Sabrina cackles, a sound so at odds with her composed exterior that the whole first week we lived together, I jumped every time I heard it. Now all of her rough edges are my favorite parts of her.
She throws open the car’s back door and tosses my suitcase in with an ease that defies her lanky frame, then stuffs the poster in after it. “How was the flight?”
“Same pilot as last time,” I tell her.
Her brow lifts. “Ray? Again?”
I nod. “Of sunglasses-on-the-back-of-the-head fame.”
“Never seen him without them,” she muses.
“He absolutely has to have a second set of eyes in his neck,” I say.
“The only explanation,” she agrees. “God, I’m so sorry—ever since Ray got sober, I swear he flies like a dying bumblebee.”
I ask, “How did he fly back when he was still drinking?”
“Oh, the same.” She hops in behind the steering wheel, and I drop into the passenger seat beside her. “But his intercom banter was a fucking delight.”
She digs a spare scarf out of the center console and tosses it at me, a thoughtful if ultimately meaningless gesture since my bun of chaotic dark curls is far beyond saving after three back-to-back flights and a dead sprint through both the Denver airport and Boston Logan.
“Well,” I say, “there wasn’t a pun to be found in those skies today.”
“Tragic,” she tuts. The car’s engine growls to life. With a whoop, she peels out of the parking lot and points us east, toward the water, the windows down and sunlight rippling over our skin. Even here, an hour inland, yards are dotted with lobster traps, pyramids of them at the edges of lots.
Over the roar of the wind, Sabrina shouts, “HOW ARE YOU?”
My stomach does this seesawing thing, flipping from the absolute bliss of being in this car with her and the abject dread of knowing I’m about to throw a wrench into her plans.
Not yet, I think. Let’s enjoy this for a second before I ruin everything.
“GOOD,” I shout back.
“AND HOW’S THE RESIDENCY?” she asks.
“GOOD,” I say again.
She glances sidelong, wisps of blond snaking out of her scarf to slap her forehead. “WE’VE BARELY SPOKEN IN WEEKS AND THAT’S ALL I GET?”
“BLOODY?” I add.
Exhausting. Terrifying. Electrifying, though not necessarily in a good way. Sometimes nauseating. Occasionally devastating.
Not that I’m involved in much surgery. Two years into the residency, and I’m still doing plenty of scut work. But the slivers of time spent with an attending surgeon and a patient are all I think about when I clock out, as if those minutes weigh more than any of the rest.
Scut work, on the other hand, goes by in a flash. Most of my colleagues dread it, but I kind of like the mundanity. Even as a kid, cleaning, organizing, checking off little tasks on my self-made chore chart gave me a sense of peace and control.
A patient is in the hospital, and I get to discharge them. Someone needs blood drawn, and I’m there to do it. Data needs to be plugged into the computer system, and I plug it in. There’s a before and an after, with a hard line between them, proof that there are millions of small things you can do to make life a little better.
“AND HOW’S WYN?” Sabrina asks.
The seesaw inside me jolts again. Sharp gray eyes flash across my mind, the phantom scent of pine and clove wafting over me.
Not yet, I think.
“WHAT?” I shout, pretending not to have heard.
This conversation is inevitable, but ideally it won’t take place while we’re going eighty miles an hour in a pop-can car from the sixties. Also, I’d rather have it when Cleo, Parth, and Kimmy are all present so I won’t have to rip off the Band-Aid more than once.
I’ve already waited this long. What’s a few more minutes?
Undeterred by the vortex of wind ripping through the car, Sabrina repeats, “WYN. HOW’S. WYN?”
Electrifying, though not necessarily in a good way? Sometimes nauseating? Occasionally devastating.
“GOOD, I THINK.” The I think part makes it feel less like a lie. He probably is good. The last time I saw him, he was virtually illuminated from within. Better than he had been in months.
Sabrina nods and cranks up the radio.
She shares the cottage, and its associated cars, with about twenty-five Armas cousins and siblings, but there’s a strict rule about returning the radio presets to her dad’s stations at the end of a stay, so our trips always begin with a burst of Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., or one of their contemporaries. Today, Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” carries us up the pine-dotted drive to where the cottage perches atop a rocky cliff.
It never gets any less impressive.
Not the sparkling water. Not the cliffs. Certainly not the cottage.
Really, it’s more like a mansion swallowed a cottage, and then wore its bonnet and imitated its voice in an unconvincing falsetto, Big Bad Wolf–style. At some point, probably closer to the year 1900 than to now, it was a family home. That part of it still stands. But behind it, and on either side of it, the expansions stretch out, their exteriors perfectly matched to the original building.
Off to one side there’s a four-car garage, and across the creek on the other, a guesthouse sits tucked among the moss, ferns, and salt-gnarled trees.
The car glides right past the garage, and Sabrina cuts the engine in front of the front door.
Nostalgia, warmth, and happiness rush over me.
“Remember the first time you brought me and Cleo here?” I ask. “That guy Brayden had ghosted me, and you and Cleo made a PowerPoint about his worst qualities.”
“Brayden?” She unbuckles her seat belt and hops out of the car. “Are you talking about Bryant?”
I peel my thighs off the hot leather and climb out after her. “His name was Bryant?”
“You were convinced you were going to marry Bryant,” Sabrina says, delighted. “Now you don’t even remember the poor guy’s name.”
“It was a powerful PowerPoint,” I say, wrestling my bag out of the back seat.
“Yeah, or it could have something to do with one Ms. Cleo James giving us free psychotherapy that whole week. My dad had just gotten engaged to Wife Number Three before we took that trip, remember?”
“Oh, right,” I say. “She was the one with all the dogs.”
“That was Number Two,” Sabrina says. “And to be fair, she didn’t have them all simultaneously. More like she had a revolving door that magically brought new designer puppies in as it swept her adult dogs straight back to the pound.”
I shudder. “So creepy.”
“She was, but at least I won the cousins’ divorce betting pool that year. That’s how I scored access to the cottage during Lobster Fest. Cousin Frankie’s loss was our gain.”
I clasp my hands together in a silent prayer of thanks. “Cousin Frankie, wherever you may be, we thank you for your sacrifice.”
“Don’t waste your gratitude. I think he lives on a catamaran in Ibiza these days.” Sabrina yanks my bag free from the crook of my elbow, taking my hand to haul me up to the front door. “Come on. Everyone’s waiting.”
“I’m last?” I say.
“Parth and I got in last night,” she says. “Cleo and Kimmy drove up this morning. We’ve all been sitting on our hands and vibrating, waiting for you to get here.”
“Wow,” I say, “things descended into orgy territory pretty quickly.”
Another Trademark Sabrina Laugh. She jiggles the doorknob. “I guess I should’ve specified we were all sitting on our own hands.”
“Now that changes things considerably,” I say.
She cracks open the door and grins at me.
“Why are you looking at me expectantly?” I ask.
“I’m not,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. “Aren’t lawyers supposed to be good at lying?”
“Objection!” she says. “Speculative.”
“Why aren’t we going inside, Sabrina?”
Wordlessly, she nudges the door wider and gestures me through.
