{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil Helvetica;}}
\f0\fs24 The coffee was good. Elikapeka stood at the kitchen counter with both hands wrapped around the mug and allowed herself thirty seconds of stillness before the evening swallowed her whole.\par
\par
Through the sliding glass door she could see Susan Carpenter moving between the rented folding tables with the brisk competence of a woman who had organized school fundraisers and church potlucks and knew exactly how a tablecloth should be anchored against a canal breeze. The caterers\u8212?two young men and a girl in black polo shirts\u8212?were arranging chafing dishes with the careful efficiency of people being paid by the hour. The patio looked better than Elikapeka had expected. The string lights she and Emma had hung last night caught the late-afternoon sun and would come into their own once the sky darkened.\par
\par
Thirty-six children.\par
\par
She drank her coffee.\par
\par
From behind the house came the low, pleasant thump of bass finding its footing, then a moment of silence, then the opening of something Emma had described as essential. Elikapeka recognized it dimly. The sound system on Jim's sailboat apparently worked. She heard Andy's laugh carry across the water\u8212?that easy, unselfconscious laugh of a man holding a beer and doing something pleasant with his hands\u8212?and then Alex Carpenter's voice saying something she couldn't make out, and then both of them laughing, and then Jim's voice joining in. Three men on a sailboat in a canal in Fort Lauderdale in June, which was exactly what three such men would choose to be doing on a Friday evening if given any latitude at all.\par
\par
She had given them the latitude. She was not sorry about it. The sound system worked and they were out of her kitchen.\par
\par
The doorbell rang.\par
\par
Ella appeared from the direction of the stairs with a boy behind her, and Elikapeka registered the boy before she registered anything else, which was how she always registered Bobby Carpenter\u8212?as a presence slightly larger than expected, taller this year than last in a way that still surprised her faintly each time. He'd always been a polite boy. He was a polite taller boy now. He had the particular expression of someone who understood he'd been drafted and was trying to look willing.\par
\par
Ella was already moving toward the front door with the focused economy of someone who had been given a task and intended to discharge it efficiently and return to her own concerns. She was wearing a coverall over her swimsuit, practical and unadorned, and Elikapeka thought for the hundredth time that Ella would find this entire evening mildly tolerable at best and was doing it because she'd been asked.\par
\par
She heard the door open.\par
\par
She heard Michelle's voice.\par
\par
Elikapeka set her coffee mug on the counter and moved to the kitchen doorway where she could see the entry hall. Michelle Hayes was a compact, energetic woman married to the most amiable of the three Hayes brothers, and she had brought all three boy cousins in one efficient delivery, like a woman who had learned to consolidate her errands. The cousins came through the door in a loose cluster\u8212?Devin first, who was sixteen and had the unhurried manner of a boy who had been told he was good-looking often enough to believe it; Tyler behind him, who was fifteen and had apparently had some kind of recent moment of recognition with Lizzie that still mildly baffled Elikapeka; and Marcus last, who was fourteen, who was wearing his flip flops on the wrong feet, and who was already looking past everyone toward the back of the house with an expression that could only be described as strategic.\par
\par
Emma appeared from the direction of the stairs with Mai Lin one step behind her, the two of them moving in the synchronized way of girls who had been best friends since the second grade and had developed a shared locomotion. Both wore coveralls over their swimsuits. Emma's coverall, Elikapeka noted, was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, which was cover the swimsuit she and Andy had disagreed about. She had made her peace with it. More or less.\par
\par
Emma greeted her cousins with the warmth of a hostess who had already filed several private grievances about their attendance and had decided, professionally, to set those aside for the duration of the evening. She kissed Michelle's cheek and pointed all three boys toward the back of the house with a gesture that was somehow both gracious and directional, the way a good ma\u238?tre d' points guests toward a table.\par
\par
They did not require pointing twice.\par
\par
Tee shirts hit the kitchen floor. Flip flops went in two different directions. Devin cleared the sliding glass door first. Tyler was a half-step behind him. Marcus, she noticed, had already located something\u8212?a Nerf football, presumably from the basket of pool toys she kept in the utility closet\u8212?and was holding it above his head like a trophy as he crossed the patio and hit the water with a sound that reached her from twenty feet away.\par
\par
The men on the sailboat cheered.\par
\par
Elikapeka picked up Marcus's tee shirt from the kitchen floor and folded it.\par
\par
"Mrs. Hayes, should I\u8212?" Bobby started, gesturing vaguely toward the backyard in a way that suggested he would go wherever he was pointed.\par
\par
"Go on," Elikapeka said. "You're doing Ella a kindness."\par
\par
Ella's expression suggested she disputed the framing but would not contest it in front of her mother. She and Bobby went out through the sliding door. Elikapeka could hear Susan Carpenter greeting them warmly, because Susan was the kind of woman who greeted everyone warmly as a matter of genuine temperament rather than social management.\par
\par
The music from the sailboat shifted to something louder and the bass settled into the boards of the dock and came up through the kitchen floor faintly, which was not something she'd anticipated but was, she decided, acceptable.\par
\par
Michelle had come through to the kitchen. She was already opening the refrigerator with the easy familiarity of a woman who'd stood in this kitchen dozens of times, which she had.\par
\par
"The tables look beautiful," Michelle said, pulling out the pitcher of iced tea Elikapeka had made that morning.\par
\par
"Susan did most of the arranging."\par
\par
"The lights were Emma's idea, I assume."\par
\par
"Emma's idea and Emma's installation. She had Lizzie on the ladder."\par
\par
Michelle laughed. "How is Lizzie taking all this?"\par
\par
"She has a book," Elikapeka said.\par
\par
"Smart girl."\par
\par
The doorbell rang again. And then again before she'd taken three steps. And then, before she reached the hallway, a third time, because whoever was on the other side was either impatient or had missed the first attempt and was making up for it. She opened the door to four girls at once, all of them in coveralls, all of them carrying towels in the pastel colors of girls who coordinated these things in advance. They were talking before the door was fully open and did not stop talking as they came through it, and Elikapeka caught their names\u8212?she'd reviewed the list twice\u8212?and matched three of four on the first pass.\par
\par
Then more cars. Then more voices at the door. Then the particular compound noise of a party finding its footing, which was different from the noise of one or two or five people gathered in a place. It had a texture to it, something almost physical, and it rose from the backyard and came in through the sliding door and mixed with the music from the sailboat and the caterers' efficient movements and Michelle's steady presence at the counter and the smell of the chafing dish lids just beginning to warm.\par
\par
From the pool she heard the distinct and unmistakable sound of a cannonball.\par
\par
Then laughter. Then what sounded like protest. Then more laughter.\par
\par
Marcus.\par
\par
She knew without looking. She would have bet money.\par
\par
She was standing at the kitchen counter again\u8212?she kept returning to it, some gravitational pull\u8212?and she picked up her coffee mug and found it had gone cold. She drank it anyway and looked out through the sliding door at the thirty-odd young people filling her backyard by degrees, at the sailboat lit now by the dropping sun with three men on its deck who had earned the right to cold beers, at Susan moving between tables with the assurance of a woman who could set a tablecloth in a canal breeze, at Emma holding court near the pool steps with the easy authority of someone who had always expected this exact outcome.\par
\par
Another cannonball.\par
\par
More laughter.\par
\par
Elikapeka smiled into her cold coffee, because it was chaos, and it was hers, and that was not the worst thing in the world to be able to say.
}