Free Summer People by Elin Hilderbrand

believed it was possible. “But don’t bring me flowers or anything.”
    “No purple cosmos?” he said.
    That hit too close to home. Beth shut her eyes, remembering the flowers wilting in her hand because she held them so tightly. They left golden dust on her skin.
    “I’m sorry, Beth,” he said.
    “You don’t know what I’m like these days,” she said. “Boiled turnips can make me cry.” She wiped her eyes. “Just take me home. I need to shower. Take a nap. And I don’t want the kids worrying about where I am.”
    They drove to her house in silence, and then Beth leapt from the van. She needed David to drive away before anyone saw him. “I’ll expect you at seven,” she said.
    “You’re sure about this?” he said.
    “I’m sure.”
    He waved. “Looking forward to it.”
    As Beth headed inside, she noticed the mail basket was full. Already, some of her mail had been forwarded from New York. There were two bills, a credit card solicitation addressed to Archer Newton, and a letter for Marcus. The return address was 247 Harris Road, Bedford Hills, New York. It was a letter from Constance Tyler.

    Garrett watched his mother closely from the minute she walked in the door from her run. The first thing she did was to look in the hallway mirror—the one that she and Uncle Danny and Uncle Scott had decorated with scallop shells in their youth— and groan.
    “I look like a dirt sandwich,” she said.
    Although she hadn’t acknowledged him, Garrett assumed the comment was for his benefit, and that he was expected to refute it.
    “What do you care what you look like?” he said.
    She turned, apparently surprised to see him there, sitting at the kitchen table, eating a lunch that he’d made himself. It might seem a small detail, but Garrett was keeping track of the fact that three days into the summer, neither his mother nor Winnie had offered to make him lunch, although they both fell over themselves to prepare food for Marcus.
    “Garrett,” she said. “It’s two-thirty.”
    “So?”
    “So, don’t you think it’s a little late to be eating such a big lunch? We’re having dinner at seven.”
    As if he were likely to forget “the dinner,” which, judging by the way his mother cleaned this morning, was a bigger event than she originally promised.
    “I’ll manage,” he said.
    As his mother walked toward him, he saw that she was holding some envelopes. She waved one in the air. “Where’s Marcus?”
    “I have no idea,” Garrett said, though he had every idea. Marcus was on the beach. Alone. Winnie had come running up about forty-five minutes earlier in a state. It seemed Marcus had given Winnie some flak about not eating.
As if my digestive tract is his concern,
Winnie said in this bitchy, conspiratorial way, nudging Garrett to agree with her. Although Garrett wanted nothing more than to gang up on Marcus, it wasn’t going to be for that reason. In this instance, Marcus was right: Winnie needed to eat. Garrett said as much to Winnie and she stomped up the stairs, her empty stomach clenched in fury against him.
    “Well, can you find him for me, please?” Beth said. “There’s a letter for him.”
    “I think he’s on the beach,” Garrett said. “He can read it when he comes up.”
    “It’s a letter from Constance,” Beth said. “It can’t wait.”
    There was faulty logic there somewhere, but clearly this letter had put ants in his mother’s pants and so Garrett walked out onto the deck and was about to yell down to the beach when he saw Marcus marching up the rickety stairs, loaded down like a pack mule with all the beach stuff—towels, beach bag, and Winnie’s chaise lounge. Once Marcus reached the deck, he dropped the stuff and rubbed his eyes.
    “Whoa,” he said. “I fell asleep down there.”
    Garrett studied him. He heard the clink of glasses in the beach bag and realized that Marcus and Winnie had been drinking. The Malibu, probably. How easy it would be to bust this kid,