Page 22 of Songs of Summer

“I took the bedroom on the left,” she said.

Shep grimaced.

“That’s where Bea usually stays.”

“First come first served, no?”

“She’s here somewhere,” he stammered, gesturing at Bea’s bags, which were still sitting by the door.

“Want me to take her bags up?” Matt offered.

“Thank you, son.”

He mouthed—the bedroom on the right—followed by a wink. Shep had his hands full. Matt felt badly for him, even though he knew in every ounce of his being that this was Shep’s own doing. Matt had gotten into more trouble beside this old man over the years than with his buddies from high school and his fraternity brothers combined.

“This is Renee’s son, Matt. I taught him everything he knows.”

He should have added “about baseball”—but Matt let it slide. Everyone let everything slide with Shep, though whatever he had done to orchestrate this present catastrophe might prove to be the exception to that rule.

“I want to say hello to your mom, to thank her for inviting me to the wedding. I was so touched. Is she in the house?”

“Not exactly,” Matt answered, amusing only himself.

Veronica busied herself on her phone and Matt took the opportunity to quietly confront Shep.

“What did you do?”

“Between you, me, and the lamppost, I sent her my invite.” Seeing Matt’s reaction, he added, “What? It didn’t say nontransferable!”

It amazed Matt that, at ninety-three, this man showed no signs of mellowing. Shep continued:

“I did what had to be done. And I’d do it again.”

“Beatrix won’t come down from my roof.”

He peeked out the window.

“That’s not like her,” he said, before ordering Veronica to apologize to her sister.

“What did I do now?” Veronica asked, apparently in all innocence.

“It’s not what you didnow, it’s what you didthen.”

“You know what,no! I’ve apologized, Daddy. Aside from the fact that she has plenty to apologize to me for, I’ve spent my whole life apologizing to her. I have written letters, left messages. I text every year on her birthday. Crickets. I was a kid. But even so, it’s not all my fault. The pregnancy was not my fault. The fact that she never had other children, not my fault. That she never got past me sleeping with some stupid lifeguard who everyone and their mother slept with—again, not my fault.”

“Whose mothers slept with him?” Shep asked with a boyish grin.

“Daddy, stop.”

She looked at Matt, angling for his sympathy.

“She blames everything on me. If she tripped over something in Ohio and stubbed her toe, I swear she would yell out,Veronica!”

Matt just smiled. It was a lot.

Everyone thought when Shep and Caroline constructed the big house across the street from the one they raised their daughters in, the sisters would make up and fill it with their own families. But they made every effort never to visit in the same month, let alone on the same weekend. For sure, people thought losing their mom, Caroline, a dozen years earlierwould unite the two sisters, but they took care of all the arrangements, and their father, by text, with little physical interaction. It was well known that this division in their family was the biggest disappointment in both Caroline and Shep’s lives, and the one thing Shep wanted to fix while he was still able.

“Please. Just once more, for me. She won’t come down off the roof,” Shep pleaded.

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