Page 1 of The Summer Club

Andi

That was the trouble with family; you could put miles and miles between you, but they always knew your favorite hiding places. No sooner had Andi pulled up to Clem’s Clam Shack at the base of the Mid-Cape Highway, the last stop before crossing the Sagamore Bridge that would officially land her “on Cape,” did her phone ring. It was Hugh. Leave it to her nosy brother, who hadn’t returned her calls in weeks, to buzz her the moment she was about to shove a much-needed buttery bite of lobster roll into her mouth. Andi groaned and let the call go to voicemail. Hugh’s message was impatient. “Where are you?”

To be fair, Andi wasn’t exactly hiding out at the Clam Shack. She just needed a minute. A minute to herself, with her teenage daughter, Molly, who did not care one bit for seafood and was, in fact, still sound asleep in the passenger seat. No matter. Andi would give herself this final family-free moment to savor her hot lobster roll. It was like a skydiver’s last deep breath before jumping out of the plane. Each year Andi pulled over at Clem’s Clam Shack, just as each year the entire family reunited at Riptide, her grandmother’s Cape Cod summer house. Everyone showed up. Her parents, Charley and Cora; her twin brother, Hugh, and his partner, Martin. And their little sister, Sydney, who would be getting married there in just a few short weeks to her fiancé, James, a bright New York commercial Realtor.

The annual Darling gathering wasn’t a standing invitation so much as a requirement. There were no excuses. Exceptions were not granted. Knowing that, each summer the Darling family members shrugged off their usual responsibilities in the various states in which they lived, packed their beach bags, and put on their game faces. You could beg off Thanksgiving; you could even miss an occasional Christmas dinner without raising too many hairs on their mother’s perfectly coiffed head. But no one missed the family vacation at Riptide. It was simply unheard of.

Andi polished off her lobster roll and licked the butter hungrily from her fingertips. Six months after her divorce, she was finally getting her appetite back. But facing the whole family—for a wedding, of all things—was still unnerving. She reached over and tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her still-sleeping daughter’s ear. Molly had inherited that gold-spun head of hair from her father, George. George, who’d promised Andi a family and a future, but had not stuck around to deliver on the last part. Who, after only six months of divorce, was already five months deep in another relationship with a new woman.

When Andi broke the news of her divorce the previous Christmas, her mother had stared wordlessly out the living room window at the snowy yard, fiddling with the bulbous ruby ring Charley had proposed to her with. It was a familiar tic signifying her distress. Andi had held her breath, watching as her mother twisted it back and forth on her slender finger. “The twist of disapproval,” Hugh had deemed it, when they were little.

“Living alone will be hard,” Cora had said, finally.

How would she know? Andi had wondered. Her mother had been happily married to her father, Charley, a man of great patience and affection, for over forty-five years.

“Mom, living together is harder. This wasn’t a decision made in haste.”

Cora’s gaze had remained fixed on the snow. “Still.”

“She will be fine,” Charley Darling said, stepping forward to lay a hand on Andi’s shoulder. “Andi always finds her way.”

Thankfully, that had been the same Christmas that Sydney and James announced the news of their engagement, giving the family something else to sink their teeth into. It left Andi with some breathing room as everyone rearranged their stricken expressions into smiles and turned their attention to the happy couple.

“You owe Syd,” Hugh had mused, holding out a tall snifter of Bailey’s by the fire while the rest huddled around the dining room table talking reception sites. “Gives you a chance to step out of the spotlight and lick your wounds.”

“I don’t have wounds to lick,” she’d insisted, snatching the snifter glass and taking a deep sip.

But she had. Even though the decision to divorce had been mutual, it was still heartbreaking. In the span of one year Andi lost her marriage, her home, and her bearings. George had insisted they sell the house, which was yet another blow. Sure, Andi knew she couldn’t afford to hang on to it alone, and friends suggested a fresh start might be best. But it was her home, and if ever Andi needed a refuge to heal it was now. Their house was the place Molly had come home to from the hospital. The house where Andi had learned to get her hands dirty and design outdoor living spaces and, after thirteen years, finally established a thriving perennial garden teeming with butterfly bushes and Shasta daisies and hydrangeas. Where she’d painstakingly selected and then painted the soothing earth tones of every room herself and still had the paint-splattered cutoff shorts to prove it. The idea of leaving all of that, of boxing up all the memories of Molly’s childhood and taking them somewhere else, was almost more gut-wrenching than leaving her marriage. Another loss to grieve.

It took her months to find their new place: a little two-bedroom cottage in the center of town with a large maple tree in the front yard. They moved in during winter break, when Andi had a week off from teaching at the middle school and Molly was home from high school. The house was modest and historic, which meant it needed a whole lot of work, but it was theirs. And it was where they would start over. For the last six months she’d pulled out her paint rollers again. Hung her favorite artwork from the old house on the new walls. Purchased shiny new appliances during the Memorial Day sales. Andi knew it would be years before the new place felt like home. But little by little it was starting to.

Since then, she’d avoided traveling to family gatherings for holidays and, instead, holed up at the cottage under the guise of moving, unpacking, and settling in. Skipping Sydney’s engagement party in February, then Easter Sunday, and her parents’ anniversary dinner in May. By then she was as moved into the new cottage as possible, but still she used it as an excuse for staying away. She was too raw. Too tired. She was reinventing herself, according to her girlfriends, whatever that meant. Despite her happiness for Sydney’s upcoming nuptials, Andi just didn’t have the stomach to pour over bridesmaid dress designs or feign joy over reception color themes.

Still, she felt guilty. Her father called weekly to check in. Her mother sent texts asking why her voicemail box was full. She knew she wasn’t being a good daughter or a good sister, but the only thing she had energy to muster for was being a good mother to Molly. And she’d make no apologies for that.

Despite her best efforts, she had not entirely escaped the bustle of the upcoming wedding, even from the safe distance of her Connecticut cottage. From the champagne-infused announcement by Sydney and James that past Christmas (which everyone had made it to that year), right up to this morning when Cora called with a blustery smattering of directives: don’t forget to bring your bridesmaid gown; make sure Molly has her dress shoes; do you recall the last place you saw my antique French hand linens? Cora had to find them for the bridal breakfast!

Andi hadn’t even known her mother possessed antique French hand linens. No one had thought to mention them when she got married.

As she pointed her car toward the Sagamore Bridge, she glanced at the sleeping figure of her fourteen-year-old daughter in the passenger seat. Molly’s expression was especially sweet in slumber, and Andi resisted the urge to reach over.

Her phone buzzed again, and this time Andi picked it up. “What is it, Hugh?”

There was a dramatic pause. “Well, that’s no way to greet your favorite brother.”

“Only brother.”

“Don’t forget Martin.”

Andi smiled wryly. “Martin is my brother-in-law and why he puts up with you, I’ll never know.”

Hugh chuckled. “Uh-huh. So… where the hell are you?”

She glanced at the first exit sign off the bridge: Sandwich. Still a solid hour from the family house in Chatham. “Almost there,” Andi lied. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Shall I start with the look on our mother’s face? Or the ten thousand wedding deliveries piled to the ceiling in each room? The damn wedding is still three weeks away and it’s already unadulterated chaos here. I need you.”

As much as she dreaded the sympathetic looks and tiptoeing she was sure she’d get as the recent divorcée at her little sister’s wedding, Andi had to admit it—she had missed her family. She pictured her father in his fishing hat and smiled. Her mother’s clam chowder simmering on the stove for the traditional first night supper. “It all sounds nice, actually.”

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