The Forever Summer

by Jamie Brenner

  Julian was happy she was free. She was happy she was free. Now she could enjoy her parents’ company in a way she hadn’t been able to last night.

  She spotted her father, dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a lightweight argyle sweater. At six foot two, with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes, her father was a dashing man. She’d always wished she looked a little more like him, but she took after her mother’s side, the Madigans. Not that her mother was a slouch in the looks department; she was a very pretty woman, with high cheekbones and deep-set hazel eyes and full lips. But Marin had always coveted the more refined, classic features of the Bishops.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked when she reached her father, looking around. The lobby was bustling with well-heeled guests arriving and departing and bellhops pushing brass carts full of luggage.

  “She has a terrible headache,” he said.

  “Oh no! Should I go up to your room and see her?”

  “No, no—she’s resting,” he said, looking away.

  “Are you sure?” Marin felt a stab of guilt. Her broken engagement was making her mother literally sick. She would have to make a trip to Philly. Schedule a mother-daughter lunch. Confide in her about Julian.

  “Yes. She sends her love and feels terrible but said to just call her later.”

  “Okay, well, do you want to eat here or go somewhere else for breakfast? There’s a place I like just a few blocks—”

  “Marin, there’s something I want to discuss with you.” His expression was serious. Stern.

  Marin’s first thought was How did he find out that I’m seeing someone at my firm? The law world was a small one, especially in the New York, Philadelphia, Boston triad. Oh, he must be disappointed in her. So unprofessional!

  She was afraid to meet his eyes. “Is everything okay?”

  He nodded, arms crossed in front of his chest. “Your mother and I are divorcing.”

  Chapter Four

  Traffic heading east on LA’s Freeway 10 was bumper-to-bumper.

  After five minutes of not moving an inch, Rachel Moscowitz leaned on her horn. Not very Zen of her, but even mindful breathing wasn’t helping today. She was out of a job. Again! And this time, it wasn’t even her fault.

  Her phone rang, and she put it on speaker.

  “Rach, it’s Fran,” her mother said.

  “This isn’t the best time. I’m in crazy traffic.”

  “This will just take a sec; can you swing by my house after work and pick up Hugo? I’m in Joshua Tree and I forgot to board him.”

  “What? Now?”

  “It’s been a few days and he’s probably out of food.”

  Un-fucking-believable. Her mother shouldn’t even have a houseplant, let alone a cat.

  “Fran, I am having a really bad day. Isn’t there anyone else you can call? Where’s Tad?” Tad, her mother’s boyfriend du jour. Just a few years older than Rachel.

  “We broke up weeks ago. Didn’t I tell you?”

  No, she had not told her. Because she called Rachel only when she needed something. The thing was, her mother’s house in Brentwood gave Rachel a place to stop on her way home and wait out the worst of the traffic.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll feed Hugo. When are you coming back?”

  “I’ll text you.”

  The call ended before Rachel could tell her that she’d lost the job she’d been sure was finally the start of a career.

  Oh, she’d been so excited to land it. One of her mother’s Reiki clients (yes, her mother was a certified Reiki master; she was also an ordained nondenominational minister and a licensed real estate agent) was a producer on the reality show Celebrity Family Tree. Post–Reiki session, the woman mentioned she needed a research assistant. And Fran, in a rare display of helpfulness, got Rachel an interview. The producer didn’t seem to mind that Rachel’s résumé featured only two years of credits from UC Berkeley, a brief stint waiting tables at an organic café, a few months as a salesgirl at a vintage shop on Melrose, and sporadic turns as a dog walker.

  “I like your energy,” the producer had said. And Rachel did have good energy! She worked at it. If there was any useful lesson her mother had imparted to her, it was the power of positive thinking.

  But then, the emergency staff meeting. Her boss, Judy, gathered them in the conference room and delivered the news: Production was halted indefinitely.

  She would try not to let her new unemployed status get her too down. Or the traffic. Or the fact that the extra key to her mother’s house was missing from underneath the potted plant next to the front door.

  Rachel sat on the front steps, the midday sun beating down on her.

  Where was the damn key? She had one at her apartment, but it was all the way across town in Silver Lake, and that wasn’t going to do her much good at the moment. She dialed her mother, and it went straight to voice mail.

  Unbelievable!

  Her mother had a way of disappearing, going completely off the grid for months at a time. Fortunately, she also had a way of leaving her windows unlocked. And since the last thing Rachel wanted to do was get back into her car, she walked through unkempt grass to the supply shed in the backyard. She dragged a metal ladder to the house, propped it against the area closest to her mother’s bedroom window, and climbed up, cursing. Positive thinking, positive thinking, she told herself.

  Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She ignored it, trying not to look down as she climbed to the second floor. She reached the window and pushed the sash up and open. Success! After heaving it higher, she leaned inside and eased her body to a safe landing on top of her mother’s desk. It was covered with piles of papers and books and loose change, much of which went flying, displaced by Rachel’s body.

  A sharp cry made her look up, lose her balance, and roll off the desk onto the floor.

  “Hugo, you startled me.”

  Hugo, her mother’s two-year-old tabby, meowed again, rubbing his body against Rachel’s. The cat, usually more circumspect, must have been attention-starved. Or just starved.

  Rachel took the stairs down to the kitchen, and sure enough, the cat-food bowl was empty. The water bowl was also empty. And it had to be ninety degrees in there.

  “Oh, Hugo. I’m sorry.” Rachel found a bag of Iams under the sink, poured a generous heap into the metal bowl, filled the water dish, and sat at the kitchen table. Now that she was there, she was in no rush to get back to her own apartment. She would have to tell her roommate that she had lost yet another job. She’d have to move out. Maybe even move back in with Fran.

  Her phone rang, startling her. She looked at the incoming number: Judy Ross, head of research. Her boss. Or, as of this morning, former boss.

  “Hi, Rachel—I know you’re probably not even home yet but I’m already getting some calls from the press. I doubt anyone would call you but if they get stonewalled by the higher-ups, you never know…”

  “I won’t say anything. But between you and me, I just can’t believe he ruined our show.” And yes, even though she was just a research assistant, she felt invested enough in the production to think of it as her show too.

  After all, she’d been there when the research team made the discovery. They were working on the episode featuring Scott Anders, beloved rom-com hero, sometime action star, and poster boy for Hollywood political activism. He was so outspoken about human rights, he made Angelina Jolie look apathetic. So what a surprise for the Celebrity Family Tree team to discover that an ancestor of his had been one of the most notorious slave traders in the South.

  Rachel wasn’t completely sure what happened next, but when the episode was edited, somehow that fun little factoid didn’t make the final cut. And someone on staff must have been pissed, because it was leaked to the press. That Scott Anders was descended from slave traders didn’t get a lot of play, because you can’t help the family you’re born into. But you can help what you do in the here and now, and Scott Anders had leaned on the producers har
d to make them bury the discovery. The whole selling point of the show was that the viewer was “with” the celebrities when they learned about their heritage. The veracity of the entire program came into question; Scott Anders denied accusations that he’d asked executives to suppress the truth about his ancestors, throwing Celebrity Family Tree under the proverbial bus. And the network pulled the plug.

  “But Judy,” Rachel said, “if you can still try to find me any leads on my father, it would mean the world to me.”

  For as long as she could remember, Rachel had ached to learn the identity of her father. All her mother knew was that he was a white male in his twenties. She chose him as her sperm donor because he’d written that he liked to travel.

  Rachel used the show’s resources to do a little digging. She didn’t have his name, but she’d had her DNA tested and found out that she was half Southern European and half Eastern European. Since her mother was an Ashkenazi Jew, that left her father as the Southern European. Even better, Genie, the DNA-testing company, reported that another user in its database was a 50 percent genetic match to her. A half sibling! And through the company, she was able to e-mail her.

  For the first time, she had more family than just her self-absorbed mother.

  But a week after sending the e-mail through Genie, she still had not heard back from Marin Bishop of New York, New York.

  Maybe the e-mail got dumped in her half sister’s spam folder. Her half sister. She could scarcely get her mind around it. Yes, that had to be it—foiled by the spam folder.

  Rachel would try her again. She’d find a way to e-mail her directly. If there was anything she’d learned from her two months in research, it was how to be persistent in reaching out to a source. And this woman, this half sister, was a source of the most valuable information she could imagine. Rachel had to believe that she belonged somewhere, and she’d certainly never felt it with her mother. But maybe when she found her father and her sister, all the puzzle pieces would fit together and she’d feel whole for the first time in her life.

  “That’s another reason I’m calling you,” Judy said. “I didn’t have time to talk to you about this at the office with everything that’s going on. But I found it. I have your father’s name.”

  Chapter Five

  Divorce! Marin hadn’t seen it coming.

  Sitting at her desk where she was usually the picture of organization and control, she was unglued by her father’s words—long overdue and a new phase of life. New phase of life? Her father didn’t speak like that. And so she asked him, “Is there someone else?” His response: “Yes.” The second blow.

  She stared blankly at her computer screen.

  How could this be happening? She’d gone home to Philly two months ago for her mother’s birthday. Her parents had appeared the same as always. There wasn’t a single sign anything was wrong, and now they were divorcing and her father was in a new relationship? Then again, she’d brought Greg with her that weekend. So much for appearances.

  She was going to lose it if she didn’t talk to someone, and the someone she most wanted to talk to was just one floor above her.

  It was wrong, and she hated herself for her weakness, but she needed him.

  She abandoned her desk and headed for the elevators.

  Julian’s secretary was not at her desk and his door was closed. Marin knocked once and opened it. All she wanted was to see his face.

  When she saw it, he had a deer-in-the-headlights look. Senior partner Hilton Wallace was sitting across from him.

  Hilton Wallace had probably once been an attractive man. But in his midfifties, he had the generic appearance of bloated affluence. Golf and tennis on the weekends couldn’t combat the decades of long hours behind a desk. He had steely blue eyes and the deepest crow’s-feet Marin had ever seen, lines that appeared to have been carved into his face rather than slowly worn in over time. And at the moment, they gave his face a particularly stern look.

  “Hello, Marin. Surprised to see you in this neck of the woods,” Hilton said, leaning back in his chair, looking at her pointedly.

  “Sorry to interrupt! I just…there are a few Genie documents that aren’t in that file box you sent down. Dina isn’t at her desk or I would have asked her—”

  “I’ll have her check the document list when she returns,” Julian said curtly.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. She backed out of the office and retreated to her own.

  Closing her own door and leaning against it, she decided to do what she should have done in the first place: call her mother. She got her voice mail and left a message saying she was going to come home on Saturday.

  Until then, Marin had to put it out of her mind. Yes, her parents were splitting up. Deal with it—you’re a grown woman.

  Marin opened her e-mail.

  She scrolled through her messages, one in particular catching her eye. It was from a name she didn’t recognize, the subject line: Please Read.

  Hi, Marin:

  I tried reaching you through Genie, but when I didn’t hear back I figured I might have gotten dumped in your spam folder so I thought I’d e-mail you directly. I hope you don’t mind.

  I recently did a DNA test through Genie and I got a notice from them that I have a very close relative in their database. You! So close that you’re either my grandparent or my half sibling. I’m guessing from your profile you’re not my grandmother (LOL). I know this probably comes as a shock to you—it was for me, even though I always knew it was a possibility since I have a single mom and my father was a sperm donor. Maybe you’re in a similar situation? Either way, I’d love to hear from you. Number’s below. Call any time.

  Rachel Moscowitz

  Marin blinked at the screen.

  What. The. Fuck.

  She hadn’t heard a thing from Genie since mailing in her test kit. She’d practically forgotten about it.

  Holding her breath, she opened a browser and logged in to her personal e-mail account. Sure enough, more than half a dozen e-mails from Genie hovered near the top, sandwiched between the entreaties from Equinox to rejoin and sales alerts from Barneys and Bergdorf’s.

  Your Kit Has Been Registered.

  Your Sample Has Been Received.

  Your Complete Genie Ancestry Reports Are Ready to View.

  With shaking hands, she clicked on the third message. Sign in to your account using the user name and password created during the kit-registration process.

  User name and password? She struggled to remember them. It took three tries before she got into the site. Stop being emotional. It was important to approach this as she would any new information that required analysis: Methodically. Professionally. Detached.

  After a few minutes of clicking around, she felt more relaxed and in control. She focused on the Ancestry Composition section, which had a global map on one side of the page and a list of percentages and regions on the other. At the top, it told her she was 99.2 percent European. She would have guessed 100 percent, considering both of her parents’ families were from the UK, but probably in this day and age, no one was purely 100 percent anything. The 99.2 percent was probably remarkable in itself.

  The map was colored in the regions where Marin’s ancestry was located. Not surprisingly, the UK was lit up—her father’s great-great-grandparents came over from England and Scotland, and her mother was Welsh. But oddly, the region of Southern Europe near Spain and Portugal was also highlighted.

  She checked the percentages on the right and frowned. According to the site’s breakdown, she was 50 percent Southern European. That didn’t make sense. Even if one of her parents had an ancestor from Spain or somewhere in the region, she wouldn’t be 50 percent Southern European.

  Well, that explained the strange e-mail. There had been an error.

  She was tempted to ignore the e-mail, but if she just left it out there, the woman might try to contact her again. Better to just terminate the inquiry.

  Dear Ms. Moscowitz:

  Than
k you for getting in touch. Unfortunately, there seems to be some mistake. I wish you the best in your family research.

  Marin hit Send and logged off.

  She didn’t need the distraction of abstract information about her alleged family tree. Her real family, her here-and-now family, was coming apart at the seams.

  And she had no idea what to do about it.

  Chapter Six

  When in doubt, garden.

  It had been Blythe’s personal motto for years. Her love of gardening came from her mother-in-law—the most valuable gift the woman ever gave her. It was prompted by Blythe’s confessed frustration with Kip’s fifteen-hour workdays and his weekend devotion to the golf course.

  “No need to feel like a golf widow, my dear,” said Nina Bishop. “It’s not that your husband is too busy. It is that you are not busy enough.”

  Blythe had looked across the room at toddler Marin. Not busy enough?

  But later, when she thought about it, she realized there was busy that made you feel like you were treading water every day and busy that gave you a sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t that motherhood didn’t give her satisfaction, but it was a different kind than what she’d felt when she danced.

  “Start simple,” Nina had said. “Lettuces. Pole beans.”

  And she did. She learned about ground pH and working the soil. Buying and sowing seeds. Transplanting. When to harvest. Weeds. Pest control. By the time Marin was in second grade, Blythe had a robust, rotating crop of lettuce, French beans, tomatoes, beets, kale, rhubarb, and—to Marin’s delight—pumpkins. Kip, not a huge fan of vegetables, had requested only one item in all of Blythe’s years of gardening: corn for popping. And she grew it.

  This morning, Blythe knelt in the soil in front of her Brandywine tomatoes checking for invaders. Yesterday, she’d spotted a tiny green fruitworm inching its way up the side of the stake. Blythe had swiftly vanquished it.

  She only wished she could do the same to Kip’s new girlfriend.