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  “I can give you a ride if you wait a few minutes so I can clean these brushes.”

  It was almost six o’clock and I didn’t really feel like walking back to the bus stop. I met Izzy over by the turpentine can and bent down to help her, wondering how it must’ve felt to remember what Mona and Henry’s father looked like and not know his name. “That would be great, thanks.”

  Chapter 12

  “So where were you today?” Lexi wanted to know when I got home from the barn. She was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing her bare foot in much the same way Shelby kneaded dough, only instead of flour Lexi used peppermint foot balm.

  I was only vaguely confused. “At work?”

  “You promised you’d stop by when you were done,” she reminded me.

  “Things ran late, I’m sorry. Where is everyone?”

  “Mom and Dad are upstairs lying down and Bart’s in the shower.” Lexi kicked off her other sneaker and started kneading her left foot. “It would have been nice if you at least pretended to care about the deli. We could have used the help.”

  I was supposed to care about the deli? I was expected to have feelings for a storefront? Lexi was severely overreacting, but I knew her well enough to know that if I didn’t make nice she wouldn’t let it drop.

  “So it went well?” I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, my interest a sort of peace offering. “Tell me all about it from the beginning.”

  Lexi attempted to hold out on me, my punishment for not showing up. But she only managed to stay quiet for all of three seconds before she gave in, which I knew she would.

  I sat forward and rested my elbows on the table. This was going to take a while.

  “So we got to the deli around six fifteen,” Lexi began, taking me all the way back to the beginning, which she literally took to mean twelve hours ago.

  For the next forty minutes I got the lowdown on everything from the first customer (arrived at 9:01, ordered a ham and Swiss on rye and two tuna salads on bulky rolls), to the first problem (they couldn’t hear the front door open, and a few customers stood there for several minutes before Lexi came out from the back room), to how they resolved it (my dad went out and bought a bell and tied it to the front door). I knew how many cans of soda they sold (128) and the most popular choice of condiment (red pepper mayonnaise, Lexi’s own concoction).

  “So it was a success?” I asked when Lexi finally took a breath and even she had run out of things to say.

  “We weren’t exactly where I’d hoped to be, but it was just the first day. Once word gets out, things should pick up.”

  “So was it fun?”

  “Yeah.” Lexi grinned at me, as if just remembering the smell of imported salami was enough to make her day. “It was fun. Hard work, but fun.”

  “Anybody we know show up for opening day?”

  Lexi rattled off a bunch of names I knew, some of my dad’s old coworkers, some of Bart’s friends, her old history teacher, who was also my history teacher last year. I waited for her to say Mona’s name, but before she could finish Bart walked into the room, his hair still wet. Which meant his bottle of Selsun Blue was uncapped in the shower, waiting for me to get in and spill dandruff shampoo down my legs.

  “Hey, Kendra.” He walked over to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of water. “We missed you today.”

  I seriously doubted Bart missed me for one minute all day long. But what I didn’t doubt was that Lexi had complained to him about my absence, so he had to say something.

  “Lexi said you had a good day.”

  “Not bad for day one,” he agreed, and took the seat between Lexi and me. “We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”

  I looked from Bart to Lexi and back again, picturing them ten years from now sitting at a table just like this, having this same conversation with each other. Lexi would be rubbing her foot with moisturizing peppermint balm, Bart would be wearing his faded Green Thumbs Landscaping, T-shirt, and there’d probably be two or three kids running around the table, playing Duck Duck Goose or something. It would be exactly what Lexi said she always wanted, ever since she was a freshman and Bart, a junior, asked her to the movies. They were inseparable after that, and even before they were married they shared holidays at both families’ houses, signed presents to us from both of them.

  Nobody was surprised when, at Lexi’s graduation party, Bart handed her a small square box and asked her to marry him. He’d been working at Green Thumbs for two years at that point, working his way up to foreman before quitting to help get the deli off the ground. Lexi’s plans after graduation included a job at the Vineyard Gazette answering phones, but what she really planned was to spend the rest of her life on the island with Bart. Needless to say, once Bart dropped to his knee Lexi immediately screamed yes, practically tackled the guy, and turned her graduation party into an engagement party. She also proceeded to spend the next two weeks either holding her left hand up to her chest so others could admire the yellow gold band with the single round diamond, or fanning it out in front of her so should could admire it herself.

  Mona, who was at the party and witnessed the engagement fanfare firsthand, nudged me and asked, “Do you think she’s pregnant?”

  “God, I hope not,” I’d told her, thinking one Lexi was enough for a while.

  Once she agreed that Lexi couldn’t be pregnant, mostly because she’d toasted her own engagement at least six times with the champagne my dad ran out and bought at the liquor store, Mona thought it was cool. She thought Lexi was lucky to meet Bart and immediately know she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. I didn’t say anything, but I was sure Mona’s idealization of teenagers falling in love and living happily ever after had something to do with Izzy’s situation. I think Mona wanted to believe that if Izzy had spent more time with Mona’s dad, if it had been more than one summer night, an impulsive decision with ramifications that would last way longer than their time together, there would have been that fairy-tale ending for her mom. So it’s kind of ironic that seventeen years later Izzy sort of got her fairy-tale ending, her prince, the castle, the whole deal. It’s just that the prince wasn’t Mona’s real dad, and I think that was the point of the fairy tale to begin with.

  But as Mona was gushing about how much fun it was going to be to plan Lexi’s wedding and pick out my bridesmaid dress, I kept thinking about how Lexi had just made a decision for the rest of her life. This was it. She was eighteen years old and had pretty much just laid out what her life would be like forever.

  While my parents liked Bart, they weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of Lexi getting married right out of high school. So they made her promise that she and Bart would wait a bit, at least until Lexi had a job and they’d saved some money. So two years later, on Valentine’s Day, Lexi and Bart were married. The thing was, they spent everything they’d saved on the wedding, which was why shortly thereafter they moved in with us.

  And that’s why I knew that Bart never remembered to put the cap on his shampoo, that he shaved with a Schick Quattro razor he kept right next to my toothbrush, and that Sports Illustrated was his reading material of choice. Because now I shared my bathroom with Bart and Lexi—and with any money they’d saved going into the deli, it looked like they’d be my bathroommates for a while longer.

  “Is anyone hungry for dinner?” my mom asked, shuffling into the kitchen in her fuzzy slippers. “Hi, sweetie.” She bent down and kissed me on the top of my head.

  “God no,” Lexi moaned. “No food.”

  “Me neither,” Bart agreed.

  Apparently I was the only one not snacking on cole slaw and pickle chips and cold cuts all day, because even my mom wasn’t interested.

  “Oh, good, I was afraid you guys would actually want a meal. Kendra, how about a sandwich?”

  “I guess that’s fine,” I told her, and hoped that sandwiches weren’t going to become the official meal food of the Bryant household. “I’ll have peanut butter and jelly.”<
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  “Great, there’s some whole wheat and some white in the cabinet, so it’s your choice.”

  Nobody jumped up to demonstrate their newfound sandwich-making skills, Lexi didn’t suggest a nice dill pickle on the side, and Bart didn’t ask if I’d like a soda with that.

  “Lexi said you guys had a good day,” I told my mom, reaching into the cupboard for the peanut butter.

  “You know, it didn’t go bad. I can make that for you if you’d like,” she offered, pointing to the jar in my hand as she rolled her head from side to side like she was trying to stretch her neck. “I must have made twenty of those today, most with the crust cut off.”

  I used to ask her to do that, too. But while my mom’s offer was tempting, she didn’t look like she was in any shape to be making another sandwich.

  “I’m going into the family room to lie on the couch and read,” she told us, shuffling out of the kitchen as if just lifting her feet required more energy than she could possibly exert.

  “You missed it,” Lexi said as she pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “I’m telling you, you’re missing all of the fun.”

  Lexi took Bart’s hand and led him out of the kitchen. But so far she hadn’t convinced me I was missing anything.

  By nine thirty the house was quiet. The door to Lexi and Bart’s room was closed as I passed by, and I stopped in front of it to check if she was complaining to Bart about me, but all I heard was heavy breathing. Breathing beat the other alternative, which, because Lexi’s headboard backed up against my bedroom wall, had actually forced me out of my own room in an effort to avoid the sounds on the other side.

  Tonight, though, I went downstairs because I was thirsty.

  “I think you’re the only one who didn’t pass out,” I told my dad when I found him watching TV and reading Sports Illustrated in the family room. He had his own subscription and didn’t share his copy with Bart, for obvious reasons. “Everyone else is sound asleep.”

  He laid the magazine facedown on his lap and looked up at me. “Let me tell you, anyone who says making sandwiches all day is easy has never made sandwiches all day.”

  “So how’d it go today, really?” I asked him, sitting on the arm of the couch. “The abridged version, please. I already heard the Lexi version.”

  My dad nodded. “Okay, in twenty words or less, I guess I’d have to say it was pretty good, all things considered,” he told me. “We’re all still learning.”

  “Was Lexi freaking out? Were four choices of mustard enough or did she wish she had a fifth?”

  My dad laughed. “Actually, she was pretty good most of the day, unless you count the potato chip incident.”

  “The potato chip incident?”

  “She didn’t tell you? I thought by now there wouldn’t be anyone left who hadn’t heard about it. I really thought she was going to call her friends at the Gazette and demand they write an exposé.”

  “So tell me.”

  My dad gave me a look that seemed to say, “Do I have to?”

  “Come on,” I chided, and slipped down off the armrest so I was seated next to him. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, but after this I never want to talk about potato chips again.”

  “Deal,” I told him.

  Apparently Lexi wanted the deli to carry as many natural products as possible, which was why she selected a brand of potato chips that claimed to be all natural. “But when she was ringing up a bag for a customer, she glanced at the ingredient list and I thought she’d discovered they were made with arsenic or something.”

  “What was it?”

  My dad reached for my hand and squeezed. “It was horrible, Kendra. The worst.”

  “What? Was it gross, like mouse droppings or something?”

  “Oh, much worse than that.” My dad bit his knuckle and pretended to be mortified. “Two words: ‘trans fat.’ ”

  I laughed at him. “Okay, so what did she do?”

  “You’d have thought the label said the chips were boiled in human blood. She insisted we take them all off the shelf and not sell them. We had six hundred bags of potato chips in the back room and she wanted to just ditch them. Your mom finally talked some sense into her, but let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.”

  “What did Bart say?”

  “What could he say? That she’s nuts?”

  “I would.”

  My dad reached for my hand and patted it against his. “I know you would.”

  “When did Lexi become so anal-retentive?”

  “I don’t know, but let me tell you, I will never look at a bag of potato chips the same way again.”

  “Are you watching this?” I pointed to the TV.

  “Nope, it’s all yours.” He reached for the remote control and handed it to me. “What about you? How’s work going?”

  “Okay.”

  “I realize things have been kind of crazy around here. Your mom and I know it’s not easy on you.”

  “It’s not so bad,” I told him. “But I think I’ve had my fill of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a while.”

  My dad smiled, put his arm around me, and pulled me into him. “I know, just hang in there. Soon the deli will be a fine-tuned machine and things will get back to normal.”

  I laid my head on his shoulder. “You mean I’ll get my bathroom back?”

  “Okay, maybe not that normal. Soon, though, I promise.” He lifted my hand to his face and laid a kiss on my knuckles.

  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did Mona come into the deli today?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see her.”

  I didn’t answer right away and my dad noticed.

  “What’s wrong, Kendra?”

  “It’s nothing. She just said she might stop by.”

  “Not today. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Maybe this was what Mona really wanted, not the Barbie or to discover where the imaginary bump on her nose came from. Maybe she just wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and have him ask her what’s wrong. “I’m kind of tired, I’m going to head upstairs. Good night, Dad. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, sweetheart.”

  Chapter 13

  Weddings are everywhere on the island during the summer, so I should have known that sooner or later some bride would sweep into the Willow to fulfill her dream of a Vineyard wedding. On Saturday morning the entire staff was running around making sure things were just so for the future Mrs. Edward Smithers from New Jersey and the rest of the bridal party, who had reserved practically every room at the inn. Tamara and Susan were responsible for seating the entire bridal party—four bridesmaids, four ushers, two flower girls, a ring bearer, and assorted family members—and serving them breakfast (blueberry pancakes, in keeping with the wedding’s blue theme). Marcus spent an hour going through the checklist Wendy handed him first thing in the morning, when we all gathered in the kitchen to get our special assignments. The list had at least ten items on it, including placing a single blue hydrangea at the foot of every guest’s door, instead of the morning paper, and arranging fifty little silver bells on the side table next to the front stairs. According to Wendy, the guests were supposed to take a bell to the ceremony at the church, where they’d ring them instead of tossing rice and spare the bride the guilt, and mess, of exploding birds. Lexi had thought the same thing, which was why she had us all blow soap bubbles instead of tossing rice. I had looked it up on Google and told Lexi the whole exploding-bird thing was an urban myth. She had the bubbles anyway.

  “Kendra, can you please deliver these upstairs to room twelve when you’re done with the lunches?” Wendy asked me as soon as breakfast was over. She handed me a vase overflowing with purply blue lilacs. They smelled amazing. “And take this card.”

  Room 12 was different than the rest of the guest rooms, and not just because it had its own private stairway (all
the other rooms were accessed from the main staircase in the front foyer). Room 12 was at the end of a long hallway between room 11 and room 14 (there was no room 13). If the Willow were some tacky hotel with Jacuzzis in the shape of champagne glasses, room 12 probably would have been called the bridal suite. But here it was just room 12. And I’d been dying to see it.

  “Should I call up first?” I asked, taking the arrangement from Wendy.

  “Nope, they’re out for a bit checking in at the church. Just take it up.”

  The lilacs sat on the kitchen counter while I filled the few lunch orders we had. Because most of the inn was filled with wedding guests, nobody was going to the beach. They were just killing time before heading to the church.

  When the last ham and Gruyère sandwich was wrapped and placed into the picnic basket, I carefully wrapped my arms around the vase, careful not to spill any of the water on my shirt, and headed up the narrow staircase to room 12. And for the first time since I’d worked at the inn, the brochure didn’t do reality justice.

  The entire room was white, from the down comforter to the elaborately carved headboard to the chaise angled in the corner beside double windows overlooking the garden below. Even the hardwood floors were whitewashed and covered with a thick white area rug so deep, I felt my shoes sink into it as I walked over to the dresser and set down the vase, taking one last sniff of the bouquet.

  And, of course, there was a white lace canopy bed.

  I stood there in the room and contemplated what I should do. What were the chances I’d ever be up in this room again? How many times does a girl get to feel what it’s like to have her dreams come true? Not many, and that’s why I walked to the door and peered down the stairwell before closing the door behind me and turning the lock.

  I made my way back to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, feeling the down give way beneath me as I pushed myself into the center of the bed. Then I lay back, resting my head on the decorative pillow covered in white linen and edged in satin so shiny it almost looked wet. And for the next five minutes I stared up at that lace canopy, thinking that this was exactly the kind of room I pictured I’d be in when I lost my virginity. Instead, I almost got the backseat of a green Ford Taurus.