Although Arietta was a newer member of the Salt Sisters, she could see how thirty years made sense to this particular group of women. They were aging.
As they waited for Hilary to arrive, they sat around the veranda table and considered the previous thirty years of their lives. Everything had changed. Back in 2004, Arietta was twenty-seven. She’d been married to Fred, writing about scientific discoveries and trying to figure out how to balance parenthood with a career and love.
When she said this, Stella reached across the table and squeezed her hand. Arietta didn’t often mention Fred any longer, although everyone knew her story. After two years in the care facility, Fred had passed away in his sleep. Arietta and her daughters had given him a beautiful send-off. By that time,Dina and Arietta had developed a sort of friendship—something that still boggled Arietta’s mind. Dina had never tried to explain her love for Fred. She’d never tried to diminish it, either. But she’d once told Arietta, “I hate that I disrespected you. I learned something in that, I think, that I’ll carry with me forever.”
“Whatever happened to Dina?” Stella asked now.
Arietta explained that Dina had graduated with her master’s from Yale and moved to California, where she’d married another scientist and had two children. “She sends me a Christmas card every year,” she said. “She looks happy.”
Arietta had never told the Salt Sisters that, after the cops got her twenty grand back from Mikey, the criminal ex-boyfriend of Dina’s, she had sent the money to Dina instead. She knew that Dina was hurting for cash and didn’t have the resources that Arietta and her daughters did. In a letter, Arietta had written, “This is not charity. I genuinely believe that this is what Fred would have wanted.”
Arietta stood by that choice, even now.
When Hilary got homefrom her trip to Los Angeles, the Salt Sisters sprang out from beneath the veranda table and the various decorative flowers and cried, “Happy Thirty Years!”
Hilary shrieked and fell into embraces with all of them. “My girls! I can’t believe this. It’s perfect!” She squeezed Arietta hard, then whispered in her ear, “I don’t know what I would do without you.” Arietta imagined that she’d said the same to all of the Salt Sisters, but that didn’t make it any less true.
Still plagued with worries about the party, Tina looked on the brink of insanity. But soon, Hilary pulled her to the veranda table and poured her a huge glass of wine. “I know it’s hard foryou to lighten up, my darling,” Hilary said. “But this party is already your best one yet.”
Tina blushed, then burst into tears. Everyone laughed and told her it was so.
“You’ve outdone yourself!” Arietta cried.
For a little while, they exchanged stories about their years together. Rose couldn’t stop bringing up the months when she’d lived here at Hilary Salt’s place, and how lost she’d been back then. “You must have thought I was such a rascal,” she said.
“Nonsense. I thought of you like family immediately,” Hilary said.
Rose smiled, and for a moment, Arietta could see the young woman she’d once been.
This happened to Arietta often. She could peel back the layers of time on someone’s face and see them through all the different stages of their lives. She wondered if people could do the same for her. Could they see her the way Fred once had? Could they see her the way her mother—God rest her soul—had?
“I remember when Arietta came on the scene,” Stella interjected. “You were such a mystery to us!”
“Oh, that blackmailing story,” Nora said, closing her eyes. “That was scary.”
“Not as scary as it could have been,” Robby interjected.
Everyone looked at her, remembering her terrifying story of betrayals and dubious medical experiments and things that her husband never told her.
“It’s incredible to remember all your stories,” Hilary gushed. “It’s been the privilege of my life to know you—some of you for thirty years, some of you for less than that. But I’m still young, sort of. And Tina can still throw a heck of a party. I picture us celebrating life and love and beauty for another thirty years!”
At this, the Salt Sisters laughed. Another thirty years was a mighty proposal. But who knew? Arietta still wrote about fieldsof scientific research. She was often astounded at what was possible, at the genetic repair that was now possible, and at the dramatic leaps forward in understanding Alzheimer’s and cancer. Maybe, just maybe, they could live for another thirty years. She was ready for all that sisterhood, all that joy.
After the party, which wound down around midnight, Arietta took a cab home and found Jasper asleep in front of the television. She kissed him awake, then watched as he ascended the staircase, yawning and begging her to join him. But Arietta was too wired from the party. She got on her phone for a while, looking at photographs from the night.
And then, Shannon called.
Arietta answered on the first ring. “Hi, honey!”
Shannon’s voice was meek, like a string. “You’re still up?”
“I am. What’s wrong?” Arietta got up and paced in front of the television.
“It’s Felix,” Shannon breathed. “I can’t get him to fall asleep.”
Shannon and Russell had recently had their first child, a son named Felix. They lived in London, working tirelessly on that same Alzheimer’s research that fascinated Arietta and helped her believe in a new kind of future. But Shannon and Russell were on maternity and paternity leave, respectively, and both were struggling with the most difficult scientific experiment of all: raising a child.
“I’ve tried everything,” Shannon said. There were tears in her voice. “I’ve fed him and sang to him and taken him for a walk. It’s five thirty in the morning here in London, and I think he’s been crying since midnight.”