Firefly Beach Read Free Page A

was reminded of a teenage girl on the brink of doing something her parents would disapprove of, daring them to stop her. Hearing no objections, Augusta walked into the house.
    “Cocktails,” Skye said to Homer.
    “Drinking’s not the answer,” Caroline said. Instead of acting offended, Skye blew her a kiss. After all this time, their roles in life were clear: Skye misbehaved, and Caroline cleaned up.
    Caroline shifted in her chair. She felt an unease deep down, worry mixed with fear. Lately she had been restless, cranky, dissatisfied with her bountiful life. She looked at Skye and saw a person she loved throwing herself away. She had to fight to keep from saying something sharp. For all these years, Caroline had been the glue holding her youngest sister together, and she felt as if Skye might finally be coming undone.
    “Simon’s not back, is he?” Clea asked, referring to Skye’s scoundrel artist husband. “He’s not coming tonight?”
    “No, is Peter?” Skye asked, referring to Clea’s husband, a hospital chaplain.
    “No, he took the kids out for pizza,” Clea replied.
    “Peter’s such a good guy,” Caroline said, “wanting a night out with his kids.”
    “Caroline, how was your date the other night?” Clea asked.
    “Fine,” Caroline said, smiling as she shrugged.
    “Who, that poor investment banker who drove all the way up from New York just to learn he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell—” Skye began.
    “Okay.” Caroline laughed, getting up. “Enough.” Thirty-six and never been married. The only Renwick girl never to tie the knot or even come close, she knew her sisters wished they could do something about her die-hard singleness.
    “Seriously,” Skye teased, tripping over the “s’s.” “Two hundred miles in his 500SL to find out you don’t kiss on the first—”
    “I’ll see what Mom’s up to,” Caroline said, walking away so she wouldn’t have to hear how drunk Skye sounded.
     

     
    She walked across the wide green lawn into her mother’s house. Firefly Hill had been her childhood home. Hugh and Augusta Renwick had named their house on the Connecticut shoreline after Noël Coward’s house in Jamaica, because on still June nights like these, when the moon rose out of the Sound, the dark fields around the old Victorian house and the thicket behind the beach below sparked with the green-gold glow of thousands of fireflies. The three sisters would run barefoot through the grass, catching the bugs in cupped hands.
    And they had named it Firefly Hill because Noël Coward, to the Renwick family, meant martinis and conversation, wicked gossip and wit, wild parties and lots to drink—but never too much until way after dark. Caroline’s father had been a famous artist; her mother had celebrated him with legendary parties here in Black Hall, the birthplace of American Impressionism.
    The house smelled like home. Whenever she entered the place, the smell of her childhood was the first thing Caroline noticed. Salt air, wood smoke, oil paint, gin, her mother’s perfume, and her father’s gun oil all mingled together. She wandered through the cool rooms and couldn’t find her mother.
    There, sitting on the wide steps of the side porch, tucked back from her daughters’ view, the sea breeze ruffling her mane of white hair, was Augusta Renwick.
    Caroline hesitated in the darkened living room. Even alone, thinking herself unobserved, her mother had such poise, such theatricality. She gazed across the ocean with such intensity, she might have been awaiting her husband’s return from a dangerous voyage. Her cheekbones were high and sculpted, her mouth wide and tragic.
    She wore a faded blue shirt and khakis, tattered old sneakers. Around her neck were the black pearls Hugh Renwick had given her ten Christmases before he died. Augusta wore them always; to a party, to a ball, in the garden, to the A&P, it didn’t matter. Her black hair had gone white when she was only thirty