Mystic Summer

by Hannah McKinnon

  “But we didn’t have time. I had to make an executive decision, Maggie. I thought you’d appreciate that.”

  And there we have it. The executive part of Evan’s thinking. For which he also seems to think I should be appreciative. “This is a partnership, Evan. We’re not talking about ordering dinner. We’re talking about making a home. Supposedly together.”

  Evan stuffs his hands angrily into his pockets and looks at me a long time. “I thought it would be a nice surprise for you. That’s all.”

  Everyone else has gone ahead of us, dispersing down the sidewalks and climbing into cars. I stare back at Evan, at a loss for words.

  Evan sighs. “Look, it’s hot out and we had a late night last night. I think maybe you need to eat something,” he says.

  I try not to bristle. “I grabbed a bagel at the inn with you,” I remind him. I’m not about to let him chalk this up to an emotional, hungry bridesmaid, which I am not. This is about so much more.

  Evan shakes his head, clearly frustrated. “I’m sure you’ll love it when you see it. Okay?”

  But it’s not okay. In his heart Evan believes he did a nice thing, but he’s clearly unable to read my own. Which leaves us at a far more perilous intersection than just a real estate stalemate.

  From across the street Peyton waves to us from Chad’s car, and I raise my hand and force a smile. “See you at the dress shop,” she calls. We are the last ones standing in front of the church.

  And then, over the tops of the cars parked along the curb, I see a blue Jeep. Time stalls, like that drizzly night on the bridge. Only this time Cam is the one driving by. He slows in front of the church, and looks directly at me. Just as Evan takes my hand and draws me up the sidewalk.

  Twenty-Four

  The hideous bridesmaid dresses fit. Only this time the tears do not belong only to the bride.

  “I can’t believe he just went ahead and did that,” Erika says to me, as she unzips the back of my dress. Peyton is shaking her head, too.

  “I totally agree with you—the lack of a pet clause is a pretty selfish oversight,” Peyton allows. “But show her the photos. It’s an amazing pad.”

  I hand Erika my phone and she scrolls through the real estate link that Evan sent me. “Wow. Hardwood floors, marble kitchen. Is that a double vanity?” She looks at me. “Hate to say it, but this place looks nicer than Trent’s and mine!”

  “I know, I know. And my parents would take the cat for me in a heartbeat. But Evan knows how I feel about my pet, just as he knows how much I wanted to see the place first. It’s like he overlooked a whole part of me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Although I know Erika’s genuinely concerned about me, I’m sure there’s a part of her that’s also wondering just how much of this calamity will seep into her wedding day.

  “I don’t know yet. But don’t worry, I promise I won’t let it get to me this weekend.”

  “Please,” she jokes. “It wouldn’t be a wedding without something falling apart.” But I can tell she’s a little relieved.

  While Peyton and the cousins bring their dresses out to the front, Erika lingers behind in the dressing area with me. With all of the events and activities and family around, I haven’t been able to get two seconds with her to myself.

  “So how are you doing?” I ask her now.

  She tucks my bridesmaid dress into its bag and zips it up. “Honestly? I’m happy. It’s been a crazy week but a great week, and tomorrow I’m marrying the man I’m supposed to marry.” She looks at me. “Thank you for everything you did to make this happen, Mags. Trent and I are both so grateful.”

  “Me? I think Peyton kept that wheel turning.”

  She laughs. “I know. But when things turned sour—like when the venue fell apart and the dresses weren’t right—you were the one who steered things back on course.” Erika’s complexion is as bright as her eyes. She really does look happy. I give her a big hug. Tomorrow she will not be Erika Crane anymore. In a move that surprised us, Erika has decided to take Trent’s name. “It’s my wedding gift to him,” she explained to us on the river cruise last night. “I want to have the same last name as our kids. I want us to be like a little tribe.” After today, she will be known as Mrs. Erika Mitchell. A move that, Peyton argued, would only change her in name, but I’m not naive.

  “Have you heard anything from Cam?” she asks me now. “How are they doing?”

  “He promised to let me know if anything happened. Until then, I’m giving them space.” After leaving the hospital and talking with my mom, I’ve decided to do what Mrs. Wilder had suggested I do when I first came home this summer: to live my life and let Cam live his own. But since seeing him outside the church, that prospect seems harder each minute. “It’s better this way,” I add.

  Erika puts a hand on her hip, like she doesn’t believe what she’s hearing. “Maggie, are you telling me that or yourself? It’s not like you to just walk away.”

  Her words surprise me. “This, from you? You’ve always hated Cam.”

  “I didn’t hate him.”

  “Yes, you did,” I insist. “I could never understand what happened between you two, or why you didn’t like him. But all those summers you guys made my life miserable. I always felt like I was choosing between the two of you.”

  Erika sinks onto the narrow bench and pats the seat beside her. “You’d better sit down.”

  This doesn’t sound good.

  “Remember the summer you guys first got together, after our freshman year?”

  I nod. “It was the only time you seemed to get along. I could never understand why that changed.”

  She nods, sadly. “Well, that was kind of my fault.”

  A bad feeling parks itself in my stomach. Suddenly I feel like I’m nineteen again and about to receive bad news about my boyfriend. “Oh, God. Did he try something with you?”

  Erika stares at the floor. “No. I tried something with him.”

  The whole dressing room starts to spin. It doesn’t matter that it’s her wedding weekend, or that my own boyfriend, who just signed a lease on an apartment, is a few streets away at the inn, or that ten years have passed. I leap up. “You did what?”

  Now she’s looking at me, cheeks flushed with shame. “I know! I’m sorry. I begged Cam not to tell you.”

  “When? Where did this happen?” Then, more important. “Why?”

  Erika looks like she’s about to cry. “We were all at Ocean Beach one night, having a bonfire. I’d had a couple beers and I’d just broken up with Mike.”

  I shake my head, unable to recall Mike, but viscerally remembering the bonfires we went to at Ocean Beach. “That’s no excuse. Tell me what happened!”

  “You went home early that night. I was lonely and probably pretty drunk, and a small group of us was left sitting around the fire. I leaned over and kissed him. But he pushed me away. And when I asked him to go for a walk with me down the beach, he turned me down.”

  “I was your best friend,” I remind her. Erika grabs my hand and pulls me back down onto the bench.

  “Maggie, please. Cam was cute, and funny, and smart. And he wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Erika. Why would you care how he felt about you?”

  She holds up both hands, at a loss. “I don’t know. Maybe because for the first time, you had something I didn’t. And I was jealous. Remember that night in our apartment when we were looking at old pictures for my wedding board?”

  It was the same night I’d taken the picture of Cam back to my room.

  “Well, I wanted to tell you that night, and then again when I confessed about cheating on Trent. I’ve never wanted to keep this from you. But it was so petty, and so stupid. I figured after all these years it wouldn’t matter.”

  I put my hands over my eyes and take a deep breath. “But it does.”

  I think back to that night in our apartment when we went through her old photo box together fondly—how vulnerab
le and teary Erika got talking about our past—and the way she remembered our friendship. I had always felt like the one in her shadow. It never occurred to me she might ever have had reason to feel the same about me. “Why now?” I ask, unable to keep the anger from my voice.

  “Because tomorrow is a big day, and I have my loved ones standing up for me. You’re one of them, and I don’t want you standing there with any regrets or any secrets. Being back here, in Mystic, and seeing Cam—I had to tell you. I’m sorry.”

  I need time to absorb this. Suddenly the years of strained silence between Erika and Cam make sense. But the fact that Cam never told me, either, is another soft blow. “It was really shitty of you,” I tell her. I look her right in the eye as I say it.

  “I know. But it was nothing, Mags. Cam only ever wanted you.”

  I feel silly at how stung I am all these years later, but I can’t help it. “I’m glad you told me,” I say finally.

  “Do you forgive me?” Erika’s eyes are wide and watery.

  We were both nineteen. Drinking beers in our bathing suits on a sandy beach without a care in the world beyond ourselves. It was the perfect recipe for disaster.

  “I don’t want to hold this between us,” I tell her. But I’m still stinging from her confession.

  Erika knows better than to hug me right now. She takes my dress bag and swings it over her tanned shoulder, her lips pressed tightly. “Thank you, Mags. It’s the best gift you can give me.”

  We meet the others, who, to my relief, remain completely unaware of our conversation, at the front of the store, where they’re busy looking through the racks. The cashier rings up my alterations. “Let me,” Erika says, but I wave her away.

  On the way out, she turns to me. “Are you still thinking about what I said?” she whispers.

  “No, actually, I’m thinking about Lauren,” I tell her.

  Erika looks relieved, but she gives this some thought. “That poor baby,” she says, finally. “What if Lauren leaves again?”

  As I follow her out into the sun, it’s a very different thought that rattles around my head: What if she doesn’t?

  Outside, we loiter in the parking lot beside our cars. The sun is high and hot, the lunchtime hour fast approaching. “I’m starving,” Peyton announces. “But if I want to belt that dress tomorrow, I should stick to my diet.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Erika says. “Let’s grab lunch while we’re in town. My treat.”

  I’m hungry, too. The bagel I grabbed earlier at the inn barely put a dent in it. “Mystic Pizza, for old time’s sake?” I suggest.

  Peyton drops her diet like a hot plate. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll drive,” Erika says. But as I start to follow them all toward her car, she spins around to face me. “Not you.”

  “What do you mean? I’m starving.”

  “No.” Her voice is as firm as her expression. “You have somewhere else to be.”

  And then I know what she means. “Erika, I can’t go back there.” It’s too much. And it’s also her last afternoon with us as a single girl. Despite everything, I’m not harboring ill will. In fact, I have the sense of being somehow lighter. “I don’t want to miss hanging out with you guys. Besides, I’ve got my own stuff to figure out with Evan.”

  “It’s been almost ten years. I think you need to figure this one out first.” Erika holds up her pinky finger. “Promise me you’ll go.”

  In the end, it’s all the permission I need. I link my finger around hers.

  Twenty-Five

  This time, when I stand in Emory’s doorway, Cam is not there. Nor are his parents. Or, thankfully, Lauren. Emory is sound asleep again, and I marvel at how pink her cheeks are. When I run my index finger down her arm she stirs and makes a little gurgly sound. Her long lashes flutter, and she sleeps on.

  “Doesn’t she look good today?” A nurse comes in behind me, and moves briskly to the IV pole. I notice as she taps the IV bag that her fingernails are painted fluorescent blue. She checks the fluids, makes a note, and comes around to check Emory’s vitals. “What a little trouper, huh?”

  “She sure is,” I say, stepping closer to the bed.

  “Do you know where Mom and Dad are?” she asks, smiling brightly. “I have a new doctor’s order for dosage that I want to go over with them.”

  I falter. “Uh, no. I only just arrived myself,” I stammer.

  “I’m here.” I turn at the sound of her voice, a voice I have never heard but cannot mistake. Lauren enters the room quietly, sets down her purse, and comes to stand beside me at the bed. The hairs on my arms rise, we are so close.

  The nurse glances at me, uncertainly. “Would you like me to go over them now?”

  “Yes, that’s fine. I’ll share them with her father.”

  I’m flooded with the sense that I have been caught. Caught here, in Emory’s room, by her mother. Listening to medical information that is intended for a parent’s ear. And keeping vigil by a child who, no matter my interest, is not my own. I glance at Lauren out of the corner of my eye. Her eyes are fixed on the young nurse; it’s as if I am not even present. But for some reason I remain at Emory’s bedside, my fingers clenched on the stainless steel railing that has grown warm beneath my sweaty grip.

  The nurse finishes her explanation and goes. We are left in the breeze of her wake, shoulder to shoulder, looking down at Emory. Lauren reaches down and adjusts the blanket over Emory’s shoulders. Her arm, unlike my own, is deeply tanned and flecked with tiny blond hairs and freckles. She wears a silver cuff bracelet and a sporty diver’s watch. When I brave a glance in her direction, I see her face is void of any makeup, her skin the color of a peach.

  “Hi,” I say unevenly. “I hope it’s all right I came to visit.”

  It’s not lost on me that I feel the need to ask her approval, a woman who while biologically connected has never had any custodial say over the little girl in question, but it feels respectful.

  Lauren does not glance at me sideways, as I did. She turns fully to me, despite our close proximity. The tip of her nose is sunburned. “You’re Maggie.”

  I nod.

  And that is all. She reaches past me to retrieve her bag from the chair, and proceeds to sit down in the corner. The same corner where Mr. Wilder snored softly, exhausted, the last time I was here. Where is Cameron?

  Lauren crosses her arms and leans back in the chair, her gaze turning to the window.

  “Is Cameron here?” I ask.

  “He’s finishing lunch downstairs. Does he know you’re here?” It’s just a question. But the fact that I have to say, “No, he doesn’t,” makes me uncomfortable. Cameron is not expecting me. I wonder if this matters to her.

  Lauren looks like someone who spends all her time outdoors. Lithe and lean, she is exactly the sort of person I would look twice at on the sidewalk. Someone who would make me conscious of my freckled knees and unruly hair.

  There is an air of cool assuredness about her—something disjointed in the confines of this hospital room. While I didn’t really know what to expect of her, I imagined some level of sheepishness or awkwardness. Some fitting sign of a woman having returned, or having been summoned, to her own baby’s bedside from across the country. But there is no sense of that.

  “How is she doing?” I ask.

  “Very well, actually. They’ve been able to break up the clot and move the blood flow out of her groin.” She comes to the bed and lifts the blanket, exposing Emory’s legs. “See? The bruising is diminished.” Emory shifts, and I fight the urge to cover her back up. Eventually Lauren does.

  “That’s great news.” I offer a smile. “You must be relieved.”

  She returns to the chair. “Of course. We all are.”

  I can’t help but notice her use of we. I wonder if Mrs. Wilder has this same sense.

  And then Cam is with us. He is far more surprised to see me than Lauren. “Maggie? What are you doing here?”

  At which Lauren looks at me expectan
tly. Despite her polite responses to my question, is she wondering the same thing?

  “I had the afternoon free, and I wanted to see how she was doing.”

  Cam glances over at Lauren. “Much better.”

  Lauren stands. “The nurse came in.” I can tell she wants to share the information the nurse told her, and there is no reason for me to stand and listen. Emory is sleeping and doing well. I’ve heard what I came here for. But then she puts her hand on Cam’s arm. “They’ve changed her dosage.”

  It’s all I need. “I’ll leave you guys to talk,” I say. I pull my purse quickly over my shoulder and turn to Cam. “I’m so glad she’s doing well. Please tell your folks I said hi.”

  I glance at Emory once more. Her little lips are moving in a slow, dreamy sucking motion. It’s the same sweet sound she made the night I babysat and fell asleep holding her in the rocking chair. “I think she’s hungry.”

  When I turn, Cam is smiling down at Emory. But Lauren is not; her gaze is fixed on me, and it has hardened. Emory stirs. She turns her head toward us, blinking, and kicks one foot out from beneath the blanket.

  “I think you’re right,” Cam says. He turns to Lauren. “Want to pick her up while I get the nurse?”

  “I’ll get the nurse,” she says, striding for the door.

  I’ve said my goodbyes. And yet I can’t bring myself to go. It’s the first time I’ve seen Emory awake all week. Gingerly Cam moves the blanket aside and adjusts the IV tube. Careful not to tangle it, he lifts her up out of the bed and nestles her in the crook of his arm. “Hi, sweet girl. Are you hungry?”

  Emory is flushed, and her head wags back and forth impatiently. Cam laughs. “This feistiness used to make me panic. Now it’s such a relief.”

  I can only imagine. As Lauren returns with a nurse, I move to the doorway. Bottle in hand, the nurse checks the IV tube and helps Cam adjust her blanket. Emory lets out an impatient wail. “That’s what I’m talking about!” the nurse says, looking pleased. “Let’s get this girl her lunch.”

  But instead of settling into the chair with her, Cam looks to Lauren. “Here, why don’t I let you feed her this time?”