Page 21 of These Summer Storms

“I was hoping you’d come for the Fourth.” July Fourth, the long weekend that had been claimed by Franklin and Elisabeth forever—a holiday held for the family, in the tradition of all old New England money. If your ancestors fought in the Revolution, you were called to celebrate them with seersucker and boat shoes at the family compound on Independence Day.

Alice had missed the last five of them, but in June, for the first time in years, Emily had called her. Asked her to come. And though Alice had said she’d try, they’d both known she wouldn’t. And she hadn’t. “I—” She stopped, thinking about all the reasons she hadn’t been on the island for five years. “I couldn’t make it.”

“Right,” Emily said. “You’re a busy person.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Emily lied. “You’re busy. You couldn’t come to July Fourth. I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t the first invitation you declined.”

And there it was. The reminder that even as the baby of the family, all joy and silliness and delight, Emily was still a Storm, still able to seat a sharp point. Alice didn’t misunderstand. “Dad couldn’t have been clearer that I wasn’t welcome here, Em. Mom, too.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t their wedding,” Emily replied. “It was mine.”

A small family affair,the gossip sites had reported three years earlier, alongside blurry photos shot from a drone high above the island. Emily and Claudia in white boho dresses beneath a bower of flowers against one of the island’s ancient stone walls. Barely twenty people in attendance. None of them Alice.

“I’m sorry,” she said. And she meant it, despite it coming out sharp and jagged and heavy with resentment, because no one had ever thought to apologize to her for the way she’d been exiled. “Is Claudia here?”

“She will be. She’s cooking tonight, so she went to get stuff from the farm.”

Alice’s brows rose. “Mom’s letting her cook?”

Emily half smiled, the most she was willing to share. “Mom likes her more than the rest of us.”

“Can’t really blame her,” Alice said, a peace offering.

“Right?” A glimpse of old Emily, her childhood companion. With Greta and Sam so close in age, they’d ganged up on their annoying younger sisters and then left, making their way in the world (ish), and leaving Alice and Emily behind to become a team—until everything had changed.

“Em—” Alice began, not really knowing what she was going to say.

“Maybe you’d like to meditate later?” Emily said at the same time, her own peace offering. “I could guide your practice if you like.”

“Maybe,” Alice demurred, resisting the urge to laugh at the idea that she had a meditation practice. Alice had anxiety practice. Irritation practice. And these days, what-the-fuck-is-happening practice. “How are you doing?”

A hesitation. “Pretty bad. You?”

Me, too.“It feels…strange.”

“That’s Dad’s energy. It’s not vibrating at the same frequency.”

It isn’t vibrating at any frequency,Alice wanted to say.Dad is dead.But she was unwilling to upset the truce they’d reached. Such as it was.

Just as the silence started to feel uncomfortable, Elisabeth called up the stairs. “Emily! Alice! You’d better come down here.” Their mother’s shout might have been described as sharp if it didn’t sound so resigned. “We have a guest.”

Instantly united, the sisters shared a look. Emily mouthed, “Who?”

Alice shrugged. “The company?” Publicity, marketing, the trustees—it could be anyone turning up.

Emily shook her head. “No helicopters.”

They would have heard Storm Inc. arriving. Alice went to the window, looking down toward the boathouse on the west side of the island, where she’d docked the skiff that morning—a boat that now had an identical companion. “Someone who knows which boats at the harbor belong to the island.”

“Girls!” Elisabeth’s tone was now, officially, shrill. Urgent. The sisters moved instantly, as they’d been trained.

A half dozen steps from the bottom of the staircase, Emily stopped quickly enough that Alice nearly sent them both toppling down the stairs, but instead pulled up short with a “What—?”

She didn’t finish the sentence, her gaze tracking to the main door of the house—framed by elaborate carvings and inlaid stained glass—where Elisabeth’s guest was standing.

Not Elisabeth’s guest. No, the long-legged, forearm-tattooed, gray-eyed Boy Scout wasAlice’sguest.

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