Also, who would leave Alexa Thornhill at the altar? Please.
There came a gentle rapping on the door to the bedroom, and before Alexa could say, “Come in,” the door opened and a face poked around the doorway. It was Cam. He surveyed the room, grinning. He said, “I need to get you out of here, Alexa. This place is lousy with asbestos, you know.”
“How do you know that?” asked Alexa.
“It’s what I wrote my college essay about,” said Cam. “It’s what got me into St. Mike’s.”
“This house?”
“Yes. This house is iconic. This house has inspired the imaginations of so many people.”
In the dream, this all seemed completely plausible. In the dream, this was an acceptable topic for a college essay.
Cam was still talking. “Did you know, for example, that because this house is owned by the Parker River Wildlife Refuge, which is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it can’t be sold for money, only traded for other property? Did you know that snowy owls and hawks nest in the cupola? No? You didn’t? Did you know that it was fully occupied until the early two thousands even though it’s never had running water?” Alexa shook her head. She didn’t know any of this.
“Well, Alexa,” said Cam. “Let’s get you out of here.” He held out his hand to Alexa, and she took it. She swung one foot over the edge of the bed, and then the other. She was barefoot, and her toes were painted a pearly pink. (Despite the long-sleeved wedding dress, her wedding shoes must have been open-toed.) There was a mirror above the heavy dark dresser opposite the bed, and she let go of Cam’s hand and approached it with trepidation. She cleaned the dust off the mirror with the sleeve of her wedding dress. (The sleeves had come in handy after all.) She expected to see that she had aged years or maybe decades. She took a deep breath before looking.
There were cobwebs in her hair, but otherwise she looked exactly the same. This was an enormous relief. She turned to Cam and asked, “Why’d you leave me at the altar?”
“Leave you?”
“Yes.” She gestured to her wedding dress.
“I didn’t leave you.”
“You didn’t? Who did?”
“You left me.”
“I did?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That’s so rude. I didn’t mean to.”
“Oh, I think you did,” said Cam. “I’m really pretty sure that you did.”
“Are you mad?”
“Of course not. It’s not a big deal. Just a silly wedding!” He took her hand again and led her out of the bedroom and toward the landing.
They were about to walk down the stairs when suddenly the staircase crumbled beneath them, turning to pieces of dust and rubble.
“Darn it,” said Cam pleasantly. “Sorry about that, Alexa. I was trying to get you out before that happened. Oh well! I guess you can’t win them all.”
From the stair landing they could see down to the front door. Out of nowhere came a sharp series of raps on the door.
“Who could that be?” Alexa asked Cam.
“Oh, it’s probably the bad men.”
“The who?”
“The bad men,” he said. He turned toward her and smiled, but there were no teeth in his mouth. “The bad men are coming for you,” he said. “I told them you’d probably be here.”
She woke sweating, clutching Stock Investing for Dummies.
53.
Rebecca
Rebecca peeled her eyes from the screen. Her daughter was a . . . YouTube personality? She perused the comments following the three videos she had watched. On each video there were many, many comments—dozens! Hundreds! One of the first comments on each video came from someone called jt76. Love how succinct this is! Also: Great explanation of balancing risk and reward. You’re so talented!
There were a lot of other comments too, most encouraging, some obnoxious. But the thing that stood out the most to Rebecca was the number of views: Alexa’s videos averaged in the tens of thousands! The highest viewed video Rebecca saw had been viewed thirty-seven thousand times!
A lot of people were watching Alexa Thornhill do her thing online.
Then there was this. Not a single one of the dresses Alexa was wearing in the videos looked familiar to Rebecca. Morgan was exactly right: they were more conservative than Alexa’s usual garb. They were very pretty! But where had they come from? Where did they live?
Granted, Alexa was almost preternaturally self-sufficient. She’d been doing her own laundry since the age of nine, and now that she could drive, Rebecca supposed it was possible that she had her own account at Anton’s dry cleaning. How much money was she making from this YouTube thing? And how far apart had she and Alexa grown, that Alexa could have this whole identity, this whole life, this whole wardrobe, that Rebecca knew nothing about? In the past this was something she would have taken immediately to Peter, of course, and failing that, to one of the Mom Squad members. Probably Gina! Before the sleeping bag incident, Gina would have been happy to lend an ear, and Rebecca would have trusted her. But now—now the earth had shifted beneath her feet in all kinds of unsettling ways, and now she had nobody. Well, not nobody.
She pulled up Daniel’s number on her phone and typed out a text.
Can you meet me tomorrow at Maudslay? I want to tell you something.
She held her breath, but the reply came almost immediately. I would love to.
After that, the three dots, then another text came in.
I miss you.
She didn’t even hesitate before texting back, I miss you too.
The next day they did their usual thing, which was to park on opposite ends of the parking lot and meet up once they’d gotten on their way. They usually walked down the road a bit before entering the park; Rebecca liked to go in by the Gates of Hell rather than via the more common entrance, by the rangers’ cottage at the beginning of the property.
“First things first,” said Rebecca. “Daniel, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about that whole thing at the tall ships.” She took a deep breath and turned to face Daniel. “I’m sorry I told you that you need to live in a box.”
Bernice gave them a baleful look, as if to say, Are we walking, or are we spending all day apologizing?
“No, I’m sorry,” said Daniel. “I need to let you do things in your own time. I didn’t mean to pressure you, or rush you. I understand that our situations are different, I do. I can wait until you’re ready, Rebecca. It turns out that being in a box with you is way better than being outside the box without you.”
“It is? Are you sure?”
“Way better,” said Daniel. “Way, way better.”
Just like that, an enormous weight lifted itself from Rebecca’s shoulders and disappeared into the summer morning air. Just like that. Maybe everything didn’t have to be so hard after all.
The Gates of Hell were wrought-iron gates that used to lead to one of the mansions on the property, back when the mansions still stood. There was a rumor that the Gates were haunted, and that late at night you could see the heads of decapitated family members on the spikes, even though no murders had ever taken place on the estate to anyone’s knowledge. Nevertheless, Rebecca shivered and tried not to look at the gates.
“Are you worried about the decapitated heads again?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted.
Daniel glanced up. “If we saw the ghosts of murdered people, I would do everything in my power to protect you.” He stepped behind Rebecca and wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on the top of her head. This was one of the things about dating someone new after years and years with the same person: you got to see how your body would fit with someone else’s, and sometimes there were unexpected surprises in that. Peter had been very tall, and would have had to stoop to rest his chin on Rebecca’s head. It was never worth the effort.
Immediately Rebecca felt disloyal for thinking that about Peter. He would have sto
oped for her all day long if she’d wanted him to.
They passed through the gates and began to walk along the dirt path.
Daniel tapped the side of his thigh for Bernice to catch up—she tended to lag, especially early in the morning. She was not a morning person. Obviously she wasn’t a person at all.
“Oh!” Rebecca said. “Here’s what I wanted to tell you. You’re not going to believe this. I just found out that Alexa has this entire YouTube channel called Silk Stockings. She dresses up in pretty, tasteful clothes, and she sits in this chair in her bedroom, and she explains things. Terms. Economic terms, things about the stock market.”
“Oh yeah?” said Daniel. He stopped and turned toward Rebecca. “Like what sorts of things?”
Rebecca named the topics she remembered: stop-loss orders, crypto currency investments. “Blockchain, maybe?” she said. “Is that a thing?”
“It’s a thing,” Daniel said. He was smiling to beat the band.
“What?” she said. “What are you so cheerful about over there?”
“Nothing. Just that I taught her a lot of those things.”
“You did?”
“Sure thing. Intro to the Stock Market. Remember I told you I had her in class?” He looked proud, spine straight, eyes eager and alert, like Bernice when she’d done something special and was waiting for a reward.
“Wow,” said Rebecca. “Well, I think you did a really good job. She seems like an actual expert. But—” She paused. “But don’t you think it’s terrible, that I didn’t know about it? It makes me feel like such a bad mother. I found out from Morgan, of all people. I used to be the one who told Morgan things that she didn’t know, and now Morgan is schooling me. My own daughter.” They continued along the path to where it curved toward the formal Italian and rose gardens, which were part of the original estate and were still kept up by the park service. In these gardens roses and other flowers grew willfully, abundantly.
“I don’t think it’s terrible at all,” said Daniel. “I think it’s the opposite of terrible. I think it’s fantastic. Really. Teenagers do all sorts of things without their parents’ knowledge. You know that.”
“I know,” said Rebecca morosely. “I was a teenager once too.”
“Much of it way, way worse than secretly learning about the stock market. Believe me. I’ve been teaching high school since the dawn of the Internet. And at the risk of sounding self-referential, I couldn’t be happier. I can’t wait to see some of these videos myself!”
Daniel’s unbridled enthusiasm put Rebecca at ease, and she reached down and unclipped Bernice’s leash from her collar, allowing her to indulge in some illegal off-leash walking. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “No, I don’t guess you’re right. You are right. You are. There’s no harm done, right? And it’s just for now. She probably won’t keep up with any of this once she leaves for college.”
“Exactly,” said Daniel. “I think that’s exactly right.”
“But what do I do? Do I confront her about it? Do I put some limits on her?”
She could tell Daniel was thinking long and hard about this because furrows appeared on his forehead. “You know what? I wouldn’t. I’d give it some time, a week or two, maybe more. Does she seem happy?”
Rebecca thought about seeing Alexa and Cam walking pleasantly down Pleasant Street; she thought about how Alexa was helping Sherri out whenever she needed it—sometimes, Sherri had told her, free of charge! “Happier than I’ve seen her in a long time,” she admitted.
“Then let it be, for now. Give yourself some time to figure out how you feel about it. When the time feels right, have a talk with Alexa. That’s what I would do. Wait here for a sec,” he said.
Daniel climbed the few small steps to the rose gardens, and Rebecca stayed behind with Bernice, who was sniffing around the small pet cemetery, where the estate owners had purportedly buried favorite horses and dogs. Rebecca at first imagined that Bernice was paying homage but then she saw that actually she was relieving herself.
Every time Rebecca was in Maudslay she thought about all of the lives spent on the grounds, where once people had lived grandly and where now there remained only a few scattered outlines of structures: parts of the stone foundation of one of the homes, a thicket-choked understructure of a swimming pool, a root cellar. These surroundings at once gave Rebecca a sense of peace and well-being and shot her through with a reminder of the smallness of her life in the vast historical landscape, where one day they would all be rubble and dust.
Wow, that was morbid. She looked up to see Daniel coming toward her with a rose plucked from one of the bushes.
“A rose for my rose,” he said.
“That’s illegal!” said Rebecca, delighted and horrified. She looked around to see if a ranger might be lurking. First her dog had desecrated the pet cemetery, and now this. “This is a state park! You’re going to get us arrested.”
He tucked the rose behind her ear and kissed her, in front of God and Bernice and everyone else. “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s worth it. I’ve missed you, Rebecca Coleman. I’m glad you’ve come back to me.” Then he said, “Are you free today? Maybe we can find a summer adventure.”
54.
Alexa
Alexa’s mother rapped on her door at nine in the morning, which was about ninety minutes earlier than Alexa generally considered acceptable, and then opened the door without being invited to do so. Alexa, who had been sleeping deeply, raised her head and said, “What?”
“I’m sorry to wake you,” said her mother. “But I have to be gone for a lot of the day and Morgan will be at loose ends. Do you think you could keep an eye on her?”
Alexa had the day off from the Cottage. She flopped back on her pillow and pulled the comforter over her face. “Okay,” she said, her voice muffled by the comforter. “I can do that. But where are you going?”
“Oh, here and there,” said her mother. Alexa felt her mother pause in the doorway but she didn’t move her head from the comforter. “Alexa? Are you sure you’re okay? About Tyler and . . . Cam? Is there anything you want to talk about? Or maybe something not related to Tyler and Cam? Just . . . anything at all? You can talk to me about anything, you know.”
“Nope,” said Alexa. “I’m good.”
Since her trip to Cam’s lake house, Alexa and Cam were hanging out a lot. They did an old-person walking tour through Maudslay State Park, where the rangers told them all about the home that used to sit on the grounds. They kayaked down the Merrimack all the way to Amesbury and back. Seen through Cam’s eyes, even this tired town had begun to send out fresh green shoots of appeal or attraction. Her mother’s request to spend the day with Morgan failed to provoke the irritation it might have earlier in the summer. Was there a chance that spending time with Cam had made her nicer? Was niceness contagious?
Her mother was still standing there. “Maybe do something with Morgan, okay? Don’t just let her sit around on her phone.”
“Got it,” said Alexa. She peeked out from under the comforter. “No sitting around on her phone.” In fact she thought it might be fun to do something special with Morgan, which was not a thought she would have had in June. It was therefore confirmed. Niceness was contagious.
“I can leave you some money to go to lunch if you want. A burger and a shake at Lexie’s, maybe?”
“Not necessary,” mumbled Alexa. Her bank account was, to put it mildly, robust. Besides that, Lexie’s was great, but a burger and a shake seemed sort of ordinary. If she wanted to show Morgan a good time, she was going to take her someplace nicer. She was going to get her an experience, not just a burger.
Her mother was still standing there, as if she had something more to say.
“What?” said Alexa irritably.
“Nothing,” said her mother. She looked at Alexa for another long moment and then she departed, closing the door behind her.
Alexa decided on the Deck, because it was a beautiful day, and they could sit
outside and look at the water. She let Morgan ride in the front seat of the Jeep, even though technically she was supposed to keep her in the back because she was still too small to withstand the crush of the airbags should they deploy. But they didn’t have to drive far, and they didn’t have to drive on the highway, so Alexa felt okay about it. “Don’t tell Mom,” she told Morgan.
“Of course not,” said Morgan, sounding like a little adult. She took a deep breath as she buckled the seat belt across her spindly chest and looked around like she was rounding the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.
They crossed Merrimac Street and Alexa immediately saw the line of cars stopped ahead of her. “Go figure,” she muttered. The drawbridge was on its way up, which meant they would sit here for at least five minutes, maybe ten. She could see the Deck from here; she could practically taste the street corn with cojita cheese. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, thrumming with impatience. If they’d left two minutes earlier or eleven minutes later, they could have avoided this.
But Morgan said, “Yess! I love it when the bridge goes up,” and her enthusiasm reminded Alexa of Cam, who in this situation would say something corny and soothing, like, That’s okay, we’ve got nowhere to be. Alexa had to admit, it was a fairly majestic sight, the view from this bridge, with the sun waltzing off the water. To their right, dozens and dozens of boats were docked in the slips at the harbor, with more out on moorings, and the river extended beyond the boats, all the way to the open ocean.
They watched as the mast of a grand sailboat cleared the bridge, and Morgan let out a cheer. The bridge eased down—it looked like it was exhaling—and the line of cars moved ahead.
A girl a year behind Alexa was at the hostess stand at the Deck, and two girls from her class were waiting tables. One of them came up to their table: a hard-core soccer and lacrosse player named Maya. Alexa gave her a hey.
“Let’s put our phones away,” Alexa said to Morgan. “Shall we?” Her mother would be proud of that. Alexa held out her hand and Morgan relinquished the phone—reluctantly, because she was playing some online game against one of her little friends. “Your generation is totally addicted,” said Alexa. “I worry about you guys.” She was kidding, but only a little bit.
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