The door swung open and there they stood: Bill tall and round, Nana small and birdlike. They gave Kristen and me curt hugs.
“We picked out a bottle of Merlot,” Nana announced, and I thanked her. Apparently we were doing some day drinking. “I’ll grab us glasses.”
Bill gestured me into a living room （family room? They looked identical and sat directly across from each other）， and I sat. There was that awkward group exhale as we all smiled and looked at one another and wondered whose turn it was to speak. Aren’t you going to ask Kristen how her flights were? Aren’t you excited to see your granddaughter for the first time in over a year?
Bill broke the silence: “How was brunch?” I got the feeling he didn’t really care.
“It was great!” I nodded eagerly. “We went to Evie’s, near the casino? Solid French toast.” I cleared my throat. “And how are you doing? It’s been at least two years since I’ve seen you, right?”
“That long?” Bill made a puffing sound.
“We heard you had a nice time in Chile,” Nana broke in, expertly clutching our topped-off glasses in a four-leaf clover pattern. “You girls are so brave, traveling around in a foreign country like that.” She leaned over to hand me one and I avoided her eyes, my heart suddenly racing. Would I ever be able to speak casually about our trip?
“Careful—Emily has butterfingers today!” Kristen called out. She winked, actually winked, and I felt myself blush.
Bill ignored her as he disentangled a drink from the others. “Yeah, we heard all about the little mountain towns you found in Chile. And all the—what’s it called?”
“What?” Kristen asked, plucking a glass of her own. She looked unperturbed.
“The liquor you gals were drinking—pico?”
“Pisco!” I nodded. “Delicious stuff.” I tried to catch Kristen’s eye, but she was sipping her wine calmly.
“I get so nervous about you girls doing all that traveling on your own,” Nana said. “I didn’t even have a passport until I was in my forties—and I certainly wasn’t going anywhere without Bill here.”
“Yeah, we both caught the travel bug,” I replied. Could they see it on my face, the panic, the blood I could swear was visible as it drummed against my temples? “But, um—what about you? What’s new?”
“You didn’t travel until your forties because you had Dad when you were twenty-one,” Kristen said to Nana, ignoring me. “If Emily and I had eight-year-olds, I doubt we’d be cavorting around the Elqui Valley either.”
“That’s true, I was busy being a mother.” Nana pursed her lips, as if she’d tasted something sour.
“Well, thank God we’re busy visiting pisco distilleries instead of changing diapers.” Kristen raised her glass high and I cringed again—why couldn’t she set aside her resentment long enough to move the subject away from Chile, where we’d left a body in the ground?
“Nana and Bill, have you been traveling—enjoying your retirement?” I glanced from one to the other.
“Oh, they haven’t gotten rid of me yet.” Bill shrugged a shoulder. “How would they run Czarnecki Chemists without the Czarnecki?”
“You haven’t retired!” I brightened, glad for the new topic. “I thought Kristen mentioned a retirement party at some point.” Czarnecki Chemists was a local chain of pharmacies—doing well, improbably, in a sea of Walgreens.
“Right, ’cause he said he’d quit the minute he turned seventy-five,” Kristen said. “But apparently, quote, ‘retirement is for the lazy.’？”
“The man broke out in a cold sweat anytime anyone used the R-word,” Nana added, her voice light. “I think he keeps working so that he doesn’t have to be home with me.” She grinned and jutted her skinny elbow toward him. This dynamic I knew from my own parents, before they’d finally split: self-deprecating humor, Oh, isn’t it funny how we can’t stand each other.
“Well, dear, somebody’s gotta support your penchant for wine-tasting,” he volleyed back.
But she just chuckled. “Oh, I’ve been retired since the day Kristen finished college. I have no trouble filling my days. But we’re boring—tell us, Emily, what’s keeping you busy?”
I set my glass on the coffee table, next to a thick black book that I suddenly realized was a Bible. King of Kings, where Kristen had gone to school, leaned fundamentalist, conservative Protestant; her dad had been super involved in the community—girls’ basketball coach, deacon on Sundays. She’d switched schools after her parents had died, but Nana and Bill had continued to attend weekly services there.
“Oh, you know. Work is good—I’m at Kibble, it’s a start-up? That makes fancy, organic cat food?” Bill and Nana nodded blankly. “It’s fun; I’m learning a lot about the start-up world.”
“The problem with start-ups is that they’re just trying to make enough of a name for themselves to get bought out.” Bill shrugged. “There’s no long-term planning.”
I smiled and sipped my wine, but his comment burned. This was what Kristen was talking about: always right, always confident, with a touch of criticism prickling beneath his words.
Nana turned to me: “Are you seeing anyone special?”
“Yeah, we just had brunch with him.” Kristen smirked.
“It’s—it’s really new.” I closed off the topic and everyone looked around uncomfortably.
A drilling noise pierced the air, and Bill rolled his eyes. “The house next door, they’ve had workers tromping around the yard for months now. You know the one, with the stupid pineapples,” he said to me, pointing. I felt the air shift; Kristen had gone very quiet, and Nana regarded Bill with something twitchy and furious in her eyes. I wanted to fold up, shrink down to a tiny rectangle like a tent.
“Now, remind me,” Nana tried, “do you have siblings?”
Didn’t they have any questions for Kristen, whom they’d raised—whom they hadn’t seen in so long? I shook my head. “An only child, like Kristen.”
“And your parents are still in…Minnesota, was it?”
“That’s right. My mom is. My dad’s in Iowa.”
“So you don’t have any family here!” Nana said it with something like horror.
“Nope! I’m doing my own thing in Wisconsin, I guess.”
I liked it here; after eight years, Milwaukee felt like home. It had many of the things I’d loved about Evanston, the town around Northwestern—old, pretty homes and picturesque lighthouses, with just enough of its own offbeat identity to make it feel far from Minneapolis, and a better fit for me. Milwaukee had a dash of the backwoods and bizarre: kooky out-of-time dive bars and schmaltzy speakeasies tucked in among bone-white museums and broad, aggressively hip markets. And the lakefront—that beautiful lakefront. Every spring I vowed to spend more time there, reading or swimming or picnicking or flying kites with friends’ children. And every year, summer sped by and the leaves began to blush before I’d thought to make the short drive to Bradford Beach.