Celeste blinked, a tear running down her face. “Oh, God, you must think I’m a total psycho, look at me.”
“You’re fine,” I said as she reached over to a roll of paper towels and ripped one off, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry you weren’t warned.”
“Well, that’s Mama for you,” she said. She blew her nose with a honk. “We’ve only talked on the phone three times today already. Are you hungry? I was just about to make Gordon something.”
“Oh,” I told her, “you don’t have to do that. I can just—”
“Sit,” Celeste said, gesturing to the table. She handed me my water. “Now, let me find those tortillas . . .”
I went to a chair, doing as I was told as she opened the fridge and began taking things out. A moment later, Gordon joined me, bringing a thick paperback book along with her.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“Oh, Lord,” Celeste groaned. “Don’t get her started about those damn gorillas.”
“They are chimpanzees,” Gordon said. From the annoyance in her voice, it was clear this was a common exchange.
“Can I see?” I asked, nodding at the book. She pushed it toward me and I flipped it over. The Allies, Gathering Two: Justice Begins, it said in thick raised print on the cover. The illustration was of, yes, a chimpanzee, but with very human features, staring into a red-and-yellow-streaked setting sun. “Oh, the Allies series. I remember these. There are, like, a million of them.”
“Twenty in the first gathering, fourteen so far in the second,” Gordon replied. “And that’s not counting all the extra editions and compilations, plus the manga and graphic novels.”
“It’s like she’s speaking another language,” Celeste added from the stove, where she was now heating up a frying pan. “I gave up trying to follow years ago.”
Gordon, unfazed, flipped the book back over and opened it to a bent-down page, then started to read. After a moment, she reached up, twirling a piece of hair around one finger.
“She’s gone,” Celeste told me, tossing a tortilla into the frying pan. “Gets lost when she reads. Thank God for it. I give her a hard time, but I was never good in school. She is.”
“What grade is she in?”
“Starting fifth in the fall. She’s in accelerated reading and math,” she replied, sounding proud. “Clearly not my child, but I will take some of the credit.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought she was—”
Celeste looked over her shoulder at me. “What? Oh, no. Her mama’s your cousin Amber, from my daddy’s side. She lives in Florida right now.”
Amber, I thought. The name was familiar, but only faintly so. “Was my mom close with her?”
“Thick as thieves,” she replied, pushing the tortilla with a spatula. “But we all were, back then. Growing up here, family was everything. It had to be. We only ever had each other.”
It occurred to me that at some point I would need to draw up a family tree to really understand my place in all this. But as long as I had Celeste here, it was worth getting started.
“So you have . . . how many kids?” I asked her.
“Three,” she said, flipping the finished quesadilla onto a nearby plate and starting another one. “There’s Trinity, who you may have seen earlier, she’s pregnant right now. . . .”
I thought of the girl with the cleaning cart, eyeballing me as I passed. We were first cousins? So much for family being all you had. She’d acted like she hated me. “She works at the motel, right?”
“Yes,” Celeste allowed with a sigh, “but only in the broadest definition of the word. Mostly she’s on her phone complaining about how her feet hurt while Mama does both their jobs because she’s a damn softie.”
“Right,” I said.
“Then there’s my son, Jack, he’s three years older than you,” she continued, shaking the frying pan over the burner, “and finally Bailey, who is your age.”
“She’s seventeen?”
“Both your birthdays are in April. Your mama and I were pregnant at the same time, our due dates just weeks apart. We spent a lot of time on the phone complaining to each other, now that I think about it. I probably shouldn’t be so hard on Trinity.”
She finished up the second quesadilla, then brought both plates over to the table.
“Thank you,” I said as she put one in front of me.
“You’re very welcome,” she replied. “Silverware and napkins are—”
Before she finished saying this, I was reaching like it was a reflex to the rattan basket across from me, pulling it closer to retrieve a fork, knife, and napkin. Huh.
“Well, never mind,” she said with another smile. “Gordon. Put the book away and eat.”
“I can eat and read,” Gordon replied, picking up her quesadilla and taking a bite, her eyes still on the page.
Celeste rolled her eyes and went to the fridge, retrieving a can of Pop Soda. Then she sat down, opening the can before kicking off her shoes, first one, then the other. “What a day. It’s only early season and I’m already exhausted.”
“You work at a market?” I asked.
She looked surprised I knew this, then glanced down at her uniform top. “I forgot I had this thing on! Usually take it off the second I get in the car. Yes, Conroy Market. Only grocery store in North Lake. I’m an assistant manager.”
I took a big bite of the quesadilla: I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I’d begun eating. “This is really good,” I told Celeste.
“You want another one?” She started to get to her feet. “It’ll only take a second.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. Thank you, though.”
While I ate, I could tell she was trying not to stare at me, my presence still so surprising. Finally she got to her feet, taking my now-empty plate and Gordon’s. “I can do those,” I said as she started to run water into the sink, crammed with all those dishes.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re a guest.”
“I want to,” I said, wanting to add that it had been driving me crazy all day. “You cooked, I clean. That’s the rule in our house. Please?”
Celeste looked at me for a second. “Okay,” she said finally. “But know this: you start washing dishes in this house, you’ll never stop.”
In response, I stood up and walked over to the sink, pulling the faucet aside and turning it all the way hot before beginning to sort everything into categories. I knew I probably looked like the weirdo cousin, but as I added soap to the water, finding a scrub brush in the nearby dish rack, I felt more in control than I had since that call in the dark from Bridget twelve hours earlier. I was in a strange place, feeling strange even to myself, but this task was one I knew well, and I took comfort in it. So much so that when I finished, I turned to see both Celeste and Gordon had gone, leaving the Allies book and the lake as my only company.
I always did a lot of good thinking while washing dishes, and Mimi’s sink had been slam full. By the time I was done, I’d decided to look at my time here at North Lake as a kind of organizing. So back up in my room, once I unpacked my suitcase and put my clothes away, I pulled out the one notebook I’d brought with me. MIMI + JOE, I wrote at the top of a blank page, with CELESTE and WAVERLY each under a vertical line beneath. From those, I drew more lines, adding in my dad beside my mom’s name, and mine underneath it. Then I did the same with Trinity, Jack, and Bailey under Celeste’s, realizing as I did so I had no idea who her husband was. I’d be here three weeks, though. I had a feeling I could fill in the gaps.