“But I think both of them really fought for their marriage to work. And it seems like you just pressed eject the moment it got hard,” her mother said again.
Camilla heaved a sigh. After another pause, she said, “I can’t tell you everything. Suffice it to say, Jonathon really wronged us. Me and Andrea that is. Your opinion is based on not knowing the facts.”
Carol furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”
At that moment, Andrea appeared in the kitchen. She looked as though she had already drunk one too many mimosas, and she glared at her grandmother with the severity of a lioness.
“Why do you think I’m back for the summer, Grandma?”
Carol balked. “Honey, you’re back because your school let out for the year. You know, I was just talking about that fashion school of yours to Ariane. My, we’re so proud of—”
“Yes, that’s part of it. But did you know that I can’t go back in the fall?” Andrea shot at her.
“Andrea, come on. Don’t do this,” Camilla whispered.
“Do what?” Carol demanded, looking between daughter to granddaughter.
“Dad lost all our money,” Andrea stammered. “It’s why I’m out there working those stupid docks. Not that I can even hold that job down. Jesus, Grandma. Why don’t you give Mom the benefit of the doubt for once?” Andrea sucked in a breath before starting again. “You know what, just leave it alone. Please just stop assuming that this is on Mom and that they didn’t try and work it out.”
Carol’s arms flailed to her sides, like fish. “What are you talking about? Lost all your money?”
Camilla studied the kitchen tile as though it could reveal something about her future, like tea leaves and fortune-tellers.
“Camilla. Answer me. What is Andrea talking about? How did Jonathon lose your money?”
Janet crunched again on a slice of watermelon. Camilla couldn’t help but remember a long-ago Memorial Day when she had been extremely pregnant with Andrea. Her stomach had swelled, much like a watermelon, and they’d taken several photos of Janet, holding a watermelon next to her waist, for proof of how large she really was. Jonathon had loved her to bits. He hadn’t been able to stop talking about their baby, about all they would do for her, about the sort of life they would build. He had even interrupted her father during another of his classic stories.
What she wouldn’t give to have Jonathon — that version of Jonathon there at her family home for Memorial Day. Just pretend that all of it was just a bad nightmare.
How it hurt that things had gone so horribly wrong.
“He lost our money, Mom. I think that’s enough of my personal life out on display for one day. Now, how about that Moscow Mule? Better make it a double.”
Chapter Seven
Andrea’s bedroom door was half-cracked. Camilla stood outside and listened for a moment to the thump-thump from Andrea’s speaker system and the subsequent grunts which came from the girl herself. The previous day, she had arrived home with a winning prize: a job offer from a boating tour company. The caveat? The required wardrobe was horrendous.
“How’s it going in there?”
“Ugh. I look like a little kid all dressed up for Disney world,” Andrea hollered.
“Can I see?”
Andrea stomped toward the door and pulled it wide open to reveal herself. There she stood, in a semi-ridiculous, striped sailor costume, complete with a little hat, set crooked on the side of her head. It took everything for Camilla to suppress her giggle.
“Come on. Say it. I look ridiculous,” Andrea shot.
“You look... very sweet,” Camilla tried.
“Yeah. Great. Tell that to my fashion professors in Manhattan,” Andrea returned. “Even if I did make enough money to return next semester, news of this outfit would make them kick me out.”
She turned back and adjusted her skirt in the mirror, which fluttered just above her knees. “Anyway, my first tour is today, if you can believe it. I was up all night trying to memorize island facts.”
“Come on. You’re an islander. Aren’t all those facts already burned into the back of your mind by now?” Camilla asked.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to Martha’s Vineyard. My name is Andrea, and I’ll be your skipper for this one-hour tour. Ha-ha-ha.” Andrea mocked a tour-guide voice as she flashed Camilla a sarcastic grin.
“You’re a total natural,” Camilla told her before letting out the laugh she had been holding and swung an arm around her daughter's shoulder. “Come on, Sailor. Maybe you can guide me to the kitchen.”
Andrea and Camilla made their way into the kitchen, where they each poured coffee and sat listlessly, checking their phones. It had been three days since the disastrous Memorial Day BBQ, which had culminated in Andrea and Camilla heading back home before even the first Moscow Mule had been fully drunk. Camilla had taken to bed after that, while Andrea had headed off to another party with Isaac. They hadn’t yet discussed what had happened.
“Have you talked to Grandma?” Andrea finally asked now. When she lifted her chin, her sailor hat dipped even more off-kilter, but she made no motion to fix it.
“No. She called a few times, though.”
“Not up to talking to her?” Andrea asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I don’t know what else there is to say. Why didn’t she trust me? Why do I need to tell her my feelings, over and over again, for them to make sense to her? This is our business, not hers or theirs. Ours!”
Andrea wrapped her hand over Camilla’s, there on the counter, and exhaled slowly. “I think she loves you a lot. She just has this image in her head of what everyone’s life should be or how she wants it to be.”
“Yeah. And for a while, my life was a direct reflection of hers, even down to the nursing part.”
“She’ll come around,” Andrea told her. “She looked totally stunned when I told her and you could see she felt bad afterward. She knows she poked around too much.”
Camilla was too frightened to explain to Andrea what her heart told her, then: that she wasn’t totally sure she cared if her mother came around. Somehow, the devastation and the loneliness had shadowed everything else. Conversations with her mother felt like daggers, continually poking an already dead idea. She just wanted to sleep.
But she knew that this aligned itself with the danger of never living again. She wanted nothing to do with that, either.
Andrea headed off for her boat tour around noon, which left Camilla the day to herself, before her shift that evening, which began at nine-thirty. Camilla eyed the outside world, the June sunlight that beamed down from cotton candy-like clouds. She cracked the window and could hear classic summertime sounds: giggling children, the jangling bells from passing bicycles. She wasn’t so, so far from Katama Beach, and her mind thought of the sound of rushing waves as they cast themselves north along the shimmering sands.
But nothing within Camilla urged her to step outside.
In fact, she found herself crumbling onto the couch and flicking through TV channels. A daytime talk show interviewed a husband and wife who’d decided to open their own sheep farm in Tennessee. A cartoon rattled noisily and flashed bright colors on the screen. Camilla had hated those days when Andrea had demanded cartoons before school. She had told Jonathon, “My brain is rotting along with hers,” and he’d asked, “Is that why you’ve started to drool in your sleep?” And she’d laughed and replied, “I do not, Jonathon Franklin! Take it back!” And she’d chased him around the house until she had pressed him against the front door and kissed him with everything she had. “What is your secret?” Amelia had asked her once, long ago. “You guys seem so in love, despite having a toddler ruling your house.”
It was a strange thing, wasting the day away. Camilla’s group chat was on fire, which added some kind of entertainment to a lackluster afternoon.
JENNIFER: Emma is going nuts. The wedding is just a few weeks away, and she’s at my house right now, sobbing her little eyes out—
poor thing.
OLIVIA: Weddings are tough.
AMELIA: If Oliver and I ever go that way, definitely going to elope.
MILA: Take it back, Amelia Taylor! I haven’t been friends with you this long, only to miss out on your wedding.
AMELIA: Ugh. Fine. But only for you, Mila.
JENNIFER: She’s having second thoughts about wedding colors! SOS.
OLIVIA: Tell her the only thing she’ll remember after it’s all over is the cake. Make sure she has a really good cake.
JENNIFER: To be fair, yours was particularly good, Olivia. I remember it more than the others.
OLIVIA: See?
Olivia then sent a series of snapshots from the work she and Anthony were in the midst of over at the mansion. In one of them, Anthony stood, broad-shouldered, no shirt, flashing a thumbs-up.
MILA: Is this supposed to be a subtle brag, Olivia?
JENNIFER: Yeah, Olivia, keep your man candy to yourself.
Camilla rolled her eyes slightly and tossed her phone over to the side. She knew one of the girls would call her out for being quiet soon enough. If she kept it up too long, they would be at her door all over again to make sure she hadn’t taken to her bed. She clicked through the TV stations again and then settled on a Netflix series, Dead to Me, which focused on two best friends who had each accidentally killed one another’s husbands. Camilla wasn’t sure why she was so drawn in. Or was she?
Before she knew it, she had to don her scrubs. They rustled comfortably across her skin as she rushed for the counter, grabbed her keys and her packed lunch, then headed out to her car. In a flash, she found herself yet again at the hospital, as one of her nurse co-workers filled her in on the events of the night and which beds she had to take over. Camilla heard herself ask the relevant questions; she knew she would remember everything instinctively, as this had been her career for twenty years. Still, she felt like an unknown in her own body.
Around one in the morning, Camilla stepped out of one of her patients’ rooms and found herself face-to-face, yet again, with that handsome doctor, Brett. The corner of his mouth tipped upward with a crooked smile as he held her eyes.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” he said.
Was this his way of flirting with her? Teasing her? Camilla blinked twice and tried on a smile of her own, which felt false.
“Hey, there. Where you off to? Headed in for your nightly Reese’s snack?”
“Not tonight, unfortunately,” Brett told her. “I have surgery in about a half-hour. Don’t need a sugar rush beforehand.”
Camilla was set to be one of the nurses in that very surgery. When she’d spotted it on the schedule for the night, her heart had jumped into her throat.
“I guess I’ll see you there,” she said.
“Lucky me,” Brett returned.
Camilla stepped toward the side to get around him. But before she could rush off to her next patient, Brett blocked her way. They stood in the very center of the buzzing hallway, which put them at risk of collision. You didn’t just stand in the middle of a hospital hallway. It went against every rule in the book.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
Camilla’s heart fluttered dangerously. It was like a caged bird, flying head-first toward the bars that entrapped it.
“I wondered if you might want to have dinner with me sometime.”
Camilla wanted to pinch herself. The words buzzed around her brain as her lips parted in shock. Flirtation in the break room was one thing, but an actual date, out in the world? How could she possibly manage that? Wasn’t she too depressed for that? What would she even say?
“Your silence is deafening.” Brett laughed good-naturedly as his eyes glowed.
“I — I am just — I’m not really sure.” Camilla’s nostrils flared with shock. “I guess not.”
Brett’s shoulders sagged the slightest bit. “I see. I have to say, that’s disappointing.”
“I’m sorry,” Camilla murmured with a sigh. “Um. I guess I’ll see you later. In surgery.”
With that, she stepped around him and hustled down the hallway. She wasn’t fully aware of which direction her feet took her. In a flash, she stood before the bathroom mirror, which was streaked with something grimy. She gripped both edges of the sink and gasped.
She’d just been asked out. On a date. By a handsome doctor.
And she’d said no?
Wasn’t this the reprieve from “real life” she’d prayed for?
But Jonathon. He was the only man she’d ever loved in her life. Wasn’t it poisonous to her memory of him to date someone new?
Oh, but Jonathon had wronged her and Andrea in nearly every conceivable way.
“You have to move on,” she muttered to her reflection. Her reflection had nothing to say in return.
She took to the group chat to find solace in the midst of a crazy night. She didn’t have long. There were patients to check on before she had to scrub-up and head into surgery. Still, she needed their help, if any one of them was awake, that is.
CAMILLA: Mayday! Help! The hot doctor just asked me out and I said no. I kind of regret it. What should I do?
She blinked at her phone for a long moment. Normally, when one of the sisters read it, her little face popped down alongside the message as proof. But tonight, now past midnight, all the faces hovered up at Mila’s last message, which spoke about a new brand of microwave popcorn she said was “to die for.”
Shoot. Camilla was on her own for this one.
A little while later, Camilla found herself in the intense chaos of surgery. Always, when she went into surgery, Camilla struggled to recognize herself. She became a machine or robot, a necessary element in the process of assisting the doctor. She was grateful that her mind was able to do this. To just escape reality for a while.
But when she came to, the surgery was deemed a success. She watched as Doctor Brett Oliphant stepped out of the surgery room. It was time for her to leave, too. She hustled out, guided by some unknown force. Once outside, she pulled off her gloves and her other protective clothing, along with her hair cap. She then rushed into the hallway and caught sight of Brett as he rounded the corner back toward the break room.
Camilla was nearly out of breath when she reached the doorway of the break room. The surgery had been long. So long that the first signs of dawn had begun to peek up over the horizon line and cast the exterior world in a strange, ghoulish light. There before her, Brett studied the vending machine with his hands on his hips.
“Doctor?” Camilla hated how uncertain and childlike she sounded.
Brett turned his eyes toward her. He gave her no smile. After all, she had just rejected him hours before.
“Doctor, I’d actually like to go. Out with you, I mean. To dinner.”
She sounded like a complete idiot. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d already changed his mind about her.
The silence that stretched between them then nearly destroyed her. Brett seemed to roll her words around in his mind as he pressed a dollar into the vending machine and fluttered his fingers next to the number pad. Camilla took a tentative step back. Had she actually said what she thought she’d said? Was she having some kind of psychotic break?
Finally, he selected Fig Newtons. Together, they watched as the little package of cookies rolled out into the darkness below. When he brought them out into the light, he said, “I hope you like Italian food.”
Camilla felt as though her heart would break through her ribcage at any moment. She felt like a high school girl that just agreed to go to prom with the handsome quarterback. Despite the busted chairs of the break room, and the bad art that hung on the walls, and the sticky carpeting that needed replacing, and the flash of the Fig Newton package as he broke it open — she nearly floated into the sky above.
“I love Italian food,” she told him. “I’m free on Friday.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Chapter Eight
&n
bsp; Camilla erupted from the hospital the following morning at ten. According to a series of text messages from her best friends, everyone fully supported her decision to head out with Doctor Oliphant. Andrea even suggested they go shopping to buy her something fashionable and trendy, but also comfortable, so she’d feel like the best version of herself. Camilla floated back to Edgartown and appreciated every little thing about her surroundings: the flash of sunlight across the glass of her car, the adorable little girl who waved to her from the stop sign as she eased into Edgartown, the horse and buggy that clucked down Main Street, just beneath Jennifer Conrad’s social media management offices. She was grateful, so utterly grateful, for every nook and cranny of her favorite place in the world. It had been a long time since she had felt so free.
When she returned home, Camilla took a quick nap, then showered, dressed, and headed off to the docks, where Andrea’s first tour of the day was slated to arrive just past three in the afternoon. As the boat approached, Andrea’s voice rang out.
“Now, folks, we’re arriving back to the historic Edgartown harbor. Thank you for being such good sports over the past three hours. Here’s hoping you learned something along the way.”
Camilla bought a cup of coffee and waited toward the side of the docks as tourists disembarked from the boat above. They seemed from all walks of life; their cheeks were vibrant and tanned from the hours at sea; and the children who had been on board bucked forward with incredible speed the moment their feet hit the dock, proof that young children shouldn’t be trapped on any kind of vessel like that for too long, least of all an educational tour boat.
Andrea appeared at the base of the boat’s ramp a moment later. Her blonde locks stuck to the sweat along her neck, and she scrunched her nose as she cleaned herself up. It took a moment, but she finally drew her blue eyes toward her mother’s. Her face changed; her smile was like a firework. She raced toward Camilla and wrapped her arms around her.
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