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said.
    Beth fell into the chair next to him. “I know you’re having a hard time, sweetie. We all are. But I worry about you especially because you’re putting up such a strong front. You’re being tough for all of us. I’m sorry I keep telling you you’re the man of the house. That isn’t fair. I want you to know it’s okay to grieve— to cry, to scream, to be angry. But don’t misdirect your anger at me.”
    “Except I
am
angry at you,” he said. “You invited your old boyfriend here for dinner. You invited Marcus here for the whole summer. We’re never going to have time alone, just our family.”
    “We’ll make time,” she said, patting his hand. “We’ll take bike rides, we’ll walk on the beach, and we’ll find the right time and place to scatter Daddy’s ashes. Just you, me, and Winnie. I promise.”
    Beth returned to the groceries and Garrett watched for a minute. Then he heard Winnie blabbering and he turned to see her and Marcus trudging up the steps from the beach. Winnie’s blond ponytail was dripping wet; she wore the sweatshirt over her bikini. Unbelievable. But she had taken it off before she went into the water. Garrett wondered if she felt lighter, freer, without it. It was an interesting concept: grief as something she could take off every once in a while, like when she wanted to enjoy the first swim of the summer. Garrett was almost envious of his sister and the way she’d appropriated their father’s sweatshirt and made it her own symbol:
I’m sad.
Garrett’s sadness churned inside of him like food that was impossible to digest.
    Marcus wore a pair of cut-off jeans as his swimsuit. He looked like a kid who should be getting wet under a fire hydrant.
    “Are you two hungry?” Beth asked. “I went shopping.”
    “I’m not hungry,” Winnie said.
    Garrett gauged Beth’s response to this, which was no response at all. She was definitely distracted. Winnie never ate anymore, and this was a manifestation of her grief that Garrett didn’t envy. Food made Winnie sick. If she was eating and accidentally thought about their father, she threw up. Every day at Danforth she bought lunch in the cafeteria and then walked it right out the front door and down half a block to where three homeless men in turbans camped out under some scaffolding. Every day Winnie gave them her lunch then walked back to school with the empty tray.
    “Do you want anything, Marcus?” Beth asked. “A sandwich or something? We have smoked turkey here, and some cheese. Or I could fry you an egg.”
    “Turkey’s fine,” Marcus said.
    “I’ll make his sandwich,” Winnie said.
    “I’ll make it,” Beth said. “You kids dry off.”
    Garrett watched his mother make Marcus’s sandwich. It was as if she were entered in a sandwich-making contest. She’d bought three loaves of Something Natural herb bread, unsliced, so she brandished her serrated knife and cut two thick slices. Then mayonnaise, mustard, three leaves of lettuce that she washed and dried first, two pieces of Swiss Lorraine, and finally the smoked turkey that she draped over the cheese one slice at a time. She put the top on the sandwich, cut it in half diagonally. Arranged it on a plate with two handfuls of Cape Cod potato chips.
    “Marcus, what would you like to drink?” she called out.
    Garrett had seen enough. He’d made do with an untoasted bagel with cream cheese that had traveled with them in the warm car all the way from New York. But that wasn’t what got him mad. It was something else. Winnie and his mother fighting over who got to make Marcus’s sandwich, for starters. Garrett found the urn on the mantel in the living room and he carried it upstairs to his room. They’d been here all of three hours, and already he could tell this summer was going to suck.

    Garrett’s room was on the side of the house that faced the ocean. The room had been built for Garrett’s great-great-uncle Burton, his great-grandfather’s brother. Burton