“Whoa. Someone moved Molly’s Cadillac,” Amelia remarks. She stands on her tiptoes and tries to see if it’s parked up at the house. Only she can’t. The grass is too high. And it’s dark.
“Maybe it was towed away,” Cate says.
“By who?” Amelia asks, her trepidation slowing her.
Cate doesn’t answer. She’s already moved on. To the girls behind her, she says quickly, “Okay. I need a couple of you to get down on the ground and shine your phones underneath the door so I can see where Amelia’s key is.”
Amelia and Cate both lie on their bellies in the dirt. With the help of the cell phone lights, Amelia can see her key a few feet inside on the floor. Cate asks someone to find her a long stick, which Jen races off to do. Then, after a couple of tries with it, Cate exclaims, “Got it!”
The girls jump up and down. Amelia, too, is excited. They’ll likely be the last people in the world to ever eat Molly Meade’s homemade ice cream. Amelia has a feeling in her chest that this is exactly what Molly would have wanted them to do tonight.
After clicking open the padlock, Cate hands Amelia back her key. Now that it’s in her hands again, it suddenly feels like something she should keep.
A car passes on the road.
And then another, but this one slows down slightly. Or maybe it just seems that way.
From behind her, Amelia hears one of the girls whisper, “What if we get arrested?”
“Don’t worry. Cate will get us out of it,” another answers.
And though Amelia believes that is very likely true, she decides it would be best to get in and out of the stand as quickly as possible. “I’ll run in and get the ice cream,” she offers as Cate pulls open the door.
But Cate is already ushering all the girls inside, telling them to take one last look at the place. And Amelia thinks, What’s the harm? This is their chance to say goodbye too. Every one of the girls has her own memories, her own experiences, her own friendships because of Meade Creamery.
They don’t turn the lights on. Instead, they use their phones to see. Even in the dark, Amelia remembers so clearly where Molly’s body was, and she’s careful to step around the spot. Maybe it’s a good thing that the stand is closing. Amelia doubts she can ever come here and not think of that moment.
“Ooh! I want to take a milk bottle!”
“Grab one for me, too!”
Amelia spins around and watches Britnee try to climb on Bernadette’s shoulders. The rafters are full of these bottles, relics from the old Meade Dairy days.
Back then, the Meade family’s primary business was milk, and their dairy was open year-round. But production stopped long before Amelia was born, the cow pastures left to grow in wild and shaggy. Molly continued making her ice cream though, sourcing her ingredients from Marburger Dairy, and selling it only a few weeks each summer.
Sometimes Amelia finds the original Meade Dairy milk bottles on garage sale tables for twenty-five dollars, an inflated price jacked up for vacationers who might never come back. None of the locals buy them; they don’t need to pay twenty-five dollars for a piece of Meade Creamery history as long as the stand is around. Though maybe now that will change.
Cate tells the girls, “No. We only take ice cream.” Amelia is grateful. She’s not sure who this stuff belongs to, but it’s definitely not theirs. “Grab however much you want, Amelia.”
Though it had crossed Amelia’s mind to take a drum of each of the four flavors Meade Creamery offers, because they’re all special in their own way, it feels suddenly too greedy. There’s no way the eight of them are eating twelve gallons of ice cream tonight. So Amelia opens the walk-in freezer and settles on a single drum of Home Sweet Home.
Mansi calls out nervously, “Yo. There’s a bunch of lights on up at Molly’s.”
Everyone runs to the office and stares through the window up at the farmhouse. There are, indeed, lights on. A dark figure steps out of the brightness of the front door, stands on the steps, and appears to look down toward the stand.
“Shit,” Cate says, but her eyes are bright and excited. “Run!”
They make for the stand door at once, a stampede. The last to go, Amelia quickly closes the lock. A million fears grip her, the girls getting arrested, Cate losing her scholarship to Truman.
It would be because of her.
The girls hurdle the parking lot chain, dive into their cars, and speed back out onto Route 68.
“Who was that up there, do you think?” Amelia asks, turning around in her seat to look out the passenger window.
Cate’s breathless and gunning it, her old truck straining. “Maybe the police?” she muses giddily.
“Why would the police be up there?”
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s those companies who clean out dead people’s houses.”
“This late at night? Plus, who would have called them?” Turning back around, Amelia sinks low and glances at the side-view mirror to see if they’re being followed.
Thankfully, they aren’t.
“Put the ice cream down there,” Cate says, pointing to Amelia’s feet. “It’ll melt faster on your lap.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, they arrive at an unmarked path splitting the dense piney woods. Cate drives down the sandy stretch and parks her truck. There’s another swimming area on the other side of Sand Lake, one with a proper parking lot and picnic tables and a paved path to the beach, but the spot on this side is used primarily by teens.
The cove is horseshoe shaped. The shore is sandy, like the ocean, and by the time it gets thick with underwater plants, most people can’t touch the bottom anyway. The water in Sand Lake is crystal clear, though it’s too dark to see that now.
The girls build a fire with sticks from the woods, one bigger than they would make at the end of the summer, because tonight the air still has a bit of that late-spring chill. The girls smooth out the blankets they brought, the blue-black lake gently lapping the shore. Amelia tips her head back. It’s as if every star in the galaxy has come out for them.
They sit in a circle. Amelia hands out plastic spoons while Cate pulls the cap off the drum of ice cream.
“You should get the first taste, Amelia,” Cate announces. “After all, this night was inspired by you. And you’re our Head Girl.”
Amelia appreciates Cate’s saying that, though it’s strange, how meaningless the distinction suddenly feels.
“It’s okay, someone else can go first,” Amelia says, because she’s embarrassed, but the girls insist and pass the ice cream drum to her. Amelia dips in her spoon and finds that the ice cream has warmed to a perfectly scoopable temperature. Color-wise, it could be mistaken for vanilla, though it’s far more buttery yellow.
Amelia closes her eyes as she brings the spoon up to her lips. Flipping it over, she uses her tongue to pull the egg-shaped taste into her mouth. Instead of swallowing, Amelia holds it on her tongue, letting it melt, cream filling the hollows of her mouth. Though the taste of Home Sweet Home is hard to describe, Amelia is desperate to commit some language about it to memory.
For the first few seconds, her brain simply rules out the typical flavors one might expect to taste in ice cream. It’s not chocolatey, or nutty, or fruity. It’s the least sugary of the Meade Creamery ice creams. There’s a warmth and a depth to whatever makes it sweet, yet it isn’t sticky like honey. It has a freshness and a brightness and a cleanness, nearly lemony, except not.
The best Amelia can do is to say it tastes like summer, like Sand Lake itself. Not the water but the feeling of sliding into it on the hottest, most humid day. Of everything and everyone she loves. And that, unfortunately, must be good enough. The truth is that no one knows exactly what’s in Home Sweet Home. And no one ever will.
Amelia passes the ice cream drum to Cate next, and silently mouths Thanks.
The girls make small talk in between spoonfuls. Loose plans form to go to the county fair together. There’s talk of a weekly lake day, maybe a mont
hly movie night. Though the girls no longer have the place that will bind them, they have good intentions of not letting each other go.
By twelve thirty, the fire has died out and everyone is full of ice cream. They fold up their blankets, pour water on their fire, and walk back toward the cars.
Amelia and Cate bring up the rear of the pack. It’s so dark Amelia can’t make out the three girls in front of her, only hear their whispered conversation.
“Do you think Molly had a will?”
“Doubt it. She didn’t have any family.”
“She had to be rich, though, right? With how popular the stand was?”
“Oh my God, what if Molly left the stand to us?”
“Huh?”
“Like a stipulation in her will. Whichever girls are working for me when I die will inherit my stand and all my money.”
Cate, staring into the glow of her phone, rolls her eyes.
Amelia has a moment of fun thinking about the possibility. Better, anyway, than what is likely the reality—that there will never be another summer at Meade Creamery. That tonight is truly goodbye.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN AMELIA ANSWERS HER PHONE the next morning, Cate is undiluted cheer and brightness. “Since we don’t have work, let’s spend the day at the lake!”
It strikes Amelia as funny to hear Cate put it that way because it’s not like this is a normal day off. Everything about their summer has changed. Amelia rolls over and looks out her window. It’s sunny with a cloudless blue sky. A perfect lake day. “Great idea,” she says, because really, it would be a sin not to enjoy a day like this. “I’ll make us sandwiches.”
She makes turkey and Swiss with mayo for herself, lettuce and cucumber and Swiss with mayo for Cate. There’s one Coke in the fridge, which is fine; they’ll split it.
Back upstairs, she digs in the bottom of her underwear drawer for her bathing suit. She puts it on, slides on a cotton sundress over top, and pulls her ponytail through a Gibbons baseball cap.
Then, as she waits on her front steps for Cate to arrive, she sends a text to the other girls, letting them know that she and Cate will be at the lake, in case anyone wants to join them. A few say they’ll try to make it. But then the group conversation shifts to what the summer will hold for the girls now that the stand is no longer around. They talk about which stores at the mall would be cool to work at. Sephora seems to be the consensus, that or Barnes & Noble.
Amelia can’t blame them for moving on. Maybe she’d be excited for something new too, if this weren’t her last summer here. If she hadn’t been the one to find Molly’s body. If there weren’t already so much change on the horizon for her, with college just around the corner. She will have to get a new job, for sure. Her Meade Creamery salary went straight into her college savings account, but her tips funded her summer fun—money to chip in for Cate’s gas, clothes, movie tickets, and Starbucks.
Before heading to the lake, Cate stops at the gas station to fill up and buy a pair of cheap sunglasses. They walk inside and wave hello to Peyton Pierce—a junior who was in Amelia’s Spanish II class—working behind the register.
Peyton, Amelia remembers, orders either a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles or a cup of Home Sweet Home with peanuts, and he reliably throws his change into the girls’ tip jar. It’s never very much, maybe sixty cents, but Amelia appreciates the gesture. Kids their age hardly ever think to tip. She wonders if Peyton, or anyone else in town for that matter, knows that Meade Creamery is closed forever.
“Hey,” Cate says from behind the sunglasses display. “Did you ever write back to your roommate at Gibbons? Whatsherface?”
“Cecilia Brewster.”
“Cecilia and Amelia,” Cate repeats with dramatic flair, and has a good chuckle.
Amelia winces. “Ugh. How did I not notice that before?”
“Well . . . did you?”
“Not yet.”
“Amelia. She’s going to think you’re weird. Write her back.”
“Okay, okay.”
While Cate tries on sunglasses, Amelia takes out her phone, intending to respond to Cecilia. But she gets distracted by the rack of newspapers. She flips through the Sand Lake Ledger, looking for a mention of Molly Meade’s death. A knot tightens inside her when there isn’t one.
“Should I have written an obituary for Molly?”
Cate looks over the top of some mirrored aviators. “No one could think that’s your responsibility, Amelia.” She spins the plastic rack. “That’s like . . . a family’s job.”
“Yeah, except she doesn’t have any family.”
“Fine, it’s at least a friend’s job. You didn’t even know her!”
It stings Amelia a little, even though she knows Cate doesn’t mean it that way. “All the summers we worked there, when did you ever see friends at Molly Meade’s house?”
“I bet someone from the newspaper does a story on her.” Cate takes off the aviators and tries a pair of turquoise knock-off Ray-Bans. They make her hair look extra blond. “These ones,” Cate says, smiling at her reflection. “Right?”
Amelia nods. “Love them.”
As they walk up to Peyton’s register, Amelia passes a small selection of cat food. Five cans for five dollars. Okay, so an obituary isn’t her responsibility. But what about Molly’s poor kitten? Who will feed him now that she’s gone?
Amelia picks cans in a variety of flavors—Salmon Feast, Whitefish, Roast Chicken, skipping Turkey and Giblets because gross—then stands behind Cate in line. Cate glances back at her, confused.
“Don’t ask,” Amelia says, unzipping her purse. “But can we please stop by the stand quick before we head to the lake?”
* * *
Cate’s truck hops the lip of the road. They don’t need to bother with the parking lot chain, just make a wide turn and pick up Molly’s driveway. She points across the cab and out Amelia’s window. “Your newbie sign is still up.”
“I wonder how many girls came yesterday,” Amelia says, wistfully. “You know what’s crazy to think about? Even after everyone in Sand Lake finds out that Molly Meade is dead, vacationers will be stopping by here all summer.”
“Probably for the next few years,” Cate muses.
Amelia shakes her head. It’s beyond depressing—the thought of people driving past this place year after year, seeing it slowly decompose, rotting until it falls over, the way some other properties in town have, when there isn’t anyone around to care for them.
Up at the farmhouse, things are quiet, which is a relief to Amelia after last night. She gets out of the truck and clicks her tongue for the black-and-white kitten. There’s no sign of him.
Someone did move Molly’s Cadillac up here. Amelia looks inside. The keys are on the dashboard. It must have been the police here last night, she’s sure of it now. They probably swung by to move Molly’s car and make sure the property was secure. Amelia wonders what will happen to the stuff inside the farmhouse. The things Molly Meade collected over her lifetime.
On her way up the front stairs, Amelia steps around a chipped teacup half full of brown triangles of cat food. She opens the cans she brought and sets them down on the steps. Despite her being picky about flavors, they all smell horrible.
While Cate tries to find better music on the radio, Amelia calls the local Animal Control to see if someone can come to the farmhouse with a trap. As the line rings, she leans over the railing. The front window is curtained with a sun-bleached bedsheet. There’s nothing to see besides a couple of dead ladybugs lying belly-up on the sill.
She’s starting to leave a message when Cate gets out of the truck, shielding her eyes from the sun—forgetting, Amelia guesses, about the new sunglasses perched in her hair. She hops up the stairs, passing Amelia, and opens the screen door.
Amelia covers the phone. “What are you doing?”
With a devious smile, Cate reaches for the doorknob.
For a second, Amelia can’t breathe.
Ca
te pulls a couple of times, hard, and the door shakes on its hinges. “Locked,” she announces, glum. “But could you imagine?” She backs down two, three steps and gazes up at the farmhouse. “I would love to see what Molly’s got inside there. What she did with all her money. Maybe she’s got a crazy fine art collection. That house could be full of Picassos or whatever.”
Amelia seriously doubts that, though she would love to look inside the farmhouse too. As much as everyone in Sand Lake knew Molly Meade, she was also a complete mystery.
After leaving a message, Amelia hangs up and pulls Cate back over to the truck by her arm. “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.”
* * *
There are already plenty of kids from their high school at the lake, blankets and towels spread out in the same groups found during the school year in the cafeteria, a catwalk of sand in between clusters. Amelia expects someone will ask about Molly Meade, wondering why she and Cate are at the lake and not at the ice cream stand getting it ready to open tomorrow, but no one does.
They claim an open spot away from the tree line and spread out their towels. Cate’s bikini is dark green with fuchsia trim and the tanner she gets, the better it looks on her. Amelia’s wearing her favorite bikini from last summer—light blue gingham, high-waisted, with a demi-cup top. She feels like a glamorous old-time movie star when she’s wearing it. It’s also great because she doesn’t have to be nearly as dutiful as Cate with her bikini line.
The girls coat their bodies with coconut oil. Amelia puts sunscreen on her face to keep it from freckling and Cate sprays her hair with another bottle that will eventually turn it white blond. Cate stretches out long and lean and lets out a happy sigh.
“How great if we could do this all summer? Just be beach bums until we leave for college.”
Amelia settles in too, tipping her baseball cap so it’s sitting on top of her face. “Maybe if I got a scholarship like you, I could.”
“My scholarship isn’t going to cover everything. College textbooks are hella expensive.”
“We should try job hunting together. Make us a package deal.”