Eyes rolled back in her head—bored, annoyed, irritated— all the earmarks of day with the family. The white hot sun seared her skin, burned her corneas, and boiled her supposedly icy lemonade. The damp air suffocated. The humidity reduced her sundress to strops of soggy, sticky, fabric. Summer in upstate New York meant one barbecue after another, heaven only knows why the entire county felt the urge to roast in the disgusting outdoors instead of just seeking refuge in the cool, air conditioned comfort of their suburban homes. Alyha had left her loft in the city for a weekend family reunion, which despite its pleasant sounding title, was little more than a weekend of hell, spent with community college dropout cousins and upper middle class suburban yuppies. Alyha loved the city; she was made for the quick tempo and the harsh culture that if offered her. No need to fake concern or interest in a place where no one else did either. For these forty eight hours though, it would be a different story. Aunt Marge was going through a divorce, so she sucked down sympathy and vodka like oxygen, telling anyone who came within a yard radius of her about that lyin’-cheatin’-no-good-son-of-a-bitch. Some of Alyha’s cousins—Amy, John, and Ted—were off smoking weed at the elementary school playground. All three of them over twenty three years old, all three of them living with their respective mothers. Aunt Alisha was having a baby; cousin James was finally engaged (the aunts all squealed); Great Aunt Maggie needed a new hip. Everyone had something to talk about, but no one seemed to have anything to say. Alyha’s parents were out of town. They spent their summers in Washington since the kids all moved out. Really, the only reason Alyha had bothered to come up at all was to see Grandpa Louis. He was man worth listening too. What everyone else lacked in substance, he made up for in trifold, on the other hand, they all made up for his frequent silence in sixfold. Grandpa Louis didn’t say much: he didn’t need too. A lot of the family took his quiet nature as a sign of stupidity or dementia, but Alyha knew better. Louis knew everything. She settled in next to him. “How’re ya doin’ Buttercup?” He’d called her buttercup as a child because of her bright blonde hair, now, even though she dyed it a somber brown, he still always called her by the tender nickname. “I’m alright Gramps. It’s hot, and humid, and loud.” A sad smile graced his wrinkled face. “It’s funny what the city does to your hearin’. Spend enough time listnen to car horns and sirens, it start to sound like music, and when you finally get back to where ye come from, every voice sounds like a screechin’ train car.” Alyha didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t. She just sat back, sipped her sour, warm lemonade, and tried to find the music she’d once heard in her family’s orchestra.