“Yeah.”

“I wish school lasted longer,” he said.

“I know. We have three more days before summer break. And then…”

Once school ended, Leni would be expected to work full-time at the homestead and so would Matthew at his place. They’d hardly see each other.

* * *

ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, Leni and Matthew made all kinds of promises about how they would keep in touch until classes started again in September, but the truth shouldered in between them. They were kids and not in control of anything, their own schedules least of all. Leni felt lonely already as she walked away from Matthew on that last day and headed for the VW bus waiting on the side of the road.

“You look down in the dumps, baby girl,” Mama said from her place in the driver’s seat.

Leni climbed into the passenger seat. She didn’t see the point in whining about something that couldn’t be changed. It was three o’clock. There was an ocean of daylight left; that meant hours of chores to do.

As soon as they were home, Mama said, “I have an idea. Go get us that striped wool blanket and the chocolate bar in the cooler. I’ll meet you down on the beach.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“What? Dad will never agree to that.”

“Well, he’s not here.” Mama smiled.

Leni didn’t waste a second. She ran to the house (before Mama changed her mind). She grabbed the slim Hershey’s chocolate bar from the cooler in the kitchen and the blanket from the back of the sofa. Wrapping it around her like a poncho, she headed for the rickety beach stairs, followed them down to the curl of water-stippled gray pebbles that was their own private beach. To the left were dark, enticing stone caves, carved by centuries of hurling water.

Mama stood in the tall grass up from the beach, a cigarette already lit. Leni was pretty sure that, to her, childhood would always smell like sea air and cigarette smoke and her mother’s rose-scented perfume.

Leni spread out the blanket on the uneven ground and she and Mama sat down on it, their legs stretched out, their bodies angled into each other. In front of them, the blue sea rolled forward ceaselessly, washing over the stones, rustling them. Not far away an otter floated on its back, using its small black paws to crack open a clam.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went fishing with Mad Earl. I think Dad’s hoping to ask the old man for a loan. Money is getting pretty tight. I’ve still got some of the money from my mom, but I’ve been using it for cigarettes and Polaroid film.” She gave Leni a soft smile.

“I’m not sure Mad Earl is good for Dad,” Leni said.

Mama’s smile faded. “I know what you mean.”

“He’s happy here, though,” Leni said. She tried not to think about the conversation she’d had with Matthew, about how winter was coming and winter was dark and cold and crazy-making.

“I wish you remembered your dad from before ’Nam.”

“Yeah.” Leni had heard dozens of stories of that time. Mama loved to talk about Before, about who they’d been in the beginning. The words were like a much-loved fairy tale.

Mama had been sixteen when she got pregnant.

Sixteen.

Leni would be fourteen in September. Amazingly, she’d never really thought about that before. She’d known her mama’s age, of course, but she hadn’t really put the facts together. Sixteen.

“You were only two years older than me when you got pregnant,” Leni said.

Mama sighed. “I was a junior in high school. Christ. No wonder my parents threw a clot.” She gave Leni a crooked, charming smile. “They were not the kind of people who could understand a girl like me. They hated my clothes and my music and I hated their rules. At sixteen, I thought I knew everything, and I told them so. They sent me away to a Catholic girls’ school, where rebellion meant rolling up the waistband of your skirt to shorten the hem and show an inch of skin above your knees. We were taught to kneel and pray and marry well.

“Your dad came into my life like a rogue wave, knocking me over. Everything he said upended my conventional world and changed who I was. I stopped knowing how to breathe without him. He told me I didn’t need school. I believed everything he said. Your dad and I were too in love to be careful, and I got pregnant. My dad exploded when I told him. He wanted to send me away to one of those houses for unwed mothers. I knew they’d take you away from me. I’ve never hated anyone more than I hated him in that moment.”

Mama sighed. “So we ran away. I was sixteen—almost seventeen—and your dad was twenty-five. When you came along, we were flat broke and living in a trailer park, but none of that mattered. What was money or work or new clothes when you had the most perfect baby in the world?”

Mama leaned back. “He used to carry you all the time. At first in his arms and then on his shoulders. You adored him. We shut out the world and lived on love, but the world came roaring back.”

“The war,” Leni said.

Mama nodded. “I begged your dad not to go to Vietnam. We fought and fought about it. I didn’t want to be a soldier’s wife, but he wanted to go. So I packed my tears with his clothes and let him go. It was supposed to be for a year. I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to live without him. I ran out of money and moved back home with my parents, but I couldn’t stand it there. All we did was fight. They kept telling me to divorce your father and think about you, and finally I left again. That’s when I found the commune and people who didn’t judge me for being a kid with a kid. Then your dad’s helicopter got shot down and he was captured. I got one letter from him in six years.”

Leni remembered the letter and how her mother had cried after reading it.

“When he came home, he looked like a dead man,” Mama said. “But he loved us. Loved us like air. Said he couldn’t sleep if I wasn’t in his arms, although he didn’t sleep much then, either.”

As always, Mama’s story came to a stumbling halt at this point, the fairy tale over. The witch’s door slammed shut on the wandering kids. The man who’d come home from war was not the same man who’d boarded the plane for Vietnam. “He’s better up here, though,” Mama said. “Don’t you think? He’s almost himself again.”