The Forget-Me-Not Summer (27 page)

T
hat evening, Marigold, Zinnie, Lily, their parents, Aunt Sunny, Tony, Jean, and Mack had a great big picnic on the estuary side of the beach. The sky paled as the sun dipped behind the dunes, but the air stayed warm. The sand was cool beneath their feet as they kicked off their sneakers and flip-flops and searched for a good spot. They wanted to find the best place to enjoy their last night. As they spread their picnic blanket and unpacked the food from the coolers, a few piping plovers raced near the shore.

Aunt Sunny had invited Peter, but to everyone's disappointment, he'd said he had to go to a very important sailing team meeting. As the captain, he'd said, he really had to be there. Zinnie knew Peter was mad at Marigold, but still, she couldn't imagine anyone missing this feast. They ate lobster rolls, drenched with
hot drawn butter, that Dad had picked up from the fish market and tomatoes from Tony's garden. Jean brought potato salad and summer squash, and Mom couldn't resist buying a blueberry pie from the farm stand. And of course Aunt Sunny made her surprise brownies. Zinnie thought it had been a summer full of so many surprises that she wasn't sure another one was possible.

But just then she saw Peter walking toward them. Zinnie watched as Marigold's face lit up, her eyes round with anticipation. When Jean asked him about the sailing team meeting, Peter said that he was on his way, but he wanted to stop by here first. Then Peter nodded at Marigold, and the two of them walked to the water's edge to talk away from everyone else. Zinnie couldn't be sure what happened, but when they came back to join the group, Marigold had a secret smile on her face and she was wearing his old, stinky Red Sox hat.

Lily asked if it was finally time for her to show Dad and Mom that she wasn't afraid of swimming anymore. It had been a full half hour since she'd eaten, and she couldn't wait a minute longer. “Mommy, will you come with me?” she asked. “Aunt Sunny said I can't go in by myself.”

“I'd love to,” Mom said. The two of them stripped down to their bathing suits and raced to the water. Mom held out her hands to carry Lily in, but Lily
jumped in all by herself. Dad watched in amazement.

“How did you do it, Sunny?” he asked.

“It was a group effort. Your daughters make a good team,” she said, resting her head on Tony's shoulder as he played a quiet song on the guitar.

“Did I tell you girls about the fairy rings?” Dad asked Zinnie and a very distracted Marigold.

“No. What are fairy rings?” Zinnie asked.

Dad explained that they were perfect circles of redwood trees, created by one mother tree that had died and sent her seeds out around her. He showed them a picture on his phone of him standing in one. The trees surrounded him like great columns. Dad zoomed in on the image. “They share a giant interconnected root system underground, and this helps keep them resilient,” he said. “It reminds me of you girls and how you'll always have one another to keep you strong.” Zinnie thought it was a magical image.

Marigold was not as fascinated. “That's cool, but I'm going to go look for sea glass,” she said. Then she headed toward the ocean side of the beach.

Zinnie stood up, about to follow her, but something made her stop. She realized that Marigold probably just wanted to think about Peter. As she watched her sister walk away, she thought of the hollyhocks Aunt Sunny had planted and how she had said that they needed space between them or they wouldn't reach their full height or bloom brightly. Her dad was right
about sisters being like a circle of redwoods; their roots were intertwined. But Zinnie thought that sisters were also like those hollyhocks: They needed their own patches of dirt and bits of sunshine in order to grow. Besides, she wanted to know more about fairy circles.

So Zinnie sat back down and took Dad's hand. She buried her toes in the warm sand, and he described what it had been like to sit in the arms of the tallest living thing, a tree that may have been a thousand years old; how he'd smelled the fog, tasted a huckleberry, heard a salamander slither across a leaf, and seen what felt like the whole wide world from its branches. As Zinnie leaned against his shoulder and listened, her imagination sparked and crackled. Her dad's stories seemed to stir up her own. She had the feeling that the idea for a new play was forming, maybe something about fairy circles. She wasn't sure. It wasn't a thought she could grab onto or describe just yet. But she could sense it in the air around her, in the late-summer breeze tousling her curls, like a secret whispered by the sea.

BROWNIES:

1 stick butter

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1-pound can liquid chocolate syrup

1 cup flour

½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

FROSTING:

3 cups powdered or confectioner's sugar

4 tablespoons butter

3–4 tablespoons milk

½ teaspoon peppermint extract (add more to taste)

a few drops green food coloring

CHOCOLATE TOPPING:

3 tablespoons butter

3 squares bittersweet chocolate

BROWNIES:

Preheat oven to 350˚. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter with the sugar. Add the eggs, mixing well. Then add the remaining brownie ingredients and mix together. Bake in a lightly greased 10” x 15” jelly roll pan for 30 minutes. Let cool.

FROSTING:

Sift the powdered sugar into a large bowl. Next, cream the butter and sugar together. The consistency of the frosting should be creamy; add milk, up to 4 tablespoons. Mix in the remaining frosting ingredients and spread evenly over the cooled brownies while they're still in the pan. Let set for 20–30 minutes.

TOPPING:

Melt the butter and chocolate squares in a saucepan over low heat until thick, stirring frequently so the mixture doesn't get burned. Pour the topping over the brownies still in the pan. Tilt the pan so the topping coats the brownies evenly. Once the topping has set, the brownies are ready to cut and enjoy!

Thanks to my beloved agent, Sara Crowe, for her unwavering belief in me. Great heaps of gratitude to my brilliant editor, Alexandra Cooper, for her vision and wisdom and for loving these girls as much as I do. Thank you to the whole team at HarperCollins, especially Alyssa Miele. I am indebted to Kayla Cagan and Vanessa Cross Napolitano for their encouragement, thoughtful feedback, and friendship. Thank you to my whole family, especially my mom and dad. Thanks also to the late Dorothy W. Gifford, also known as Aunt Dot the Great, teacher, sage, and fairy godmother. Giff, you've been my best friend from the get-go. And Maryhope, every day I count my lucky stars that you are my sister. As always, love and thanks to JLD, my sweetheart and secret weapon. And to HHD, who inspires and delights me beyond compare, thank you for opening my heart wider than I thought possible.

Photo by Sally Peterson

LEILA HOWLAND
was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. A graduate of Georgetown University, Leila spent five years acting in New York, where she was a company member of the award-winning Flea Theater in Tribeca.
The Forget-Me-Not Summer
is her middle grade debut. She has also written two YA novels:
Nantucket Blue
, for which she was named a
Publishers Weekly
“Flying Start,” and
Nantucket Red
. Leila now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, baby boy, and two dogs. Visit her online at
www.leilahowland.com
.

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Cover art © 2015 by JI-HYUK KIM

Cover design by KATE J ENGBRING

THE FORGET-ME-NOT SUMMER
. Copyright © 2015 by Leila Howland. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Ji-Hyuk Kim. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howland, Leila.

  The forget-me-not summer / Leila Howland. — First edition.

    pages   cm

  Summary: When their parents, a screenwriter and a film editor, go off on summer projects, Marigold, twelve, Zinnia, eleven, and Lily, five, must visit their Great Aunt Sunny in Cape Cod, where they learn much about themselves and each other and grow closer than ever.

  ISBN 978-0-06-231869-5 (hardcover)

  EPub Edition © April 2015 ISBN 9780062318718

  [1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Great aunts—Fiction. 4. Actors and actresses—Fiction. 5. Cape Cod (Mass.)—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Kim, Ji-Hyuk, ill.

15 16 17 18 19    
CG/RRDH
   10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION