Firefly Summer

by Nan Rossiter

  “Moving on!” she declared. She took another sip of her wine, opened the flaps of an old box she’d plopped onto her chair, paused, realizing the contents, and began to slowly unwrap a collection of framed photos. Sailor had always loved the black-and-white photographs David had taken of the “Quinn Sisters,” as he called them. It had been a summer tradition to walk out on the dunes of one of the beaches or out to Rock Harbor at sunset and have their picture taken. It was also a Christmas tradition for David to give them each a framed copy of that year’s photo. Birdie and Remy and Piper usually hung the photos up here and there in their homes, but Sailor had always thought they should be hung together. Unfortunately, she’d never wanted to hang them up in the house in Cambridge. For some reason, the sprawling house she and Frank shared never “fit” the way she felt about her family—so she’d always kept them tucked in a box. Now, as she looked around the room, her eyes settled on the wall next to her drawing table—it was the perfect spot.

  She looked down at the photos again. When viewed together, they were an extraordinary collection—it was stunning to see how she and her sisters had changed over the years. She picked up the very first one and realized she must’ve been around eighteen at the time—which would’ve made Birdie twenty-two, Remy twenty, and Piper only thirteen. Look at them! They were all so slender . . . and gorgeous . . . and independent. Although the family resemblance was strong, the similarities ended there—they were all so different. The only lasting similarity was the solemnness in their eyes, a solemnness that revealed a shared sorrow—one of which they never spoke. Sailor never understood why her parents never talked about that night . . . why they never even said Easton’s name, and through the years, whenever she or her sisters said it, they were given looks that said “don’t go there.” Eventually, they learned not to mention him, and looking back now, it was an absolute wonder they weren’t all more messed up. She’d tried to work her issues out on her own. She’d even gone to therapy for a while, hoping that a therapist would be able to help her relax and not be so afraid to express her feelings, but it hadn’t helped. She couldn’t even tell him about Easton. Her parents’ silence, she’d decided, was so ingrained in her psyche that she felt like she was betraying her family if she said anything. Maybe she was more screwed up than she thought!

  She looked back at the picture and searched her sisters’ eyes. They were definitely all products of the same upbringing and shared family history, and as a result, they loved each other fiercely. Maybe that was the one good thing that had come from the tragedy of losing their brother.

  She put the photo back with the others and looked at them again. Even their clothing was an unintended study in the fashion of the times—from college T-shirts and L.L.Bean polo shirts to linen blouses and flowing sundresses—their clothing revealed roots firmly planted in the soil and sands of New England, and as they’d aged, they looked more and more like the strong New England women they’d become.

  Sailor picked up one of the more recent photos and smiled—it was, by far, her favorite. At the time, however, she hadn’t even wanted to be in it. She gazed at it now. She was very thin, hollow-cheeked, and gaunt, and her sisters all had their arms around her. Without looking, she knew the photo had been taken in 2006 because that was the year she’d had a double mastectomy and then endured twenty-eight rounds of chemo. She hadn’t wanted to be in the picture because she’d lost all her hair and she’d thought she looked terrible, but her sisters had insisted, saying it was more important than ever. Birdie had found a soft hat for her to wear, and as they’d all stood on the beach, her sisters had wrapped their arms around her and held her tight . . . and her eyes had filled with tears—she’d never felt so much love.

  CHAPTER 9

  Piper tossed the forward line into the launch, pushed off, and hopped in.

  “Not bad for an ol’ girl,” Nat teased, swinging the boat around and heading out into the bay.

  Piper rolled her eyes. “You’re one to talk.”

  “How old are you going to be this summer?” he teased. “Sixty?”

  Piper gave him a wilting look. “The best way for you to remember my age is to take your age—which is sixty-six—and subtract eight.”

  “Ouch!” Nat said, shaking his head.

  Piper laughed as she pulled her Windbreaker over her head. The early morning air was cool and misty—not great for boating, but they’d definitely been out in worse. She reached for her binoculars and scanned the slate gray water. First Encounter Beach was in Eastham—the next town over—so they’d be there in no time, but the turtle could be anywhere by now, and with the Memorial Day weekend looming, the Bay would soon be full of boats and much more dangerous for a big sea turtle.

  As they neared the beach, Nat slowed down and reached for his binoculars, too. They drifted along, scouring the coastline, but the only sign of life was a woman throwing a tennis ball for her dog. “I wish I had his energy!” Nat said, watching the dog plowing into the surf.

  “That’s what happens when you get old,” Piper teased.

  “I’m still young enough to keep up with you!”

  “You think so?” Piper teased as Nat pulled her into his arms. “Hey,” she said. “We’re supposed to be looking for a turtle, you know, one of those reptiles with a hard shell.”

  “Actually, loggerheads have soft shells,” Nat said, sliding his hands down her back. “Kind of like you ...”

  “Very funny,” Piper murmured. “There are people around, you know....”

  “There’s no one around,” Nat countered softly.

  Piper looked back at the beach and realized the woman and the dog had disappeared and fog was starting to roll in. “Sheesh, what happened? It’s getting to be like pea soup out here.”

  “Mmm,” Nat agreed. “I don’t think we’re going to find our turtle today.”

  “I guess not,” she said resignedly. “The tide’s starting to turn, too, so we better head back.”

  “What’s your hurry?” Nat asked.

  Piper smiled, remembering the time they hadn’t paid attention to the tide because, like now, Nat had been distracting her and before they knew it, the boat had stopped rocking.

  “Nice!” Nat teased, shaking his head. “Now, look what you’ve done!”

  “Me?” she countered. “You started it!”

  “You’re the one who wore that tight, white tank top....”

  “You’re the one who didn’t wear a top,” she countered, eyeing his tan torso. She sighed. “What should we do?”

  They debated walking to shore, but then realized they’d have no way of getting back to the boat when the tide came in, so, with nothing to do, they followed the receding water, stood on its edge, shed their clothes, swam in the shallows, and as the sun set, made love on the cool, wet sand. An hour later, flushed with lovemaking, they walked back to the boat and watched the stars grow brighter as the coastline—from Boston to Provincetown—blinked to life. They pulled on sweatshirts, leaned against the boat’s windshield, and gazed at the canopy of lights twinkling all around them. Six hours later, they woke up to gentle rocking . . . and one month after that, Piper realized she was pregnant.

  “I don’t want to be stranded for twelve hours,” she said. “I have stuff to do—I want to see Sailor’s new place and Elias is coming home tonight so I need to go food shopping.”

  “I thought he wasn’t coming home till tomorrow.”

  “Change of plans,” she said with a shrug. “He misses his mom.”

  “He misses Chloe,” Nat teased with a grin.

  Piper laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, knowing how much their son missed Chloe when he was away at college.

  Nat pressed against her and she felt how aroused he was. “Are you sure you want to head back right now?” he asked softly.

  “I guess I could stay a little longer,” she murmured with a smile. “As long as you’re quicker than the tide.”

  CHAPTER 10

&nbs
p; Birdie could tell, when she woke up in the middle of the night, that trouble was brewing. She rolled to her side and felt her ankle throb, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain looming behind her eyes. She made a fist under her pillow and pressed her temple into it. “Please, no,” she murmured. “Please don’t let me get a headache.” She hadn’t had a migraine in years—not since she’d been perimenopausal—but she remembered the symptoms all too well, and she knew she needed to get up and take something—early intervention was key—but getting up seemed so . . . impossible . . . and what should she take? What could she take? The only thing that had ever worked for her head was Imitrex, and it had been so long since she’d needed some, she didn’t even know if she still had any. She sat up and groaned as the change in blood flow increased the pounding in her temple. “Not good,” she murmured, easing to the side of the bed and reaching for her crutches. One thing was certain—the pain in her head was making the pain in her ankle seem like a walk in the park.

  David felt her moving. “What’s the matter?” he murmured.

  “Migraine,” she said.

  “Want me to get something?”

  “No, no . . . go back to sleep.”

  He rolled over, and before Birdie had even made it across the room, he was snoring again.

  “Must be nice,” she muttered, maneuvering around Bailey, who was sprawled out across the hall. She made her way gingerly down the stairs in the darkness, but when she turned on the kitchen light, she blinked at the brightness and promptly turned it off again. She felt her way to the stove, closed her eyes, switched on the hood light, squinted at the clock, and groaned again. It was 3:20—much too early to be awake. She wouldn’t be able to function in the morning . . . when the real morning arrived.

  She pulled open the medicine drawer full of pills and rifled through it, praying she’d find an old blister sheet of her migraine medicine. They had everything from prednisone to Prozac and Valium to Xanax—“We could open a damn pharmacy!” she muttered. Like a possessed woman, she pulled out the remaining contents of the drawer—three pill splitters, one pill crusher, two heartworm pills, and an old inhaler. She peered into the empty drawer, and to her surprise, spied a small rectangular foil packet in the back. She pulled it out and squinted at it but she was unable to tell without her glasses whether it was Imitrex; she could, however, make out the date: “Discard after 06/00”—Really? Could it really be sixteen years old? Was it safe? Was it safe to take with Vicodin? Had it lost its potency? Her aching head spun with questions.

  Maybe the Vicodin had caused her headache . . . or maybe it was the combination of Vicodin and alcohol. For the first time in her life, Birdie regretted ignoring John’s warning. Why hadn’t she listened? She could feel the pressure building behind her eyes. Maybe she didn’t have a migraine at all. Maybe it was a brain aneurysm! One of her colleagues had died from a brain aneurysm, and at her funeral, her husband said the only symptom she’d had was a severe headache. Birdie found her glasses and studied the foil packet. Maybe she should wait and call John in the morning. Then again, if she had an aneurysm, maybe she should go to the emergency room. She looked at the clock, wondering if John would mind a call at this hour. Surely, if he knew she had a brain aneurysm, he wouldn’t mind. Another wave of nausea swept over her, and she felt as if someone were tightening a vise grip on her head. She leaned against the counter and folded back the corner of the packet, trying to separate the hard plastic from the paper, but the ancient seal had melded together. She looked in the junk drawer for scissors—they were never where they were supposed to be!

  In desperation, she pulled a sharp knife out of the dish drain, and almost immediately, the old familiar voice in her head started to sound the alarm. She knew that voice too well—she’d been listening to it, and ignoring it, for sixty-seven years. Be careful! it warned. Don’t do anything stupid! “Of course, I’ll be careful,” she muttered. “Do I ever do anything stupid?” She paused. “Don’t answer that.” She pointed the tip of the knife into the edge of the plastic bubble, but just as she started to apply pressure, the knife slipped and sliced into her finger. Birdie cried out in surprise and pain, dropped the knife in the sink, turned on the cold water, held her finger under it, and watched the white porcelain turn bright red. For heaven’s sake, how can there be so much blood? I wonder if I need stitches? With her free hand, she reached for a paper towel and wrapped it around her finger. If I go to the ER for stitches, maybe they’ll do a CAT scan and find my aneurysm, too. She squeezed her finger, trying to decide which part of her body hurt most: her finger, her ankle, or her head. With her throbbing finger wrapped in a bloody paper towel, she ditched her crutches and limped to the bathroom, where, in the process of looking for a Band-Aid, she found the scissors. She rinsed her finger again, dried it, quickly applied the Band-Aid before more blood spurted out, and limped back to the kitchen with the scissors. She looked at the clock, and thinking more clearly now, made the executive decision to not call John at this ungodly hour. She carefully cut open the package with the scissors, swallowed the pill with a gulp of water, dumped the rest of the water in the sink, retrieved her crutches, and headed for the living room. Collapsing on the couch, she propped her foot on a pillow and leaned back.

  “Please make it go away,” she prayed, pressing her knuckle into her temple. The pressure behind her eye was explosive—even the tears sliding down her cheeks didn’t relieve it. She listened to the ticking of David’s clocks. They seemed so loud. The old grandfather clock in the hall chimed its familiar Winchester chime, followed by four loud bongs; her bird clock from Orvis—the one David had given her for her birthday years ago—chirped with the song of her least favorite bird, the house wren, whose favorite pastime was filling bluebird houses with sticks. She didn’t know how that fool wren had any time to make a nest and raise a brood of its own when it was so busy ruining other birds’ nests. Finally, a couple minutes later, the cuckoo—perpetually late-to-the-party, no matter how carefully David adjusted the pendulum—opened its door and cuckooed four times. Birdie silently counted each chime, song, and cuckoo. There was so much she wanted to do today. She’d wanted to stop and see Sailor’s new cottage yesterday and bring her a celebratory bottle of chardonnay (Sailor always switched to white in the summer), but those plans had gone right out the window when she’d tripped on the rug and spent all of the next morning at the doctor’s office. And now, if her headache didn’t go away, she wouldn’t get to see her today, either. She also had a backlog of work to finish for the ornithology board, but if she had a headache, she definitely wouldn’t be able to look at a computer screen.

  She stared into the darkness, wondering how human beings had survived before painkillers, antibiotics, and antianxiety pills. She could still remember peeking anxiously into her grandmother’s darkened bedroom when she’d been rendered helpless by debilitating and days-long headaches. Back then, there’d been no relief for her poor grandmother—she’d just had to wait it out. Oh, the misery she’d endured!

  The clocks chimed again, and Birdie felt a cool breeze drift through the window. The sky was growing brighter and the ever-punctual songbirds—whose internal summer clocks were set for 4:30—started to sing. She closed her eyes and listened. Mr. Cardinal was first—she could picture him tapping his baton and giving the others his first cheerful note; soon, the grosbeaks, chickadees, and titmice all joined in, and then, not to be left out, the house finches, wrens, nuthatches, and bluebirds added their songs, too, until the woods were alive with a symphony. . . and then there was another haunting sound. Birdie caught her breath and listened, remembering a long-ago night when she and her siblings had been camping in the backyard—all five of them in one tent! Easton had been lying next to her and she’d just fallen asleep when he nudged her with his elbow.

  “Birdie?” he whispered urgently. “What’s that sound?”

  “What sound?” she murmured sleepily.

  “Listen.”

  She listened but all s
he could hear were crickets. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Shhh!”

  And then, there it was—a long mournful wail. “Oh my,” she whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a loon,” she said, her voice filled with awe.

  “A loon?”

  “Yes. Dad said they’re on the Cape, but I’ve never heard one before.”

  “It’s so cool,” Easton said. “It sounds like a whale.”

  “It does sound like a whale,” she agreed, smiling. They’d lain still, listening to the lonely loon until it was silent and all she heard was her brother’s peaceful breathing.

  Birdie listened to the loon now. It had been years since she’d heard the long, sad call. She breathed in deeply through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth, trying to take her mind off the pain. Finally, she felt the sensation she’d been waiting for—her throat tightening as the blood vessels constricted; it was an odd sensation—the first time she’d felt it, she’d panicked, but now she welcomed it, knowing it meant her headache was going away. She closed her eyes and felt Bailey nuzzle her hand. “Hey, there, sweetie pie,” she murmured, stroking her soft ears. Five minutes later, she drifted off, and when she woke up, Bailey was lying beside her and David was making coffee.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Better,” she said in a relieved voice. “Thank goodness I had something to take.”