Summertime Nights

by Katie Winters

  Nancy turned to find Carmella’s gaze. “Tell me. How was it, really out west?”

  Carmella swallowed. She wasn’t sure how honest she could be with Nancy, as they’d never had the strongest of relationships. “When I got there, I just realized I was needed here more.”

  “That makes sense. I understand that feeling of displacement,” Nancy offered. “When you’re so sure that if you can be anywhere else, you’ll be happier. But once you get there, you just feel like you don’t fit in.”

  “Something like that. Yeah,” Carmella affirmed.

  “But Elsa says you already have several appointments lined up for the week?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes, I do. I’ll be at the Lodge bright and early tomorrow,” Carmella said.

  “Us too,” Nancy said, beaming. “I’m doing morning yoga at six. You should come before your first appointment!”

  Carmella had never once agreed to a morning yoga session with Nancy. She had always resisted the woman’s advances toward friendship and bonding. But now, she found herself nodding. “That sounds nice.”

  Nancy beamed. “I think you’ll really like it. I know you’re still young and spry, but that goes south quickly, believe me.”

  “You’re about as healthy as they come, Nancy,” Carmella said. “You drank from the fountain of youth, didn’t you?”

  “Not quite. I never managed to find it on all my travels across the world,” Nancy admitted. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t make some of our own. We can mix it with whiskey, maybe. The way your father would have liked it.”

  After dinner, Carmella collected the plates, while Elsa and Janine collected the cutlery, bowls and glasses. Together, the three of them piled into the kitchen to clean up. Traditionally, the clean-up was the time when Carmella and Elsa had found new ways to fight and belittle one another. Even now, as Carmella began to load the dishwasher, she felt Elsa’s eyes on her. She half expected Elsa to say something about her technique — that maybe, they didn’t load the dishwasher that way. What did Carmella know? She’d never had a dishwasher.

  Carmella lifted her eyes angrily toward Elsa’s. But she found only compassion. Elsa grabbed a box of chocolates from the counter and said, “Bruce brought me these. Want one?”

  Carmella washed her hands and selected a piece of orange chocolate. Janine grabbed one, as well. As she bit down, she moaned and said, “That Bruce is off to a good start, isn’t he?”

  Elsa laughed nervously. From the kitchen, they could hear the booming voices of Bruce and Henry as they discussed a recent sailing expedition from the local sailor, Tommy Gasbarro, who planned to trek back down to the Caribbean, something he’d done frequently.

  “I guess somebody has a new friend?” Janine said then.

  “We’re in big trouble if they gang up on us,” Elsa affirmed. “Can you imagine?”

  Carmella turned her attention back to the dishes. Her cheeks burned with sudden excitement. After all, hadn’t she met a man out west? Wasn’t this the kind of story you told your sisters?

  “I met this guy at a bar the other night,” Carmella said.

  Janine and Elsa’s eyes widened as they both looked directly at Carmella.

  “Are you serious? Tell us more, please!” Elsa cried.

  Carmella looked at both of them and chuckled. She had their attention, something she wasn’t accustomed to. “He was so handsome. We sat at this dive bar and talked for hours. He was so curious about me. I am not used to that, as you know.”

  “Not that you couldn’t be,” Elsa said. “You’re one hot lady, sis. Men look at you in the street all the time.”

  Carmella scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “She’s not lying,” Janine added. “I notice it, too.”

  “You’re just too closed off,” Elsa said.

  Carmella gave Elsa a sharp look, one in the style of their previous, darker relationship. Elsa hurriedly mended her words.

  “I mean, you’re just always so busy with other stuff. They know they can’t approach you,” she said.

  Carmella shrugged. “I just felt totally comfortable with this guy. He was like Cody already, even though we’d just met.”

  “Ah, Cody. Poor guy,” Elsa said.

  “Why poor Cody?” Janine asked.

  “Because he’s loved Carmella for years, and she won’t give him the time of day,” Elsa teased.

  “That’s not true. He got married and had a baby, for goodness sake,” Carmella clarified.

  “People get married and have babies all the time. They don’t always fall in love,” Elsa returned. “Not the way Cody loves you.”

  “Whatever,” Carmella grumbled, waving a hand in the air to dismiss her sister’s comment.

  Back on the porch, the family sat together and watched as the waves lapped up across the sands. Nancy poured Carmella another glass of wine, and Carmella felt herself grow more and more comfortable in her strange body. Her thoughts slowed; the anxiety about the Southwest had stalled. Over and over again, her heart told her a story of comfort, of light. There, in the house she knew so well, she’d found some form of peace.

  And when the clock ticked toward ten, Nancy said, “You know. That spare bedroom upstairs is always yours, if you want it.”

  Alyssa and Maggie beamed at her. “Yeah! Stay, Aunt Carmella! The more, the merrier!”

  It was strange yet welcoming to hear these two relative strangers call her “aunt.” She formed a smile and nodded. “I guess it would be nice.”

  “Then, I can wake you up early tomorrow and drag you to yoga with me,” Nancy said. “Just like we talked about.”

  “I definitely want to go, too,” Alyssa affirmed.

  “Yeah. I’m still working on my perfect wedding body,” Maggie slurred as she reached for her glass of wine. “Not doing so well in that department.”

  “As if. You’re a size one,” Alyssa pointed out.

  Maggie shrugged. “I want to be Paltrow-thin for the wedding. You know that.”

  Alyssa rolled her eyes and reached for another piece of chocolate. “And I want to be happy for your wedding. Big difference, I guess.”

  “It’s going to be beautiful,” Maggie said. Her eyes found Carmella’s again, who she’d pegged as the only member of the family who didn’t know every piece of information about her approaching wedding. “It’s going to be ten times better than any Manhattan socialite wedding. I tried to tell Dad he can’t bring Max—”

  “Shh...” Alyssa hushed.

  Maggie dropped her eyes. She’d nearly brought up Janine’s decades-old best friend and now total enemy, Maxine, who their father had left Janine for.

  “Anyway, it’s going to be wonderful. I can’t wait for us all to be together there,” Maggie said. “You can keep my crazies at bay.”

  “Bridezilla, you know we would do anything for you,” Alyssa teased.

  Chapter Eight

  “You’re kidding. Karen? Seriously?” Cody sat across from Carmella at the diner with his French fry poised in the air. Beside him, in a high chair, Gretchen smacked a plastic spoon around and gabbed as though Carmella hadn’t just revealed one of the strangest and most personal events of her life.

  “I’m not.” Carmella crossed her arms and continued to avoid her food; the chef’s salad she had ordered and promptly decided looked disgusting.

  “And you talked to her?”

  “We went out to dinner. And then, before the food came, I ran out.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I know.”

  “You really have the worst luck of anyone I know,” Cody told her. He gave her a crooked smile as Gretchen whacked her spoon again. Hurriedly, he reached over, grabbed the spoon, then said, “Remember, Gretch, we’re in public. You can practice your drumming at home.”

  Carmella smiled. She couldn’t help it; her heart ballooned with happiness when she saw Cody with his little girl. They were two peas in a pod. She even had his bright green eyes, ones reminiscent of the first
leaves of spring.

  “So you’re letting her start the band?” she asked.

  “What can I say? She’s a punk at heart,” Cody said.

  “Tragic. But I’ll support them till the end,” Carmella said. “Girl power, little lady. Girl power.”

  Gretchen bounced around in response, then started jabbering about something that had happened earlier on her television show, none of which made sense. Cody took another fry and nibbled at the edge.

  “What are you going to do? Are you going to tell Elsa about this?” Cody asked, after Gretchen grew distracted.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what good it would do. It would just bring up all that old resentment. And we’re still trying to work through it. We haven’t had a fight in a few weeks, which has to be a record. And I even slept over at their house last night. Like we’re all one big happy family.”

  “The big happy Remington family. I didn’t think I’d ever see the day,” Cody said.

  “Me neither.”

  A pregnant teenager named Mandy stood at the head of the table and refilled their waters. Carmella kind of knew the girl; she was Amelia Taylor’s niece, and Amelia Taylor was one of the heads of city council. The Katama Lodge occasionally had to deal with her for various permits for their events over the years. Amelia was something of a powerhouse on the island, but rumor had it that she’d gotten pregnant around the same time as her niece — both on accident. The thought of it made Carmella anxious. Not the pregnancy, exactly but the fact that people could just move on, build lives, and make such enormous decisions. She felt totally unequipped.

  Gretchen ate some of Cody’s grilled cheese sandwich, which resulted in a lot of melted cheese across her chin. Cody mopped it up and spoke gently to her. “That’s all right, Gretch. You can still eat like the Cookie Monster until you’re four.”

  “What about me?” Carmella asked.

  Cody arched an eyebrow. “You can eat however messy you want, as long as you have a few bites of your salad, for gosh sakes.”

  Carmella laughed. “Fair enough.” For Cody, she would. She stabbed her fork through a few pieces of lettuce and nibbled on it slowly. Almost immediately, she felt the slightest bit more awake. Funny what nutrients did to you.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t make it through the clinic, though. I know you were looking forward to it,” Cody said.

  “Yeah. I just couldn’t imagine walking the hallways, thinking all the time that I would run into Karen. I probably would have had some kind of breakdown.”

  AFTER THEY ATE, CODY loaded Gretchen into her buggy, and the three of them headed out toward the boardwalk, which stretched north, toward the lighthouse. The breeze was soft and tender; it curled Carmella’s hair over her shoulder and brought tears to her eyes. The contrast to the desert was astounding.

  “Gretchen’s fever broke last night,” Cody said after a few minutes. “Thank goodness. We both slept hard afterward.”

  “It must be so frightening to see her sick like that.”

  “It really is,” Cody affirmed. “It reminds me of when I was sick as a kid. You’re so helpless. You think the world is ending. And in a way, when I see how sad and frightened her eyes are, I feel like the world is ending, too.”

  “You were always meant to be a dad,” Carmella said tenderly.

  “Yeah. At least one thing to thank Fiona for, I guess,” Cody said thoughtfully. “No matter how many regrets I have about the whole situation, I have to say, Gretchen is worth all the misery.”

  Carmella paused at the side of the boardwalk and leaned over the fence. Just a few feet away, two sailboats creaked against one another. It had been a long time since Carmella had been out on the water; it had been a long time since she’d felt that level of freedom. Her father had taken her out as a teenager a few times, but often, that had resulted in some kind of fight.

  It was one of the greatest dilemmas of Carmella’s heart, in fact, that she and her father had never had anything much of a friendship. This had only been exacerbated in the months since his death, as the entire island had mourned him. So often, people stopped her at the store or on one of her runs to tell her how much Neal had meant to them. She never knew what to say.

  “Karen remembered you,” Carmella said then.

  Cody stood up alongside her, the buggy to his left. “Really? That’s surprising.”

  “Yeah. She asked if we ever got together,” Carmella said with an ironic laugh. “I guess it goes to show that she never really got me.”

  “Oh.” Cody’s voice seemed suddenly faraway. “Right. Yeah.”

  “She only ever saw me how she wanted to see me. And I should have always known that, especially since she didn’t even try to keep in contact with me after she left. We were so close, you know? I thought I could talk to her about anything. But in the end, it’s more than twenty years later, and you’re just there at a Mexican restaurant, and you’re basically strangers. And you’re wondering where the time went.”

  “Yeah.” Cody shook his head and then glanced down at Gretchen, who’d begun to sleep in the shadow beneath the overhang on her buggy. “I hope me and Gretch are friends.”

  “How could you not be?” Carmella asked. “I feel like you already are.”

  “It’s true that when she was a baby and couldn’t talk, I would just tell her anything I wanted to,” Cody said mischievously. “Almost everything. She was my confidant, and it made it all the better because she couldn’t speak and wouldn’t remember. Times changed, though.”

  “You hope she doesn’t remember. Who knows? She could have built up a big list of blackmail items.”

  “That’s true. Shoot. Guess I shouldn’t have told her about that murder I committed.”

  “And now you’ve told me,” Carmella said with a heavy sigh. “I guess I’ll keep the secret to myself, but only because I don’t know who else will eat with me at the diner.”

  “It’s true. Others have grown out of the diner and moved on to adult restaurants. Personally, I can’t imagine,” Cody teased.

  “Didn’t you and Fiona always go to that Italian place?”

  “Yeah. She loved it. We got into so many arguments there. I think the restaurant considered paying us to come back for more arguments because it was kind of like a performance for the other diners,” Cody said. “Phew. My anxiety is hardly palpable, now that I really only see her to pick up and drop off Gretchen.”

  “What a relief.”

  Eventually, they wandered back toward Cody’s car. Cody asked Carmella if she wanted to come back to his place to eat snacks, have some wine, and watch a movie. Carmella hesitated and then declined his invitation. She hadn’t been to her apartment in a few days, and she craved a few moments alone.

  “But I’ll see you later?” she said.

  “Of course. We always have later,” Cody said with a wink.

  Carmella returned to her apartment and sat at the kitchen table, which featured only one chair, which was all she really needed, as she didn’t frequently have people over. She poured herself a glass of wine and then grabbed her computer, where she headed straight for the social media page of the acupuncturist clinic over in Santa Fe.

  There were one hundred and forty-three photos posted from the previous two days at the event. Three of those photos were of Karen. Beneath one of the photos were the words: Karen Brosnahan is one of our top instructors at this year’s acupuncturist clinic. She brings decades of knowledge, compassion, and wellness to our clinic here in Santa Fe.

  “Good grief,” Carmella breathed.

  She thought about contacting Karen after she spotted her email on the website of the clinic. But what would she say? “Thanks for showing me that my love for you was always wasted.” Or, “Thanks for proving me wrong about you all those years,” or, “Hope you enjoyed that homemade salsa!”

  But none of it would have done anything. Carmella heaved a sigh and checked her phone. Elsa had sent her a photograph of herself, Mallory, Zachery, and Nancy
, over at the house.

  ELSA: Come over if you want to!

  ELSA: :)

  Carmella puffed out her cheeks. She assessed the empty space around her, the calendar that hung on the wall without a single note of a plan upon it, and the empty fridge. She headed over to her closet, grabbed a sweatshirt, and then marched out to her car. Her life had always had very, very little in it, but Elsa had extended an olive branch. And Carmella planned to take it and hold onto it forever.

  Chapter Nine

  It was a rare thing for Carmella to find herself with Zachery in her arms. She could count the number of times on one hand. Yet here, now, as Mallory rushed upstairs to fetch a fresh towel and Elsa flipped pancakes at the stove, Carmella held baby Zachery clumsily off to the side of her body. She prayed Elsa wouldn’t look at her and call her out on how little experience she had with babies.

  It was Saturday morning. Nancy planned to return from a morning yoga session at the Lodge in about twenty minutes, and Elsa had suggested pancakes and a girls’ breakfast. Janine was up at the Lodge as well and probably wouldn’t be able to get away. “She works really hard,” Elsa said now, of Janine. “But it’s good. Dad would have loved how committed she is to the clients.”

  When Elsa did turn around to catch sight of Carmella and Zachery together, she grinned broadly. “You two really do look alike.”

  Carmella was surprised. “Really?”

  “Yes. I can see the similarity in the eyes. Yours are green and his are blue, but there’s something about their shape.”

  “I don’t even know what he is to me. If he’s your grandson, and I’m your sister...”

  Elsa shrugged. “Great Aunt, I guess?”

  “Wow. Sounds very... old. I remember some of our great aunts from back in the day. Their houses always smelled like moldy food and they always gave us those tiny orange candies, remember?”

  Elsa scrunched her nose. “I can’t believe you remember that. I think our last great aunt died when you were, what, four? Colton was three, and I remember it really well because he choked on one of those candies. Mom totally freaked out on Great Aunt Mona for putting him in danger.”