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

were allowed to play in the foaming, leaping waves, but not to pass the safety line the adults provided. The wind came hurtling toward the land, causing the waves to explode, and the air was full of spits of salty water. The children screamed with joy. They threw themselves into the surging waves. They struggled to see who could stay upright as a row of breakers rushed in. They invented a brilliant game of building sand castles as fast as they could, and watching the waves surge relentlessly toward the castles, demolishing the buildings and scattering the sand everywhere. They cheered madly and built more mounds of sand as high as they could, only to dance and yell triumphantly when the waves knocked them down.

“They really are little beasts,” Ari yelled at Cal.

“We all feel that way in a storm like this,” Cal shouted back.

—

It was true, Ari thought as she drove home at the end of the day. People loved the energy and wildness of a storm on the ocean. Well, people safely on the land felt that way.

If she thought of her own life, she realized she was on no kind of land. And her world was stormy. Uncontrollable. She hadn’t heard from her mother or her father or Uncle Cliff. She knew she was in love with Beck, and she thought he was in love with her, but that gave her no harbor. Her waist was swelling beneath her loose shirts, and soon those shirts would be too tight. In her email were forms from the university requesting enrollment information, course selection. Would she want a room in the dorm? Ari laughed at that, and wept a bit, too.

More than anything, she wanted a nap.

When she arrived home, she thought, with a kind of jolt: Home? Is this home? It was her grandmother’s house. Her anxiety kicked in, offsetting her exhaustion.

She found Eleanor at her desk in the small alcove off the kitchen. Here she kept and paid all her bills and handled necessary correspondence.

“Hello, darling,” Eleanor called, standing up to hug her.

“Gram,” Ari said, “could I talk to you?”

“Of course. Let’s get some iced tea and sit on the deck.”

They bustled around together in the kitchen, dropping ice cubes into glasses (Eleanor didn’t own a fancy refrigerator with an ice maker—that would be one step too nouveau riche), pouring the cold tea from the pitcher on the top shelf of the refrigerator, Eleanor adding sugar, Ari adding nothing. The familiar everyday motions calmed Ari.

Eleanor slid open a door onto the deck and quickly closed it.

“We can’t sit on the deck,” she told Ari. “Too windy.” Eleanor sat at her usual place at the kitchen table.

Ari brought her glass of tea over and took a nearby chair.

“Now,” Eleanor said. “Tell me.”

“I’m in love with Beck,” Ari began, and then it all came out in a rush. “I think he loves me, I’m sure he does, but I’ve told him I’m pregnant, and he says he needs time to think it over, because of the baby, so here I am, like an untethered boat on a stormy sea, and I don’t know what to do! Apparently both my parents are gallivanting through life with their brand-new lovers, so I can’t even find them to ask if I can live with them, and Uncle Cliff is no help at all. I want to start my courses for my master’s, and I could do it this semester, it’s over in December, and the baby won’t come until February, and—” Ari burst into tears. “Oh, Gram, I’m going to have a baby!”

Eleanor sat quietly, smiling gently.

“I’m scared,” Ari confessed. She took a paper napkin and began tearing at it with her fingers. “I’m afraid of the pain—I’ve heard the pain is unspeakable—and I don’t know how to take care of a baby, and I don’t know where I’m going to live, and from what I’ve heard, I won’t get any sleep for a year, and I’ll be dumpy and unattractive and—” Ari was sobbing now, caught up in the full throes of her fear. “I won’t be able to take courses for my master’s, and Beck won’t marry me and, and—”

“And you’ll end up living in a trailer down by the river,” Eleanor said.

“What?” Eleanor’s words shocked Ari out of her frenzy. She met her grandmother’s eyes, and suddenly they both began to laugh.

“Is it hormones?” Ari asked.

“Probably. Also, your life is a bit of a mess.” Eleanor picked up a spoon and stirred sugar into Ari’s tea. “Drink up. Sugar helps. And I’ll help if I can. First of all, you are in a mess, but you’re going to have to wait for Beck to make up his mind. It’s no small responsibility to take on some other man’s child as his own.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Ari agreed and began crying again. “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. But I can’t just wait for Beck. I refuse to be a pitiful maiden needing a big strong man to rescue me. I’m determined to take online classes from B.U. this fall and next spring, too. I’ll live with my parents—they’ll have to let me stay there. I’m their daughter. This will be their grandchild.” Ari’s heart jumped as a new possibility occurred to her. “What if they get divorced?”

“You could always stay with me,” Eleanor said quietly. “I’d love helping you take care of my great-grandchild.”

“You would?” Ari was so startled she stopped crying. “Gram, that’s fabulous! You’re so kind! I love you! Thank you!” Jumping up, she seized Eleanor in a hug and kissed the top of her head.

“Don’t be silly,” Eleanor told her. “Sit down. Calm down. Take things one day at a time, right?”

“Right, but the summer is almost over. Beach Camp has only one more week left.”

“Beach Camp is a wonderful gift to all those children and their parents. You should be proud of yourself for working there when you could