire? You get to have a real fire?”
“Yeah. We have a fire in the little fire ring out in the yard. It’s not a big fire.”
“I don’t think our mom would ever let us have a fire. In fact, we better not tell her.” Scarlett looked across Nora at Penelope and raised her brows, as though warning her little sister not to say anything.
Just that made Nora sad. Why couldn’t she have sisters? She didn’t understand.
They had a good time that afternoon, with the fire and the hot dogs and even marshmallows, and Nana dug up candy bars for s’mores. And then, to top everything off, just as it started to rain, her dad brought his ice-cream machine, and they all went in the house and he made raspberry ice cream.
Her friends thought she was the luckiest person in the world, and she kind of felt that way too. Except after her friends left, and she begged her dad to let her stay with Nana, she felt sad and lonely again.
She wanted siblings. She wanted a family. She wanted a mom and dad who lived in the same house. Why couldn’t she have that? Other people did.
“You’ve been kind of quiet all day. And this is one of your favorite things to do. The fire, the marshmallows, the hot dogs, and the raspberry ice cream. I think your dad makes it better every year.”
“It was really good,” Nora said, sitting in the sunroom, watching as the clouds cleared over the lake and the sun sank low. Pretty soon it would set, and if the clouds were just right, they’d glow orange and yellow and pink and flare up into the sky in a big beautiful sunset, the kind she loved watching in Strawberry Sands. Where her mom and she lived in Indiana, they didn’t get sunsets like that. Or maybe they did, and she just couldn’t see them because of all the other houses and buildings that were in the way.
