Summer By The Sea

“Maybe that’s why we got along so well.” Rosa looked at her friend. Clearly, Linda wasn’t buying it. “All right, what about Derek Gunn? Eight months, at least.”

“I’d hardly call that a lifelong commitment. I wish you’d stuck with him. He was great, Rosa.”

“He had a fatal flaw,” Rosa muttered.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You’ll say I’m petty.”

“Try me. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you ’fess up.”

“He was boring.” The admission burst from Rosa on a sigh.

“He drives a Lexus.”

“I rest my case.”

Linda got an extra mug and shared her tea with Rosa. “He’s got a house on the water in Newport.”

“Boring house. Boring water. Even worse, he has a boring family. Hanging out with them was like watching paint dry. And I’ll probably burn in hell for saying that.”

“It’s best to know what your issues are before going ahead with a relationship.”

“You been watching too much Dr. Phil. I have no issues.”

Linda coughed. “Stop that. You’ll make me snort tea out my nose.”

“Okay, so what are my issues?”

Linda waved a hand. “Uh-uh, I’m not touching that one. I need you to be my maid of honor, and it won’t happen if we’re not speaking. That’s what this meeting’s about, by the way. Me. My wedding. Not that it’s anywhere near as interesting as you and Alex Montgomery.”

“There is no me and Alex Montgomery,” Rosa insisted. “And—not to change the subject—did I just hear you ask me to be your maid of honor?”

Linda took a deep breath and beamed at her. “I did. You’re my oldest and dearest friend, Rosa. I want you to stand up with me at my wedding. So, will you?”

“Are you kidding?” Rosa gave her friend’s hand a squeeze. “I’d be honored.”

She loved weddings and had been a bridesmaid six times. She knew it was six because, deep in the farthest reaches of her closet, she had six of the ugliest dresses ever designed, in colors no one had ever seen before. But Rosa had worn each one with a keen sense of duty and pride. She danced and toasted at the weddings; she caught a bouquet or two in her time. After each wedding, she returned home, carrying her dyed-to-match shoes in one hand and her wilting bouquet in the other.

“…as soon as we set a date,” Linda was saying.

Rosa realized her thoughts had drifted. “Sorry. What?”

“Hello? I said, keep August 21 and 28 open for me, okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

Linda finished her tea. “I’d better let you go. You need to deal with Alex Montgomery.”

“I don’t need to deal with Alex Montgomery. There’s simply no dealing to be done.”

“I don’t think you have a choice,” Linda said.

“That’s ridiculous. Of course I have a choice. Just because he came back to town doesn’t mean it’s my job to deal with him.”

“It’s your shot, Rosa. Your golden opportunity. Don’t let it pass you by.”

Rosa spread her hands, genuinely baffled. “What shot? What opportunity? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“To get unstuck.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You’ve been stuck in the same place since Alex left you.”

“Bullshit. I’m not stuck. I have a fabulous life here. I never wanted to be anywhere else.”

“I don’t mean that kind of stuck. I mean emotionally stuck. You never got over the hurt and distrust of what happened with Alex, and you can’t move on. Now that he’s back, you’ve got a chance to clear the air with him and get him out of your heart and out of your head once and for all.”

“He’s not in my heart,” Rosa insisted. “He’s not in my head.”

“Right.” Linda patted her arm. “Deal with him, Rosa. You’ll thank me one day. He can’t be having an easy time, you know, since his mother—”

“What about his mother?” Rosa hadn’t heard talk of Emily Montgomery in ages, but that was not unusual. She never came to the shore anymore.

“God, you didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“I just assumed you knew.” Linda jumped up and rifled through the stack of daily papers. She returned with a Journal Bulletin, folded back to show Rosa.

She stared at the photo of the haughtily beautiful Emily Montgomery, portrait-posed and gazing serenely at the camera.

“Oh, God.” Her hands rattled the paper as she pushed it away from her on the table. Then, in the same movement, she gathered the paper close and started to read. “Society matron Emily Wright Montgomery, wife of financier Alexander Montgomery III, died on Wednesday at her home in Providence…”

Rosa laid down the paper and looked across the table at her friend. “She was only fifty-five.”

“That’s what it says. Doesn’t seem so old now that we’re nearly thirty.”

“I wonder what happened.” Rosa thought about the way Alex had been last night—slightly drunk, coming on to her. Now his recklessness took on a different meaning. He’d just lost his mother. Last night, she had dropped him off at an empty house.

Linda leveled her gaze at Rosa. “You should ask him.”

Four

Rosa drove along Prospect Street to the house where she’d grown up. Little had changed here, only the names of the residents and the gumball colors of their clapboard houses. Buckling concrete driveways led to crammed garages with sagging rooflines. Maple and elm trees arched over the roadway, their stately grace a foil for the homely houses.

It was nice here, she reflected. Safe and comfortable. People still tended their peonies and hydrangeas, their roses and snapdragons. Women pegged out laundry on clotheslines stretched across sunny backyards. Kids rode bikes from house to house and climbed the overgrown apple tree in the Lipschitzes’ yard. She still thought of it as the Lipschitzes’ yard even though Linda’s parents had retired to Vero Beach, Florida, years ago.