Read Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans for Free Online Page B

front porch with Mom; times when the phone rings and you just wish to hear that voice. Heidi is searching. And Birthmother was very young. And I have red hair and blue eyes. Her friend’s eyes stay glued to the screen on some solitary, enduring hunt. Private adoption through Catholic charity. And Birthmark on my right forearm.
    “Don’t you see?” Eva asks as she continues to read. “I belong to this. Here on this site. No one else has as little as we do.”
    “Wait. Excuse me?”
    Eva turns quickly. “What’s wrong?”
    “We should go,” Maris says then, turning to the door. “Your guests are waiting.”
    “Whoa,” Eva answers. “I thought you’d be excited for me.”
    “I’m not, Eva. I’m sorry, but I’m actually not.”
    “Why not?”
    “Why not?” she asks. Maris opens the office door and grandly sweeps her arm to all the life outside it. They hear Taylor calling for her mother. Fourth of July peals of laughter and voices come in through the open windows of Eva’s old beach home as the barbecue gets underway. Thin white curtains fill with a sea breeze. Yellow sunlight pours into the big kitchen and the scent of cooking food hangs in the air.
    Maris turns back to Eva. “I never had a mother to speak of. My father just died. I have no family except for some distant aunt somewhere in Europe, and I have no marriage, no children. Seriously, Eva. No one else has as little as you do?”
    “Maris, wait! That’s not what I meant,” Eva says as she logs off the site and clears her toolbar history. Then Taylor interrupts to tell them that Matt and Kyle need more hamburger buns to toast, and Jason’s sister Paige comes in, asking what she can help carry outside, and Theresa pokes her head in the office, saying they need the serving utensils.
    Maris gives Eva a long, piercing look before heading to the kitchen to lift the steaming corn out of the pot.

    What are photographs, really? The merest memories we put corners on and paste into an album, one whose pages we slowly turn and brush a finger across in wistful moods. We are driven to hold some memories in permanence, but isn’t that like trying to pin down a spirit? To trap some ethereal feeling that has a way of slipping by, just out of reach, ever elusive? That’s what Lauren thinks by the day’s end, with Eva’s camera still clicking. She had photographed the whole reunion barbecue, from the grilling to the badminton to everyone eating at the picnic table. Not a moment missed that roving lens. Her camera seemed to be mining their histories in search of friendships from nearly twenty years ago when every summer day was spent together hanging on the beach under the sunny sky, every night on the boardwalk beneath the stars. Funny how Lauren’s thoughts page through a different sort of scrapbook. Doesn’t Eva know that memories can be photos enough?
    “Let’s take out your boat,” Kyle said, holding a bunch of bottle rockets. The sun had set and the beach was crowded with Fourth of July revelers walking along the high tide line. “Less people in the way.”
    “It’s too small for all of us,” Jason answered. “We’ll never fit.”
    “And the gas tank’s empty,” Neil added, picking up a flat stone and skimming it out over the dark water. His jeans were cuffed and he waded in the shallows.
    “We’ll take another one then.” Kyle turned to face them, walking backward in the dark, the waves breaking at his feet.
    “What. Like steal one?” Eva asked, her thumb linked through Matt’s belt loop as they lagged behind.
    “More like borrow one,” Kyle suggested. “You know.”
    “Right,” Maris said, bending to pick up a small conch shell from the high tide line. “Because if we’re returning it, it’s not stealing?”
    They all quieted then, but somehow their ambling at the water’s edge shifted up toward the boardwalk and the boat basin behind it, filled with moored, idled boats.
    Lauren hung back, unsure about liking the subtle