Page 62 of Songs of Summer

“We thought she’d drowned. Her shoes were found on the beach. There’s been a manhunt all night.”

At least she thought it was called a manhunt. She wasn’t sure if manhunt was reserved for escaped convicts; she didn’t know what the term was for last night’s valiant effort—maybe a search and rescue?

“Oh my God. I had no idea!” The color drained from his face, and he directed them to “Come with me.”

Bea gripped Maggie’s hand tightly and pulled her along as they raced to her old house. Part of her now felt a connection to Bea that bound them together, while another part of her thought to run in the opposite direction.

Inside the neighbor’s house that had once been Shep and Caroline’s, Ben’s wife, Addison, pointed to the bedroom where the Silver sisters had slept as children. There they found Veronica curled up under aLittle Mermaidcomforter, sound asleep.

Two young girls were sitting up in the other bed, watching her. Maggie imagined one sister waking the other in the night to reveal her discovery, the two of them tucking Veronica in with the comforter and snuggling up together in the other bed, lids heavy, but imaginations running wild over the identity of their surprise guest. From the images on their bedding, Maggie was sure they were hoping for a mermaid or a princess or some other Disney iteration of a damsel in distress, not adrunk Beverly Hills housewife desperately clinging to her youth.

Bea pulled her phone from her pocket and called Paul.

“I found her. Tell my dad she’s fine. She was at the old house.”

Veronica rolled over, opened her eyes, and looked curiously at the scene in front of her.

“Come here, girls,” Addison instructed her two little ones, leading them out of their room to give the older sisters, who once shared it, their privacy. Maggie tried to follow Addison out, but Bea refused to release her hand.

“I thought you were dead,” Bea cried, finally letting go of Maggie and climbing into the little bed next to her sister, holding her shocked face in her hands.

“I am,” she cried.

“No, you’re not,” her sister assured her.

“I dissed the lifeguard.”

“Good job. Me too.”

“And I drank.”

“I’ll help you find a meeting.”

Veronica motioned to the space between them.

“This ridiculous mountain between us. I’m so tired of climbing it, only to fall back down again. Could this be over now, please?”

Bea looked at her sister, so thankful that she was right there in front of her in one piece. She thought back to the time in their lives when they were a single unit, an unbreakable force in so many ways. Life was better like that, safer, kinder, more fun. Sitting in their old bedroom, it hit her hard: the years had flown by, and Veronica was the onlyperson who had seen them all with her—well, almost all. She suddenly longed for the moments they’d missed.

“Yes.” Bea hugged her and Veronica melted into her sister’s arms. Bea melted right back.

“C’mon. Let’s go,” she whispered.

“But—”

“We can’t stay here,” Bea interrupted her, reading her sister’s mind.

Veronica nodded in reluctant understanding and sat up.

“Can we do one thing, please, before we go?” she asked, nodding her head toward the closet.

“Wow, I never even knew you read it.”

Bea reached into a bucket of markers on the girls’ dresser and pulled out a dark purple one that, when opened, filled the room with the scent of grape jelly. She slid open the closet door and gingerly stepped in between pairs of tiny flip-flops, sneakers, and rain boots, bending her head back to see if the hateful words she had scrawled underneath the shelf in Sharpie thirty years before were still there.

She scribbled over the decades-old graffiti as best she could.

“Let’s go home,” she said, taking Veronica’s hand.

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