Beautiful Day(34)

“I can’t watch,” Jenna said.

It did seem morbid, all of them standing around, gawking like witnesses at an execution. Margot reminded herself that it could be worse. Alfie might have been struck by lightning. As it was, he would still stand guard over their property, still shade them; birds would still sing from their unseen perches in his upper branches. They were only taking off one limb—and Roger was right, that branch was hanging awfully low. It might have snapped on its own with the next nor’easter.

There was a honking, and Margot turned to see a silver minivan pull into the driveway.

“It’s Kevin!” Jenna said. “Oh, thank God!”

Margot made a face. Their whole lives it had always been “Thank God for Kevin.” Kevin was eleven months younger than Margot—an oops baby, Margot was certain, although neither of her parents had ever admitted to it—but because Kevin was a boy, he had often been treated as the oldest. And to boot, he had been born with the unflappable calm and unquestioned authority of an elder statesman. He had been class president all through high school, then had attended Penn, where he’d been the head of the Student Society of Engineers. While in college, he had performed CPR on a man who collapsed on the Thirtieth Street subway platform, and he’d saved the man’s life. Kevin had been awarded a medal by the mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Rendell. Kevin Carmichael was, literally, a lifesaver.

He unfolded himself from the minivan—he had no shame about driving the thing, despite ruthless teasing from both Margot and Nick—and stood, all six feet six of him, in the sun, grinning at them.

“We’re here!” he said. “The party can start!”

Beanie materialized at his side, all five foot two of her, and slid her arm around Kevin’s middle so that the two of them could be frozen in everyone’s mind for a second, posed like a photograph captioned “Happily Married Couple,” before the three boys busted out of the back of the car and all hell broke loose.

Kevin strode forward, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed at the tree and the stepladder and Hector with the chain saw. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

God, his tone drove Margot insane. Was it normal, she wondered, to have your siblings grate on you like this? As much as she was dreading the amputation of Alfie’s branch, she now wished it had already happened, just so she didn’t have to stand by and watch Kevin weigh in on it. Kevin was both an architect and a mechanical engineer; he had founded a company that fixed structural problems in large buildings, important buildings—like the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Like the White House.

“They have to cut that branch,” Margot said. “Otherwise the tent can’t go up.”

Kevin eyed the branch, then the upper branches of the tree, then the yard as a whole. “Really?” he said.

“Really,” Margot said.

At that moment Roger appeared, holding his clipboard; Margot hadn’t heard his truck, so he must have parked on the street. Plus, that was Roger’s way: he appeared, like a genie, when you most needed him. He could explain to Kevin about the branch.

Margot turned her attention to Beanie and gave her sister-in-law a hug. Beanie had looked exactly the same since she was fourteen years old, when she and her family moved to Darien from the horse country of Virginia. Her brown hair was in a messy bun, her face was an explosion of freckles, and she wore horn-rimmed glasses. She never aged, never changed; her clothes were straight out of the 1983 L.L. Bean catalog—today, a white polo shirt with the collar flipped up, a madras A-line skirt, and a pair of well-worn boat shoes.

Beanie had probably worn this very same outfit on her first date with Kevin in the ninth grade. He had taken her to see Dead Poets Society.

Beanie said, “You look great, Margot.”

Beanie was a true golden good person. It was her MO to start every conversation with a compliment. Margot adored this about Beanie, even as she knew the compliment to be a lie. She did not look great.

“I look like a dirt sandwich,” Margot said.

“Last night was fun?” Beanie said.

Margot raised her eyebrows. “Fun, fun!” she said. She thought briefly of her sunken phone, Edge’s lost texts, and the reappearance of Griff. Oh, man. It was quite a story, but Margot couldn’t confide it to anybody, not even Beanie.

The Carmichael boys—Brandon, Brian, and Brock—were racing around the yard, chasing and tackling Drum Jr. and Carson. Ellie was perched above the fray on her uncle Nick’s shoulders. Nick came over to kiss Beanie, and Margot turned her attention to Roger and Kevin, who were deep in conversation. Then Kevin started speaking to Hector in fluent Spanish—what a show-off!—and pointing up at the tree branches.