Doris swiveled around, showing off her flour-dusted, once-peacock-blue shirt, which was speckled with lemon zest. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Come, sit with me, have coffee,” Georgia said. “I’m checking the blueberries for stems.”
Hannah flipped on the hand mixer. “We’re making your Nannie’s blueberry lemon cake,” she yelled over the whir. “Did we wake you?”
Boop chose a mug and poured a cup of coffee. “No, I had to get up to eat cake.”
Hannah tipped back her head and laughed.
Boop sat at the kitchen table with Georgia. “When did you plan this little baking party?”
“No plan,” Doris said. “I woke up earlier and heard . . .” She glanced at Hannah.
“She heard me throwing up,” Hannah said.
Oh.
“And then fifteen minutes later she was digging through the kitchen cabinets looking for something sweet,” Doris said. “So here we are.”
“By then, I was awake,” Georgia said.
Georgia picked stems and tossed blueberries from one bowl to the next. “Why don’t you look happier? Whatever else happens or doesn’t, there’s going to be a baby!”
Boop’s own unplanned and outside-of-wedlock pregnancy was a shanda; her grandparents had been so ashamed. It was something to be hidden. She was to be hidden. For Hannah it was coffee klatch fodder.
“Hannah, come sit,” Georgia said.
Hannah shut off the mixer, balanced the blades on the side of the bowl, and sat at the table.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no right or wrong,” Georgia said. “Get married now, later, or never. It has to be right for you.”
“Wasn’t it ever right for you?” Hannah asked.
If Georgia answered, this would officially be the summer that nothing was off-limits.
“All I wanted to be was a doctor. Not a wife, not a mother.”
“I don’t think you ever allowed yourself to want those things,” Doris said.
“Perhaps. But I wanted to be a doctor because I had a sister who died when she was three days old. I never met her. She would have been the oldest, so twelve years older than me. My whole life I just wanted to keep babies healthy.”
Boop held Georgia’s hand. How Georgia had wished there had been a gravesite to visit nearby for Imogen, but her parents had moved to South Haven from Detroit. By the time they had moved away, Imogen might have been married with babies of her own.
One winter around Imogen’s birthday, Boop and Georgia had collected frozen sprigs of fallen pine, tied them with a pink ribbon, and set the bundle on the river, where they saw it resting on the ice until the spring thaw.
“I didn’t get married until I was twenty-two,” Doris said. “My parents thought I was going to be an old maid. I do think good things come to those who wait.”
“You’re old but you’re not an old maid,” Georgia said to Doris.
Hannah chuckled.
“It wasn’t funny back then,” Boop said.
“Do you have regrets?” Hannah asked. “Any of you?”
“No,” Doris said. “I mean, I regret that my husbands died and that two of my marriages failed. So, I guess that’s my answer. But I don’t think of them being regrets as much as being sad reasons for brand-new opportunities.”
“My regret might be not being closer to my nieces and nephews. I spent so many years taking care of children that when it came to my family I only got involved if someone was sick,” Georgia said.
“You were always good to me and Emma,” Hannah said.
“My sometimes granddaughters.” Georgia leaned over and hugged Hannah.
“What about you, Boop?” Hannah asked.
Boop hesitated, but if she meant to finally be honest this summer—with Hannah and herself . . . “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to go to college and push myself. To be someone in addition to a wife and mother.” Or other than. “But I’m not sorry I married your grandfather if that’s what you’re asking. I wouldn’t have your dad or you or Emma.”
“What do you think you would have become?”
“Your grandmother wanted to be a fashion editor,” Georgia said.
“At a big fancy magazine,” Doris said. “In New York.”
Hannah grinned. “Your grandparents didn’t want you to take over the resort?”
“They never pressured me. Not when it came to my education. Zaide thought he’d run the resort forever. Never talked about retiring. They didn’t count on the whole industry and all the resorts failing in the late sixties.”
“What happened?”
“Highways, affordable airfares, summer camps, working mothers.”
“So it would have worked out for you to stay in New York. Magazines didn’t start to tank until the 2000s.”
“Who knows what would’ve happened to me?” Would she have been encouraged or discouraged, redirected? Would she have been able to compete with the other girls? Boop still believed she would have liked New York, and that a future built on her abilities, intellect, and passion would have differed from the one she built on the top of a Magic Chef.
Hannah poured the blueberries into the batter, and the batter into a cake pan. She placed it in the oven and set the timer.
Georgia patted the chair next to her. “Marriage is a big decision, and if all this is a surprise . . .”
“It might be a surprise but maybe this baby is what you need,” Doris said.
Georgia shushed Doris. “Hannah, would you want to marry Clark if you weren’t having a baby?”
Boop should have been the one to ask, but she couldn’t. Even hearing Georgia say it singed her heart.
Hannah slouched. “Probably not now. But maybe eventually. We weren’t talking about kids yet. We both wanted them—but later.”
“No time like the present,” Doris said. “Take it as a sign.”
“Please don’t tell her to take one of the biggest decisions of her life as a sign,” Boop said. “This should be a deliberate and joint decision. You know what? That’s what’s wrong here.”
“What?” Hannah asked.
“This isn’t about a fairy tale, or what happened to me. It’s about you and Clark. No matter what you decide, the baby will
