Uncle Brent jerked his thumb at my father. “Nope. J. T. made it.”
“Seriously?” Lobster Bob looked over at my father. “Are you willing to part with a few bottles? You can name your price. If it catches on, we’ll make it an exclusive line.”
My parents exchanged a glance. Our family was always looking for ways to make extra money. “Income streams,” my parents called them.
My father nodded. “Sure, why not?”
“It can’t be exclusive, though,” Aunt True said firmly. “We already carry the Terminator at Lovejoy’s Books. It’s one of our best sellers.”
I happened to know that this was a teeny white lie. Maybe even a medium-size one. I’d overheard my parents and Aunt True talking about carrying the hot sauce at the bookstore as one of our sidelines—the official name for everything that bookstores sell that aren’t books—but nothing had come of it yet, as far as I knew.
Lobster Bob nodded. “I understand. Still, I’m definitely interested.”
Teaching Mackenzie how to liberate the lobster meat from its shell was harder than teaching her how to eat a steamed clam. We Lovejoys had all had lobster before, of course. Gramps and Lola had taken us over to the seacoast plenty of times when we visited. But most of the Gifford clan hadn’t. Lobster wasn’t exactly a Lone Star State specialty. It took a lot of work to get through that armorlike outer shell, and the nutcrackers and picks that Lobster Bob had brought along to help were practically airborne as my family members passed them back and forth.
“Check it out!” crowed my father. We looked over to see him pick up a lobster claw in his prosthetic hand’s titanium fingers. He squeezed, and there was an audible CRACK!
“Sweeeet!” hollered my cousin Matt. “Do it again, Uncle Jericho!”
The younger cousins abandoned their hot dog feast at the far end of the table to scamper over and watch this new trick. “No one wins against… the Terminator!” my father cackled, and they all squealed obligingly as he cracked another claw.
Across the table, my mother gave Aunt True a misty smile. Aunt True smiled back. I knew exactly what they were both thinking. They were thinking what I was thinking, that my father had come a long way this past year since his injury. He’d gone from soldier to civilian, pilot to entrepreneur, and most importantly, from Silent Man—our name for the brooding stranger who had returned to us from Afghanistan—back to his own silly, fun-loving self, the father we’d always known and adored, who could joke around with his brothers-in-law, effortlessly entertain his nieces and nephews, and make light of his own hardship.
“That high-tech device of yours could come in mighty handy in this line of work,” deadpanned Lobster Bob. “If you ever need another job, Mr. Lovejoy, I’ll hire you.”
My father raised the lobster claw in a mock salute.
“Clambake coma!” declared Hatcher a little while later, slumping forward and pretending to do a face-plant on his paper plate.
“No kidding,” I groaned. I hadn’t been this full since—well, since dinner last night.
As the catering crew circled the long row of tables passing out warm washcloths so we could wipe off our hands and faces, I helped my brothers bundle up the lobster shells and clamshells and corncobs and other trash in the newspaper table coverings and carry them away to the garbage cans in the barn. Then I helped Uncle Brent pass out clean plastic silverware and napkins. The clambake came with dessert, too—homemade blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream, which Lobster Bob was busy serving up.
“What have we here?” asked Uncle Teddy, taking the piece of paper that Mackenzie handed to him along with his fresh napkin. He read it aloud: “ ‘Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy’?”
I looked over, surprised to see him holding the brochure from the library.
“I was wondering if maybe we could go,” said Mackenzie. “Me and Truly.”
I stared at her, aghast. She shrugged and smiled. “You said you wished we could spend more time together this summer.”
“Yes, but—”
“And since you don’t want to come to Texas, how about I stay and we do something fun together instead? We don’t just have to hang around Pumpkin Falls.”
Not wanting to go Texas didn’t mean I wanted to go to some dumb mermaid camp. But before I could say so, my cousin turned back to her father. “Please?” she begged. “Could we? It’s just for a week. I’d be home in plenty of time for our trip to Yellowstone.”
Uncle Teddy passed the brochure across the table to Mackenzie’s mother. “What do you think, Louise?”
“What do I think of what?” Aunt Louise paused her conversation with my mother and Aunt True and glanced at the brochure. She looked up at Mackenzie and smiled. “Aww, honey! Mermaid camp!” Panic rose inside me. “You’d have loved this when you were little.”
The panic subsided a bit. Aunt Louise understood exactly—Sirena’s Sea Siren Academy was for little kids. Not teenagers like Mackenzie and me.
“You have to be thirteen to attend,” Mackenzie continued, pointing to the fine print at the bottom. “Truly and I are just the right age.”
Was this conversation really happening? “But I don’t want to go!” I protested, my panic level spiking again. No one seemed to be listening to me.
Mackenzie had always been the one fixated on mermaids, not me. When the two of us were little, she used to make me call her Ariel, like in the movie. She wore Ariel pajamas and slept under an Ariel bedspread and dressed up like Ariel for three Halloweens in a row, and probably would have done it for a fourth, except she couldn’t stuff herself into her toddler-size costume anymore.
I’d always loved being in the water, but I’d never actually dreamed of living there. The closest I’d ever gotten to the whole “under the sea” thing was swim team. That and painting my bedroom back in Texas a gorgeous shade
