Page 4 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The smallest of smiles curled Louisa’s thin upper lip. “You’re just always sobusy.”

“Shut up. I am busy.”

Opening the cabinet, Betsy pulled down a glass, turned on the tap and drank down a glass of water. Why did Louisa’s hair always have to look so perfect, shiny like a summer day and with layers that fell softly around her angular face? Betsy was proud of her own bangs though, a bold decision that she’d decided made her look like the actress Jane Birkin. Betsy even owned a striped tank she’d seen Birkin wear, and she often let her hair blow about her face loose and carefree like the actress. “Are we really selling the house?”

Louisa sighed. “It appears that way, but Mom hasn’t said much yet. I got here last night. Aggie’s outside with the babies.”

On the second night of her father’s wake last May, Louisa had accused Betsy of trying to pick up a boyfriend. It had infuriated Betsy. She and Aggie had been circulating as they were expected to, merely being polite, and Betsy couldn’t get out of a conversation with a handsome young Senate aide about her father’s outsized influence on his career. Her mind had blurred at what he was saying, but when he departed, Louisa had cornered Betsy in a spray of funeral flowers. “I picked the coffin, the headstone, organized the catering, and now I have to babysit Mom too. The least you could do is take a turn holding her arm like I have all night, instead of trying to find a boyfriend.” Louisa had wrapped her black blazer around her loose black dress.

“You never think I’m doing the right thing.” Betsy snatched her arm from Louisa’s grip.

“Well, it’s not enough, Daddy’s girl.” Louisa had stormed off, giving her the cold shoulder for the rest of the funeral, and Betsy had given her the cold shoulder since, an anger festering and growing into something bigger than the fight.

“Where is Mom?” Betsy managed.

“She’s up in the study, working on some article, like always.”

The previous year sat between the sisters like a wall too tall to climb. “At least she’s writing again,” Betsy said.

Louisa nodded. She stirred the sugar and water into the lemonade pitcher, resolution knitted in her eyebrows. “Anyway, we’re here now, so we might as well be cordial.”

“Isn’t that convenient?” Betsy wouldn’t let her off that easy. She wanted an apology. What her sister had done had hurt her so deeply at a time when her heart had been bruised; it had felt, and still felt, unforgivable.

“Fine, have it your way.” Louisa added ice to the pitcher, stirring once more. “But no comments about the five pounds I put on. I already feel like a hippo.”

Louisa had been top of her class at Barnard, then attended Harvard Law, where she’d earned an editor job on the Law Review and had her pick of gentlemen admirers. Why would she mention her figure?

“To me, you look like nothing but an overworked constitutional lawyer,” Betsy said. She switched on the small transistor radio in the window, the chorus of “Stayin’ Alive” lightening the moment.

Her sister smiled at her goofy dance moves. “I’ll take it as some version of a compliment.”

Aggie and the kids barreled toward the back door from the yard, and Betsy was grateful for the interruption in the uncomfortable reunion with Louisa. Her middle sister glided inside with her pale blue eyes softening, her long, blond curls clipped to one side with a barrette. The baby, Mikey, hoisted on her hip; little Tabitha toddling behind. “Betsy! I’m so glad you’re here. When Mom told me about the house, I was worried how you’d take the news. Are you okay?”

“Why were you worried aboutme?” Betsy hugged Aggie, then bent down and scooped her niece into her arms, kissing her soft pillowy cheeks. Everyone was always worried about Betsy.

“Because you used to count down the days before we left for the island every summer. I’m upset about the house, too, but you always loved it here most.”

“I guess. I mean, it was Mom that made us come here.”

Aggie nodded like she didn’t agree, then stuffed a binky in the baby’s mouth. “Okayyy. Well, you loved it, too, right? To think that it’s our final summer. It’s so depressing.”

Louisa poured each of them a glass of lemonade. “I feel like we’ve barely finished mourning Dad, and now we’re going to mourn this house?”

Betsy always thought her older sisters were like two different versions of the same person, her mother even nicknaming Louisa “Mopsy” and Aggie “Flopsy” after the bunnies inPeter Rabbit, since they were always up to something. The names had always made Betsy long for a similarly rhyming name like “Bopsy,” just so she’d feel closer to them.

Betsy threw Tabby into the air; her toddler smiles easy to earn. She was a dead ringer for her father, Dr. Henry Talbot, a surgeon at Mass General in Boston. Aggie had met him running the Boston Marathon four years before, a whirlwind romance that ended with a wedding one year later and two kids in three years’ time. “I still don’t get why she needs all three of us here at once. Couldn’t we have come in shifts?”

“A show of solidarity. You know Mom.” Louisa sat down at the kitchen banquette, her dainty hands folded on the tabletop as the windowed room revealed the comings and goings of the three-car Chappy ferry on the other side of the glass. “What I want to know is just how bad her finances are. I didn’t think it possible that Dad could muck things up from the grave.”

The baby began to cry, and Aggie handed him off for a moment to warm a bottle in a metal pot on the stove. “Do you think it’s something in the will that’s changed?”

Betsy wished she’d painted her toenails and wore a nicer skirt, now that she saw how pretty her sisters looked. “Mom probably mismanaged her accounts. She’s always holding those feminist lunches at the Hay-Adams.”

Louisa rolled her eyes. “Mom charges for those lunches, Betsy. She doesn’ttreateveryone.”

Betsy’s stomach growled, and she reached for a loaf of Wonder Bread and a jar of crunchy peanut butter, spreading a spoonful on a slice. “Okay, so what did Dad do?”

---