That Old Cape Magic

feet. Apparently the father-daughter segment of the program was drawing to a close. “I’m still pretty mad at you, though,” she admitted.
    “I know,” he said, rising as well. “Me too.”
    When they emerged from the maze, she said, “Grandma told me one other thing, actually. About you.”
    “What’s that?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
    “She said you’d never admit it, but you’re just like her.”
    Damn right you are
, his mother said, agreeing with herself.
    Everyone did seem to be on their best behavior, just as Joy had promised. He’d no sooner gotten himself a glass of wine than Jared—at least he was pretty sure it was Jared, given the shaved skull—came over and extended his hand, which Griffin saw no reasonnot to take. Whichever brother he was shaking hands with looked like what he was, a career marine: lantern jawed, thick necked, improbably muscled. “So,” he said, pumping Griffin’s hand in his crushing grip, “no hard feelings?”
    Jared, then. Note to self: Jared, skull; Jason, hair. Griffin said no, there were no hard feelings.
    The twins were a family enigma, born nearly a decade after Joy (Jane and June were older, the girls all spaced in two-year intervals) and completely different in temperament. As boys they’d worried Harve and Jill by fighting constantly and ferociously, neither ever seeking parental redress or justice. They fought until they bled, then fought some more. But suddenly all of that was over. Instead of wanting to kill each other, they had each other’s backs. With the leftover energy they took to bodybuilding and making gentle, sometimes not so gentle, fun of their father, first behind his back, later to his face. Neither had married. Now in their forties, they still liked heavy-metal music, strip clubs and the kind of women one met there.
    “Two sides to every story, I guess,” Jared said, a worm squiggling under the skin of one temple, evidence how costly, for him, such magnanimity actually was. “Push comes to shove, I have to side with my sister, but …”
    “I’m kind of on her side myself,” Griffin told him, because it was true, but also because it seemed like a good idea to suggest to Jared that pushing really needn’t come to shoving. Or punching, or stomping, or castration. All of which had apparently been on the table at one point. Brother Jason (not hair so much as stubble, really) was watching them from across the room, Griffin noticed, his expression, well,
murderous
was probably too strong a word. “I hear your brother left the service,” Griffin ventured, genuinely curious that either twin should do something so brazenly individualistic.
    Jared snorted, glancing over his shoulder at his brother andraising his voice enough to be sure he could hear him. “Yeah, well, Jason always was a pussy.”
    “We’ll see, J.J.,” his brother called back. This was short for Jared the Jarhead, the nickname he’d immediately picked up when he joined the marines. As if there weren’t enough
J’s
in the family already. “You wait.”
    Joy’s father was indeed in a wheelchair along the far wall. A tall, angular woman who Griffin assumed must be Dot stood sentry at his elbow, and when he approached, she bent at the waist to whisper, like a handler to a pol, in Harve’s ear. To remind him who Griffin was? That he and Joy had separated?
    “What?” Harve barked at her, and then, when she repeated whatever she’d told him, said, “Hell, I know who it is.” He extended a feeble, palsied hand, and Griffin felt an unexpected surge of pity. His father-in-law had always been a robust man, but no more. His pale blue eyes were watery, their lids outlined in bright red, as if with a cosmetic pencil.
    “Jack,” he said, “are you keeping your head down?”
    “Look up and all you’ll see is a bad shot,” Griffin replied. “It’s good to see you, Harve.”
    The man nodded. “You know my wife died?”
    “Yes,” said Griffin. He’d attended Jill’s funeral, of course, and thought about reminding Harve of this but decided not to. “Yes.”
    “He knows,” said Dot, unhelpfully.
    “Hell of a thing,” Harve said, unwilling to let go of the subject. “I hope you never have to go through it.”
    “Me too,” Griffin said, realizing that despite Joy’s warning he’d given him far too much cognitive credit. If he knew about their separation, he’d clearly forgotten. Either that or someone had informed him that