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Minnie looks at Cameron for a second like she must be joking. “What, I look like I don’t have running water or ice in my house, girl?”
“No, no,” Cameron says, blushing. “It was just a reflex. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I thought—“
“Knock it off, Cammy. I’m just yanking your chain.” Minnie walks through the front room in just her socks with the bottle of whiskey in one hand. “I’m making three Jack & Cokes and an ice water,” she shouts from the kitchen. “I’d tell you to look out the window and keep an eye open for your uncle Ted, but he died three years ago,” she adds.
Cameron looks mildly horrified at the casual way Minnie has announced her husband’s death. “Mom,” she whispers.
Sunday blinks a few times; she and Minnie don’t talk a lot, but she can’t imagine that it’s been more than three years since they’ve last spoken. She stands up immediately and walks into the kitchen. “Min,” she says firmly, forcing her sister to turn and look at her. “Why didn’t you call me? Jesus, what happened?” Sunday can feel her eyes filling with tears; she’s known Ted Kull her entire life. In fact, Ted and Sunday’s high school boyfriend, Irvin, had been first cousins, and she and Minnie had been on countless double-dates with the two boys.
Minnie busies herself with mixing the drinks. “I didn’t call for the same reason that you didn’t call to tell me you were coming home before you showed up at the Waterfront. Or that you didn’t call to let me know that you’re going to be a grandma.”
“Well, I just found out about the grandma part a few hours ago,” Sunday says, wiping her eyes as they stand under the single globe light that hangs above Minnie’s chipped enamel kitchen sink. “But I didn’t call you because I knew I wouldn’t be on this island for more than an hour without you hearing about it anyway.”
“EHHHH,” Minnie says, sounding like a buzzer in a game show. “Wrong answer. You should have called, Sun.”
Sunday’s eyes fall to the floor. “And you should have called me when Ted passed. What was it—heart attack?” She cringes at the thought of Ted, sweet as pie Ted Kull, dropping dead on the dock one day after fishing, or maybe just not waking up one morning.
Minnie shakes her head. “Lung cancer. He was diagnosed and then dead in less than six months.” Her mouth is pressed in a grim line. “I miss that man every single day.”
“Of course you do.” Sunday takes the bottle of whiskey from her sister’s hands, sets it on the counter, and then puts her arms around Minnie. “I’m so sorry. I truly am.”
“I know you are,” Minnie says, relaxing into her older sister’s arms. They’re Irish twins with barely ten months between them, but Sunday is the big sister and always has been. Even her leaving the island was, in a sense, her way of blazing a trail that her younger sister could have followed, had she wanted to. But she’d stayed on Tangier, married Ted Kull, and had Matt and A.J. in quick succession, just as their mother had had them.
Sunday lets Minnie go, and then they finish mixing the drinks and getting Cameron’s water so that they can rejoin the girls in the front room.
“Thank you, Aunt Minnie,” Olive says gratefully, sipping her Jack & Coke like it’s water. “This is perfect.”
Minnie laughs. “I don’t know that drinking a tacky mixed drink on your old aunt’s hand-me-down couch is all that glamorous, girl, but if you think it’s ‘perfect,’ then it most certainly is.”
Cameron says nothing, but smiles wanly as she sips her water.
“I brought the girls here for a reason,” Sunday says to Minnie, taking the first sip of her own cocktail and letting the whiskey flood through her body.
“I figured.”
“I want them to know everything.”
Minnie stays quiet. She drinks her Jack & Coke and sways slightly back and forth in the rocking recliner by the front window. “Hmmm,” she says, holding her drink in both hands. “That’s a lot.”
“It is,” Sunday agrees. “But I left here in a hurry—“
“You sure as hell did.”
“And I never came back.”
“That did not go unnoticed,” Minnie says sarcastically, but with a smirk. She takes another drink.
“I’ve talked very little to the girls about my life here, about their grandparents, or about what it was like growing up in this house.”
Minnie’s chin drops and she looks into her drink as if she’s searching for answers there. “Life here was something else,” she finally says.
“What was Dad like?” Sunday asks her.
Minnie’s eyes fly up to meet her sister’s. “You want me to tell this story?”
Sunday nods. “I do.”
Minnie clears her throat and rests her head against the back of her recliner as she gazes at the ceiling and formulates her thoughts. “Okay.” She lifts her head again and looks at both of her nieces, who are listening intently. “The house you see here now is not the house that your mother and I grew up in. Your uncle Ted and I worked hard to change everything about it after my parents died, and I think we turned this house of horrors into a real home.” She glances around the room, her eyes landing on the photographs on the mantel that show Matt and A.J. in various sports attire, holiday photos of Minnie, Ted, and the boys, and posed school photos. “I raised my boys here, and in doing so, I essentially erased some of the bad feelings I had about this place.”
