The Cousins

by Karen M. McManus

I’m not sure which is more frustrating: that my mother is trying to blackmail me into spending the summer working for a grandmother I’ve never met, or that it’s totally going to work.

Not fair, I think as I take a seat. I thought sunglasses would be rude, or I would’ve brought my own. I could use some camouflage right about now.

I will, I reply, before slipping my phone into the pocket of my dress. This dress is the most perfect article of clothing I’ve ever worn—not only because it’s beautiful and fits me like a dream but also because it has deep pockets that hold a phone and a lipstick without ruining the line of the skirt.

Her brothers couldn’t bring plastic cups to the beach like normal people; they brought crystal tumblers. Half the time they forgot them and Allison would find them embedded in the sand.

I almost had it last night, when I remembered the Sweetfern picture of my father and grandmother, but I’d put the wrong mental image next to it. I’d been thinking about Gran’s face: half shaded like always by her hat, tight with sadness. I should have been thinking about her hands. Bare of gloves for once, wrinkled and age-spotted, but otherwise unblemished.

FINALLY

By train, of course. She wasn’t kidding about the bus.