Five Summers by Una LaMarche Read Free Book Online

front seat, almost dislodging a Frida Kahlo bobble-head doll on the dashboard, and pulled out her old watermelon backpack. “It’s still got all our notebooks,” she added.
    “Our six hundred MASH games!” Jo said fondly.
    “Yes, where you marry Gus and live in a shack with six children,” Emma said. “Any progress on that?”
    “Broken dreams,” Jo sighed.
    “Ah, well. There’s still time.” Emma shut the car door and looked at them eagerly. “Speaking of which, I know I’m late, but can we go somewhere and catch up before everyone gets here? I’m dying to hear everything that’s been going on.”
    “I would love that,” Skylar said, “but we’re supposed to set up the gazebo for the impending vultures.” In fact, she was grateful for the opportunity to stall the truth-telling portion of the weekend. Now that Emma was actually there, it was real. She would have to tell her. And she had no idea when, or how, to do it.
    “You can help, though!” Jo chimed in. “How does arranging butter cookies into concentric circles sound?”
    “It sounds fabulous,” Emma said. “As long as we can gossip while we work.”

    When they got back to the gazebo, Skylar saw that Mack had
completely
ignored her instructions to braid and gently drape the streamers along the beams, choosing instead to hang individual pieces from the ceiling like strips of flypaper.
    “How do they look?” he asked proudly.
    “Like a car wash tunnel,” Skylar whispered to Emma. Emma punched her lightly in the arm.
    “They look great, Mack,” Emma said.
    “Emma Zenewicz!” Mack boomed, setting down his Scotch Tape and giving her a warm hug. He stepped back and looked at the girls, beaming. “It’s so good to see you girls together again. This is what I wanted; I wanted the children at my camp to become a family.” His mustache, now streaked with gray but just as resplendent as always, started to twitch.
    “Dad, don’t cry,” Jo warned sharply, and Mack laughed his big, deep cackle that always sounded to Skylar like firewood crackling.
    “Where’s Maddie?” he asked when it had died down.
    “Stuck at thirty-five thousand feet,” Jo said. “Or, at least, I think she’s still in the air. She said she’d text when she landed at Portsmouth.”
    “Okay,” Mack said, patting Jo’s shoulder as he turned to head back to the office. “I won’t cry until she gets here.”
    Skylar smiled. Jo hated it when Mack got sentimental, but Skylar thought it was sweet. Her dad was never sentimental. He was whatever the opposite of sentimental was. When she’d unpacked her trunk back in June, she’d found a community college brochure slipped in between the pages of her sketchbook, along with a note that read, in his rigid block print,
We all have dreams. This is for when you wake up.
    “Sky, help me with this?” Jo was struggling to stabilize a folding table. Skylar grabbed one end, relieved to have busywork to focus on, as Emma started opening the plastic sleeves of dollar-store shortbread Mack kept stockpiled in the kitchen pantry for all celebratory occasions.
    “So . . .” Emma said expectantly, arranging the crumbly squares on a plastic tray, “tell me everything.”
    Skylar wondered what Emma would most like to hear. That she’d been desperately missed? That was true. That there was a new foosball table in the game room, one with controls that didn’t stick? Or did she want more salacious gossip, like the fact that, over the course of three summers, Skylar had managed to hook up in one way or another with half the male counselors? Skylar and Jo looked at each other, unsure of who should start. There was so much ground to cover.
    “Well, my dad’s gone totally soft, as you just saw,” Jo laughed.
    “I love it,” Emma said. “What else?”
    “Gus finally fixed that rotten board on the dock,” Skylar said. “No more butt splinters.”
    “Come on, I want
real
dirt,” Emma smiled. “You know: hookups, fights,