where the biggest decision was what to have for lunch or where to stake the beach umbrella.
She must have drifted off because she woke to the motion of the car gently slowing as it exited the Parkway. The children had fallen asleep in the back seat, Connor’s book open wide on his lap, Sophie’s truck on the floor beneath her feet.
“You have a good nap?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah, I did.” Stacy shifted in her seat and stretched. “How long was I out?”
“Not long. We’re coming up on Parkway Diner—you want to stop for pancakes?”
The Parkway Diner was famous among the shore crowd. On summer weekends the wait for a table could be an hour or more but nobody seemed to mind. The restaurant had wisely provided an outdoor table with a coffee service for customers needing caffeine and a fenced side yard for kids to burn off excited energy while they waited for their turn.
Inside Stacy remembered a comfortable sameness in the way the tables were set. A long row of sticky-handled syrup dispensers lined up across the far side. In the center, a frayed wicker basket filled with small tins of grape or strawberry jelly. A red plastic squeeze-bottle held ketchup that Brad used to draw designs on his serving of scrambled eggs. They’d order the same thing every time: scrambled eggs with a side of pancakes studded with fat blueberries. Looking back, she realized it didn’t matter what kind of pancakes the server brought, because the best part of breakfast at the Parkway Diner for every kid was pouring a bit from each syrup dispenser—marionberry, raspberry, blueberry, huckleberry, and maple—until their plate was flooded, their pancakes completely submerged. She and Brad ate every bit of those pancakes and, predictably, the sugar buzz hit them just as their mother pulled the car into the driveway of the shore house. Thinking about it now, Stacy wondered if that had been part of her mother’s plan. Hopped up on sugar, she and Brad would disappear to chase each other around the neighborhood, leaving their mother in peace to calmly organize the house.
“I’d love to, but I think it’s too late in the day,” Stacy said. “Brad’s supposed to arrive tonight too, and Mom’s probably planned a big dinner. Best to arrive hungry.”
“Hmm.” Ryan’s response was noncommittal as he slowed to navigate the traffic circle.
They were getting closer and Stacy felt her excitement build. Both sides of the street were dotted with surf shops and tiny neighborhood delis. Tufts of beach grass grew in the median, with a dusting of sand along the curb and on the shoulder of the road.
As they approached the Manasquan River bridge, Stacy lowered her window just a bit and inhaled. It was a game she and her brother had played in the car on the way to the shore.
The winner was the one who smelled the salt air first.
She felt the breeze from the inlet below wash over her, warm and light on her face.
“Mommy, it smells like the ocean.” Connor spoke from the back seat. Stacy glanced at him in the side mirror, his eyes wide with excitement, his hair ruffling in the breeze.
“You win, bud,” Stacy murmured.
The summers she and her brother had spent in Dewberry Beach had been magical and she let the memories come. Sparklers and shucking corn. Sunburns and mosquito bites. Burned hot dogs and drippy popsicles. The crash of the ocean waves as they tumbled to the shore. The sound of crickets at night, the blink of the fireflies and the heat from an outdoor fire as she held a peeled-bark stick of marshmallows too close to the flames.
The best memories came from the times she and Brad were allowed to walk to Duncan’s Ice Cream after dinner. It was only four blocks or so from their house, but Stacy remembered feeling so grown up that they’d been allowed to walk there unsupervised. Her job was to hold the money, a few dollars crumpled in her fist; Brad’s job was to pull the paper ticket from the machine in the shop and to step forward when their number was called. After Stacy paid, they walked home, delighting in drippy cones of whatever flavor looked good. They enjoyed a kind of freedom at the shore that wasn’t permitted during the school year.
She wanted all of that for Sophie and Connor.
“Have you spoken to your brother?” Ryan asked.
“Not recently, no.” Stacy adjusted the seat belt around her expanding belly. “But Mom says she