No one ever remembers who it was now, but it was me.
Actually, pretty much everything that night was me. Max and Babette had gone on a last-minute, two-week, second-honeymoon cruise around the boot of Italy that they’d found for a steal—and the return date just happened to be two days before Max’s sixtieth birthday party—smack in the middle of summer.
Babette had worried that she couldn’t book a trip with an end date so close to the party, but I stopped her. “I’ve got this. I’ll get everything ready.”
“I’m not sure you realize what a big undertaking a party like this is,” Babette said. “We’ve got the whole school coming. Three hundred people—maybe more. It’s a huge job.”
“I think I can handle it.”
“But it’s your summer,” Babette said. “I want you to be carefree.”
“And I want you,” I said, pointing at her, “to take a dirt-cheap second honeymoon to Italy.”
I didn’t have to twist their arms. They went.
And I was happy to take charge of the party. Max and Babette were not technically my parents—but they were the nearest thing I had. My mom died when I was ten, and let’s just say my dad was not my closest relative.
Actually … technically he was my closest relative.
But we weren’t close.
Plus, I didn’t have any siblings—just a few scattered cousins, but no family anywhere nearby. God, now that I’m laying it out like this, I have to add: no boyfriend, either. Not for a long time. Not even any pets.
I did have friends, though. Lest I make myself sound too sad. Especially my friend Alice. Six feet tall, friendly, and relentlessly positive Alice, who was a math specialist and wore a T-shirt with a math joke on it every day to work.
The first day I met her, her shirt said, NERD SQUAD.
“Great shirt,” I said.
She said, “Usually, I wear math jokes.”
“Is there such a thing as math jokes?” I asked.
“Wait and see.”
To sum up: Yes. There are more math jokes in the world than you can possibly imagine. And Alice had a T-shirt for all of them. Most of which I didn’t understand.
We had almost none of the same interests, Alice and me, but it didn’t matter. She was a tall, sporty, mathy person, and I was the opposite of all those things. I was an early riser, and she was a night owl. She wore the exact same version of Levi’s and T-shirts to work every day, and every day I put together some wildly different concoction of clothes. She read spy novels—exclusively—and I read anything I could get my hands on. She played on an intramural beach volleyball team, for Pete’s sake.
But we were great friends.
I was lucky to be a librarian at a very special, very legendary elementary school on Galveston Island called the Kempner School—and not only did I adore my job, and the kids, and the other teachers, I also lived in Babette and Max Kempner’s garage apartment. Though, “garage apartment” doesn’t quite capture it. The real term was “carriage house” because it had once been the apartment above the stables.
Back when horses-and-buggies were a thing.
Living with Max and Babette was kind of like living with the king and queen. They had founded Kempner, and they’d run it together all these years, and they were just … beloved. Their historic mansion—that’s right: real estate is super cheap in Galveston—was just blocks from school, too, so teachers were constantly stopping by, hanging out on the porch, helping Max in his woodshop. Max and Babette were just the kind of people other people just wanted to be near.
The point is, I was glad to do something wonderful for them.
They did wonderful things for me all the time.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a rare opportunity to really astonish them with the greatest party ever. I started a Pinterest board, and I went through magazines for décor ideas. I got so excited, I even called up their daughter Tina to see if she might like to do the project together.
Ironically, their daughter Tina was one of the rare people in town who didn’t hang out at Max and Babette’s all the time. So I didn’t know her all that well.
Also: she didn’t like me.
I suspected she thought I was trying to take her place.
Fair enough. She wasn’t totally wrong.
“Why are you decorating for my dad’s party?” she said, when I called—her voice tight.