A decade-old image pops into my head: me with my long-lost grandmother, filling a shopping cart to the rim with stuffed animals while dressed like we’re going to the opera. Tiaras and all. I push the thought aside and grope for more words. “Is she…Does she…Why?”
My mother reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope, then pushes it across the table toward me. “Maybe you should just read it.”
I lift the flap and pull out a folded sheet of thick, cream-colored paper that smells faintly of lilac. The top is engraved with the initials MMS—Mildred Margaret Story. Our names are almost exactly the same, except mine has Takahashi at the end. The short paragraphs are typewritten, followed by a cramped, spidery signature.
Dear Milly,
We have, of course, never met. The reasons are complex, but as years progress they become less important than they once were. As you stand poised on the threshold of adulthood, I find myself curious to know you.
I own a property called Gull Cove Resort that is a popular vacation destination on Gull Cove Island. I wish to invite you and your cousins, Jonah and Aubrey, to spend this summer living and working at the resort. Your parents worked there as teenagers and found the environment both stimulating and enriching.
I am sure you and your cousins would reap similar benefits from a summer at Gull Cove Resort. And since I am not well enough to host guests for any length of time, it would afford me the opportunity to get to know you.
I hope you will accept my invitation. The resort’s summer hire coordinator, Edward Franklin, will handle all necessary travel and logistics, and you may contact him at the email address below.
Very sincerely yours,
Mildred Story
I read it twice, then refold the paper and lay it on the table. I don’t look up, but I can feel my mother’s eyes on me as she waits for me to speak. Now I really have to pee, but I need to loosen my throat with yet more water before the words can burst out of me. “Is this bullshit for real?”
Whatever my mother might have been expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “Excuse me?”
“Let me get this straight,” I say, my cheeks warming as I stuff the letter back into its envelope. “This woman I have never met—who cut you out of her life without looking back, who didn’t come to your wedding or my christening or anything related to this family for the past twenty-four years, who hasn’t called or emailed or written until, oh, five minutes ago—this woman wants me to work at her hotel?”
“I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way, Milly.”
My voice rises to a near shriek. “How am I supposed to look at it?”
“Shhh,” Mom hisses, her eyes darting around the room. If there’s one thing she hates, it’s a scene. “As an opportunity.”
“For what?” I ask. She hesitates, twisting her cocktail ring—nothing like the five-carat emerald stunner I’ve seen on my grandmother’s hand in old pictures—and suddenly I get it. “No, wait—don’t answer that. That’s the wrong question. I should have said for who.”
“Whom,” my mother says. She seriously cannot help herself.
“You think this is a chance to get back into her good graces, don’t you? To be—re-inherited.”
“That’s not a word.”
“God, Mom, would you give it a rest? My grammar is not the issue!”
“I’m sorry,” Mom says, and that surprises me so much that I don’t finish the rant I was building toward. Her eyes are still bright, but now they’re watery, too. “It’s just—this is my mother, Milly. I’ve waited years to hear from her. I don’t know why now, or why you, or why this, but she’s finally reaching out. If we don’t take her up on it, we might not get another chance.”
“Chance for what?”
“To get to know her again.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say Who cares, but I bite it back. I was going to follow that up with We’ve been fine all this time without her, but that’s not true. We’re not fine.
My mother lives at the edge of a Mildred Story–shaped hole, and has for my entire life. It’s turned her into the kind of person who keeps everybody at a distance—even my dad, who I know she loved as much as she’s capable of loving anyone. When I was little, I’d watch them together and wish for something as perfect. Once I got older, though, I started noticing all the little ways Mom would push Dad aside. How she’d stiffen at hugs, use work as an excuse to stay away until past our bedtimes, and beg off family outings with migraines that never bothered her in the office. Eventually, being chilly and closed off turned into criticizing absolutely everything Dad said or did. Right up to the point when she finally asked him to leave.
Now that he’s gone, she does the same thing to me.
I draw a question mark in the condensation of my water glass. “You want me to go away for the entire summer?” I ask.
“You’d love it, Milly.” When I snort, she adds, “No, you really would. It’s a gorgeous resort, and kids apply from all over to work there. It’s actually very competitive. Staff quarters are beautiful, you get full access to all the facilities—it’s like a vacation.”
“A vacation where I’m my grandmother’s employee.”
“You’d be with your cousins.”
“I don’t know my cousins.” I haven’t seen Aubrey since Uncle Adam’s family moved to Oregon when we were five. Jonah lives in Rhode Island, which isn’t that far away, but my mother and his father barely talk. The last time we all got together was for Uncle Anders’s birthday when I was eight. I only remember two things about Jonah: One, he whacked me in the head with a plastic bat and seemed disappointed when I didn’t cry. And two, he blew up like a balloon when he ate an appetizer he was allergic to, even though his mother warned him to stay away from it.
“You could get to know them. You’re all the same age, and none of you has any brothers or sisters. It would be nice for you to be closer.”
“What, like you’re close to Uncle Adam, Uncle Anders, and Uncle Archer? You guys barely talk to one another! My cousins and I have nothing in common.” I shove the envelope back toward her. “I’m not doing it. I’m not a dog that’ll come running just because she calls. And I don’t want to be gone all summer.”
Mom starts twisting her cocktail ring again. “I thought you might say that. And I realize it’s a lot to ask. So I want to give you something in return.” Her hand moves up to the chunky gold links gleaming against her black dress. “I know how much you’ve always loved my diamond teardrop necklace. What if I gave it to you as a thank-you?”