We extend our best wishes to beautiful Betty for a speedy recovery.
Boop mouthed the words as she read. She felt Georgia’s arm around her, holding on. She heard Doris’s breathing. Boop stared at the photo of the girl they’d called beautiful, and felt no connection to her. That was a different person—which didn’t seem right. She’d felt as if her life had been interrupted, so that there was before and after. The unidentifiable middle was in that photo.
Boop saw crisp lines, a purple swimsuit from a New York boutique, and a pink sash instead of grainy shades of black, gray, and white.
Of course it was the only photo or mention of her; Nannie and Zaide would have seen to that. They didn’t even announce her engagement or marriage to Marvin in the newspapers. “Too many questions, and not enough answers,” Nannie had said. Rumors had swirled. Lies were told.
Boop traced her finger along the sash, which looked dull and ordinary.
“Do you remember something?” Natalie asked.
“The suit was purple.”
“That’s a lovely detail. Does this mean you were there? Did you know this girl?”
Georgia held her tighter, and Boop didn’t know if it was an attempt to encourage or discourage what came next.
Foggy moments drifted back to her consciousness. Her parents in the audience. Marvin too. The beach. All the images in her head looked faded by sunlight.
“I’m that girl, Natalie.” She folded the paper and handed it back. “I’m the runaway bathing beauty. Or I was.” Even for Boop it was hard to believe. The girl in that photo had been trim and toned and giddy. She was rich with dreams and expectations. Her disheveled appearance in the photograph made it almost look like she had known what would happen next.
Natalie gasped, then leaned over and hugged her. “This is more than I could have hoped for. I’m going to look so good at the next meeting, saying, ‘My friend, Boop Peck, was the last Miss South Haven.’ Can you tell me what happened that day? But if it’s too much or you want me to keep it a secret, I will.”
“No more secrets,” Boop said.
“She was suffering from exhaustion,” Georgia said.
“Oh, that’s terrible,” Natalie said.
“It was,” Boop said.
Before she said anything else, the girls ushered her away.
Boop’s next few hours passed in a blur of box kites, beach umbrellas, and oversize SUVs that blocked her view of the lake. Remembering the Miss South Haven contest, where the threads holding her life together unraveled quicker than a ball of wool chased by a rambunctious kitten.
It was there, on that day, that her life lay in temporary ruin and permanent redirection. What did the kids say? Own it. Still, it was her redirection, her life that followed. Hannah’s thoughts about how Abe had led her to Marvin applied to the pageant as well. Perhaps every event had been preordained. She’d never been meant for another life or another love. Maybe even without the pregnancy it all would have ended—Abe, Miss South Haven, Barnard. But if that were so, the longing inside her would not have resurfaced, the memories wouldn’t pinch her heart. She wouldn’t be in her eighties and wondering what if.
Doris stepped onto the porch and set a light shawl over Boop’s shoulders. Georgia followed with a cup of tea. Boop didn’t want any tea. They thought she was sick.
“I knew it was a mistake to go poking around in the past,” Georgia whispered.
“Should we call Hannah? Or Stuart?” Doris asked.
“I’ll call them later,” Boop said. “I’m fine.” She would be fine—wasn’t she always?
Gathering the corners of the shawl with one hand, she felt the widening stitches and the wearing yarn. Nannie had crocheted this shawl for herself when Boop was seventeen. For years Boop had stored it in a tight-lidded plastic shirt box, folded in layers of white tissue paper and sprinkled with mothballs. Whenever she would open the box, the pungent and toxic smell would mean the shawl was safe, that she could wrap it around her as if it were Nannie herself. She was older than Nannie had ever been, but she was also that young girl sometimes—lately more so than usual, or maybe than was healthy.
The weight of the shawl transmitted only the wonder of Nannie to the forefront of Boop’s thoughts. Her grandmother had knitted, sewed, cooked, baked, operated a resort, sustained a marriage, raised a son, watched him leave home to rarely return, and then raised her granddaughter. Yetta Stern had been the small, strong, grand dame of South Haven, who accomplished much and who had dared to dream on behalf of her granddaughter. That was, until her and Zaide’s guidance had gone askew.
Boop had tried to right the wrongs of the past. To teach Hannah the lesson Boop wished she had learned.
Energy surged through her. A jolt of recognition of a forgotten tenacity—to help herself.
Hannah doesn’t need to learn from the past; I do.
Boop should have been using those long-ago experiences as a way to understand what Hannah needed from her. Not what Hannah should do or think or feel. If they wanted to get married, Boop would support it. Clark was a good young man, just like Abe had been, maybe not someone she would have chosen for Hannah but that wasn’t her job. Boop didn’t need to see it, feel it, or know it; she needed to trust Hannah the way she wished she’d been trusted.
Boop left the shawl on the back of her chair and walked into the house. The girls followed.
She lifted her cell phone from the end table.
“Who are you calling?” Georgia asked.
Boop placed her index finger to her lips and turned to the window. Gulls dipped and soared and spun as if she had a front-row seat to a bird ballet. The phone clicked its connection.
“Hi, Boop,” Hannah whispered. “I’m sorry I
