Page 39 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Betsy’s mind hadn’t left her father. “But why wouldn’t he tell her he was taking these loans? Was he in some kind of financial trouble himself?”

“Mom seemed to think it was more that he needed to keep up appearances of the life they’d had when he was in the Senate, and he planned to pay it back.”

“That theory is just self-preservation on Mom’s part.” Louisa seemed confident of as much. “You can convince yourself of anything if it means you’ll sleep better at night.”

Still, the theory that her father likely planned to pay it back was in line with Betsy’s thinking. Her father took some of the money out, planned to return it before anyone noticed, and then… Well, then he was gone. A small plane careening through the sky, nothing but a pile of ash when authorities discovered it in the New Jersey cranberry bogs.

“Can we get ice cream, Mama?” Tabby asked, spying a little boy and his brother licking at melting ice cream cones.

“Sure,” she said, and as Tabby and Aggie joined the line outside the nearby sweet shop, Louisa turned to Betsy. Lines deepened across her forehead.

“I wanted to tell you first, because I know you’re as upset as I am, but the house is in foreclosure. I found the notification in Mom’s office yesterday.”

“What?” The words hit Betsy like ice in a glass, sending a chill up her spine.

Louisa ran her hand up her slender arm, rubbing at it like it hurt. She pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her purse, holding the page out to Betsy. “It says that we need to pay back the loan or vacate the house by the fifth of August, or they’ll send the sheriff to evict us.”

“Why wouldn’t Mom tell us?” Betsy imagined their couch on the lawn. Her father’s books in stacks on the steps. A policeman taking out armfuls of sheets and towels and tossing them outside.

“Jesus, Betsy,” Louisa snapped. “You always ask the most obvious question.”

“Can you relax? It was rhetorical.” Because keeping the kicker of the story a secret was typical Virgie Whiting. She was direct with everyone except her own family.

That gave them only two weeks to save the house.

The day’s tumult had settled into Betsy’s nerves, particularly because she still didn’t have a pregnancy test in hand. The last thing she wanted to do was watch Carol Burnett, which was what her sisters were doing. Instead, she carried a light sweater and a box of chocolates to the back patio. She wouldn’t admit it out loud to anyone, but she’d picked a lounger facing the harbor, and the small spit of green beyond, so she could make out James’s illuminated window.

She popped a chocolate filled with lush crème de menthe into her mouth, closing her eyes.

It was funny to think about the moment their childhood friendship grew into something more, but she remembered it clearly. They’d been skipping rocks in the curve of land near his house. He was doing that thing where he talked fast about something scientific, like why puffer fish blow up in self-defense to protect from predators. When he got into science facts, she would just wait for him to take a breath, swim a lap, finish tossing a stick as far into the water as he could, and finallyreally talk. That day, after he’d skipped probably a hundred rocks, he’d turned to Betsy and said, “Can I call you sometimes when you go back to Washington this year?”

“That’s what you were so worried about saying?” Betsy remembered how she’d fallen backward on the floral sheet they’d opened on the beach in the sunshine, how she’d rolled onto her side with her head propped up on an elbow, her long brown hair falling around her face. “Yes, James Sunday, I, Betsy Whiting, would love to talk to you after the summer ends.” His eyes had smiled back at her, and then he had switched on his beloved transistor radio and pretended to play air guitar.

Those phone callshadchanged things between them, too, since suddenly James was in her life all year long, and the following summer, when she’d arrived on the island at age fifteen, he’d rowed up to theshore a few doors down to pick her up. He was three inches taller, his hair doing that thing where he let it flop about his face, but he couldn’t come around the house. By then, her father had discouraged her from seeing him; sneaking phone calls after school had been easy when your parents didn’t get home until seven o’clock every night.

That day, though, she’d sat down on the metal seat of his little boat after not seeing him for nine months, surprised when she felt his lips on hers. Fluttering her eyes open, Betsy saw that his were still closed, and she’d slowly closed hers again, realizing that it was finally happening. They were officially going to be a thing. After the kiss—a kiss that she had fantasized about but never had the guts to do herself—James had motored her to a small, secluded cove near a house without summer people yet and anchored them, the boat rocking gently as they lay on their backs and watched the clouds pass. It felt like they could remain that way for the rest of their lives.

And they might have, too, if time and distance and summers spent elsewhere hadn’t driven them apart. And, of course, if James had answered the letter she wrote to him junior year, the one where she told him she wanted to be with him forever.

Her cheeks burned at the memory.

A firefly landed on her arm then, and she tilted her chin, watching its tiny abdomen light up gold. She carefully tried to slide her finger under it, raising the lightning bug to her face.

“I can’t stop thinking about one very true thing,” Betsy said aloud, staring down at the insect’s glow, her eyes burning with overwhelm. “Every man I’ve ever loved has left me behind.”

CHAPTER FIFTEENVirgie

1965

The first dinner party of the summer and it had been entirely forced upon her. Virgie pressed her fingertips to her temples, her face thick with foundation and blush. She lowered her hands back into the bouquet of flowers she had asked Louisa to clip from the garden, a bundle of deep pink roses, blue hydrangeas, and white dahlias, and she continued to arrange them in a large mason jar. She’d chosen to skip the gooseneck vase she’d use if she were hosting guests in Washington—it was the joy of a summer house to employ simple jars for everything from drinking iced tea to planting vegetable seeds.

Everything was more casual onthe island, and she didn’t want to change that, even if they were hosting someone Charlie deemed important.

Virgie checked the roman numerals on the kitchen clock. Her husband would arrive in an hour, their guests thirty minutes after that. She wasn’t sure what to say to him when he arrived, perhaps only that she was pleased he was there. Keep things as simple between them as the style permeating her dining table. Informal. Pleasing. Without complication. It would be their first time together since she’d left for the island, and she felt anxious being in the same physical space as her husband. She didn’t want a confrontation.

Or did she?

Earlier, before her afternoon had twisted into a tornado, Virgie had dragged out two rickety easels from the garage and set them up for Betsy and James, who wanted to paint watercolor pictures of the harbor. She had just delivered them cups of water and paintbrushes when the kitchen phone rang. It was Charlie’s secretary from his offices on Capitol Hill. She’d announced in her sweet bouncy voice that the senator had asked her to deliver a message: he would arrive tonight in Cape Cod by airplane, and India and Russell Knight—possible donors—were coming for dinner.

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