Free Beach Girls by Luanne Rice

.”
    “Enjoy the summer day,” Emma had repeated, with something dark in her eyes that Stevie had taken to mean that this was a lesson she had to learn. Why should happiness be so hard? Did girls who still had their mothers feel it much easier? Yet she couldn't block out the picture of Emma taking that ten-dollar bill from the shopping cart. . . .
    Those memories were in Stevie's mind as she fed the baby crow.
    Her thoughts of Emma turned to Nell and Jack. The man's eyes looked bruised—as if he had been beaten up. She stroked the bird's ruffled black back. If she could save its life, help it to live, somehow she'd be honoring Emma and the daughter she'd left behind.
    Or maybe there was another, better way.

Chapter 6
    WHEN NELL AND HER FATHER WALKED
home from their noontime meeting at the boardwalk, they found a note stuck in their screen door. Nell saw the drawing of two birds and cried out, “It's from Stevie!”
    Her father read the message: “You are cordially invited to dinner with me and Tilly, tonight, six o'clock.” It was signed “SM,” with a cat sitting on top of the letters.
    “Can we go, can we go?” Nell asked.
    “I have a lot of work,” her father said.
    “Work, work,
work!
” she said, her hands on her hips, feeling a tidal wave of frustration. “What kind of vacation is this? I know—I'll bet Francesca is bringing papers down, and you have to have dinner with her.”
    “No. As a matter of fact, I told her to fax them.” He gave a slow smile that meant Nell was going to get her way.
    “Well?” Nell grinned. “Then we really have no excuse! We're goin' to Stevie's!”
     
    AND THEY DID.
At six o'clock sharp they walked up Stevie's hill. Nell wore her best yellow sundress with white daisies embroidered around the hem. Her father was wearing chinos and a blue shirt, and Nell had seen him smoothing his too-long hair behind his ears the way he did when he wanted to look nice and realized he should have gotten a haircut. Nell held a bouquet of wildflowers she had picked at the end of the beach. Her father carried a bottle of wine.
    They knocked on the screen door. Tilly was sitting right inside, and she gave an evil, toothless hiss. Nell jumped, then giggled.
    “You must be Tilly,” her father said.
    “Right you are,” Stevie said, letting them in. She looked really pretty, with her dark hair combed and shiny, one smooth bird's-wing curl on each cheek. Her eyes were made up, and she wore a white shirt over blue jeans. Nell beamed, wishing Peggy could see Stevie now: she looked so beautiful and bright.
    “We brought you flowers!” Nell said, handing her the bouquet. “We picked them at the end of the beach! Did you used to go there with Mom and Aunt Maddie? Did you pick flowers there, too?”
    “Nell, slow down!” her dad said.
    But Stevie was wonderful. She knew that Nell was giving her much more than a few stalks of aster, beach heather, and Queen Anne's lace: she knew that Nell was giving her the chance to remember her two best friends. She crouched down, looked Nell right in the eyes, and nodded. “That's exactly where we used to go to pick flowers,” she said.
    Nell shot her father a smile and a look of triumph.
    Stevie stood up, looking at the bottle in Nell's father's hand. “Would you mind opening that while I put these in water?” she asked. “You look like maybe you could use a glass.”
     
    JACK WAS GLAD
for something to do. Stevie handed him a corkscrew and pointed at a shelf filled with glasses. He couldn't find two alike. They were all different heights and sizes—some with stems, some short and round, some clear crystal, others colored glass. Engineers and architects tended to like things in order, matched, symmetrical. Stevie, her house, and her glasses threw him off balance. He wound up choosing two, with different length stems. She asked him to pour her a ginger ale.
    Nell also had ginger ale. Jack watched her face as Stevie garnished all three drinks with