Her spirit hadn’t waned. Emerson helped me lead Mom, very slowly, into the bathroom to complete her morning routine.
I knew she would be exhausted by the time we were finished. It would take all the energy she had to simply complete her everyday tasks.
“I’m going to get this hair looking good,” Emerson said.
I looked down at my watch. It was nearly eight thirty. I heard a light rap on the door. I was still in my robe with no makeup and hair pulled back into the squatty ponytail that was all my shoulder-length hair could manage. “Sloane,” I half-yelled, half-whispered. “Get the door and take Jack into the kitchen.”
If he was safely stowed away there, I could sneak upstairs and get presentable.
“Where’s your mom?” I heard Jack ask.
“Oh, she’s hiding in Grammy’s room so you won’t see her without her makeup.”
She would pay for this. I had brought her into this world, and I could take her out of it. Emerson was still with Mom in the bathroom, and Jack peeked his head in. I pretended that I was making the bed, not hiding.
“Hey,” he said, winking.
I threw a pillow at him and put another one up to my face. “I will be ready in ten minutes. I promise.”
“I think you look great now.”
I couldn’t see his face because mine was covered with a pillow. On the one hand, it was silly. The man and I had been through everything together, and he had certainly seen me without my makeup before. But I was young then. Fresh. Wrinkle-free. Now I had to keep up appearances, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, keep him interested. You know, just in case.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, JACK and I were standing on the teak deck of his beautiful boat. It felt so rewarding to see one of my completed projects. “So,” he said, “brought back a lot of memories getting high with you last night. Good times.”
I swatted him playfully. “It was only once, Jack,” I said, remembering as clearly as if it had happened the day before sitting in the cabin of Bobby Franklin’s boat with Jack, Sandra, Emily, Bobby, and their friend Craig, passing around an ill-rolled joint, feeling very, very rebellious.
“Twice,” he said.
“That must have been another girl.” It was silly, but I felt jealous, thinking of Georgia. Her car had been at Jack’s house for quite some time the day before, much longer than your general Realtor check-in. But this was what I deserved. I had told him we couldn’t be together. What did I expect?
“It was not another girl,” he said. “It was you and me over by the lighthouse. And then we . . .” He wiggled his eyebrows.
I put my hand over my mouth and could feel the blush coming up my cheeks. “Jack!” I scolded. But then I said, “How could I have forgotten that night?”
He smiled up at me, and our eyes met for a bit too long. I couldn’t help but think of how something similar had transpired between us in this very boat a couple months earlier. If I was honest with myself, I wanted it to happen again. We were standing so close together, the energy between us so thick you could almost see it. I wondered, briefly, what would happen if I leaned over and kissed him. Just this once. What could it possibly hurt?
Jack clapped his hands as if to snap us both out of it. “OK,” he said, leaning down and picking up the big bag from my store I had dropped on the deck.
“Jack,” I said.
He looked up at me again, and said, “I can’t, Ansley. I can’t even think about the start of this road when I know where it ends.”
The impulsive part of me, the part that still loved that boy as much as I had that night on the beach by the lighthouse, wanted to tell him the road didn’t have to end, that I had been stupid and made a snap decision. But then I thought of all the people getting ready to get on this boat and how much they needed me. My mother was dying, for heaven’s sake. This was not the time to be kissing high school crushes on their beautiful yachts. Before I could say anything, Jack handed me a pillow. I had covered the banquette around the dining table in blue-and-white-striped Sunbrella, and combined with these pillows, it would be a plush and comfy place for Mom to hang out.
I turned around to see them all. My mother, frail and tiny wrapped in a blanket despite the heat, James on one side, Hippie Hal on the other. Coffee Kyle was carrying Preston, which struck me as immensely funny. Sloane was holding Taylor, who was already in his life jacket, and AJ was swinging between Emerson and Mark.
Kimmy ran onto the dock. When she reached us, she stopped, her hands on her knees, panting. “Phew!” she said. “I was afraid I was going to miss the boat.”
“Me too,” Jack said. To everyone else I’m sure it seemed like nothing. But, to me, his words felt heavy, laced with longing and what’s more, anticipation.
“I sure am glad you didn’t,” Hal said. “How would you have ever gotten all the way over to Starlite?”
We all turned our heads and laughed. It was a laughably short distance. With all the preparation, the food, the tents, the lights, the massive amount of planning crammed into a very short window, all of us gathering on this huge boat as though we were off on a grand voyage, we had forgotten this was a journey we could have taken via kayak, or, had we been strong swimmers, no vessel at all.
“More importantly,” Mom said, “who would have brought my pot brownies?”
That set everyone off again. It was a good start. I was afraid this would feel like a funeral, somber and heavy. But it didn’t. It was a party for
