Local Girl Swept Away Read Free Page B

“No, he hired two of his nieces, so I’ll have to look around. I should have started before this, but, you know, I haven’t had the energy.”
    “Want to work with me at my dad’s place?”
    “At the café? Really? I didn’t know he was hiring.”
    “One of our regulars retired. You’d be working with me, breakfast and lunch. Tips aren’t stellar, but we get busy in season.”
    “Absolutely! I love the Blue Moon.”
    “Great! I told my dad I’d ask you, but you should go by and talk to him after school. He’ll pretend like he’s going to make your life miserable, but he’s all bark.”
    I felt a smile break across my face and recognized it as a first since Lorna’s death. There was a lightness in my chest that felt like hope.
    As Finn and I trudged down the hall after lunch, he said, “You sounded pretty excited about that job.”
    “Why shouldn’t I be? I have to make some money this summer, and it’ll be more fun to work with Charlotte than down at the Riptide.”
    Finn didn’t say anything else, but as he headed off to his next class, I felt like I’d been scolded. Did he think I was replacing Lorna or something? That was ridiculous. Lorna was irreplaceable. But I needed a friend, I needed a little bit of normalcy in my life, and if Charlotte was offering that, I was damn well going to take it.

3.
    Lorna’s memorial service didn’t take place until a month later, at the end of June, the day after school let out for the summer. At first it looked like there might not be one at all because Lorna’s mother had gone into a drunken seclusion and was incapable of planning it. I stopped by to see her a few times, but she wouldn’t even open the door. Finally, Ms. Waller, the guidance counselor from the high school, managed to force her way into the house, and she got Carla to agree to let her plan something in the school auditorium.
    “We all need to find some closure,” Ms. Waller told me when she called me into her office to discuss it. If that’s what she said to Carla, I’m amazed she got out of there alive. “Closure” sounded to me like what happened when the lid of the casket banged shut. Only we didn’t have a casket or a body or a grave. We just had a big hole in our lives.
    The day of the service, I changed clothes four times. Nothing I owned sent the right message:
Everything is ruined.
I understood now why black was the traditional funeral color, not dull gray, not muddy brown. Only stark black told the world that the worst had happened, the inconceivable worst, and there was not a bit of color left in your life.
    Mom went to the memorial with me, but Dad was out on his boat, unwilling to lose a whole day of fishing. We were a little late getting to the high school because of my clothing dilemma, and I was surprised to see the auditorium was almost filled. Who were all these people? Did they really know Lorna, or were they there because she was young and beautiful and she fell from a place every one of them had also carelessly walked?
    Finn came up the aisle toward us wearing his usual jeans and dark T-shirt, the uniform of every teenage boy I knew. He always looked a little sharper than the other guys though, probably because Elsie bought his clothes in New York when she went to her gallery in the city. The locals mostly shopped at the mall in Hyannis, if not the Goodwill.
    “We saved seats for you up front,” he said, pointing. The whole Rosenberg clan was in the front row, Elsie motioning for us to join them.
    “You go,” Mom said, giving me a little push. “I’ll stay here in the back.”
    “No! Mom, come with me!” I begged. I wanted her by my side for this, but I wasn’t surprised when she backed away. Not only did she hate funerals, but she pretty much despised any public gathering of more than two or three people. It was kind of amazing she came at all.
    “There’s plenty of room up front, Mrs. Silva,” Finn said.
    “Oh, I know. Thank you, Finn. But I don’t