He pulls her close to him and kisses her. Their wet bodies stick together. His hands are pulling at her, peeling her shirt up over her head. Then she peels away his. And they are kissing and walking, heading toward the living room couch half-dressed, the rain blurring the view out of every window. The room is dark with the storm until a crack of lightning flashes, brightening everything up.
And then, there is Cate—wet as a stray cat, shivering in the hallway. “The roof is leaking,” she says, annoyed. “I tried calling you like seventeen times, Amelia.”
“I . . . I . . .”
Cate shakes her head. “Don’t even try.”
Cate waits in the foyer, impatiently tapping her foot, while Amelia declines Grady’s offer of a dry shirt, wriggling into her wet one.
They all go down to the stand together. A few folks sprint up to the windows, but they don’t have many customers. Grady climbs up on the roof and, in the midst of the storm, tries laying down a tarp. The wind lifts it up on him a few times, snapping it. The reason the roof isn’t fixed, Amelia knows, is all because she wanted him to salvage those signed shingles.
As Grady battles the tarp, Amelia scrambles to place containers on the floor to catch the drips. The other girls find rags to dry the floor, wipe down surfaces, pull the old milk bottles down from the rafters.
Cate is the only one not moving, just standing still in the middle of the frenzy, snorting with laugher.
“You seriously find this funny?” Amelia manages to ask, even though she’s having trouble breathing. Will Cate out her and Grady to the rest of the girls? Would that be the worst thing?
“Yeah, I do. You’re trying to catch drips when this entire place is falling apart. The freezer, the walls. One more rainstorm this summer and we’re flooded out.”
Amelia knows this is likely true. But it doesn’t make her laugh. It makes her cry.
“Oh, lighten up, Amelia. It’s just an ice cream stand.”
She ducks outside so no one will see.
Looking back at the stand, and shielding her eyes from the rain, Amelia sees the tarp wrapped tight to the roof, raw lumber piled on top to hold it down, but there’s no sign of Grady.
Cold and wet, feeling like a dog nobody wants to let in the house, she wraps her arms around herself and walks back up to the farmhouse.
She finds him pacing the length of the fireplace mantel. “I don’t have the money for that freezer. I definitely don’t have money for a new roof.”
The stand wasn’t as profitable as she thought, and Molly hadn’t been taking care of the place. Amelia can’t help but wonder if it even would have been around next summer.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have to ask my dad for a loan.”
“Will he do that for you?”
Grady shrugs. “He might. He’d be in a position of power over me, which he’ll enjoy. It’s probably going to come with some conditions, though.”
“Like . . . taking his ideas.”
Grady nods.
Amelia, of course, is thinking about the ice cream.
Grady seems to read her mind. “I’m just going to get the money and then I’ll figure it out the rest later.”
Amelia nods. She’s got the same plan for dealing with Cate.
Later.
CHAPTER FORTY
GRADY AND AMELIA SIT SIDE by side on the basement couch, heads close together, Grady’s cell balanced on his knee. They’re splitting Grady’s earbuds so they can both listen in on the call. Jazzy hold music plays on the line.
“Can you hear my heart beating?” Amelia whispers to Grady. It pounds in her ears, in her throat, in her chest.
He squeezes her hand. “If this is too weird, you don’t have to do it. But I like having you next to me for moral support. I don’t want to screw this up.”
Amelia can hear how nervous Grady is. She wishes he didn’t have to make this call, go crawling back to his dad to ask for money, but what other option is there? This conversation is surely going to be about more than just a business loan. Hanging in the balance is Grady’s ability to return to Truman this fall, and maybe any chance there might be to repair something deeply broken in his relationship to his dad.
She squeezes his hand back. “I’ll be right here.”
The hold music ends abruptly. A secretary comes on the line and says, hurriedly, “Are you still there, Grady?”
“Yeah, Nancy. I’m here.”
“Okay. Your dad just got off his conference call. I’m going to put you through to him now.”
“Thanks.”
Everything inside Amelia freezes as the line rings once. Twice. Three times. Then, the clunk of a telephone receiver lifting off its cradle.
“Grady.”
At the sound of his father’s voice, Grady immediately straightens. He lets go of Amelia’s hand and wipes his palm on the leg of his pants. “Dad. Hi. Thanks for taking my call.”
“I have something in ten minutes,” Mr. Meade informs him. Amelia hears him shuffling papers around. She remembers the photo of Mr. Meade’s office that accompanied the Truman article she dug up on Grady, his austere mahogany desk covered in piles and piles of work. “That leaves you six minutes. So. What can I do for you?”
It doesn’t sound like a question. Or at least, that’s how Amelia’s ears interpret Mr. Meade’s brevity. This is his opening jab in this negotiation and he’s immediately put Grady on the ropes.
Grady takes a deep breath. “I want to apologize to you, Dad. I . . .” He glances at her, unsure of what to say. Probably because he isn’t actually that sorry. “I let my emotions get the better of me the last time we spoke.” Amelia nods approvingly. Perfect. “I’m sure everything I said came out of nowhere, but—”
Mr. Meade cuts his son off with a sigh. “I got an alert that you keyed into the beach house, Grady. So, no, it didn’t.”
“Oh.”
“You went through your mother’s things, I assume.”
Grady bites his lip. “Yes.”
And that’s all Grady says. Yes. Even though there’s so much more to the story. Amelia wants Grady to explain, tell his dad about the letters and the missing recipes they found. But Grady keeps his lips pressed together.
“While I appreciate your apology, this is exactly why I didn’t want you to get involved with Meade Creamery to begin with. I knew you’d get emotional and lose sight of what’s important.”
Grady tenses up, leans forward. “Yeah, I got emotional. And Mom was—” He shakes his head, starts over. “She is important.”
Amelia fights the urge to lay a gentle hand on Grady as a way to dial him back because she knows he needed to say it.
“Of course you miss her. And, whether or not you believe it, I . . . miss her too.”
Hopefully hearing this simple declaration will help Grady. And his father’s words do seem to soften him. Amelia watches his shoulders come down from his ears. He leans back against the couch cushions and Amelia leans with him.
Mr. Meade continues. “But your primary concern needs to be the solvency of the business you are attempting to run. Which, don’t forget, is an endeavor you took on to prove yourself because you nearly failed out of Truman.”
“I know.”
“Grady, emotional decisions are never good business decisions. Like, say for example, telling off your father when he foots the bill for your clothes, your vacations, your tuition, your car. Every single Starbucks coffee you drink. Every trip through the drive-thru for a cheeseburger and fries. You can’t let emotion cloud your judgment. It’s a recipe for failure. The reason I have a dollar to my name is because I’ve learned to separate my head from my heart. That’s not a weakness, that’s an asset.”
Grady’s cheeks flush and his jaw sets. “I would like to get to a place where I didn’t have to rely on you for money.”
“But that’s why you’re calling, correct?” There is no anger in Mr. Meade’s voice. If anything, he sounds satisfied. Aft
er all, he set this trap for his son by canceling all his credit cards. “So quit beating around the bush. What do you need?”
“We’ve had a few operational setbacks at the stand.”
“And you’re out of cash.”
“Yes.”
After an excruciatingly long pause, Nancy comes on the line and informs Mr. Meade that she has his next call waiting.
“Grady, I do think we need to continue this conversation, but I’d prefer to do it in person. Why don’t you meet me at Wyndham Sands for eighteen holes tomorrow afternoon? Nancy, are you there? Can you book us a tee time around noon?”
His secretary pipes up. “Of course, Mr. Meade.”
Amelia can’t believe she was listening in this whole time.
“Okay,” Grady says.
“See you then,” Mr. Meade says. And then the line goes dead.
Grady pulls out his earbud. “As much as I hate to admit it, my dad’s not wrong. I shouldn’t get emotional about this. I need his money, simple as that. He’s got that over me, he always has. So I just have to play his game. I’m going to make this golf game as transactional as an ATM withdrawal.”
“It won’t be like that forever, Grady. You’re getting a good education now, and you’ll graduate and get a job—”
“Where my dad will also pull the strings,” he says. He shakes his head, determined to push aside whatever melancholy is trying to take hold. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I know I’ve had every advantage possible in life. I’m better off than so many other people. I’m lucky.”
Lucky is not exactly the word Amelia would use. But as she helps Grady pack, she tries to remain hopeful that this story will have a happy ending for both of them. He’ll leave today, spend the night at the beach house, and meet his dad for golf in the morning.
For a moment of levity, Amelia asks Grady to try on his golf outfit. He ducks into the bathroom and emerges looking handsome in a gray-and-white-striped Nike polo made of superlight material, navy slacks with a little swoosh on the back pocket, a bright blue belt, and a white baseball hat that says NIKE GOLF.
“Are you sponsored?” she asks.
“Ha. No. But I’m actually pretty good. My dad’s forced me to take lessons since I was a kid. I regularly kick his ass, which drives him crazy. Once, in Palm Beach, he got his ball stuck in a sand trap. I was cracking up until he drove off in our golf cart. I had to walk back to the clubhouse.”
“Well, tomorrow, let him win.” She sits down on the arm of the couch. “I wish I could do more to help you. Will you text me when you can? Let me know how it’s going?”
“Sure. Wish me luck,” he says, leaning down for a kiss.
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” Amelia says, and she means it, every single word.
* * *
After Grady leaves, she stays up at the farmhouse, lying on the couch in the basement, listening to Molly’s records, trying to figure out what to say to Cate about her and Grady.
Obviously her biggest transgression was kissing him in the first place. Grady was supposed to be off-limits to all the girls, and though she tried to keep their relationship purely professional, something did eventually develop between them. She should have told Cate right away after that first kiss, but she was too scared.
Why?
If Amelia’s being honest with herself, it’s because her kiss with Grady wasn’t the first time she’d picked him over the girls at the stand. After all, that kiss came immediately after she missed their Fourth of July party.
All Amelia can do is hope that Cate will forgive her when she’s had a chance to explain.
But how far will Amelia need to go back, in trying to do that? She’ll have to fill Cate in on Grady’s dead mother, and on the things she’s read in Molly’s diary, and admit the heat that clearly existed between her and Grady the very first time they met in the stand. It’s a whole summer’s worth of catch-up.
There’s a lot she’s been keeping from Cate.
Amelia can’t help but wonder if this will be how their friendship is come September, when they’re at different schools. And what about December? Will they continue to grow apart at lightning speed during the school year?
By next summer, they could be strangers.
Her stomach in a knot, Amelia walks down to the stand. The rain has stopped, thankfully, and the sky is a beautiful pinky red. She opens the door just as Cate is passing by. Cate gives Amelia the most fleeting of glances, and Amelia can barely get out a whispered “Hey, can we talk?” before Cate stalks into the office and shuts the door on her.
“I deserve that,” Amelia says, as quietly as she can through the door. “Please let me explain.”
She waits a minute for Cate to answer.
And then she turns around. Liz and Mansi are on the windows, and they quickly look away.
One of the newbies looks away too, and tries unsuccessfully to form a waffle around the cone mold, but it won’t hold its shape. Amelia steps over and discreetly whispers, “You only have a few seconds after taking them off the griddle to wrap them around the mold. If they start to cool down at all, they won’t hold their shape.” She realizes as she’s saying it that the waffle cooled because the newbie was watching and listening to her appeal to Cate.
The girl looks up at Amelia and whispers, “Thanks,” gratefully and also nervously. As if she doesn’t want to be seen fraternizing with Amelia.
Liz and Mansi don’t acknowledge Amelia.
Sides have been taken in this battle.
Amelia steps away, embarrassed.
The stand looks like hell after the rainstorm. Amelia does her best to ignore the discomfort and awkwardness, focusing instead on cleaning, trying to get the stand back to the way it’s supposed to be, appearance-wise anyway. She wipes down every surface, mops the floor, drains the milk jugs and buckets and empty ice cream drums of cloudy rainwater.
Cate stays in the office the whole time.
It’s near closing when Amelia is finishing up in the bathroom. She’s gone through an entire roll of paper towels and is well into her second. In the last hour, she’s heard lots of whispering discussion inside the office, and she’s hopeful that Cate will eventually call her inside to talk.
But those hopes are dashed when she hears Cate’s truck start up outside. Amelia checks her phone for the time—it’s barely a minute after closing. Ducking her head outside, she sees that the exterior lights have already been turned off and the girls are already in Cate’s truck—Liz riding shotgun, Mansi and the newbie in the back.
She watches, almost dumbfounded, as Cate calls out to her, “Lock up when you’re done, okay?” before driving away.
At Meade Creamery, Amelia’s always felt like one of the girls, among her sisters. Now she feels like an outsider.
Or worse. A traitor.
Though it hurts, she knows that being left behind tonight is something she probably deserves. After all, Cate wasn’t the only one she let down.
And, looking back, Amelia knows there were plenty of times when she could have been down at the stand with the girls and instead chose to help Grady. What good was trying to save the stand if she neglected the girls to do it?
One thing Molly said, over and over again in those early diary entries, was that it was never supposed to be about the ice cream. It was supposed to be about the girls.
How could Amelia have forgotten?
This is bigger than just her and Cate. If Amelia really wants to make things right, she’s going to have to reckon with all the girls.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AMELIA IS THE FIRST ONE at the stand the next morning. She arrives with a Tupperware full of sweet corn muffins, which she stress-baked the night before, a tub of butter, and a container of orange juice. Her plan is to call all the girls into the stand for a staff meeting and lay herself bare, tell them everything that’s been going on, share Molly’s diary with them. Try to explain her feelings for Grady and her reasons for hiding them. And, m
ost of all, she’ll voice her regret over losing sight of the most important tenet of being a Meade Creamery girl—that the relationships created here are the most important thing.
She already has the text written in her phone, but she needs the newbies’ phone numbers, which she’s hoping to find somewhere in the office.
As soon as she unlocks the stand door, a strange, foreign smell hits her. Like something’s been burning. She worries at first that the walk-in freezer has shorted out, and she rushes in to check on it, knocking over something made of glass. She stoops and sees an overturned Meade Dairy bottle. Inside is a sludge of sooty water with several waterlogged cigarette butts.
Amelia flicks on the lights. Though she cleaned the entire stand yesterday, it’s been turned upside down: couch cushions damp and in a circle on the main floor, pictures crooked, and the radio off the shelf, dangling upside down by its black cord.
She opens the bathroom and recoils at the smell of vomit.
Back outside, she lifts the heavy plastic lid on the dumpster. Inside is a pile of beer bottles and crushed beer cans.
She finds more beer cans inside the walk-in freezer. These were left behind, and they have exploded. Icy beer has splattered all over the drums of ice cream Amelia made earlier in the week. The whole freezer smells yeasty.
Amelia goes back into the office and pulls out her phone. She’s shaking, she’s so angry. After a bit of scrolling, she comes across several pictures from the party here. The girls having fun together. Playing cards on the office desk. A dance party in the stand. Running through the trees in the dark.
That last picture makes Amelia remember once coming home late from her grandmother’s house on a summer night, when she was just a kid. It was past midnight; her mother was asleep against the car window. They drove past the stand, long closed to customers, but the girls were still there, sitting around the picnic tables, talking, their voices a streak of sound that came and went as the car passed by.