As she said farewell, she realized that maybe she was trying to hold on to—or recreate—something that didn’t exist in her old friendships. When they had all lived together, with the daily tug and push of interaction, there had been many similar moments of easy conversation, quick affection, camaraderie simply expressed. But she, too, had moved on to new friendships, as Brandi had, and if that was going to make things awkward, it would be a long vacation.
At least there would be Rachel and Melody, the two that she was closest to. And all of them arrived together on the ferry this time, Rachel, Melody, and Gabriela, loaded down with luggage and bags, a camera, a purse, and more. After they all hugged Jaymie, Gabriela, the back of her long streaked brown hair twisted and fixed in place with a dollar store hair clip, spent the first bit of their walk to the cottage complaining about Brandi bringing Courtney.
“So you know her?” Jaymie asked, taking her friend’s Queensville Emporium bags loaded with sunscreen, snacks, and various other items unneeded and unwanted.
“Of course. How could I avoid it?” Gabriela griped. She swept her long bangs out of her eyes, tucking the loose hair behind her ears. “Brandi doesn’t go anywhere without her now!”
Melody slipped up beside Gabriela and took her camera bag from her, hoisting her own duffle high on her shoulder. As usual Melody, in cut-off jean shorts and a T-shirt, short curly brown hair and bright inquisitive blue gaze darting everywhere, taking it all in, had packed light, knowing that beyond bathing suits, shorts and sleeveless tees, all anyone needed was a nice sundress for the dinner cruise and any other possible occasion. She and Jaymie had talked at length, and Jaymie assured her that there was plenty of shampoo, conditioner, towels, toothpaste, soap, and moisturizer on hand in the cottage; no need to bring them.
Rachel hid a smile but met Melody and Jaymie’s glance as Gabriela droned on. Her own springy natural hair was bleached in part and tipped in blue. Her round face was lit with a ready, toothy smile and bronzy cheek color, the only makeup she habitually wore besides a peach lip gloss on her cupid bow lips, above her pointed chin. She was wearing a sundress, a brilliant crimson and sunset abstract pattern that was set off beautifully by her dark skin, and fringed suede sandals on her feet. Round red-framed sunglasses perched on her nose.
“So, what’s Courtney like?” Jaymie asked, once Gabriela had finally slowed.
She shrugged and adjusted her shorts around her plump middle. “Okay, I guess,” she said as they approached the cottage along River Road.
“This is so cute!” Rachel said with a gasp as they stopped in front of Rose Tree Cottage.
Jaymie looked up at it with pride. It was cute, a blue clapboard and white trimmed cottage on a slight rise, with a wide covered porch along the front, surrounded on three sides with groves of pines and poplars. There was another porch on the back, above a sloping grassy lawn and steps that led down into the grove, where the flagstone patio and the firepit made a relaxing shady vacation hideaway. “Wait ’til I show you my summer project!” she said.
An hour later they were all sitting together in the shaded rockery, as she called the little valley between her cottage and the Redmonds’. Over the past year or so she and Becca and their mother, in her rare visits, had transformed the slopes surrounding the terraced patio into rock gardens with perennial alyssum, stonecrop and other sedums, and some hostas and annual coleus. The hill leading up to the Redmonds’ cottage was thickly treed, a canopy of greenery shading the grove, with pine needle mulch making the slope slippery.
They quaffed iced tea—or in Brandi’s case, iced tea with a hit of bourbon from a bottle she kept in her purse—and sat on the comfy lounge chairs the Leightons had furnished their patio with for the use of renters. Gabriela munched on corn chips, but everyone else was saving their appetites for dinner. They had gotten past the initial catching up, but it was too early to head to the Ice House, the restaurant on the island owned by the Redmonds. Hoppy had taken to Rachel, and was curled up in her lap as she stroked his ears.
Pink was shouting, from Rachel’s cell phone through the Bluetooth speakers wired into the patio sound system, about getting the party started. Gabriela, between snacks, was playing some game on her cell phone, and Melody watched them all with the focused, darting interest of an anthropologist in a new community. A little older than the rest of them, and an introvert who did not shine at parties, she had always been the observer of their group, more so now as a full-time professional author of a couple dozen contemporary and historical romances.
There was a lull, a bit of an awkward silence. Cicadas buzzed loudly in the trees overhead, and squirrels rustled in the pine needles on the slope. A blue jay scolded, flitting from one branch to another and squawking loudly; they were sitting too close to the feeder full of peanuts that he preferred over the more standard birdseed mix. A chipmunk chipped his own alarm, upset by Hoppy’s presence, though the little dog was quiet, for once. Gabriela looked up from her phone and glanced around. “This is nice, Jaymie,” she said. “I’ve been needing a vacay. My new job is hectic!”
“Yeah, congratulations on that,” Rachel said. “You sounded excited when you got it. I don’t think I understood what exactly you’re doing, though?”
“My first job was as a quality control associate at a grocery store, but now I’m district manager of quality control, food handling and safety staff. I have to go to different grocery stores and stay on top of them about food safety and employee safety, make sure everything is up to code . . . you know, temps in freezers and fridges, meat storage and handling, that kind of thing. It’s for a big chain. I have to travel a lot, sometimes overnight, all over Michigan and Ohio. Company car, though! And good benefits.”
“I’m proud of you,” Jaymie said.
“It’s good for our bottom line. When we just had Logan’s wages, we were living hand to mouth. But . . .” She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure I’ll have fun this week, but I can’t help but wonder, should I have come away on vacation? I miss my hubby and baby so much!” Her eyes teared. “Fenix and Logan are my world! I expected Lo to message me before now, but I haven’t heard a peep from him!”
“For cripes’ sake,” Brandi groaned. “You just left home this morning! There hasn’t been time for your bed to get cold yet.”
“No, I get it, Gabriela!” Jaymie exclaimed hastily, butting in to forestall Brandi, who always said whatever she thought, kind or not. “I miss Jakob and Jocie.”
“But it’s different. Jocie’s not your real child,” Gabriela said.
There was deafening shocked silence. Brandi snickered. “There you go,” she said, raising her glass in a woozy salute. “And yet I’m the clueless rude one?”
Jaymie bit back her first response out of a desire to keep the peace, though it hurt to stay silent. Gabriela’s comment was all too common. Folks often remarked, as an aside, when stating how moms and kids had a special bond, that Jocie was not her real daughter. “I love and miss her,” Jaymie said softly. “And Jakob, too.”
“You’ve only been married a year or so . . . just wait,” Brandi said. She stood, swaying and clutching the back of a chair to steady herself. “All right, ladies, we are here to have fun, to cut loose, not mope around looking like sad sacks!”
Gabriela, her cheeks aflame, said, “Better a sad sack than a drunk who doesn’t give a darn about her husband and kids.”
“Ex-husband-to-be,” Brandi said. “And yeah, I intend to have fun, get thoroughly wasted and find some guys to have fun with!”
“Just a normal Wednesday then?” Gabriela shot back.
There was snickering from Courtney. It was kind of funny, and unexpected coming from the usually mild Gabriela. But Jaymie didn’t laugh, exchanging alarmed glances with Rachel and Melody. Brandi sat back down, her drink spilling.
“So, Courtney, how did you and Brandi meet?” Jaymie asked, determined to befriend the quiet woman. And change the subject away from the tension between Gabriela and Bra
ndi.
“Don’t answer that!” Brandi laughed, exchanging an arch look with her bestie. She took a long hit of what was left of her booze-soaked iced tea.
Courtney puffed on her Capri Magenta cigarette, then butted it out on a flagstone. “I hauled her ass home from a bar,” she said with a sly smile. “Some guy had dumped her and left her to her own devices. She was sitting on the curb crying.”
Brandi giggled, snorting. “Court said, ‘Do you need a lift?’ and I said, “Yeah, do you think you can carry me though?’”
Gabriela sniffed in disgust, but the others chuckled politely.
“When was that?” Jaymie asked.
“Last year,” Courtney said.
“And we’ve been inseparable ever since,” Brandi said, slinging her arm over Courtney’s shoulders and pulling her close, giving her a wet kiss on the cheek.
“Someone has to head off the herd of guys and take your butt home when you’ve had too much and are getting in trouble!” Courtney gave her a kiss back, with a fond look in her eyes.
“Oh, look, Gabriela,” Melody said with deadpan delivery. “Courtney is doing your old job.”
An interruption was needed to ward off the acrimony that seemed to bubble under the surface of interactions between Brandi and Gabriela. Jaymie suggested they walk to Tansy’s Tarts and buy the next day’s breakfast—they were all on vacation, so pecan butter tarts for breakfast seemed reasonable, though Jaymie did have something else planned—and then after they picked up the tarts they’d head directly to the Ice House for dinner. Gabriela kept checking her phone as they walked and seemed more and more worried. When Jaymie sidled up next to her and asked if anything was wrong, Gabriela said it was odd that Logan hadn’t texted. She texted him to ask what was up. He had not responded. She was worried.
He was busy, Jaymie reassured her. She led the way, up the sloping sand and gravel lane to the road along the water channel that bisected Heartbreak Island into the U.S. and Canadian sides in a fairly even manner. The border was mostly on the honor system; if you were going to enter the Canadian side you were supposed to do so at one of the proper crossing points, several bridges across the narrow man-made channel. In the past folks had slipped back and forth through residents’ backyards and hopped the channel, but most now used the border crossing points. If you had a Nexus pass it took seconds.
“I’ll tell you the story of Heartbreak Island at the fire one night,” she promised.
Tansy Woodrow’s shop, Tansy’s Tarts, was a bakeshop on the American side of the island. Tansy made the most exquisite tarts and pies for miles. Her specialty was butter tarts, the recipe a well-guarded secret that had been handed down from her Canadian grandmother. When you bit into a Tansy Woodrow butter tart, the filling gushed like liquid heaven, sweet and buttery, golden perfection crusted with buttery flaky delectability. There weren’t any like them in the rest of the United States and she was not sharing the recipe.
The shop took up much of the main floor of a white two-story frame structure with a big pink-and-white-striped awning over the front window and door with Tansy’s shop name in script; beyond the shop was the bakery at the back. Tansy and her hubby, Sherm, lived in the upstairs apartment and had a deck out back from which they could see over the narrow canal to the Canadian side of the island. Jaymie belatedly realized her impulsive suggestion to head to the bakery now was probably not the best plan. At this point in the day their stock would be depleted, but she’d go again the next morning if there wasn’t much to be had.
They entered, the chimes over the door jingling merrily. Jaymie looked at the nearly empty glass case—the shop was lined with antique bakery cases, white porcelain and chrome, with huge glass expanses and wire shelves—and said, “I think we’re too late.” She approached the order desk, where a young girl with a distended pregnant belly sat on a stool looking tired. “Hi. Is this all that’s left?” she said, indicating the few tarts remaining.
“Whatdya expect?” the girl said. “It’s almost closing.”
The girl was unfamiliar to her, perhaps a new summer hire; Jaymie didn’t often get the butter tarts, as she was trying to stay away from too many sweets. She glanced at her name tag. “Hi, Hallie . . . uh, yes, I should have realized that.”
“‘I should have realized that,’” the girl said with a grimace, mimicking Jaymie’s tone, or what she approximated as Jaymie’s polite tone. She rubbed her belly.
“No need to get frickin’ rude, little girl!” Brandi said.
“Brandi, it’s okay,” Jaymie said, putting one hand on her friend’s arm.
“It’s not okay!” Gabriela said, slipping her phone in her plaid cotton shorts pocket. She tugged her bright pink T-shirt down over her hips. “Brandi’s right; she’s a server here. She should be respectful of a customer.”
Hallie . . . Jaymie remembered where she had heard the name before. This must be Mario’s girlfriend. She couldn’t be more than twenty, and he was in his fifties. And he was a creep. And he was cheating on her with anyone who would stay still long enough. Jaymie held up one hand to her friends. “It’s okay, hush, everyone. Hallie, we’ll take what you’ve got here.” As the girl boxed the tarts that were left, Jaymie said gently, “I’ve met your, uh . . . I’ve met Mario. And Kory. They were at my friend Valetta’s house, measuring to do some work.”
The girl paused and turned. Wearily she said, slapping the lid shut on the cardboard box, “I don’t give a crap what they were doing with your friend. I don’t care if they were boning. That’ll be ten dollars.”
As they left the tart shop Brandi ducked back in, the door chimes jingling merrily, and made a rude gesture to Hallie, along with a loud raspberry.
“Brandi!” Jaymie gasped. “I have to live here, you know!”
But her friend merely laughed and sprinted ahead, whirling, hands in the air. “C’mon, Jaymie, don’t be a spoilsport. We’re young, we’re free! Let’s live!”
She skipped ahead, her drunken stupor worn off, it appeared, Courtney racing to catch up and Gabriela sighing but following quickly on their heels. Jaymie, Melody and Rachel were left behind, strolling the sandy dirt road as the sun began to descend over the line of trees that rimmed the U.S. side of the island.
“I didn’t think being young and free meant being rude,” Jaymie muttered.
“So embarrassing,” Rachel moaned.
“Really, you two . . . what did you expect?” Melody said. “It’s as if you’ve never met Brandi before.”
“What do you mean?” Jaymie asked.
“She was always like this—impulsive and careless—you’ve forgotten. Or blocked it out. Don’t you remember nagging her to do chores, like put out the garbage? She’d forget to lock the door after her, and we were robbed twice because of it. She ate our food and used our toiletries and never replaced them. She had—has, apparently—the attention span of a two-year-old and her manners are worse. Don’t you remember her sneaking those two dudes into the house and keeping them in her room for a week? And how they scared the crap out of us by coming down for breakfast one morning?”
“I remember!” Rachel cried. “I was in my PJs and those two guys, neither speaking English—I think they were Colombian exchange students—crept into the dining room when I was having coffee. Gabriela makes me laugh every time she tells the story . . . her aggrieved expression is the funniest part. I almost called the cops on them. Brandi wasn’t even there. She had gone out the night before and went home with some new dude and didn’t come back. The guys got scared and hungry and came down, finally.”
Jaymie laughed. It was funny now, but it wasn’t then. “If Gabriela hadn’t spoken Spanish we would never have figured out who they were and why they were in our house!”
Four
Dinner at the Ice House was, as usual, wonderful, though the owners were not there. The Redmonds, who had been on a monthlong sailing adventure of the Great Lakes, were set to return any day. Good staff made the luxury of a vacation possible
; the restaurant was efficiently run, the manager stern, competent and yet well-liked.
The restaurant, named after the ice harvesting storage facility it had once been, was right on the river. It had a long narrow outdoor patio that lined the whole front, overlooking the St. Clair and facing Queensville, with benches for those who wanted to sit and sip a glass of wine while they watched boats slip past. There was a larger patio at the back, where umbrella-shaded tables were popular for the après boating crowd. In late August the patio was the popular place to watch the sun go down.
But it was a hot evening, and the inside was dim, air-conditioned and comfortable. They took one of the larger tables, sitting near the big antique freezers that lined the back; they were no longer freezers, now acting as storage for barware and linens. Her friends asked what was good, and Jaymie said everything. She ordered the local perch and fries, Rachel had fish tacos, and the rest had the Ice House signature burger. Beer, iced tea, wine . . . soon their table was cluttered with drinks and plates and there was relative quiet as they ate.
Jaymie worried about how the time was going to pass, but as the mood mellowed, good food and drinks working their magic, she felt more optimistic. Her friends were tired, and it was always difficult to please a whole crowd. They’d work it out. It usually, if memory served her, took a few days for the group to find the rhythm of their past camping adventures, but by the end of it they’d be hugging and crying and not wanting to let go of each other.
The dinner crowd drifted away and the evening crowd, sunburned, waterlogged and ready to party, wandered in. Jaymie had plans for the evening and didn’t want it to be too dark when they got back to the cottage. She suggested they leave, but Brandi and Courtney wanted to stick around for a couple of drinks. A local rock band set up on the corner stage, tuning instruments and checking mics, and soon oldies, done with tolerable talent but loud, filled the bar part of the restaurant. Brandi and her friend moved them to a table closer to the band, and Brandi flirted with the lead vocalist, a local who worked at the hospital in Wolverhampton during the week and played with his band on weekends. She took her drink and stood by the stage, chatting with him between songs as the singer’s wife glared at the oblivious Brandi from her table by the stage.
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