He swallows hard. “Alright then. Goodbye, Mrs. … Goodbye.”
Gibs drops his head and rushes down the steps. I giggle and wave as he gets into his car and drives off.
Aunt Nic looks at me and mouths, “Oh my God!” She joins me on the stoop. “You little sneak … you are a couple! Like, duh. I knew it.”
I laugh and twirl a piece of hair around my finger.
“He’s adorable, by the way,” Aunt Nic adds.
I wrinkle my nose. “You think?”
“Uh, totally. Have you told your mom yet that you two are an item?”
I roll my eyes. “Item,” I repeat mockingly, making Aunt Nic laugh. “Mom is on a need-to-know basis only. You’ll keep quiet under penalty of death.”
“Why?” she asks with an exaggerated pout. “Your mom would be thrilled. She’d be inviting Gibson over for dinner, and packing picnic lunches for the two of you, and taking his mother to lunch, and—”
“Yeah, that’s kinda why.”
“Well, you’d better stop smooching on the front porch, or the jig will definitely be up.”
We smile as a warm breeze gently buffets our hair.
“I finished her journal,” I say softly.
Aunt Nic lays her hand on my back. “Are you glad you read it?”
I nod. The lightning bugs are in full swing now, dancing through the air like neon confetti. “Did you know she’d broken up with Chris right before she died?”
“Mmmm,” Aunt Nic says. “Your mom told me. She didn’t have many details—she was just so happy Shannon had finally seen the light.”
“So you didn’t talk to Shannon about the breakup?” I ask cautiously.
Aunt Nic shakes her head. “I wish I had. Uncle Matt and I were at the beach the week before she died. We got home late that Sunday night, then, the next morning …”
I take a deep breath of honeysuckle-scented air. “It was nice to find out that Shannon wasn’t perfect. Makes me feel a little less hopelessly disappointing.”
Aunt Nic rubs my back. “Why would you think that?” she asks. “You’re the bravest person I know. That’s why I trusted you with Shannon’s journal.”
I smile at her. “Thanks. I think I’ll trust Mom and Dad with it.”
She pauses, then nods, her eyes warm.
“They can read it if they like, or put it away … whatever,” I say. “But it should be their choice to make. I know some of it might freak them out, but … I think Shannon got the fundamental flaw in our family.”
“Yes?” Aunt Nic prods.
“That what we have here,” I say, in my best Cool Hand Luke imitation, sweeping my arm toward our house, “is a failure to communicate.”
Aunt Nic giggles.
I giggle, too, then rest my chin on my hand. “I don’t want to fail at communication any more,” I say.
Aunt Nic takes a deep breath. “Well,” she says, the crickets chirping in the background, “I think you and Shannon make a pretty good team.”
Thirty-Nine
I walk into the house, the garlic scent from the pork chops still lingering in the air. I pass Mom scrubbing pots in the kitchen and wave at her casually, then go into the den. The news is on TV and Dad is sitting at the computer.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“Hi, hon.”
I sit in the swivel chair and turn in his direction. Dad turns around and faces me.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
He smiles. “Shoot.”
I tilt my head a bit. “How did you and Mom deal with it when Shannon died?”
He looks a little startled, then runs his fingers through his hair. “Your mother kept me going. She kept us going. I couldn’t have gotten through it without her.”
I search his eyes.
“You’re like your mother,” he tells me. “Strong. And smart.”
A sudden whoosh of Shalimar fills the air. Dad and I glance toward the door and watch Mom walk in.
“Summer, I forgot to ask you during dinner—did you remember to pick up your schedule from school?”
I nod. “I’m all set. Ready to start senior year Monday.”
My eyes dart from one parent to the other to gauge their reactions. Dad looks wistful; Mom looks unflappable. She starts rifling through mail.
I steel myself and keep going. “I’m about to catch up with Shannon,” I say. “That’s the last thing she ever did. Start the first day of her senior year.”
Mom and Dad exchange glances, then Mom looks at me with a sense of urgency. “Summer, you’re going to be fine,” she says decisively. “You’re going to go to school Monday and have a wonderful day. Then you’re going to have a wonderful year. Then you’re going to get on with the rest of your life.”
I nod. “I know. I’m not superstitious or anything. I know it’ll be just another day. But … I’ve been thinking about Shannon a lot lately.” I look at Mom steadily. “Tell me about the last weekend of her life,” I say gently. “Right where we are today: the weekend before the senior year of high school. What was her last weekend like?”
Mom’s jaw drops slightly. The pendulum on the mahogany grandfather clock ticks dully.
“Please tell me,” I plead. “If I know, I won’t wonder.”
Mom bright-blue eyes widen. They’re suddenly moist. Dad intertwines his fingers.
“There was nothing remarkable about that weekend,” Mom says, staring out the window. “Shannon was a little down. She’d had a crush over the summer on some boy …” Her lip curls. “I think, by the end of the summer, she realized it was just infatuation. But still … it was hard for her.”
“Did she talk to you about it?” I prod.
“Do you talk to me about those sorts of things?” Mom asks defensively. “Teenagers don’t talk to their mothers.”
“She talked to me.”
Dad’s voice is so small, we barely hear the words. But our eyes fall on him immediately. “She talked to me about him,” he repeats.
I lean in closer. “What did she say?”
He opens his mouth, but closes it. Then he opens it again … and a sob rushes out.
I lean in to hug him. He grips me so hard, I wonder if my ribs will break.
“Randall,” Mom says, but her voice is kind.
“She was in love with him,” Dad says through his tears, still holding me close.
“She wasn’t in love …” Mom protests.
“She was in love,” Dad repeats. “I tried to warn her, but she was … she was a kid. He broke her heart, of course. She cried her eyes out to me, right before she died.”
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“I told her I was sorry, that she deserved better. That he was nothing, that she’d have a million more boyfriends.”
He sobs openly now. Mom’s face crinkles like a leaf. The mail drops from her fingers and her hands shake.
“It was nothing,” she insists, weeping. “It was just a silly little crush.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Dad says firmly, pulling away from me and rubbing his fists roughly against his cheeks. “It wasn’t nothing.”
A long moment hangs in the air.
“Still,” Dad finally says, his voice steadier now, “she was okay. She was getting through it. I told her she should go shopping with her mother. Shopping always cheered her up.”
Mom walks toward us. “She bought four pairs of shoes,” she says, smiling through her tears. “It was ridiculously extravagant, but we decided we could both wear the shoes, so what the heck. We had the same shoe size.”
Mom stoops at the foot of my chair. Dad looks at her tenderly. “Those shoes are still in the boxes in my closet,” she says.
“Shannon and your mother were very close,” Dad tells me.
Mom smiles wanly through her tears. “She was tough on me,” she says. “Like you are, Summer. She kept me on my toes. She hadn’t always been that way—just toward the end. She was suddenly questioning everything, making me justify everything I said or did. It was exhausting.”