Family Reunion, Nancy Thayer [the kiss of deception read online .txt] 📗

recently the insurance companies have absolutely strangled all the doctors and hospitals. I can’t even talk about it, I get so upset.” Tears welled up in Alicia’s gemlike blue-green eyes.

“I’m sorry, Alicia, but I can’t help with the tuition. I’ve given you all I can afford to give.”

Alicia wiped the tears from her eyes, rose from the bed, and stalked to the window overlooking the Atlantic. Today the ocean was a surly gray.

Without looking at Eleanor, Alicia said, “You could if you would sell this house.”

It wasn’t the first time Alicia had raised this possibility, and Eleanor kept her anger in check. She said what she’d always said before: “I am not selling this house. It was my mother’s house, and now my house, and I intend to live in it until I die, which I hope will not be soon.”

Alicia was not defeated. “Maybe you could get a reverse mortgage? Have you heard of that?” She beamed at her mother as she walked back to the bed.

“I’ve heard of it, and I would be insane to do it,” Eleanor said.

“Then I don’t know what we’ll do,” Alicia said sadly, sinking back down on the quilt. “Even if we resign from our Boston club—which is so important for both Phillip and me—” Alicia paused, waiting for her mother to speak.

“You could get a job,” Eleanor suggested.

“A job?” Alicia looked horrified, as if her mother had told her to drink poison.

“It’s not a stain on your character to work,” Eleanor said gently.

“Really? Like you would know? Because you never worked in your life!” Alicia’s lovely face crumpled. Tears spilled from her eyes. She strode from the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She had forgotten to take the cups and tray.

Ah, Eleanor had so many memories like that one, when Alicia lost all her charm when charm didn’t get her what she wanted.

But Alicia had given Eleanor one miraculous gift: Ari, her granddaughter.

Eleanor and Ari had been like human magnets from the moment Ari was born. As an infant, when Ari wailed inconsolably, Alicia would either wring her hands or rock the baby so quickly she only cried louder. Eleanor would pick her up, hold her to her shoulder, and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. Ari would relax, sagging against her grandmother, sobbing a little less, then a little less, and finally falling asleep. Eleanor had walked miles carrying the little girl. Alicia had been grateful to her mother for the help, and had been delighted for Eleanor to visit for weeks at a time during Ari’s toddler and “terrible two” years. But when Ari turned three, Alicia sent her to what she considered the preschool, and Eleanor was less useful. Next came school plays, ballet lessons, piano lessons, and playdates with the right girls.

Fortunately, Nantucket was the place to be in July and August, so Eleanor and Ari continued to enjoy each other’s company, especially on rainy days when Alicia had lunch dates. Then the two played cards and board games and read aloud to one another from Harry Potter. For a couple of years, grandmother and granddaughter became obsessed with making clothes for a pair of adorable small toy mice.

Those had been heavenly days. But when Ari turned ten, she took sailing and tennis lessons and met friends her own age who came over to hole up in Ari’s bedroom, listening to bubbly tween music while trying on clothes and playing with their increasingly sophisticated phones. Two years later, Ari was on the island for only a few days in the summer. Instead, she attended an all-girls New Hampshire camp where she learned to paddle a canoe and a kayak, play volleyball, softball, and soccer, shoot arrows into targets, and run relay races. It would help Ari learn about team spirit, Alicia said, and Eleanor knew she was right. Still, Eleanor was sad to be separated from her granddaughter, even if it was natural and to be expected.

After that, when Ari came with her family to Nantucket, she was affectionate with Eleanor, but she was always racing out the door to go to the beach with a pack of friends.

“Remember what you did when you were her age,” Eleanor said out loud as she sat in her bed. “Now stop being silly and make a plan for yourself in your fortunate old age.”

After a moment, she took up her iPhone and texted a message to her son, her daughter, and her granddaughter.

Please come to Nantucket and help me celebrate my 70th birthday on June 3! Party favors and cake for the guests!

She tapped “Send” and found herself smiling. This would give her something fun to think about. She’d ask her cleaner, Penny, to help freshen the bedrooms—well, the entire house, actually. She’d take them all out to Le Languedoc for an extravagant champagne dinner. As for party favors, well, that would take some thought. She’d go exploring in town to find the perfect gift for each person.

Eleanor snuggled down beneath her quilts—even now, at the end of May, it was cold in the house, but she was too much of a New Englander to turn the heat on. It was meteorological spring. She lay on her side and smiled as Shadow crept over and folded himself against the bend in Eleanor’s knees. Reaching out, she turned off her bedside lamp.

She closed her eyes, let herself sink into sleep—and had a thought that made her eyes fly open. What if her family thought that by “party favors” she meant giving them the house?

Two

It was Ari’s last day at Bucknell University. Her roommates and most of her friends had already left. Her Subaru Forester was almost packed. Her room was empty, down to a few plastic hangers abandoned in the closet.

Ari was dressed casually in a sundress and sandals, her long dark hair tied back. No jewelry, no makeup. She wanted to be plain, plain, plain, unequivocal and understood. She had tried doing