Siren's Storm

by Lisa Papademetriou

  Gretchen pulled off the highway onto a shady lane lined with houses that were large, but tastefully so.

  “So, after ten months, you just decided to come over and make me some breakfast?”

  Gretchen was silent. Will looked out the window, letting the breeze blow through his hair. His father liked to tease him. “Get a haircut,” he’d say. But Will liked the long hair. He let it hang, curtain-like, over his scar.

  Tim had always buzzed his hair off at the beginning of the summer. By summer’s end, he’d looked scruffy again. Will had preferred the scruffy version of his brother—half-grown beard, shorts two sizes too big. With his chiseled jaw and long, aquiline nose, Tim’s good looks could be intimidating. At the beginning of the summer, Tim always looked like someone who could pull you over and give you a speeding ticket or slap cuffs on you. By the end of the summer, with his hair grown out again, he looked like a vacationing movie star.

  Will glanced over at Gretchen. One hand was on the steering wheel, the other hanging out the window. Her posture was carefree, but her face was serious—lost in thought. Will noticed how pale she was. She had dark circles under her eyes.

  “How are you sleeping?” Will asked.

  “Eh—I got out last night.”

  “That could be dangerous, you know,” Will told her.

  She sighed, and the sparkle in her voice seemed to drain away. “I know.”

  Will wondered how she had the energy to even pretend to be happy. He certainly didn’t. It was all he could do to get out of bed, work at the stand, and exchange a few words with other human beings. Even brushing his teeth felt like a superhuman effort.

  As they turned into the center of town, Will became aware that he was scanning the sidewalks for signs of the girl he’d seen yesterday. But the streets were mostly empty. He fought the urge to ask Gretchen if she’d ever seen anyone matching the girl’s description. He didn’t feel like explaining what had happened the day before. Let it go, he told himself.

  Finally they pulled up in front of Sixteen Flavors. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you hum before,” Will said as the car rattled to a stop.

  Gretchen paused, her hand partway to the door handle. “I was humming?”

  “Yeah.”

  She cocked her head. “How did it go?”

  Will gave her a look. “You know that line of questioning will get you nowhere,” he said. Will was completely tone-deaf.

  The bell over the door jingled as Will and Gretchen stepped into the cool air of the ice cream shop. Sixteen Flavors served lunch, too, and the place was already filling up with locals and summer people looking for a bite in one of the few places in town that were open. Will said a little prayer of thanks that the girl smiling at them behind the counter was Rachel Finnegan. She was sweet and didn’t talk much. She was also just a freshman, which meant she wasn’t likely to dare to chat with them.

  “Two scoops of peppermint stick on a sugar cone,” Will said as he perched on the red stool.

  “And can I get you anything?” Rachel asked Gretchen.

  “No, that’s for her,” Will explained. “She always gets the same thing. I’ll have a Coke.”

  Rachel turned to Gretchen with lifted eyebrows, and Gretchen nodded. Then Rachel looked at Will again, and her cheeks blushed pink. She looked down at the counter when she handed Will his Coke.

  “Thanks, Rachel,” he said, and she flushed even harder before she scurried to scoop out the ice cream.

  Rachel handed Gretchen the ice cream cone, and Will waved off Gretchen’s attempt to pay. “You buy the next one,” he said.

  Will held the door as Gretchen stepped into the sunshine. She nodded her thanks—she was busy licking an escaping drip from her ice cream.

  Three guys with sleek, tanned chests and low-slung shorts were fixing a broken awning in front of a new restaurant, Paz. Yay. Another pretentious restaurant. When he was a kid, the streets had been lined with cute little stores that were run by people from Walfang. There had been Penny’s Candy, Toys and More, Fitzgerald’s—which everyone had always called the dime store—and the “nice” restaurant, Delia Mater’s. All of those were gone now, except for Delia’s, which had been renovated beyond recognition by a couple of New York City investors. Now, boutique after boutique lined the streets. Most of them offered impossible-to-wear fashions at the kind of prices usually reserved for major appliances.

  A scrawny kid with lank black hair watched the workers from a stoop. When he saw Gretchen, he turned his huge dark eyes to her face and stared. He was gawking, really, with a gaze that didn’t waver or blink. Will could tell the look made Gretchen uncomfortable, because she stiffened beside him. Will knew the kid. He wanted to tell Gretchen not to worry, that he was just a harmless dude who was a little crazy, but before Will could speak, she turned and asked, “Does that happen to you a lot?” She elbowed him in the ribs. “People just staring at you?”

  Will gave her a wry smile. “What can I say? It ain’t easy being this sexy. Seriously, that’s just a sophomore kid—Kirk Worstler.”

  Gretchen chuckled, her limbs loosening a little, and she let Will steer her across the street, away from the skinny kid’s piercing gaze. She seemed happy again, intent on her ice cream. Will was just starting to relax when Gretchen stopped suddenly and stood staring at a telephone pole. A vibrant green flyer blared that a local band—Minutia’s Cousin—would be playing at the Old Barn on Saturday night. Gretchen reached out and touched the paper as if it were an old relic or a fragment from a dream.

  Will read the flyer over Gretchen’s shoulder. “Life goes on, I guess,” he said.

  Gretchen’s eyes glowed, like paper that had caught fire. “I can’t believe they’d just—” She shook her head.

  Will placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. He’d seen the flyers before, so it wasn’t such a shock that Tim’s band had somehow managed to go on without him. But Gretchen tensed, her fingers knotted into a tight fist. “Tim started that band,” she said. “That was Tim’s band.”

  Will shrugged. He could practically hear Alan and Rob and Ginny saying, “Tim would have wanted it this way.” He was sure the band had gotten together and decided that keeping the name would be a tribute to their friend and the fulfillment of his wishes. Will thought it was interesting that everyone seemed to know what Tim would have wanted. He, personally, had no idea.

  Will remembered the last time he and Gretchen had gone to hear Tim play. It had been an open-air concert on the lush green lawn in front of First Church. Minutia’s Cousin played a strange fusion of classical and rock. Tim played classical guitar, Alan played flute and piccolo, Rob played percussion, and Ginny played the electric guitar and sang. Tim had arranged most of their music, stealing phrases and snippets from classical and updating the melodies. They were just starting to become well known locally—even now, their Facebook fans were a strange mix of teens and grayhairs. Gretchen had loved their music. She insisted that Will accompany her to every single concert, and she sometimes even sat in on rehearsals. Will had liked Minutia’s Cousin, too—but mostly because it was Tim’s band. Personally, Will preferred hip-hop, and he liked it loud. Minutia’s Cousin sometimes sounded like glorified elevator music to him, but then again, he didn’t know much about music.

  Gretchen stood for a moment with her head bowed like the curve of a candlewick. Finally she seemed to pull herself together. She straightened up and frowned at the gaudy flyer. “They’ll suck without him,” she said lightly. She let Will’s hand drop from her shoulder as she stepped away and tossed her ice cream cone into a garbage can.

  Will could tell from the way she said it that he’d never see her at another Minutia’s Cousin concert again. She’d always been friendly with Alan and Ginny—not Rob so much, because he hardly ever spoke—but if she saw them in the street now, she probably wouldn’t even wave. That’s how she was.

  Gretchen liked to pretend that nothing bothered her. But Will knew better. Almost everything bothered her.
More than once, she had confronted Will about something insensitive he’d said weeks earlier, words that had created tiny wounds that refused to heal. Even worse was when Gretchen would obsess over some slight she feared that she had caused Will. She would return days, sometimes weeks later with an overwrought apology for something that Will couldn’t even recall. He didn’t understand the way her mind worked. Things that meant nothing to him meant everything to her. But that was also why she fell into raptures at the sight of a flower or burst into tears while reading a poster for a stray dog. She was like something flammable, and everything was fuel for her fire.

  Gretchen flipped her blond hair and slipped her arm through Will’s. He put a warm hand on her bicep, but he didn’t look at her. They fell into step down the quiet street. Most of the stores weren’t open, but a few—like the hardware store—were humming with activity.

  “That was a really good breakfast, by the way,” Will said at last. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They walked a little farther. The town had recently refurbished the business district, and the pavement was set with red bricks. A few branches were down here and there, but it looked as if the city had cleaned everything up early in the morning.

  Will stopped suddenly, his arm dropping from Gretchen’s shoulder. Something in the window of an antiques store had caught his eye.

  “What’s up?” Gretchen asked.

  He was looking at what seemed to be an ancient flute. A very familiar-looking flute. But he didn’t want to have to try to explain it to Gretchen. Especially since he didn’t know what he was explaining. Instead he just shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Nothing, like—nothing? Or nothing, like—dramatic pause—nothing that’s really fraught with something?”

  Will blinked at her. “Nothing, as in that’s a cool flute. But the store isn’t open, anyway, so forget it.”

  “Okay, keep your secrets.” She pointed to the Help Wanted sign in the window of the vintage silver diner next door. “Destiny has led me here,” she announced dramatically.

  Will looked dubious. “You’re going to work at Bella’s? You’d get better tips at the Villa. Or that new Paz place.”

  Gretchen studied the caboose-style diner. The windows were filled with hand-lettered signs advertising specials—$2.99 for eggs, toast, bacon, coffee. Free ice cream with kids’ meal. Breakfast served all day. It was located at the scruffy end of a nice street, next to a run-down liquor store. This corner was the only blot on the pristine block. And Bella’s was the only place where the locals could still afford a meal. Most of the summer people never set foot in there.

  “Rich people are crappy tippers,” Gretchen replied. “How do I look?” She straightened the pale blue halter she was wearing with a pair of white denim shorts. “Do you think I should go home and change?”

  “You look great,” Will said. “You don’t need to wear a business suit to get a waitressing job.”

  “Said like someone who works on a farm.” Gretchen raked her fingers through her thick, wild blond hair and smeared on some lip balm. She peeked at herself in the reflection of the glass and took a deep breath. “Wish me luck,” she said to Will.

  Will studied her a moment. “Why are you even doing this? You’ve got plenty of money.”

  Gretchen looked pensive, as if she was about to say something heavy. Then she seemed to change her mind, and flashed him a smile. “What else am I supposed to do all day?” she asked. “Sit around on the beach and work on my tan?”

  Will shrugged. “That’s what most girls do.”

  Gretchen put a hand on her hip. “I’m not most girls,” she told him.

  Will gave her a brotherly arm punch. “Yeah,” he said. “I noticed.”

  The chain saw screamed as Mr. Archer sliced into the fallen tree’s thick trunk. As he approached his house from the rear—cutting across Gretchen’s yard to get to his own—Will got a good look at the greenhouse wreckage. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. The oak had glanced off the sloped roof, popping some windows and crushing a few tender seedlings. Two feet over, and the greenhouse would have been totaled. The tree lay like a fallen giant on the side near the house. The roots were still attached at the base, and it had left a huge hole in the earth.

  Will strode toward his father, who was cutting the trunk into eighteen-inch lengths. Just big enough to fit into their woodstove, which was how they heated the house most of the winter. Still, Will was surprised to see his father doing the cutting himself. Usually he had Humberto do the physically challenging work on the farm. Then Will remembered—Humberto was busy this morning.

  “Want me to start hauling this toward the shed?” Will shouted over the chain saw’s roar.

  Mr. Archer looked up at Will through thick plastic safety goggles. Frowning, he turned down the chain saw to a rumble. “What?”

  Will gestured toward the shed. “Want me to start piling up the wood?”

  “Carl’s going to do it,” Will’s father said. “He’s coming over later.”

  “I’ll take care of the glass,” Will offered.

  “Carl and I will see to it,” Mr. Archer said. He looked at Will warily. “You just take it easy.”

  Will sighed impatiently. “I’m okay.”

  “Just make sure the animals are fed tonight, and see if you can figure out what’s wrong with the gate. You can help me tomorrow. I’m keeping the stand closed for the day, but we have to be open for the weekend. Summer people need their gourmet vegetables.”

  Will fought the annoyance that grasped at him like a monkey’s paw. He appreciated that his father was trying to do him a favor. But it was in his dad’s own particular way. Even when his father was being kind to Will, he never lost sight of who came first—the customer. Everything Mr. Archer did was calculated according to a mental profit-and-loss statement.

  Will stood and watched his father for a moment. He actually would have preferred to have some work to do, but he didn’t want to have to explain why. As it was, the little chores his father had assigned him could be done later, in about an hour. Will started for the house, but when he saw that his mother’s car was in the driveway, he took a detour toward the garage. Can’t deal with her right now.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness in the musty garage. As usual, the first thing he saw was the light wood paddle over his father’s rarely used workbench. Skipper Award, it read. Tim had won it from the local sailing club when he was twelve, and Will had always envied it. Tim had been an outstanding sailor … and look where it had gotten him.

  Will remembered the gentle rocking of the boat as he had stepped into the Vagabond beside his brother the night Tim disappeared. The sunlight had glinted off the water. When Will had looked out across the bay, he’d caught sight of a dark shape against the shimmering gold. Before he’d had a chance to call out to Tim, the shape had disappeared. It had looked like a swimmer. But it had been very far out in the bay. I must have imagined it, Will had thought then.

  And that was what he was starting to think about the girl the day before.

  Will tried to shake off the thought, wondering when he would get used to the little land mines planted throughout his life. Everything in Will’s life was laced with Tim. His absence was a silent presence that lurked in unexpected corners. Now thoughts of the girl surprised him the same way.

  Will hauled out his heavy black Honda motorcycle and pointed it toward the road. He was heading toward the beach.

  Maybe there would be something there. Some sign. Some clue.

  Something that would say, She was here.

  Will strapped on his helmet and kicked the bike to life. He buzzed out the driveway and down the limb-lined road. An orange public works truck was parked on the side, guys in hard hats shoving branches into a portable chipper. Will gave them a wave as he passed and punched the accelerator.

  He sped past his family’s own field of sunflowers—a customer favorite, surprisingly u
ndamaged in the storm—and two hothouses of organically grown tomatoes and basil. The Archer family had owned farmland in Walfang for over three hundred years. They’d been here when there was nothing but farmers, fishermen, and preachers. Local streets were named for their ancestors—Archer Road, Old Archer Lane. Over the years, parcels of land had been sold off, developed to make enormous mansions with ancient-looking turrets and shingles on the outside, and spacious rooms, cathedral ceilings, and up-to-the minute appliances on the inside. Many of these houses boasted “green” and “eco-friendly” features, which always made Will laugh because, of course, the best way to go green was to not have a nine-thousand-square-foot house that gets used just two months out of the year. As he sped down the quiet side street, Will peered past the high boxwood hedges to catch glimpses of vast emerald-green lawns landscaped with ubiquitous hydrangeas and climbing roses, and he thought about the fertilizer that was spread with abandon, the water needed to keep everything green and lush even in August, the pesticides and sprays. These people’s idea of going green was to drive a hybrid car to the local farm stand and buy a few vegetables, then drive home again to eat beside the chlorine-laced pool instead of the beach that was two blocks away.

  And the farm stand that they drove to? That was his father’s.

  Despite the family history, Will’s father was no farmer. Of course there were farmers out here. A neighbor down the road—from another family legacy—had gone to Cornell Agricultural School. But Bertrand Archer had no interest in real farming. He owned land, sure, and hired people to plant and harvest the flowers and vegetables. But Bert had figured out that real farming wasn’t where the money was. The money was in retail, or in (as Will liked to think of it) his boutique vegetables. People in the Hamptons didn’t care how much Bert charged for a pint of tomatoes. If they saw fresh kettle fries being made at a roadside stand, they’d buy them no matter what the cost. If they were looking for a housewarming gift, they’d buy handmade lavender soap or a bouquet of flowers without thinking.