Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (23 page)

Going to the city with Henry would remind me that we only had the summer, that every day that passed was one less day we had together. And I wasn't sure I was ready to admit that just yet.

“Then what?” Henry asked. “It's really not that hard, Kendra.”

He was trying to make this easy, and I almost wished he wasn't doing such a good job of it.

“Come on, I can take you around the city, you can get out of here for a couple of days. You must know somebody who'd cover for you.”

“There might be someone.”

“So promise you'll ask.”

“I'm not guaranteeing anything. Chances are she's going to say no.”

“I'm sure you can be persuasive.”

“Okay,” I agreed, because I really did want to go despite my fears. “I'll give it my best shot.”

There was no way I was going to ask Camille to cover for me as soon as I got back. She was elbow deep in six servings of Dutch apple pancakes and I figured it was in my best interest to wait until breakfast was over. When breakfast hours were over and we were washing the dishes, I figured it was as good a time as any.

“Hey, Camille, can you cover for me on Thursday?” I asked, spending more time than necessary drying the pan in my hand.

“No way, it's my day off.” She didn't even pretend to feel bad.

“I could trade with you the following week, give you two days off in a row,” I offered.

She wasn't going for it. “I'm going to the beach, I've been here almost two months and my tan sucks.”

I'd pretty much prepared myself for Camille's answer, but the more she protested the more I realized how much I wanted to go with Henry.

“What if I give you my next two Wednesdays off?” I tried again.

Camille patted me on the back. “I need the tips. But nice try.”

After the breakfast dishes were put away and the picnic baskets were lined up along the side counter, I went to work on
the picnic orders in silence. There'd be no Boston with Henry. He'd end up going without me and we'd have two fewer days together. We'd be two days closer to Labor Day and the end of summer.

“You're awfully quiet,” Shelby commented, slicing a tomato.

I didn't open my mouth to answer, afraid the words wouldn't make it past the lump forming in my throat. Instead, I shrugged and kept my eyes on the lettuce leaf I was carefully positioning on a piece of whole grain bread.

“I heard what you asked Camille.” Shelby paused, resting the knife on the skin of the tomato without even making a dent. “So what were you planning to do on Thursday, before Camille shot you down?”

“Going to Boston for the night,” I managed to say, my voice stammering a little.

“With who?”

I inhaled sharply before saying his name. “Henry.”

“Fourth of July Henry? Mornings at Stop & Shop Henry?”

I looked up from my lettuce. “How'd you know about the mornings?”

“It doesn't take a half hour to pick up a bag of walnuts. I saw you sitting outside in his truck.”

“Okay, yeah, that Henry.”

“I'll cover for you,” she offered.

“You will? But it's your day off,” I reminded her, sure she wasn't serious.

“That's why I can do it, Wendy will be cooking.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Shelby went back to slicing the tomato. “Nope, I'll do it.”

“But why?”

Shelby had lost her patience with me. And she was holding a knife. I shouldn't have been pressing my luck. “Look, do you want me to cover for you or not?”

Leave it to Shelby to turn the tables on me. “Yeah, I mean, yes. Absolutely. Thanks.”

“Fine, now go ahead and bring these baskets out to the front desk.”

I gathered the handles of four baskets and prepared to leave. As the kitchen door swung closed behind me I heard Shelby mutter, “You owe me one.”

And I did. Only I didn't get the feeling she actually cared if she ever collected.

We caught the eleven o'clock ferry from Oak Bluffs. It was absolutely gorgeous out, the sky a clear blue, and there was enough of a breeze to keep us cool but not so much that we couldn't sit up on the deck and soak up the sun on the way to Woods Hole.

“So your parents didn't have a problem with you coming with me for the night?” Henry asked, moving over to give me some room on the bench.

“I didn't exactly tell them it was just you and me,” I admitted.

“So what did you tell them?”

“I just asked if I could go to Boston to spend the night at Mona's house. Technically that was true. Why, what'd you tell Izzy?”

Henry gave me a sheepish grin. “That I was heading into the city to see Tom for the night.”

Even if neither of us said it out loud, I knew we were both thinking the same thing. If our being together was so fine and normal and not such a big deal, why didn't we tell anyone?

“I thought we could have a little picnic.” Henry opened
up his backpack and slipped a sandwich from a brown paper bag. “Turkey on French bread?”

“Mustard?” It was midweek and the ferry was only half full, so I moved over to give us some room to eat on the bench.

“Absolutely not. I provided explicit instructions—no mustard.”

There were certain benefits of eating lunch at Henry's house for the past ten years, one being that he knew what I liked on my sandwiches and what I didn't.

I took my half of the sandwich and looked overhead for hungry seagulls waiting to swoop down and take a bite for themselves.

“All clear,” Henry told me, looking up himself.

I took a bite. “Wow, that's good,” I said, my mouth full. “Zilda makes a great lunch.”

“I'm sure she'd like to hear that, but I didn't get this from Zilda. I got it from the deli.”

“As in . . .”

Henry didn't let me finish. “As in the Pot Belly Deli. Don't tell me you haven't eaten there before?”

I shook my head and wiped my mouth on a napkin Henry had pulled from his backpack and handed over to me.

Henry stopped midbite. “You can't be serious.”

“I am.”

“You haven't even had the Santa Fe Gobbler?”

“What's that?”

“Oh my God, are you kidding me? Turkey and pepper Jack cheese with guacamole and salsa in a wrap.”

“Sounds different.”

“It's amazing. It's Mona's favorite. She even has Malcolm hooked.”

“You've all been to the deli?”

“Yeah. Everyone goes. Hasn't anyone even brought you a sandwich home for dinner or something?”

“Actually, I've been big on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lately, and I have to make them myself.”

“What's that saying? The cobbler's children have no shoes.”

Yep, that was me, the cobbler's child. Only I didn't have a Santa Fe Gobbler. But Mona and her friends did.

“Why haven't you ever gone?” Henry asked. “And don't tell me you don't know.”

Henry never let me get away with not answering when he knew I had my reasons. That was probably one of the downsides to eating lunch at Henry's house for the past ten years. He knew better. “Remember when we were in junior high and we'd all have our parents drop us off downtown in the summer so we could walk around or see a movie or something?”

Henry nodded.

“One night Mona and I were in line at the movies and we were behind some kids ordering popcorn. And when the guy behind the counter was at the machine filling their buckets, the kids were so rude and nasty, yelling ‘More butter' and ‘Don't stick your thumbs in my popcorn,' like the counter guy wasn't even a real person, he was just someone they shouted their orders to.”

“Come on, Kendra, they were just stupid kids.”

“No, Henry, they were summer kids.”

“Why do you always do that? You always talk about it like there's an us versus them.”

“Well, there is, isn't there?”

“If that's true, then what am I?”

“You're an us, of course.”

Henry laughed. “There are a lot of people who'd actually consider me a them.”

I put down my sandwich, my appetite suddenly gone. “You mean Emily and Jilly and Devon?”

“Not specifically.”

“Then what did you mean, Henry? Because if you're saying that you're one of them, that you wouldn't mind being with a girl who wears make-up to the beach and tells her friends to get plastic surgery, then just say it.”

Henry laid his hand on my knee but I pushed it off.

“Hey, what's going on with you? Why are you so pissed at me all of a sudden?”

“Because you're acting like I'm the bad guy.”

“I didn't say you were the bad guy, Kendra, I was just saying I'm not sure there are any bad guys in all of this.”

“Look, I just don't like the idea of my family catering to a bunch of people who bitch if their Swiss cheese isn't imported.”

“Come on, somebody really did that?” Henry asked.

“No,” I admitted. “It was just an example.”

“Did it ever occur to you that all those people you think are bitching just might actually think the deli is pretty damn good?” Henry shook his head at me. “There is no us and them, Kendra. There's just people you know and people you don't, and I think you're making a way bigger deal out of it than it really is. You should go down to the deli and see for yourself, I'm sure your family would really like you to.”

He placed his hand on my knee again. “Can I do that, or have I lost all touching rights?”

I let his hand stay there. “You're making me feel like a shitty daughter and sister.”

“Don't feel shitty, just do it. We can go together when we get back. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Maybe Henry was right. Maybe I was being oversensitive, or even just underestimating what Lexi, Bart, and my parents were capable of.

“Hey, Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any potato chips in your backpack?”

He reached in and pulled out a blue and gold bag of chips and handed it over to me. A large black oval in the upper right-hand corner of the bag screamed “no trans fat” in gold lettering. Only instead of thinking my sister was a fruitcake, I realized they must have sold six hundred bags of the other brand of chips. And that didn't make me think Lexi was nuts; it made me think she might know what she was doing with the deli after all.

“Let's drop our stuff off at home and then we can walk around,” Henry said once we'd parked the car in the underground garage.

The town house was just one of many brownstones lining the narrow street. Unlike Malcolm's Vineyard house, which was only designed and built to look like it had been there forever, the town house actually had been there for hundreds of years, which I learned from the plaque beside the front door stating the year it was built. I prepared myself for the scrutiny of a doorman, but inside the lobby was just a small beige room with a deep emerald green area carpet in the center of a
tiled floor. So far Henry's Boston home was way more normal than the one on the Vineyard. And if I had any trepidation about entering Henry's Boston world, the town house's nondescript lobby put me at ease.

Because the building was so old, and only four floors, I figured we'd walk up some stairs, but instead Henry went to what looked like an antique elevator and pressed the up button. “It's too hot to walk,” he explained.

When the elevator doors opened, we got in and Henry pressed the button for the third floor. It didn't take very long, and about a minute later a little bell went off and the number 3 above the door lit up.

Henry stepped back as the doors slid apart, letting me get out first. I had expected a hallway with a bunch of doors to choose from. I was entirely unprepared for what I got instead.

“Holy—”

“Yeah, I know.” Henry stepped around me and put his backpack on the floor.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you lived like this.”

The elevator didn't open into a hallway, it opened into the foyer of Malcolm's home. A huge, marble floored foyer with a round table in the center and the biggest arrangement of flowers I'd ever seen, even bigger than the arrangements people sent to the funeral home when Poppy died.

“You live on the entire third floor?”

“And the fourth.” He pointed to the sweeping staircase over to our right. “Anyway, I can show you around, but it's
pretty much a house. The living room, kitchen, et cetera. My bedroom's upstairs.”

“This is not a house, Henry. It's a mansion.”

Henry ignored my observation. “Come on, I'll take you upstairs and you can put your stuff away.”

I followed Henry upstairs and down a long hallway to his room. Even when Henry and Mona lived in Poppy's house, we didn't go into Henry's room that often. We just didn't expect anything terribly interesting to be in there. But now going into Henry's room felt personal, like an inside look at who he was, the things he cared about, much the same way Mona's room at Poppy's once said so much about her.

“That's Mona's room,” Henry told me as we passed a yellow room on our left.

I couldn't help it, I had to look. I paused in the doorway and peeked my head inside, expecting a room similar to the one in Malcolm's house, only done up in a different color palate. But what I found was nothing like the tastefully appointed lavender and green designer extravaganza. Not to say it wasn't nice. It was, with beautiful cream-colored furniture and a four-poster bed. It was just that this room actually looked like Mona lived there.

“Are those her pictures?” I asked Henry, stepping inside the room. Plain white wooden frames with black mats set off the black-and-white photos staggered on the walls.

“Yeah. That one over there is the one that won the award.”