She was no longer accustomed to being alone.
How quickly she’d acclimated to talking to the girls instead of herself, to making reservations for three or four or five instead of calling for Delightful Buddha takeout, to walking around with a posse and a pocketful of memories and private jokes. Her cheeks still ached from all the smiling. Those weeks had filled up parts of her she didn’t know were empty—parts that were draining fast. She’d have her activities and her appointments, but that wasn’t the same as having someone close enough to hear their breathing, anticipate their habits, appreciate their imperfections. The same someone who might tell her to put her hands in the air if she started coughing, even if that remedy (which worked) had no medical soundness.
Hannah unzipped a section of the suitcase and pulled out the tackle box. Boop gasped as if she hadn’t placed it there herself.
“I remember this thing.” Hannah unlatched and opened the box.
“You do?” Boop lurched back, thinking memories would pour out, but when she leaned over and looked inside, it was empty.
She removed it from Hannah’s hands and the words spilled out as easily as the crayons had. “I used it as a hiding place, but I must have emptied it because when I checked it was empty. Well, not empty, but empty of my most special keepsake. It was the only reminder I had of the summer before I married your grandfather.”
Hannah stayed silent, her eyes intent. Boop knew she wasn’t being judged.
“I won the Miss South Haven pageant when I was eighteen,” Boop said.
“I wondered when you were going to tell me.”
“You knew?” Was everyone keeping secrets from her, the hypocrites?
“Natalie was worried that she’d upset you with the article. She found me online and sent a message. Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
“I promised your grandfather I’d erase everything from that summer that didn’t have to do with him.”
“Oh, Boop, I’m so sorry.”
“What’s done is done. I’d have liked to see that sash again though, especially with the new pageant this summer. So many memories.” Boop laughed. “Like walking around with a book on my head.”
“Could you do it?”
“Of course I could, but Georgia was better at it.” Boop allowed her words to drop off. “The summer of 1951 was really something. In so many ways.”
“And they gave you a pink sash embroidered with ‘Miss South Haven 1951’ in black?”
“How do you know?”
“Pop gave it to me and Emma one summer. He said to add it to our trunk of dress-up clothes.”
Boop’s limbs ran cold. Another betrayal. When would it end? Her throat thickened with sorrow and rage. “Pop gave you my sash?”
“We were little girls. We just didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“No one asked about it?”
“We went home to our mom’s that summer. I guess she didn’t think it was anything more than an old souvenir.”
The sash had been the only tangible reminder she’d had of the happy times that summer, before her life split into before and after. And Marvin had given it away.
He’d thought it would remain a secret, just like Georgia had.
“It wasn’t his to give away. It represented childhood dreams. College plans. Career goals. Summer love. I wasn’t hurting anyone by keeping it.”
Hannah cocked her head. Boop was wrong. Cherishing those memories hurt Marvin. She supposed giving away the sash had been his quiet revenge. She realized neither action had defined their life together.
“You need to talk to Clark,” Boop said. “To find out if the good in your relationship outweighs the hurt.”
“He’s in Traverse City this week at a craft show.”
“That’s not too far.”
“No, it’s not, but I’m not leaving you alone, and since he’s busy, it’s good timing.”
Few things were, so Boop would take it.
Later Boop walked downstairs and through the living room, where Hannah had sprawled onto the couch for a nap.
Boop smoothed the fabric of her periwinkle blue shorts that didn’t need smoothing. Anti-wrinkle fabrics would have been a godsend at Stern’s. She looked at her familiar surroundings, the ones she looked at every day but didn’t always see. She’d chosen a clichéd (and somewhat inaccurate) nautical decor with navy and white furniture and accents. Antique wooden tables that had adorned her childhood—and had the dings and scratches to prove it—held books and candles, figurines and art projects. Area rugs camouflaged the most worn paths on the solid oak floors that had never been replaced, though they pitched and buckled in spots everyone had learned to avoid. She walked to the sideboard and tapped the pictures of her grandparents next to ones of her great-grandsons. So many tchotchkes, some cheap yet treasured, others pricey but meaningless. What of it mattered?
Boop sat at the kitchen table, the weight of still-unspoken questions sat on her shoulders.
Hannah stepped into the kitchen and set store-bought chocolate-chip cookies onto the table and pulled out a plastic-wrapped sleeve. Nannie would have cringed. Boop helped herself to two.
Hannah sat across from Boop. “I have to ask. Do you think you would have run off with Abe? If you had known?”
Boop had dreamed of that scenario many times. The answer always unclear. “The truth?”
“Please.”
Boop had been so young, and scared, and her heart had been broken several times over. “I don’t know if I would have. But I’d have wanted to.”
Hannah furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Even though you were pregnant?”
The answer to this question would further undo Boop’s lifetime of secrets. “I would have wanted to because I was pregnant. Hannah . . .”
Hannah’s gaze flitted back and forth between the cookies and Boop. She furrowed her brow, then opened her eyes wide. Boop knew what came next.
“The baby was Abe’s, wasn’t it?” Hannah asked, but Boop knew it was rhetorical.
Boop was at once relieved and ashamed. She
