Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews Page A

Scouts?”
    “A Kaper chart,” Ellis said quietly.
    “Oh yes, Kaper.” Julia nodded. “Excellent for eight-year-olds who have to be reminded to scrub their teeth and gather wood for the campfire. But for the love of God! We’re grown women here. I’m thirty-five years old. I don’t need a chart to tell me to hang up a wet towel.”
    Ellis felt her face go pink. “I just thought … well, I thought it might help the month go smoother, if things were sort of organized. Unlike you guys,I’m used to living alone and doing everything myself. I thought the chart would be kind of fun, but obviously I was wrong.” She pulled the whiteboard off the wall and walked rapidly out of the room, her back stiff. A moment later, she was back, but only to pick up her empty juice glass, rinse it out, and place it on the drainboard. Then she stalked out of the room. Dorie and Julia heard the screen door open and then slam shut.
    *   *   *
    “Shit.” Julia tossed the toast crust onto her plate. “I’d forgotten how prickly our girl can be. But really, Dorie, it had to be said.”
    Dorie picked up both their plates and coffee cups and put them into the sink full of soapy water. “It could have been said nicer. Ellis isn’t like you, Julia. She didn’t grow up fighting and fussing with a bunch of brothers. You really hurt her feelings. And after all the work she did putting this together for all of us. It wouldn’t hurt to go along with her. At least for the first week or so.”
    Julia sighed. “Now you’re gonna make me play nice, aren’t you?”
    Dorie grinned. “Either that, or you pick up your Tinkertoys and go home.”
    Dorie walked out to the front porch, with Julia trailing reluctantly behind. They stopped at the front door and peeked out. The whiteboard was poking out of the top of the trash can at the edge of the driveway, and its creator, Ellis, was sitting on one of the porch chairs, rocking rapidly to and fro, staring off into space. It was a gorgeous summer morning, sunny, not too humid, with banks of high, puffy white clouds overhead.
    It was the second day of August, and already they’d started to bicker.
    “Come on, Ellis,” Dorie coaxed. “Don’t be mad. Julia didn’t mean anything by it.” She turned and glared at Julia. “Did you, Julia?”
    “Julia’s a bitch,” Julia whispered loudly, poking her head out the door. She tiptoed onto the porch and stood behind Ellis’s chair. “And just for that, Julia’s going to have to clean the latrines for the whole month, right, Dorie?”
    Dorie sat down on the rocker next to Ellis’s. “Absolutely. And she gets no s’mores. Ever.”
    Julia knelt down on the floor on the other side of Ellis. She wrapped her arms around her friend’s waist and laid her head on Ellis’s lap. “Julia’s sorry,” she said in a little tiny mouse voice. “She loves Ellie-Belly and doesn’t ever want to hurt her friend’s feelings.”

    Ellis suppressed a smile. She patted Julia’s head and then gave it a sharp thump. “Get up, you nutjob. And don’t think you’re going to get out of cooking my dinner tonight, either.”
    Julia groaned. “Thank God. My knees are killing me.” She flopped down into the other rocking chair. “So what should we do today? Our first whole day at the beach? Bike ride? Shopping? Hang gliding over at Jockey’s Ridge? I saw a brochure for the most marvelous-looking school where they actually teach you to hang glide. Remember that time we all went bungee jumping at Myrtle Beach?”
    “You and Dorie went bungee jumping,” Ellis corrected. “I couldn’t even watch. I was petrified you’d be killed, and I’d have to explain to your mothers what happened.”
    “Nah, you were just scared if we got killed you’d have to go home alone and drive over the Talmadge bridge all by yourself,” Julia taunted.
    “True,” Ellis admitted.
    “Why don’t we just hang at the beach here?” Dorie asked.
    The others turned to look at her in