Nothing was the same after that summer, yet the vacation began the way it always did. The SUV piled high with too much stuff, the four of us squeezed in between the bags and the suitcases. Not so much a vacation, as an enforced retreat. A mad dash to Long Island, to escape the summer chaos of Manhattan. It was a city that had always been too much for me, and from the very beginning, I’d insisted on a house by the sea.
That annual escape to Montauk had become something vital over the years. Just knowing there was a wide-open space I could run to made the rest of the year feel less claustrophobic.
But that summer, things were different. That summer, there were five of us. An odd number. A break with the usual routine. Everything out of balance. I had hesitated when Sarah asked if Isa could join us, not because I didn’t want to help her, but because it felt like an encroachment. As if my hideaway had been discovered and the summer spoiled somehow, before it had even started. But Sarah had left me with little choice. At least, that was how it felt.
“Willem and I need to get away,” Sarah had practically begged me. “Just the two of us, so we can sort things out and see if we can salvage anything from this mess.”
She told me she wanted to treat it as some sort of second honeymoon which meant it was better if Isa wasn’t with them.
“It would just feel awkward,” she had explained.
Which was true, I suppose. It was awkward. But, my God, second honeymoon. I had cringed when Sarah called it that, because it sounded so hopeless for some reason. The idea that it was necessary—a second chance. The failure contained there, in that insipid little phrase. You failed the first time so now you need to try again. Poor Sarah.
But I found myself blindsided by the request and agreed that Isa could join us at the house in Montauk. What else could I do, faced with Sarah’s desperation?
It’s terrible to think that everything was set in motion by such a poorly considered decision. I caved in, despite my better judgment. I allowed my emotion to get the better of my intuition.
Perhaps, if I’d paid more attention to Katie, I would have come to a different decision. I had expected her to be excited when I told her that Sarah wanted Isa to spend the vacation with us. I thought the prospect of having her best friend around for a whole month would have had her rushing to call Isa and start making frenzied plans. But she was strangely subdued when I mentioned it.
“The whole summer? With us? At the beach house?”
“Yes. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Sure. I guess so.”
I guess so. That was a warning in a way, when I look back. But I chose to ignore it.
“You don’t sound too keen.”
“No, I am. I’m just tired is all. But it’s cool if Isa comes with us. And anyway, they’re not going to want Isa tagging along with them on their second honeymoon, are they? That’d be weird.”
“You know about that?”
“Mom, Isa’s my best friend. Do you really think she wouldn’t talk to me about something like that?”
“That’s true. It must be strange for her too, I suppose. All this fuss and bother?”
“What do you think? She almost died of embarrassment when they told her about it.”
And I can spend the rest of my life going back over that moment. I can torment myself with the idea that this was the moment I should have stepped back and really thought about what Sarah was asking us to do. I should have recognized Katie’s reticence for what it was—she had her doubts, she wasn’t sure. I could have waited a few days and then asked her again, asked her why she wasn’t so keen on the idea. But I didn’t. And I’m going to have to live with that.
I tried to explain my misgivings to Peter, hoping, perhaps, at some subconscious level, that he would dissuade me.
“Four weeks is a long time, don’t you think?” I asked him. “A lot can happen in four weeks, and I’m not sure I have the energy for all that worry.”
“Worry? What’s there to worry about?”
“I don’t know. When it’s someone else’s child, you worry about them more than your own, don’t you?”
“Maybe, but Isa’s seventeen now, she can take care of herself. And let’s face it, Sarah does have a point, they can hardly take her with them on their honeymoon.”
“Second honeymoon,” I’d reminded him.
“Okay, second honeymoon,” he laughed. “But you know what I mean. They need time to sort things out, and if we can help them out, then I think we should.”
But that was the problem, in a way. Seventeen. It was a dangerous age. I remembered how I felt myself, at that age. More adult, more capable, than I really was. Never able to ask for help, or admit I needed it. Floundering because of it. You needed guidance at that age, perhaps more than ever.
I thought all this but never mentioned it, because… well, how old-fashioned it sounded. How provincial of me. Like I wanted to interfere or spoil the fun. Kids had more freedom these days, especially in a city like New York, that’s just how it was.
And Katie and Isa were on the cusp of adulthood, so you had to give them room to make mistakes, it was part of the deal. But there was a wildness to Isa, I had always felt. An adventurousness and boldness that unsettled me. That smile of hers, that glint in her eye, that feline stretch of arms and legs that always suggested something indolent and untamable. There would be trouble, there would be mess. I could feel it.
“Listen,” Peter had said. “If Willem and Sarah think Isa can handle it, then it’s fine with me. They know their own daughter. So, I guess it’s going to be up to you. If you don’t want Isa with us, then that’s fair enough, it’s our vacation too, so…”
Which meant nothing, in the end. How could I be the spoilsport? Say no, when everyone else seemed to think it was fine?
So, I kept my thoughts to myself, ignored my instincts and, instead, found myself driving along West 80th Street on my way to collect Isa.
I can still see her outside their beautiful brownstone, waiting for us. She was standing at the top of the steps leading up to the house and jumped up and down, waving when she caught sight of the car. When Katie spotted her, she opened the window and leaned out, waving back and whooping, “Hey! Isa! You ready?”
It was a quick pickup. New York is an impatient city, and a line of cars formed immediately behind us, honking their annoyance as soon as we stopped and forcing us to zip back and forth quickly with Isa’s bags.
I remember Isa jumping into the back of the car too quickly, forgetting Willem and Sarah were there and that she had yet to say goodbye to them. Not caring, it seemed, that it would be a month until she saw her parents again.
They had needed to lean into the car to say their goodbyes, just a brush of a kiss on a cheek, all of it very informal and rushed.
“You guys have a great time too, okay?” Isa had called out to them. And they had nodded and laughed.
“Okay, we’ll try.”
I remember I looked in the rearview mirror as we pulled away and watched Willem and Sarah as they stood on the sidewalk, arm in arm, waving until the car pulled out of sight.
Not once did Isa turn to look back at them and wave a last goodbye. She was already gone, off on her summer adventure, her parents forgotten, leaning on Katie as they both stared at something on the screen of Isa’s phone and laughed.
And I still wonder if my memory of this moment is more vivid than Sarah’s or Willem’s. I imagine it is, but I can’t explain why I remember it so clearly. The banality of it all didn’t lend itself to being remembered. And yet, there it is, fixed in my mind. Sarah and Willem on the street waving as the car turns the corner, neither of them knowing this was the last time they would see their daughter alive, blissfully unaware that Isa had apparently forgotten them already.
We’d driven to Long Island filled with the same easy forgetfulness, and I’d been relieved to feel the looseness in my shoulders as we sped down the interstate. Katie and Isa chatting in the back, James leaning against the window and snoozing, the radio on low, and Peter humming along with it.
Just like every summer.
Yes, I thought. Maybe I’ve been wrong to worry too much about Isa coming with us. Everything will be okay.
Three hours later, we pulled up at the beach house and tumbled out of the car. The salty smell of the sea was like a welcome home and the cool Atlantic breeze blew away any last traces of doubt.
Summer could begin at last.
Summer, I thought it would never come. For weeks it was the only thing I thought about. I kept waiting for the moment when Mom would turn around and say she’d changed her mind and that Isa couldn’t come with us after all. I planned and imagined every detail because I wanted it to be perfect. A fun summer, an exciting summer, an unforgettable summer. It had to be. Just me and Isa together for a whole month. We could start anew and learn to be friends again. The anticipation was almost unbearable.
That first morning in the beach house, I woke up, roused by the gentle shush of the sea and the flicker of sun on my eyelids and forgot, for an instant, that Isa was there. When I turned and saw her sitting in the window seat staring out at the ocean, it made my heart jump.
I lay in bed, heavy with sleep, and watched her for a while, admiring the looseness of her, the way her head rested against the glass, like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was simply sitting there staring out the window and watching the day begin.
Being tucked away by the sea, away from New York, seemed to have worked its magic already; she seemed happy, and it was nice to see her looking so relaxed again. And watching her, I thought we’d be able to put all that trouble behind us. Just forget all the arguments and disagreements and get back to being friends again. Good friends. Close friends, just as we had always been.
Isa could forget all that crap with her parents, she could forget all about Alex, and all the stupid shit she’d done the last few months, all the lies, all the trouble she’d caused. She could learn to be herself again.
Looking at her sitting in the window, the pale light of the morning shimmering around her like a halo, it was possible to forget the secrets behind her fake bright smile. It was possible to ignore the truth and pretend everything could be forgotten, and I lay in bed and looked at her and felt sure of it: the summer was going to be the best ever.
“You look like an angel sitting there like that,” I said.
And she turned towards me and smiled, then leapt from the window seat and onto the bed beside me.
“Damn it, Katie,” she laughed. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”
The house was quiet, everyone asleep still and enjoying the fact that there was no need to get up early. When I turned the clock towards me it read 6 a.m.
“Shit, Isa, you’re not going to wake up this early every day, are you?”
“Dunno, depends what we get up to I guess.”
“Swimming, sunbathing and sleeping,” I told her.
And Isa laughed. “Well, that’s a start, I suppose.”
“Why? What else were you planning on doing?”
Isa simply smiled and shrugged, the sort of shrug that suggested “you’ll see.” The sort of shrug that suggested she had plans, lots of them, and they were going to be messy. And if that made my stomach lurch a little, then I decided to ignore it. It was summer after all, and the whole point of summer was to loosen up and let go. And besides, I had plans of my own.
We spent an hour or so sifting through our suitcases, pulling out summer dresses, sandals, bikinis and agreeing which ones we would swap during the vacation. Isa pulled off her nightshirt and slipped on a yellow sundress she’d lifted from my pile of stuff. It was a perfect fit, tight in all the right places and looked good against her skin, which was golden brown already from all the running she’d been doing. An attempt to get healthy after her recent bout of partying.
I watched as she stood by the mirror, smoothing down the creases, messing up her long blond hair, and checking herself from every angle to be sure she looked good. When she was satisfied with the pose, she grabbed her phone and took a photo over her shoulder before swiping the screen and uploading it to Instagram.
I knew what was coming, though I’d hoped things would be different here, that the sun, the sea, the change of scenery, would prove a bigger lure than the glitter and instant gratification of Instagram. That Isa would realize there were plenty of other ways to feel good about yourself and would stop needing that sort of attention, even if it was just for a few weeks. Stupid really. Isa was still Isa and a change of location was never going to alter that, no matter how much I hoped for it.
I watched her posing in front of the mirror and knew the rest of the day would be punctuated with pings and notifications, and Isa checking her phone every few minutes to read the comments and keep count of the likes. Isa always got plenty of likes.
Likes that would keep on coming even after she died, the tally of little red hearts maintaining a ghoulish upward tick. Even in death, Isa would lose none of her allure.
“Hey, okay if I wear this today?” she asked me.
And I wanted to say, “Actually, no.” I wanted to tell her that the dress was a gift, something my mom had picked out especially for the vacation, but I said nothing. I think I understood it was a test, of sorts. Isa’s way of asking me, “Are we really still friends?” So, I let her have the dress.
“Sure, but take a shower first, yeah? I don’t want you stinking up my new clothes.”
“Hey!” Isa laughed, and she picked up a T-shirt from the floor, and threw it at me. “I don’t know about you, Katie Lindeman, but I plan on getting sweaty and sandy and dirty this vacation. It’s summer, time to live a little.”
“Isa, if you want the dress, you get in the shower.”
And she laughed again, “Yeah, yeah,” and made a show of sniffing her armpits and scrunching up her nose, before peeling off the dress and sauntering to the bathroom, comfortable in her nakedness, a confidence I wished I also possessed.
There were other girls at school who had the same ease, a self-assurance that came from sport and toned muscles and long limbs, and something else, something indefinable, though none of them had the easy grace Isa possessed.
I knew I would never be one of those girls, an Isa sort of girl, and it was a thought which made me scratch at my arm and try to think of something else.
From the shower, I could hear Isa singing, some song I didn’t recognize. Probably something she was making up as she went along. She was like that, spontaneous and in the moment. One day, I would figure out how she managed it.
Sweaty and sandy and dirty.
I thought about what my mom would think if she’d heard Isa announce this. It was the kind of thing that made her nervous and super vigilant.
But Isa’s right though, I thought. It was summer, it was time to loosen up. It was what seventeen was all about. Messing things up, creating chaos, getting into trouble, and having fun. Mom had just forgotten what it was like to be seventeen, her memory fogged over by middle-age and the horrors she imagined might befall her daughter. Sex, in other words.
And as if Isa had picked up on my thoughts, there came a yell from the shower.
“Hey, Katie, any boys in this town worth getting to know?”
And I almost said it. I almost told her: “Yeah, there’s this one boy, Luka.”
But I wasn’t ready to share Luka with Isa yet. Not after all that had happened between us. So, I said nothing. Just listened to the shower run, and Isa sing, and tried to swallow down the unease I already felt rising in my throat and burning my tongue.
We had always shared our secrets. Not so much lately, perhaps, but we were confidantes still. We leaned on one another as friends always do. But when it came to Luka, I held back. Kept it to myself without really knowing why. A secret like that was the sort of thing friends were supposed to share with each another. But something had held me back. Instinct, I suppose.
Luka, no, I couldn’t tell Isa about him. Tell her about the feelings I had for him. Feelings which had crept up on me unexpectedly. I still wasn’t sure just what it was I felt, or where it had come from, this… well, what was it exactly? Infatuation? A crush? I had no way to articulate it, not without sounding gushing and pathetic. It made me cringe just thinking about it.
Every time I thought about him though, that was how I felt. A tingle somewhere—everywhere, in fact, from scalp to toe. Just saying his name could bring it on. “Luka,” and there it was, that shiver across my skin and down my spine.
He had always been there, a regular part of the Montauk summer. But the feelings—they were new. They overcame me last summer. The two of us were headed to the beach, Luka hanging on the porch, waiting for me just as he always did, smiling when I came running outside, my hair still wet from the shower, T-shirt half on, my beach bag half open so everything fell out and had me cursing and blushing and feeling clumsy and geeky as I tried to pick it up and stuff it back in.
He kneeled to help me. That was all he did, he just kneeled, and I looked up from my crouched position, felt the wet of my hair as it started to soak through the back of my T-shirt, caught a whiff of shampoo—the awful medicinal smell of the brand James used, a bottle I’d seized by mistake in the morning rush—and it was as if I could see myself, so awkward and flailing and hopeless. And I’d wanted to run inside and never come back out. I’d thought he would laugh at me and shake his head, smell the crappy shampoo and back away in embarrassment, but all he did was crouch down beside me, pick up the sunscreen and put it in my bag saying, “Hey, what’s the rush? It’s summer, remember?”
And he could never have known, of course, what this did to me. He was just being Luka. Just being how he always was with me. A friend, a pal, someone to walk to the beach with. Until that morning, that was all he’d ever been to me, as well.
Or maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe I had noticed the blue of his eyes before. A color I found so hard to describe. Darker than a sapphire, bluer than a jay, indigo almost, it had caught me unawares a long time ago, just like the flop of his dark hair. Boys weren’t meant to look like him, was what I’d thought. Beautiful, like this. They were meant to be rough around the edges and not worth my attention.
But there he was, looking this way, looking beautiful, and I’d had to stare at the ground, just to stop myself from blushing, just to catch my breath. Some days I’d even gone out of my way to avoid him, just to be sure he wouldn’t figure it out.
Because if he did, that would be the end of that loose connection we had. That ease we had around each other would be gone. And I would have spoiled it for nothing. I knew we could never be anything more than friends. I would never be brave enough to tell him what I felt and then stand there watching him squirm as he told me he didn’t feel the same way. I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was the sort of boy I could never have.
And, if I’d trusted her completely, I would have asked Isa what to do. There were even a few times, over the last year when I’d come close to it.
Hey, there’s this guy…
But I never dared, I always held back. And a piece of me knew why. Some instinct I preferred to ignore, a little voice that said, She’ll hurt you, if you tell her. She’ll hurt you in the worst way you can imagine.
It wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to think about a friend, and I was ashamed of thinking it, at the time. Even now, when I know how true it was, when my instincts were proven correct, I still prefer not to think about it. Prefer instead to remember all the good things that happened that summer, before it all went wrong.
I’ve thought about that every day since Isa died. How it was possible that a vacation could turn into something so disastrous. Because the start of it had been so much fun. That first day, when I think back to it, it seems impossible that it was actually the moment we started moving closer to Isa’s death. There was a shadow hanging over us all that time, but we just weren’t aware of it.
By the time we had showered, we could already hear the sounds coming from the kitchen, the clatter of pots and pans and the radio playing. Dad was already up and about making breakfast. It was his little vacation thing, a full-blown affair of pancakes and fruits and freshly squeezed juices. Warm bread rolls and eggs and expensive artisan jams (no one ever knew where he found them). Coffee on the stove from a percolator he brought with him from home. Strong, black, powerful stuff that caused goose bumps with the first sip.
This breakfast extravaganza was something he never did back home. He didn’t have the time. Back home we rarely saw him on weekday mornings, he was always up and gone long before we even opened our eyes. Breakfast in Manhattan was a quick toasted bagel and a gulp of juice, if that. No one talking much, save to say if they were going somewhere after school.
It was my favorite thing about staying at the summer house, those breakfasts, the fact that we all sat together and talked, as if we were a normal family. So as soon as the smell of coffee filtered through the house and up towards us, I shouted out to Isa to get a move on, so we would be downstairs before James scoffed the lot.
He was already there though, by the time we made it into the kitchen, sat at the table with his plate piled high. On his fork, a pancake, halfway to his mouth when we walked in. Isa in the yellow dress, her wet hair piled up on her head, the water dripping onto her shoulders and seeping into the thin pale cotton, the wet fabric clinging to her so that, in the morning light, against that tanned skin, you could almost think she was naked.
James simply stared.
“Morning, James,” I said. And I winked at him because it was so easy to tease him, which made him drop his fork and caused his cheeks to blaze a furious embarrassed red, and Dad to shout out to him that he was, “such a klutz still.”
And Isa? She noticed none of it, or pretended to, I couldn’t be sure. She just slipped into the chair facing James and smiled at him and asked if there was any coffee left.
Poor James, I thought. So damn awkward. So shy.
Still young enough not to realize that girls had started to notice him and that they liked what they saw. Not just because he was basically an okay kinda guy, the sensitive kind, but because he was pretty good-looking, and the fact he didn’t realize it made him all the more attractive.
“You know who he reminds me of sometimes?” Isa had said to me once. “Johnny Depp when he was really young, but just nowhere near as cocky.”
And I had laughed at that, not because I couldn’t see it, but because I could never imagine Isa looking at my brother that way.
“You should get yourself some glasses,” I told her. And Isa had shaken her head and shrugged again. That same shrug she always did when she knew she was right about something. “You’ll see, Katie. You’ll see.”
Until that summer, girls had never veered into James’ line of vision. He was always busy with other things. But now there he was, sat at the breakfast table facing Isa and trying desperately not to look up from his plate.
I gave Isa a dig in the ribs and mouthed a whispered “stop” when I caught her smiling at James, all coy and girlish. If they hadn’t known each for so long, it could have been funny, but something about the way Isa smiled at him felt weird. A joke too far. She should know that there were some boundaries even she shouldn’t cross, and the fact that she didn’t seem to consider this made me nervous.
Dad finally finished up in the kitchen and came to the table with a flourish and a “Ta-da,” as he laid down a massive pile of fresh pancakes. He was already relaxed into his summer self. Sloppy and casual in a faded old T-shirt, the one with the album cover of London Calling on it.
Mom always joked he wore it as an ironic statement. But I never saw it like that. He was just relaxing was all. The rest of the year, he lived in expensive tailored suits, and wore a watch that cost as much as a small car. And okay, so maybe he’d never come close to being punk, and maybe Joe Strummer wouldn’t have liked him all that much, at least, not when he was in high finance mode, but on mornings like this, with a pile of fresh pancakes on a plate and the sun pouring through the windows, maybe they’d get on okay.
Because he kn. . .
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