Page 16 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Betsy felt emotion bubbling up from way down deep. “You wouldn’t be upset to let the house go?”

Aggie took the baby back, then kissed the side of Mikey’s small cheek. “No, I’m just making the point that maybe it would be good for Mom to sell. Maybe coming to the house is too hard with Dad gone, and in addition to paying off whatever debt Dad incurred, it would give Mom a chance to start fresh.”

Betsy watched the baby resettle, sprawling out on his mother’s belly, lowering his head gently on her chest. She felt weepy watching him, longing for the child’s warmth and the assuring way he looked at her. “Easy for you to say, Ag, you have your own family. You have your own house.”

“Oh, honey.” Aggie softly patted the baby’s back. “You’re going to have your own house someday too. This place won’t even matter anymore.”

“Maybe not, but Jesus, Aggie.” Louisa tapped her foot, an impatient woman in line. “Why aren’t you more attached to this place?”

“I dunno, I just find it so hard to be here. If we sold the house, then we wouldn’t be forced to come here every summer without Dad.”

Betsy felt a swelling in her heart. “Dad wouldn’t have wanted us to give up this easily, Aggie. He would have told us to fight, and if Mom wasn’t grieving right now, she would tell us to fight too.”

Louisa smirked. “So you do have some fight in you, Betsy!”

Betsy wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult. Before she could decide, Aggie said, “I just don’t want us to get our hopes up. If it’s going to hurt, I want it to hurt all at once.”

The sentiment weighed on them a minute until Betsy could see what the conversation wasreallyabout: Aggie’s belief that discarding the house would somehow alleviate the pain of missing her father. But it wouldn’t. The loss of Charlie Whiting would follow them forever. Betsy moved closer to her wiry and muscular sister so their sides were touching, and she looked into Aggie’s sad eyes, noting that she could no longer find Aggie’s competitive spirit from her years playing basketball. “Okay, I’m sorry, but what if talk of saving the house upsets Mom?” Aggie said.

“We can’t tell Mom, at least not yet.” Betsy glanced at Louisa to see what she thought.

“I agree,” Louisa said. “Not until we have a concrete plan. Okay, Betsy, you start. What is your big idea?”

Betsy pulled her knees to her chest on the boat cushion, the light in the kitchen casting a pretty glow on the house. “What if we asked her friend Wiley to buy this place? That man has more money than a Rockefeller, and we can rent it back from him.” She didn’t even know if people did that, but she planned to go ask Wiley for her old summer job back at the yacht club tomorrow.

Aggie and Louisa shot down the idea, the baby rousing at the spike of volume in their voices. “Mom wouldneverask Wiley for help. He would have something over her, control of her things, and she would hate that.”

“Okay.” Betsy realized her mistake. “He’s just such a generous person.”

“But he would own the house, Betsy. We wouldn’t.”

Aggie ran her lips on the top of the baby’s fuzzy head. “What if Henry and I purchased the house as a summer place? I honestly don’t have any idea if we can afford it, but I could ask him. He’d only come on weekends, and then you and Mom could come visit. It would pretty much be ours.”

“Only it wouldn’t be.” Louisa pinched her lips together.

“Hmm,” Betsy said, cooing at the baby in her sister’s arms. “But you know Mom would feel like she was imposing and never come, which defeats the point.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking.” Louisa took out her headband and repositioned it. The wind was getting to her. “We’ll go to the bank and take out a loan.”

“They’ll give us a loan?” Betsy didn’t even have a credit card.

“Of course they’ll give us a loan,” Louisa said. “We’re three responsible residents of the island.” She pondered her own words a moment. “I’m going to cancel my ferry tomorrow and try calling my boss. Mom needs me here another week.”

Betsy appreciated her sister’s commitment, but it was also shocking that Louisa was willing to put her mother before her job. “They’ll give you that much time off?”

Louisa nibbled her nail. “Not happily, but I’ll say it’s an emergency. Anyway, it’s a holiday week with July fourth on Tuesday.”

They returned to their scheming. “Okay. If you can get Mom out of the house, I can look through whatever financial records there are,” Betsy said. “Maybe I can find a ledger and see what kind of savings they have, maybe some stocks.”

Aggie sat up, cradling the baby’s head. “Okay, that leaves me to talk to Mom about the house. Maybe she’s looking for a clean break. She tells me stuff she doesn’t tell you both.”

Louisa blanched. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s like having kids put me in a club,” Aggie said with tenderness. “You know what she told me? That she could have done more with us if she’d only had two kids, rather than three. I was like: ‘Why do you want to erase one of us?’ She huffed away, like I was missing her point.”

Betsy didn’t want to think too hard about the comment. Instead, she motioned around the boat, gulping in a breath. “I’ll go down to the harbor and see whatSenatorialmight fetch too.”

They shared a moment of silence. Charlie Whiting had loved this boat with its shiny wood and patched-up sail. So did Betsy. The idea of selling it brought forth a complicated wave of emotions. When she looked at its thirty-foot mast, its glossy teak trim, she saw a series of scenes with her father—her dad tying the rigging, Betsy handing him the sail lines, the white billow of a beautiful shiny sail, their faces turning upward with a grin. It was on this boat that a unique and close friendship had developed between her and her father.

---