Of course he’d mention drinking.
She turned her face away, brushed the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Boone. Sorry about everything.”
“I hear you, babe. So am I.”
* * *
Boone called Kit.
Sarah had no idea what he said to her, but in the morning she and Cass were on her doorstep, hugging the kids, chatting with Boone in the family room, where they’d stumbled onto him sleeping on the sofa.
Fifteen minutes later Kit had packed a bag for Sarah, and then she and Cass were dragging Sarah out the door, hustling her into Kit’s Prius, informing her they were heading to Capitola for a Brennan Girls’ Getaway. Meg and Brianna would meet them there.
Sarah allowed herself to be pushed into the backseat, but she knew this was no Brennan Girls’ Getaway. This was an intervention.
An intervention staged by Boone.
Kit drove, with Cass in the passenger seat. Sarah was fine being in the back. As the youngest, she’d been relegated to the backseat from birth. It wasn’t until her brother and sisters had all gone off to college that she got to ride in the passenger seat, and by then, she’d gotten her driver’s license and was driving herself everywhere.
But the backseat wasn’t all bad. In the back, she didn’t have to help navigate or keep the driver company.
In the back, you could sleep or cry. Which was what she did now.
“Almost there,” Kit said as she took the ramp from 17 onto Pacific Coast 1 South.
Good, Sarah thought, closing her eyes. Soon the drinking could start.
* * *
Meg and Brianna were already at the beach house when they arrived.
Sarah glanced into the kitchen. From the boxes and bags in the kitchen, it looked as if Meg and Brianna had taken care of the groceries while Kit and Cass had taken care of her.
Sarah opened the refrigerator. No wine.
Seriously?
She closed the fridge, shouldered her overnight bag, headed upstairs, wondering what Kit had packed for her, and then shrugged, not caring.
It didn’t matter. None of it really mattered.
But upstairs, on discovering that Meg had put her suitcase in the master bedroom, thereby claiming it as her own, Sarah felt annoyed and let it show. “Why do you get Mom’s room, Meg?”
Meg had been unpacking her vanity bag, placing her toiletries on the dresser, and she straightened abruptly, glancing at Sarah, and then at the others, bewildered. “I’m sorry. I was just in here all summer.”
Meg’s expression made Sarah hate herself. But instead of backing off, she just came back, swinging harder. “Well, it’s not summer, and this is the Brennan Girls’ Getaway with your sisters, so you’re stuck in the girls’ bunk room with the rest of us.”
Meg frowned. “But if we have an empty bedroom—”
“It’s Mom’s,” Sarah said fiercely. “And it’s empty because she’s dead.”
“Sarah!” Kit protested.
Bree put a hand on Sarah’s arm. “That’s not necessary.”
And Sarah, who’d already opened her mouth to say more, because she had to say more, because she was burning on the inside with this rage she couldn’t deal with, realized she was unleashing it on the wrong person.
She was venting here, because she was terrified she’d vented the wrong things at home.
She hadn’t wanted to end her marriage. She’d wanted to end the pain. But ending the marriage seemed like the only way to end the pain.
But the pain was still in her, burning hotter and brighter than ever before.
“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking away from Bree. She stumbled out the door, down the stairs to the front porch.
Cass and her sisters followed.
Sarah stared out at the sea, refusing to turn around when the screen door opened and banged closed.
“Sarah,” Meg said. “It’s okay.”
Sarah held up a hand, jaw tight. “It’s not. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m being such a bitch—”
Meg came up behind her, wrapped her arms around her, and hugged her. “I miss Mom, too,” she whispered in Sarah’s ear. “I miss her so much. And there’s nothing we can do.”
Sarah covered Meg’s hand, squeezed it, refusing to cry because tears would solve nothing now.
Tears wouldn’t bring Mom back.
Or heal her marriage.
They were self-indulgent at this point, and something not to be tolerated.
* * *
It was Cass who coaxed them all off the front porch and into the tiny aqua-blue kitchen, where they were gathered now—well, squished was more like it—making the Brennan Girls’ favorite, fresh strawberry margaritas, for their traditional happy hour.
They always had happy hour every day at the beach house during their getaways and today was no exception.