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mother and Simon were staying across the hall.
    The rest of the clan was sleeping down the island in Mary Ellen Way’s rambling eight-bedroom house on the marsh, which she occasionally loaned to friends or friends of friends. Maggie and Grant’s oldest son Mickey, who was now called Mike because he was twenty-six after all, knew about Mary Ellen Way’s house because he had dated her niece and, after winning the campaign for the uncles, including Henry, to foot the bill for some groceries and so forth, he invited all the boys to stay there and organized everything. Beth thought this was an excellent idea as there was only one bathroom on the second floor of their house and two tiny ones downstairs. It didn’t matter how large the capacity of the hot-water heater was, no residential system was going to deliver hot showers to that many people. Anyway, the most important detail is that Beth had too many cousins to know and all of them were lazy cows when it came to pitching in to help.
    Coming to that same realization, as she tripped over running shoes and tote bags that were thoughtlessly tossed and dropped everywhere, that her nieces and nephews were a bunch of slugs, Maggie snapped out of her delirium and engaged the services of a woman named Cecily Singleton to help with meals on Friday and Saturday. Cecily was the granddaughter of Livvie Singleton, who, according to family lore, had single-handedly saved the whole family from implosion back in the sixties when Beth’s mother was a girl. So, between the second house and an extra pair of helping hands, Beth began to think they might survive the house party after all.
    Friday afternoon, almost everyone had disappeared to walk the beach or to browse the new Whole Foods for exotic breads and olives. Beth’s hair was restrained in a ponytail, her breasts were almost concealed, and she was tying on an apron (with an Eiffel Tower hand-painted on the front) to help with Friday night’s fish fry, which would take place in two hours’ time. She looked out the kitchen window and there came the person whom she rightly assumed was Cecily, straight up the back steps. She rapped on the screen door, but before Beth could answer it she walked right into the kitchen like she owned the place.
    “Humph,” she said, looking Beth up and down with a huge grin, dropping her tote bag on the table with a thud. “Nice apron.”
    “Humph yourself,” she said. “I’m Beth.”
    “If you say so.” Cecily arched an eyebrow at her. “Where’s our Miss Maggie?”
    Beth arched an eyebrow back at her and said, “Out on the front porch with her hot glue gun, building a last minute four-foot-tall Eiffel Tower out of shells she personally collected from the beach. With her own hands. Without wrecking her manicure.”
    Cecily held herself still for the entire span of two seconds and then they both burst out laughing.
    “Oh Lord! That woman is so crazy!” Cecily said between hoots. “You got an apron for me?”
    “You’re telling me?” Beth said, reached for a tissue to blot her eyes, and tossed her an apron that matched her own.
    “But it’s a good crazy, I guess. Thanks.”
    “Yeah, I think so too.” She blew her nose and looked at her again. “So you’re Livvie Singleton’s granddaughter, huh?”
    Cecily was tall and lean with high cheekbones and a smile so bright that it seemed to flash light all over the room. Her hair was pulled back in a low knot and she was dressed in white linen trousers and a jade green cotton knit shirt. Beth liked her right away because Cecily was smart and for some inexplicable reason she seemed like an old friend.
    “That’s my claim to fame,” she said.
    “That’s a very big pair of shoes to fill. It’s great to meet you.”
    “Same here,” she said, and they shook hands.
    “So, how do you know my Aunt Maggie?”
    She reached in her bag and pulled out a business card, handing it to her. It read:

    Get it Together
For all your Organizing Needs