Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

He realized he still hadn’t said anything.

“We’ll come to your house… in a little while,” the Chief said.

“Okay,” Jeffrey said. And then he thought, Andrea . “Does Andrea know?”

The Chief cleared his throat. “Not yet. I’m going to find her. Tell her in person.”

Jeffrey and Delilah had been friends with the Chief and Andrea-and Tess and Greg and Phoebe and Addison-for years and years. They hung out every weekend, they checked in, they helped out, lending a hand with the everyday stuff- Would you drop me off at Nantucket Auto Body so I can get my car? Can I borrow your deep fryer? They had taken six vacations as a group, but only rarely did Jeffrey’s old feelings for Andrea resurface as they did this second. He thought, I will go tell her. I will tell her in person. Jeffrey had known Tess since she was fifteen years old. When Andrea and Jeffrey started dating, Tess was still in high school in Boston. But the Chief was the Chief. It was hard to argue with his authority or his sense of ownership in situations like this one. Andrea was his wife.

“Okay,” Jeffrey said. Delilah and the kids were walking toward the car. He had to follow them home. He would tell Delilah first, and they would wait for the Chief and Andrea before they told the kids. Andrea-what would she do? Tess was her pet, her doll, her treasure. When Jeffrey and Andrea lived together and Tess came to visit, Andrea and Tess slept in the bed side by side while Jeffrey took the couch. And then there was that weird week this past fall when Tess and Greg had separated. Tess had taken the kids and moved in with Andrea and the Chief. For Andrea, losing Tess would be like losing a sister. Like losing a child.

Jeffrey was sweaty and grimy and his side hurt. He was heavy with the news, impossibly burdened with the prospect of sharing it.

He hung up with the Chief and hurried to catch Delilah. He tapped on her window. She turned, put down the window. The radio was blaring, as always; the kids were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to a rock song Jeffrey had never heard before. The whole car smelled like strawberries.

Jeffrey looked at Chloe and Finn. The twins were carefree now; they would be carefree for another hour or so. The thought was hideous to him.

“I’m going to follow you home,” Jeffrey said.

“What?” Delilah said. “Why?”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said.

The Summer of Me: it was a joke, but not really. Andrea Kapenash had been a parent for sixteen years, which meant that for sixteen years her summers had consisted of wading pools, plastic beach toys, juice boxes, swim diapers, playgrounds, boogie boards, skim boards, surfboards, baseball camp, football camp, gymnastics camp, lacrosse camp, tennis lessons, golf lessons, sleep-overs, tents set up in the backyard, thousands of packed lunches, thousands of pick-ups and drop-offs, mosquito bites, missing flip-flops, and the constant application of sunscreen. Andrea loved her children, but she could never have predicted the joy she would feel at watching them spread their own wings. Her daughter, Kacy, scooped ice cream at the Juice Bar, a job she loved because she was always busy. The line was always out the door and Kacy felt she was in the center of things. Although it wasn’t exactly brain surgery, she was, in a small way, bringing happiness to people. When Kacy passed a hot fudge sundae across the counter, people smiled, they thanked her, they tipped her. Andrea’s son, Eric, worked two doors down at Young’s Bicycle Shop, setting people up with rental bikes, writing rental agreements, and when the shop wasn’t busy, he was in the back, doing repairs. The job played to his strengths: his easy, natural charm, his attention to detail, his love of tinkering with a machine. Eric had been born with the uncanny ability to fix anything, which had served him well, since the Chief was not handy at all, and furthermore was never home.

Andrea’s summer now fell into the pleasant routine of seeing the kids off to work and going about her day. She was free to do as she liked-go to lunch with Tess, Phoebe, or Delilah, go to the beach and swim to her heart’s content, read half a novel without interruption. She had time to walk into town to go shopping, she had time to linger at the farm truck, picking through vegetables, she had time to stop by the station and see her husband or surreptitiously check on her children working. The Summer of Me: she was an adult again, doing adult things.

She had the time now for simple kindnesses. For example, she had made the world’s most delicious picnic lunch for Tess and Greg’s sail to Martha’s Vineyard: chilled gazpacho with chunks of creamy avocado, lobster salad sandwiches on challah bread, potato salad with bacon and blue cheese, a fruit salad of strawberries, raspberries, mango, and mint, and chewy coconut macaroons. The picnic was an anniversary gift-though as a rule, they did not exchange gifts among their group-because this anniversary was special. It wasn’t the twelve-year milestone that was remarkable; it was the fact that Tess and Greg had managed to stay married through everything that had happened in the past nine months. Greg had been accused of committing a transgression last autumn with one of his students, and whether it had happened or not, the tempest surrounding the accusation would have been enough to topple the strongest fortress; it was the story that would not go away, the rumor that would not die. Everywhere Tess went, she said, she heard whispers. Every time Greg left the house, she harbored suspicions. They screamed, they yelled, they cried, they went into counseling, they gave up counseling, they separated for a week. And yet they hung in there. They stayed married. The anniversary should be celebrated.

Call me when you get home! Andrea said when she dropped off the picnic basket at Tess’s house that morning.

Okay, I will! Tess said. She was wearing a red bikini and jean shorts, and a pair of red sunglasses with white polka dots. In a lower, more serious voice, she said, Thank you for the picnic. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.

I know I didn’t, Andrea said. But I wanted to.

Andrea and Tess were first cousins. Their fathers were brothers, the mighty and formidable DiRosa brothers, both narcotics detectives for the Boston Police Department. Andrea had three younger brothers and Tess had three older brothers, so in addition to being cousins, they were sisters, the only DiRosa girls. Andrea was nine years older than Tess, so in addition to being cousins and sisters, they were mother and daughter.

In all of Andrea’s memories of childhood, she was wet. She was diving into the community pool at the YMCA, she was swimming fifty yards off the shore of Thompson Island, sluicing through the green water of Boston Harbor; she was a mermaid, the water was her natural habitat, it was hers and hers alone. Her brothers fooled around in the waves at the beach, but they didn’t swim the way Andrea did.

Andrea’s natural ability in the water gave her authority. Because she was so gifted at something, adults trusted her, they treated her like she was older; from the time she was twelve years old, she was allowed to baby-sit for Tess; she was allowed to take Tess for long walks in her stroller. When Andrea was fifteen and received her junior lifesaving certificate, she was allowed to lead beach excursions for her brothers and her cousins-eight DiRosa children, with Andrea in charge. Andrea swam butterfly for the Boston Latin swim team, and in her senior year she won the city championships in the 100-meter and 200-meter. That same year she pulled a grown man who had had a heart attack while swimming laps out of the middle of the pool at the Y. She was awarded a medal by the city council; her picture was in the Globe.