Page 13 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Louisa emitted a despairing sigh. “They got together so young. She was twenty. How do you live your life with someone that long, and then suddenly, they’re gone.”

“Well, you keep loving them for as long as you’re on this earth,” Betsy said, a pang hitting her in the center of her chest. She would love her father long after she needed to look at a photograph to remember the details of his face.

Louisa fiddled with her popped collar. “Betsy, why do you always talk about Dad like he was perfect? He wasn’t, you know.”

“No one is perfect, Lou,” Betsy said. Not even her sister, but she didn’t say that. There was no use in being mean.

The buoy bell chimed again in the breeze, the rhythmic sound slowing the conversation. A boat passed in the dark harbor, the small cabin lights illuminating the night like stars. She felt sorry for her mother. She never really thought it possible that her mother could feel that alone, not when she had inspired women to march in protests, not when she was a must-get lunch attendee in Washington political circles. But even a woman like that could feel no love at all when it didn’t come from the people she cared about. The last couple weeks had taught Betsy that.

Aggie crossed her legs at the knee. “You know what, girls? Even if things are a little off here, even if we need to let go of the house, I needed this vacation. My life has become an endless string of chopping fruit and chasing Tabby while getting dinner on the table before Henry gets home. I think it’s good we’re all back together. We needed sister time.”

The statement made Betsy shift in her seat, sensing that the conversation was veering into dangerous territory, the notion that Betsy and Louisaneededto be forced together for their own good. “At some point in your life, you will stop being the peacemaker in this family, Ag.”

Aggie delivered an awkward half laugh in Betsy’s direction. “If I don’t do it, who will?”

Louisa raised her unpainted fingernails. “Iama lawyer.”

“But you’re half the trouble.” Betsy smiled, even if she felt peevish at the truth behind her statement. She remembered then how her mother sometimes sat with Louisa at the kitchen table in her latter teenage years and begged her to talk to her father, how she had told Louisa that she’d be filled with regret someday that she didn’t make peace with him. “He calls me moody,” Louisa had complained, to which her mother had responded, “He doesn’t know how to reach you. You won’t let him in.”

Louisa ignored Betsy’s comment, instead pivoting toward Aggie. “Are you the peacemaker in your marriage too? With Henry?”

Aggie’s mirrored locket glowed on her neck. “Sometimes. I always give in first when it comes to an argument, and I always think it’s rather convenient for him.” Something about the way Aggie said it made her sound like she’d lost a running race. She put her empty glass on the arm of the chair, leaning forward in her chair, frowning. “Can’t the two of you just talk? Like really talk?”

Betsy trained her eyes onSenatorial, how the mast bobbed from side to side in the breeze. She and Louisa had been civil these last few days, even if they didn’t say much at night when they climbed into their respective beds in their shared bedroom. Louisa would read legal magazines, Betsy with her nose inPeoplewhile she fantasized about Andy calling the Vineyard house and announcing he’d made a mistake.

Aggie jostled Louisa in a playful way. “Come on, Lou. You’ve talked to Supreme Court justices. You can certainly talk to Betsy.”

Louisa cleared her throat, but she didn’t say anything. It would have been a good time for Betsy to admit how stupid Louisa had made her feel at her father’s funeral. How depressed she’d grown afterward, and how low she’d felt having lost her father and her sister in a single week. How she wished that Louisa had just asked Betsy for her help if she’d needed it, rather than snap at her. Betsy could have listed everything she had done right that day, like refilled the plates and napkins when they’d run low, tipped the catering staff, created the collage with the photos of her father with his wife and girls that stood on the easel near the coffin.

Instead, Betsy said, “I hated that we had to bury an empty casket.”

Aggie sighed and sunk back into her seat. “It wasn’t empty. It had some of his remains, and his photos, and the stuff we put inside.”

“No, Betsy’s right. It’s weird that Dad wasn’t in there. Sometimes I think he survived the crash and someone is secretly taking care of him, and he’ll show up one day and find us.”

“Louisa, that’s so impractical of you. They gave us his remains. He was on that plane.”

“I know, but I would like to see him one more time.”

“To say you’re sorry?”

Louisa steeled her voice. “He doesn’t deserve an apology.”

Betsy never fully understood why Louisa always made her father out to be a villain. “Maybe he did deserve one.” Maybe Betsy deserved one from Louisa.

Louisa made a biting face. “If I could, I’d tell him that he had everything he ever wanted. Everything he’d always worked for. So why did he have to go and screw it all up?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Her mother gathered Betsy and her sisters in the study on Saturday, just after Aggie put the baby down for a nap. The room smelled of patchouli incense and musty pages, thanks to piles of magazines and dog-eared newspapers, stacks of neatly typed articles paper clipped on her mother’s large mahogany desk. The heart of the room was a single oversized picture window overlooking the harbor, and on opposite walls, two bookshelves with a mix of nonfiction and fiction titles. Books were scattered elsewhere, too, piled on the end tables, the radiator, stacked on the floor, making it impossible to ever find the one you wanted. While Betsy’s father took over the space during the Senate recess in August, it had always been her mother’s room. In the acknowledgments section of her most recent book, her mother had even thanked the study, saying she did some of her best work here from Memorial to Labor Day since her mind opened while looking out at the water.

Betsy perched in her mother’s swivel chair, allowing herself to imagine what it would be like to be as respected as her mother. Spinning in the chair, Betsy tracked the framedMs.magazine covers hanging on the walls, her mother’s name emblazoned alongside the headlinedstories she’d penned: WHY THEFBIISSPYING ON THEWOMEN’SMOVEMENT; JOBADVICE IFYOU’RE“JUST AHOUSEWIFE”; WHY THEPILL IS ABASICHUMANRIGHT.

“Wait until you see this.” Her mother opened the small closet and lifted a cardboard box from the shelf. Then she carried out a cumbersome metal projector and set it up on the wooden desktop, plugging it in and aiming it toward a portion of blank wall behind it. “I found all these old home movies that Dad took when you girls were little. He loved to follow you around, but I forgot about them until last week.”

Her mother threaded the canister of film through the antique projector. “Honestly, I’m surprised this thing still works. Can someone close the curtains?” She flicked the metal switch of the projector, and the machine rattled on, a whir of the film looping as Betsy and Aggie swept the navy drapes closed. An image flashed on the wall. A grainy picture of Louisa’s cherubic face came into focus, the camera adjusting to sharpen her features. Louisa was about nine, a freckled nose, a complete towhead, a sweetness in her playful expression as she swept her eyes up to the camera, smiling. She was reading to a stuffed bear on the back lawn, the harbor painting a lively scene behind her. There was no sound, but then she began speaking to someone off camera, and the gritty video panned to Aggie, an eight-year-old string bean, doing cartwheels in the grass.

“Oh my gosh,” Aggie said. “Look at us. Louisa, you’re a dead ringer for Hayley Mills.”

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