Tonight her dad had promised to take them to the Wellfleet Drive-In, the only drive-in movie theater left on the Cape. It was a ten-minute car ride from their rambling old house on the bay, but they were planning to take their bikes instead; they didn’t need the car, since they would probably see one of the indoor movies in the multiplex part of the drive-in. After the movie, in the dark, they would coast home again along the peaceful streets, listening to the crickets. They did it every Thursday night in the summer.
Their dad was a distracted scholar type who knew Latin and wore three-piece suits and even the kind of watch you kept in a pocket on your vest and pulled out on a chain called a fob. But he did love one modern thing: movies. He would see anything that was playing, but he especially loved bad vintage movies with cheesy special effects, like The Mummy’s Hand and Swamp Thing.
She didn’t know what was at the theater tonight, but this was one time she agreed with her dad: any old movie would do. When she settled down in front of the vast screen, bright pictures flashing in front of her eyes in the dark, she could almost forget that her mother was missing and no one in the whole world seemed to have the faintest clue where she was.
She walked through the wild beach roses to the parking lot. The pink flowers had already disappeared from their low bushes along the trails, leaving the rose hips behind them. Her mother liked to gather the small fruits every fall and make tea with them, which she said helped to ward off colds. At the thought, Cara felt the usual pang.
This fall, maybe, she’d get sicker than usual. This fall there wouldn’t be the warm homemade tea, only the bare counter in the kitchen and empty oven mitts hanging on hooks, unused.
She looked up at the sky, to where the towering white clouds of the morning had flattened out and turned gray and low, and tried to push the thought of winter down and away. Unlocking her bike, she tossed her mesh bag into a saddlebag, got on and took off. With no one in the parking lot except her, she could fly; she could pedal as fast as she wanted across the pavement, through the cooling air of twilight.
She spread out her arms and felt the wind lift her hair.
As she coasted down her street toward her house the surface of the bayside water was turning black; fingers of pink and purple reached across the sky. The trees were shifting slowly from leafy green into dark silhouettes, making home seem even more welcoming.
Her family’s house was big and ramshackle on the outside but cozy within: the warm orange light from the windows reflected across the water and shone through the trees. It was built of weathered silver-gray wood and had started out as a simple box, long ago, but more and more additions had been built onto it over the years. Now it had a wraparound, covered porch overlooking the water on one side and the grassy lawn on the other, where she and Max played badminton and Jax jumped in between them, trying to bat the birdie out of the air with his grubby hand.
During the day, if you sat on the bayside terrace, you could watch boats chugging out to the oyster fields. The harbor was narrow here, and right across from her house she could see the pier with its outdoor restaurant, a fish place that always had long lines in the summer. At night the restaurant sparkled with light, and the sounds of people laughing carried over the water.
She lifted her bike up the sagging wooden steps and leaned it beside the front door, near the pile of her dad’s sea kayaks. Her dad wasn’t the sporty type—that was an understatement, actually—but he liked paddling, as he called it, and used to make the family do it, all together on the weekends.
Not recently.
As soon as she banged through the screen door into the front hall, she smelled cooking. She hung her bag on a peg, kicked off her shoes, and shoved them into a jumble of hightops and sneakers piled up against the wall. The house wasn’t so neat these days. She heard the thump of music above her head, from Max’s room. Max was really into old classics—mostly the Clash, at the moment. Since their mother had gone, he liked to shut himself up a lot and blast it really loud.
Jax was more interested in dead toads.
Rufus, their aging brown Lab, came up to her wagging his tail. She knelt down and petted his head.
“I’m home,” she called out to her dad, rising and making her way down the hall to the kitchen. Rufus followed, his nails clicking on the wood floor.
But when she reached the kitchen door, a woman she’d never seen before was standing at the stove.
“Who are you?” she blurted.
The woman turned. She had a broad front, a sun-weathered face, and graying hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a red-and-white checked apron that said IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY COOKING … LOWER YOUR STANDARDS.
“You must be Cara!” she said and wiped her hands on her apron so she could stick one out. “Call me Lolly. Your father hired me to do some housekeeping. And dinners.”
Seeing Cara’s blank face, she added quickly: “Just, you know. Till your mother gets back and can pitch in again.”
“Oh,” said Cara in a small voice. “I see. Nice to meet you.”
“With him starting back to teaching, and all,” went on Lolly, “and you three kids at two different schools, things will be getting pretty hectic. Hey. You like mac and cheese?”
“Sure, sure,” said Cara, distracted. “So, um, where is my dad?”
“Should be in his study.”
Cara turned and
