Page 5 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

It annoyed Betsy that she was looking at Louisa and waiting for an answer, that she and Aggie were so accustomed to letting Louisa interpret the world around them, just like they did as young girls.

Feeling their expectant looks, Louisa shrugged. Betsy noticed delicate fine lines near her eyes.

Said Louisa: “Well, we all know Dad had secrets.”

Betsy headed upstairs, her suitcase bumping against the settling steps. It was a relief to finally be alone. At the top of the landing, with its familiar warping in the wood from a bad leak during the 1938 hurricane, Betsy paused at the closed door of her mother’s study. Listening to the keys of an electric typewriter noisily hitting paper on the other side, Betsy felt ten years old again. A whir of impatience, the same desire to turn the knob and interrupt her mother, swing open the door and announce herself with dramatic flair. But house rules were house rules. If the door was closed, Betsy and her sisters could only open the door if there was an emergency. Otherwise, her mother would come out for twenty minutes at noon and then return to her office until four o’clock every day. It was nearly the latter now.

Betsy fell onto one of the beds in her old yellow room, the paint faded and dull now, thinking she might as well unpack. She propped herself up on one elbow so she could take in the busy harbor below. The distant voices of boaters carried through the open window, along with the rhythmic lap of the water. From here, she could see the white Edgartown lighthouse with its black tip. She followed the water line to the small island of Chappaquiddick, looking for a run-down house in the distance with a towering oak tree on the front lawn.There it is. She smiled. The house once belonged to her oldest friend, James Sunday. She wondered if he ever visited the island anymore. They’d lost touch when they were teenagers, mostly because Betsy’s father had never liked the boy.

She could hear Louisa climbing the stairs in the hall, her steps quick and light from years of ballet, and only then did Betsy realize that her sister’s belongings were in Betsy’s old bedroom. It made sense—Aggie would get the large front bedroom with the kids, so Louisa and Betsy would need to share. Betsy sat up on the larger bed when Louisa entered, her sister nodding to the smaller twin-sized daybed against the wall, making clear she expected Betsy to sleep on it, which was ridiculous. Of the three sisters, Louisa was the most petite, five footfour with long, slender limbs, while Aggie was the tallest at nearly five ten. She’d always carried herself with a swanlike elegance thanks to her towering frame.

Louisa straightened the lace doily on the nightstand. “Of course, we can sleep in the big bed together, but you better not kick me.”

“How about we wedge a pillow between us, so we don’t accidentally touch in the middle of the night?” This made her sister laugh, and Betsy felt a pang of satisfaction, even if she had zero interest in talking to Louisa. “It’s fine.”

Betsy rose to stand and pressed her hand on the springy twin with the thin coverlet; everyone knew it was the worst bed in the house, reserved for Aunt Lacey or a friend visiting from college. Now it was Betsy’s. For the entire summer. Betsy unzipped her suitcase and opened a dresser drawer, arranging folded denim shorts inside.

When she was half Louisa’s size, Louisa would read to her and Aggie, sitting on the edge of her bed and licking her fingertip like a librarian as she turned the pages ofThe Berenstain Bears. They’d played school in here, pulling chairs up to the bed to form makeshift desks. In later years, when her parents had big arguments about her father’s work, which happened weekly, Louisa would pull her sisters in here and translate what was going on. One time, she’d hugged Betsy to her chest, Betsy suddenly aglow. Louisa could fill up all the holes inside her when she was affectionate. She’d said, “Don’t be sad, Betsy. This is the part when Daddy apologizes for sneaking cigarettes, and next, he’ll tell Mom he can’t live without her, and she’ll crumble, they’ll sip a glass of port and go to bed giggling.”

“Betsy, is that you?” Her mother hurried into the sunny bedroom in a burst, her coke-bottle reading glasses pushed atop the cascade of pretty, loose waves framing her face; everyone in Betsy’s family had gotten her mother’s light hair and ocean-colored eyes except Betsy, who took after her father’s darker features. Looking at her mother now, Betsy thought her a dead ringer for Dyan Cannon in that new movieHeaven Can Wait.

Her mother squeezed her so tight, Betsy felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“Hi, Mom. I got in an hour ago.”

She cupped a hand on Betsy’s cheek, smiling. “Oh, honey, you look so wonderful. Graduate school has been good to you.”

Betsy wished she could show her mother the earrings Andy had given her; instead, she’d left them on the nightstand in her old apartment. “Well, I don’t know about that.” She pictured herself in class, feeling intimidated to raise her hand in a classroom full of male counterparts. Betsy had been so certain that psychology was her passion when she applied for the graduate program: It was widely joked that people with the biggest problems were drawn to psychology since it gave them a chance to study themselves. As much as she loved listening to people and wanted to help make changes in people’s lives, she did often feel her mind wandering to her family, the good and the bad. But her classes felt distant from the job of an analyst. One professor had sat Betsy down in her first semester and inquired whether she’d be a better fit in the education program since she seemed well-suited for school counseling. But Betsy didn’t want to work in a school. Sometimes she wished she could rent an office, call herself a therapist, and start seeing patients—without ever having to return to get the degree.

Her mother held Betsy’s hands and swung them about. “I’m done working for the day, girls. I was thinking I’ll make spaghetti and clams, and we’ll play Scrabble on the porch.”

“You’re a crowd pleaser, Mom,” Louisa said, a genuine smile forming. She had gone into the bathroom to change into her bathing suit, slipping a floral sundress over it. “But first, let’s go for a swim at the beach.”

“Oh, Betsy.” Her mother squeezed her hand. “It’s so good to see you, honey. You’ve been so far away.”

“I’m only in New York, Mom.” She knew what her mother was saying though, that she’d been distant in general. Now, standing herein her summer bedroom, her mother was making it so hard for Betsy to hide her emotions. All at once, Betsy felt the pain of the breakup slam against her chest. She bit the insides of her cheeks.

“Well, I’m happy you’re home.”

“Me too,” Betsy managed, a waver in her voice.

Because this sweet little house by the sea was home. Now that she’d given up her apartment, Betsy had nowhere else to go. She didn’t even have a plan for her future. The inside of her cheek suddenly tasted of metallic, and still, Betsy smiled at her mother broadly when she said she needed to change too. For the swim.

“Don’t be long,” her mother said, tapping her back twice. “It’s been so long since I’ve had all three of you here. I want us to get reacquainted and tell each other everything.”

Betsy had to give her mother credit for trying. She wanted them to engage in one of the most important (and challenging) aspects of patient therapy: acknowledge what you might be holding back.

CHAPTER THREEVirgie

Vineyard Haven Ferry, Martha’s Vineyard

July 1965

Virgie couldn’t believe they’d made it to the ferry dock. Following the instructions of two cranky attendants, she’d crept her butter-yellow Ford station wagon onto theIslander, the beloved boat that had been transporting her family to the island for a generation. Even with an ache in her lower back from driving, Virgie had to admit that the ferry’s gleaming white facade and the futuristic way it invited you to drive onto the ferry and drive off going in the same direction still filled her with promise. Here was this twenty-three-mile island (a mere nine miles in width) floating in Vineyard Sound that had drawn her since childhood, instilling in her everything she believed about her family: that this island was their anchor, these shores a place to reconnect, relax, and run amok with the tides. In thirty minutes, they would dock in Vineyard Haven, and she’d drive her long, lumbering car into an early summer evening, the busy streets of the sweet little village bustling with tourists. By tomorrow, Virgie wouldn’t even remember the nine-hour (and rather awful) drive from Washington.

All of it will be worth it when you wake up in your summer bedroom with the breeze ruffling the curtains, Virgie reminded herself. Sheimagined the anger Charlie would feel when he arrived home from the Senate and discovered an empty house and foil-wrapped plate of chicken à la King. She knew he would be beside himself, and yet she’d been beside herself too. That Virgie wanted to leave early for the Vineyard had been an ongoing argument; his irritation at the popularity of her newspaper column Dear Virgie had been the wedge. A big fat slice of the tartest key lime pie sitting right between them, and both refusing a bite.

“I need to get out of this car.” Louisa used her fifteen-year-old might to push open the door, straightening the pleats of her shorts around her new curves as she stood; her blond hair was cut with glamorous short bangs and a wavy chin-length bob that matched her shapely eyebrows. “Aggie has been farting since we passed Providence.”

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