The Summer We Came to Life (22 page)

WHEN I WALK BACK INTO THE HOUSE, JESSE AND Lynette are setting out steaming plates of tortillas, eggs and beans. Jesse looks at me and smiles.

“You okay, kiddo?” She tucks her hair behind her ear and blows me a kiss. Lynette looks at me with the same face full of love and concern.

I nod. I must look awful. But they don't know. They don't know that everything's going to be okay. I try to give them my most reassuring smile.

Isabel comes barreling into the room. “You're back! Did they tell you?” She's brandishing her cell phone.

I look at their faces, now beaming with excitement. “What?”

Isabel grins. “Kendra's on her way.”

“Really?”

Isabel presses the phone into my hands. I look at the text.

Jesse moves to snatch the phone from me. “I want to read—”

Isabel grabs it first and catches my eye. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly then flashes a smile at Jesse. When I fail to follow suit, she looks at me with questioning eyes. Lynette and Jesse eye us both suspiciously.

It hits me finally. Isabel and Kendra do know something. In the vision Ahari showed me, I kept my eyes shut, but they both opened theirs and spoke to Mina. I'm suddenly inundated with questions for them, but it'll have to wait. I settle for flashing Lynette and Jesse a megawatt grin.

 

The rest of the day passes in cozy anticipation. Jesse ropes me into a game of rummy. Arshan corners me with a pitch about the selling points of GW's graduate physics program. Lynette braids my hair the way she did when I was little, and tells me funny stories about her students. She delivers a perfunctory rant about how irrational it is for Kendra to come
now
. But everyone can tell she's thrilled. Cornell, too. He swept out our rooms and picked some of Ahari's flowers to fill the vase on our nightstand.

The whole day, anytime Isabel or I walk past, one of the parents reaches out and pats us or hugs us or smiles. Today is a celebration of life, a reminder of how fragile and fleeting and precious it is. But I wish I could tell them. I wish I could tell them about the secrets we uncovered, about how we are more powerful than we know. Maybe one day. One day, I will tell everyone.

AFTER DINNER, THE SIX OF US SIT ON THE PATIO and play cards. Kendra called. She hired a driver to bring her to the house. I'm not thrilled about that, but there's really no telling Kendra what to do. Or any of us, for that matter.

We're all a symphony of yawns by the time the van pulls up out front. Before I make it to the door, Kendra bursts through. Eight and a half hours of travel, and the girl looks fresh as spring grass in a green Versace dress. She hugs me and gives me a theatrically loud smack on the cheek. Then she leans in close, studying my face.

“I don't know
what
to believe, girl,” she whispers.

I laugh as she hugs me again.

Kendra steps back, looks like she wants to say more, but the rest of the crew is gathering round.

“We'll talk,” she whispers meaningfully.

Then the parents are upon us, all chattering to Kendra at once. How was her trip? How did she convince someone to
drive her all the way out here? How's Michael? What was so important at work?

Isabel hangs back and watches everyone, then catches me doing the same thing. She smiles at me and I wink.

 

Nobody goes to bed for a long time. We walk down to the beach and the parents tell their version of the near drowning, how scared they were, how helpless they felt on the sand. They take turns telling Kendra about the car accident, the food poisoning, all the fun she missed. Kendra laughs and groans and gasps and squeezes my hand.

Finally, when it looks like the reunion is winding down, Kendra clears her throat and puts out her hand to shush Jesse from teasing Cornell about his argyle socks.

“I have news.”

Jesse and Lynette go completely quiet and peer at her closely. Kendra looks radiant. Her hair is neatly combed back and her gold earrings sparkle in the light of the lanterns.

“Well, jeez, girl—” Jesses bursts out. “Spill it then! You've had us worried sick this whole trip.”

“Michael and I broke up.”

I look up in surprise.

Lynette reaches out a hand to her daughter. “Oh, sweetie, that's terrible, but I'm sure he'll—”

Kendra smiles. “No, it's fine. Really. That's not actually the news. That's the preamble. I'm—” She straightens up in the sand, looks at each of us in turn. “We're having a baby.”

Isabel gasps and we both break out in big goofy auntie grins. I think of the swimming pool, of the pain on Kendra's face. I remember the horrible scene in her bedroom. I am so overcome, a tear dribbles onto my smile.

Lynette, though, raises a hand to her gaping mouth.

Kendra's eyes are on her mother. “Mom, are you okay?”

Jesse glares at Lynette as she slumps against Cornell's chest in response, a Scarlett O'Hara caricature of ruination. “Oh,
hush, Lynette, don't you dare. I always knew that Michael was a jerk. And so did you.” She grins at Kendra. “I'm sure you'll tell us the details when you're good and ready, but— God dog—you're glowing like a big ol' pile of uranium, gal. If you're happy, we're happy.” She kicks Lynette with her foot. “That goes for all of us.”

The beachgoers spring back into motion, with Cornell clapping his hands together and saying, “Lordy Lordy.”

I can't help but think
the circle of life
. I look at Arshan and his sad smile tells me he is thinking the same thing. Jesse lets out a loud whoop but Lynette still looks shaken. She hasn't said anything or cracked a smile.

Jesse turns to her again. “Seriously, Lynette, think about it. This baby's gonna have more love and more
family
than it knows what to do with. Kendra, I think that you are one very brave woman.” Jesse gives Kendra a wink.

“Takes one to know one, Mama.” Isabel points a finger at Jesse.

Arshan gives Jesse a long, lingering look. Then he smiles and turns to Cornell. “Well, my man, I'd say—”

Arshan pauses to sweep his eyes over everyone in the group. He appears young and happy looking at all of us. I follow his gaze. Kendra has one arm linked in Isabel's and one hand on her belly. Isabel's twirling a piece of Jesse's hair. Cornell places a featherlight kiss on Lynette's ear. I think of all the stories I've heard this trip, all the mountains of love and loss we've experienced—these are the legends of my unlikely family.

“I'd say we are surrounded by some pretty amazing women.”

 

When I finally open the door to the bedroom, Kendra and Isabel are huddled together, whispering like detectives in an alley.

“Finally,” Kendra says. “Shut the door. Sit down. We've been dying to talk to you.”

Isabel pokes Kendra at the word dying.

I rush to the bed opposite them. “Me, too.”

Kendra straightens up, making this official. “Isabel and I— We had the same dream. At the same time. While you two were in the water, and I was asleep—”

“You died,” Isabel finishes and her face crinkles like cellophane thrown in the fire.

Kendra takes Isabel's hand, but her eyes lock on mine. “You died and it was horrible. And I—” she averts her eyes “—I got rid of the baby. But something went wrong—so much blood—”

“I couldn't take it. I was shattered.” Isabel's eyelashes glisten. “I went back into the ocean.”

Kendra looks at Isabel. “Mina.”

Isabel nods. “We both saw Mina.”

Kendra and Isabel continue to stare at each other, and Isabel rubs at goosebumps along her forearms.

“On the dock?” I say and both turn to look at me like a ghost just flew in the window. I take a deep breath. “What if I told you it was real? That I did die? And I reunited with Mina, and we saved you both?”

The silence is like a blanket of snow. Or like the light in between worlds. I breathe out slowly. It's okay. I can wait. I have a lifetime now to make them understand.

Finally Kendra speaks. In a whisper. “But Sam, that's crazy—”

Isabel rubs at her arms again as if she feels the snow.

But Kendra stops short and exhales briskly, a familiar gesture of wresting control. “You were drowning,” Kendra asserts, like she's listing the facts to an office assistant. “You were unconscious. You were dreaming—”

“The exact same dream.” Isabel's face is a flip-book of human emotion—sadness then incredulity then awe.

I lean forward, intending to recount the vision from Ahari as proof, and I take both of their hands at once.

My mouth opens, but the words catch in my throat like a stone rolling atop a spring.

Because a surge is coursing through us, a river of electricity. I feel it flow into and out of me through my hands, joining us like a ring of fire. Instinctively, I close my eyes.

A flash. I see the four of us from above, like Ahari showed me. Four girls aging at the speed of racecars.

Kendra jerks her hand free and gasps, breaking the vision.

My eyes fling open to find them both staring at me, eyes like saucers.

“Sam, what the hell is going on?” Kendra whispers.

I look at their scared faces and I have to remind myself that they weren't there. They weren't part of the research project with Mina, and they weren't on the dock with us. They didn't die.

My whole life I've told them everything, down to the most banal preoccupations like bathing suits and traffic jams. I think it is this openness that wove the cloth that binds us, like quadruplets swaddled in a cradle. But now the world is bigger, my sense of it fractured. I need to find my own two feet, something Mina must have known when she sent me back alone. So, for now, the dock and the vision from Ahari must become like gifts from a secret lover, meant to be treasured and considered before shared.

“A second chance,” I say and smile. “That's what's going on.”

Kendra relaxes ever so slightly as she considers this. Then she puts a hand on her stomach and nods. “A second chance.”

Isabel takes my hand, perplexed. “She said she knew you'd succeed if you believed she'd be there. Does that make any sense?”

A whimper escapes my lips. Now, only now, after all that
has happened on this long day, can I cry for Mina. She didn't choose her mother over me. She sacrificed herself for me, for all of us. Like she always has. I start to cry and it is the way I cried on the dock, my heart heaving as if the whole world's crying with me.

Because it is. Kendra and Isabel both wrap their arms tight around me and their tears are as indistinguishable from mine as streams flowing into a river. We cry like we did in the days after Mina's death. We cry because it is so unbearably unfair. Because we miss her. Because we know we will always miss her.

But at least we will bear it together. The only consolations in life, Mina said. Love and best friends.

PACKING TO LEAVE TAKES THE WHOLE MORNING. From the second Lynette opens our door and shoos us out of bed, she and Cornell hardly leave us alone for an instant. They sweep and laugh and clean and bark out orders. I've never seen anything like it, those two. It is only by the grace of their incredible organizational harmony that we are all packed by brunch time. I add my suitcases to the lineup by the door and head out to the porch to help Isabel set the table.

“Are you going to do the happy dance again?” I'm only half mocking. Consoled by the idea of a second chance, they've been positively giddy all morning.

Isabel smoothes down a napkin and looks at me. “Yep. Every day till we're a hundred years old.”

Lynette comes out with a plate of sandwiches. “You girls still giggling like a pack of crazies out here? Three women about to turn thirty, one unemployed and one,
my
daughter,
eager
to be a single mother. Now what do you guys have to
be so happy about, huh?” Lynette's fake frown reveals itself as a grin.

Isabel takes my hand. “Well, as it turns out, Lynette, a whole helluva lot.”

Cornell appears with a fresh round of iced tea on a tray. “Honey, where'd Jesse and Arshan get to?”

Come to think of it, I haven't seen either of them all morning. “They're packing, I hope.”

Suddenly we all jump at a loud thud. Isabel takes off running and I'm right behind her. We all pile up at the door to Jesse's room.

Please don't let anything bad happen. Please don't let anything bad happen.
“Oh my God, I swear I can't handle—” I say as I raise my hand to knock.

“Well, me neither, missy,” Lynette snaps as she pushes past me and swings open the door.

 

Nothing, not even coming back from the dead, could have prepared me for the sight before my eyes.

At my feet is an entire bookcase dumped clean of its contents.

And beyond the mound of seashells, romance novels and knickknacks are Jesse and Arshan doing it on the couch. A flash of crepe-paper skin, varicose veins, and—oh, Jesus— Jesse's five-inch heels.

Jesse tucks a long, sweaty shock of hair behind her ear and looks up at Arshan, who's turned to stone and pretending none of this is happening. “Great guns, y'all, march your sweet little butts outta here!”

Lynette shuts the door before any of us can blink, and we stand there rooted in place, the image seared onto our eyeballs like a nuclear explosion. I bite down on my knuckle and wait to follow Isabel's lead.

Cornell has no such tact. “Oh, you've got to be
shitting
me,” he yells, slaps his hand to his forehead, and starts
laughing so hard he punctuates the phrase the second time with barnyard snorts. “You've got—” snort “—to be—” snort “—
shitting
me!”

“Cornell!” Lynette makes an earnest attempt at consternation but takes another look at her husband and lets out a guffaw even louder than his.

I'm laughing so hard I think I just peed my pants. Isabel looks a little green around the edges but she's being a good sport. Kendra looks at me slyly and busts out with the happy dance. “Go Arshan! Go Jesse!”

And in some weird perfect moment in time, all five of us follow suit in a conga line back to the porch, laughing all the way.

While, I presume, Jesse and Arshan carry on about their business of falling in love. Finally.