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Sunday sits back down at the table and picks up her menu again. “I did not go to prom,” she says, shaking her head.
A waitress is standing beside their table holding a notepad, and when they look up at her, they realize that it’s not the same waitress who had seated them. “She definitely did not go to prom,” the woman says, watching them with tired eyes. “But if she’d stuck around, she could have been the prom queen.”
Olive’s mouth falls open and Cameron sets her water glass down loudly. “Mom?” she says, looking back and forth between her mother and this stranger, who looks to be about her mom’s age, but without the benefit of access to a good hairdresser or up-to-date fashion. “Do you two know each other?”
Sunday sets her menu on the table with a sigh. “Girls, you remember your Aunt Minnie,” she says. “Min, your nieces are all grown up.”
Minnie puts the pen in her hand behind one ear and looks first at Cameron and then at Olive. After a long minute, her face breaks into a smile that looks like a sunrise cresting over a mountain range. “Well, get over here and give your old Aunt Minnie a hug!” she says, opening her arms wide and waiting for her nieces to stand.
Olive jumps up first, walking right into Minnie’s embrace without hesitation. Cameron is a bit more reluctant, but there’s a smile on her face like she’s happy to be seeing family. Sunday gets up last and hugs her sister, squeezing her quickly and then letting go so that they can stare into one another’s faces.
“What the hell are you doing here, girl?” Minnie asks Sunday, leaning against the table with one hand. She looks around and then leans in to Sunday and lowers her voice. “We’ve got nothing in here but geezers covered in fish guts, and a menu with grease fried in grease. Why don’t you come over to my place?”
Sunday looks at her girls with a question in her eyes; they both shrug like they’re up for anything. “What time?”
“I’m off in fifteen minutes,” Minnie says. “Meet me at home.”
Sunday stands and gathers her purse, motioning for the girls to follow. “We’ll walk over there now.”
“Can’t we catch an Uber?” Cameron asks, putting her hand over her stomach protectively.
“Have you seen any cars out there, ding-dong?” Olive says, poking her sister. “It’s all bicycles and golf carts.”
“Take my cart,” Minnie says, fishing a key on a ring with a red disk shaped like a lifesaver out of her pocket. “It’s parked out back—the one with the Hudson-Bond bumper sticker on it.”
Sunday gives her sister a look that’s full of love. “Aww, you didn’t.”
“Pshaw, girl. Of course I did. You think my sister is gonna end up living in the White House and I’m not gonna put a bumper sticker on my cart to let the world know that I voted to help get her there?”
“Thanks for the vote, Min, but we actually lived at the Naval Observatory in a house there.”
Minnie waves this explanation off with a roll of her eyes. “Potato, po-tah-to,” she says. “Now head over to my place. Door’s unlocked. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
* * *
The inside of Minnie’s house is wood-paneled and warm.
“Mom?” Olive asks, walking around with her hands behind her back as she looks at the photos in the frames on the mantel. “How did you know where Aunt Minnie lived if you haven’t been here in almost forty years?”
A slow smile spreads across Sunday’s face and she looks at Cameron, who is sitting gingerly on the edge of a couch covered in scratchy plaid fabric. “Because this is the house I lived in my entire life before I left Tangier. I was actually born in the back bedroom,” she says, pointing down a hallway. “As were Minnie and our brother Jensen.”
Cameron looks surprised. “Seriously? Minnie got the house when your parents died?”
“Sure,” Sunday says. “She was here and I wasn’t. It’s fine—she deserves every single thing my parents had, which I can tell you wasn’t much.”
The front door opens then, and Olive stops examining every picture in the room. She hurries over to the couch to sit next to her sister.
“Yoo-hoo, I’m home!” Minnie calls out, dropping her purse and kicking off her shoes in the front hallway. She walks into the living room, pulling the sides of her tunic down over her hips as she sighs and stops to stretch her neck from side to side. “So you remembered where the house was, huh?” She winks at Sunday. “Thought you might’ve forgotten.”
“Never.”
“You ladies want some hooch?” Minnie walks over to a bookcase, pulls three paperbacks from the shelf, and reveals a flat bottle of Gentleman Jack whiskey that’s been hiding behind the books. “I can make you a Jack & Coke?”
“Yes for me,” Sunday says quickly, relief coursing through her veins at the thought of alcohol to lubricate this particular visit.
“Okay, yes, please,” Olive says, raising a hand like she’s in school. She looks at her mom with excitement in her eyes; this trip has obviously defied her expectations of some touristy visit to her mom’s hometown, but she’s always been game for pretty much anything anyway.
Cameron holds up a hand. “I’m expecting,” she says primly, “so no thank you. Just an ice water for me, if you have it.”
