The Hideaway

by Lauren K. Denton

  I nodded and he kissed me. It was soft but urgent, all traces of hesitation gone.

  “I thought I’d be in and out of Sweet Bay in a week. And now here you are. And the house, and Mags . . . I thought I was done with this place.”

  “Mags and I were conspiring all along. We wanted to mess up your plans so you’d come back where you belong.” He kissed me again. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispered.

  We stayed on the dock long after the last lights had gone off inside The Hideaway and on down the bay. We finally picked up the remains of our picnic and walked around the house to his truck parked in the driveway.

  “I would’ve made time for you,” I said, pushing that heavy door in my heart open even farther. “If I’d met you in New Orleans, I mean. Even if you’d stumbled into Bits and Pieces on a day with clients swarming all over the place and deadlines staring me in the face, I wouldn’t have been able to say no to you.”

  “That’s good to hear. Because I sure don’t want to hear you say it now.” He stood with his back against the truck and took my hand to pull me toward him. “I’m all in, and I want to see where this can take us.”

  I nodded. “Me too.”

  “Okay then.” He put his forehead to mine and kissed me, then climbed into the truck and rolled the window down. “We’re not going to talk again about what happens down the road. Let’s get the house finished, then we’ll discuss the impossibility of you leaving.”

  “Deal.”

  “And anyway, these guys work for me. I can slow them down as much as necessary to get you to stick around here longer.” He winked and pulled away.

  29

  MAGS

  NOVEMBER 1963

  Jenny turned three in October, and we were cruising toward Thanksgiving when the brakes hit. Everyone in the house gathered around the television to watch the newscasts about President Kennedy’s assassination. Even the men were emotional. The women cried in clusters, but I tiptoed around the sobbing as much as I could.

  Robert found me standing in front of the kitchen sink one night after dinner. The only light in the room came from a small lamp sitting on the telephone table. I didn’t realize I was crying until he walked over and brushed the tears away from my cheeks. At the rare physical touch, I leaned my cheek into his hand, then remembered. I shrugged his hand away and turned off the faucet.

  “I was just . . . I just wanted to help,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I’m okay.” I busied myself by drying a few cups sitting by the sink.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought after all this time . . . Do you think we’ll ever be able to go back to how it used to be? We have Jenny now, we—”

  “How it used to be?” I said softly. “You must remember that time more fondly than I do.”

  “I don’t mean all that. I know I made mistakes. But you’ve stayed with me. It must mean something that you haven’t kicked me out.” He chuckled as if he’d lightened the mood.

  “Maybe I should have done that a long time ago,” I said, my back still turned.

  “What’s that?”

  I turned around to face him. “You’re right. I haven’t kicked you out, although sometimes I wonder why. You’ve been great with Jenny and with the house, but I still can’t forget everything that happened before. Everything that drove me here in the first place.”

  “But I still love you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” He said it so simply, as if the fact that he loved me—or thought he did—erased everything else.

  It had been almost seven years since Robert got down on one knee and proposed to me, promised me it would never happen again, that he wanted me and me only. He was still as sharp and handsome as he was back then, only now he had some gray at his temples and a track record of breaking promises.

  “You only think you love me,” I said. “I understand it—being married to me makes sense. Our families together makes sense. But I could never trust you again. Don’t you see that?”

  “I’ve been here three years now and I’m still trying to make it up to you. You can’t see that? We can make this work. I’ll never want anyone else, I promise.”

  My composure burst like a delicate bubble on a sharp blade of grass. “You promise? Your promise to love and cherish me was still rattling around the church the first time you decided to sneak off with God knows who. I’m not the same woman who sat at home waiting for you to walk back in the door.”

  “Good,” he said, surprising me. “I don’t want you to be her anymore. You’re different now, and I like it. You’re strong and focused. You have opinions and you’re not afraid to let people hear them.”

  “Do you know what made me this way—this strong, opinionated woman you like so much? This house. And William.” Neither of us had spoken his name—at least not around each other—since Robert moved in. “If I’d stayed with you, I’d still be that sad, passive woman standing in the kitchen, waiting on her husband to come home and eat her chicken dinner.”

  “Margaret, I will never cheat on you again. There will never be any other women. How many ways can I say it?” His voice rose along with the color in his cheeks. “I don’t see why you won’t just forgive me.”

  “Because you’re not him!” I yelled, fresh tears spilling over.

  “And how is that my fault?” he yelled back.

  And with that one question, everything that was boiling inside me stilled, like a pot pulled off a hot burner. Years of pent-up anger and resentment flooded out, loosening the tight heat in my chest. It wasn’t his fault. Yes, he cheated—that was on him. But our marriage, the culture that pushed me toward a certain type of husband and away from another—Robert had nothing to do with it.

  I leaned back against the counter and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “You’re right. It’s not your fault.”

  He moved toward me, but stopped before coming too close. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice brimming with emotion.

  Robert cheated, I cheated, William left—all of this was true and couldn’t be erased. But even still, the three of us had been mostly innocent bystanders, caught up in a society that dictated the who, what, and when of young people’s lives.

  He took a step closer and I leaned my forehead on his chest.

  “I wish it had all gone differently,” he said. “If I could go back . . .”

  “I know.” I straightened up and looked at him full in the face. “And my forgiveness—you have it.”

  On his way out of the kitchen, he paused with his hand on the door frame. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you came here. This house, this mysterious place—it turned you into a different woman, and we’re all the better for it. I’m just sorry I don’t get to be the man who . . .” He looked out the window, then back at me. “Well. Anyway, good night.”

  He let his arm drop and left the room. I remained in the kitchen with my arms hanging loosely at my sides. Then I folded the dish towel I’d used to dry the dishes and turned the lamp off.

  The soft glow from the light in the garden filtered through the windows and made everything look watery. We were all floating in the semidarkness—me, Robert, maybe even William, wherever he was.

  30

  MAGS

  1964

  Significant exits in my life were always preceded by me finding a note. A small, handwritten piece of paper, either hurriedly scrawled or carefully written. Either way, a note was a note, and it meant someone was leaving.

  This time, the departure was inevitable.

  Four long years after moving into The Hideaway, Robert left a note saying he couldn’t stay. He gave some details, but I didn’t pay much attention. Deep down, I knew the day would come. He’d spent all that time promising he’d never leave again, but in the end, he was never a man of his word.

  After Robert’s exit from my life, joy came a little more frequently. William was still a barren place in my heart, but I had Jenny, I had my own slice of waterfront paradise, and I lived with my best friends. Thi
ngs could have been worse. While part of me still longed for William to come back, another part of me—the part I showed to everyone else—was willing to move forward into whatever my life would hold.

  I heard on the six o’clock news one evening that a vet in Daphne had rescued a flock of Canada geese from a pond between two busy highways, and I knew they were meant to live at The Hideaway. For some reason, the vet let me take them home in Major’s orange van. I expected him to put his foot down and demand that I find a more suitable vehicle, but I think my yellow rain slicker and captain’s hat threw him for enough of a loop that he just watched me waddle the geese out of his office and into the van.

  He held his hand up for a moment like he was going to wave me down before I pulled away, but he let it drop, so I tooted the horn and drove off. Those geese saved me from irritating solicitors and salesmen peddling everything from penlights to kitchen knives. They’d take one look at those birds walking around, unchecked by gate or fence, and take off in the other direction. Lord, it was funny to see them run.

  Eugene Norman, a self-taught potter, moved in not long after the geese arrived. His only request was that he be able to practice his trade while living in the house. He pulled his potter’s wheel out into the backyard and made all sorts of odds and ends while staring at the water. He probably should have kept a closer eye on what he was making. After presenting me with several sets of misshapen and unusable dinner plates and coffee cups, he hung up his potter’s apron.

  Next, he tried glassblowing. He and Bert constructed a furnace on the empty lot next door, where he built fires so hot the flames turned blue. He’d found his niche though—he made green-glass paperweights by the dozen and actually sold some at a gallery in Fairhope.

  Less than a year after Robert left, I got another note, this time from AnnaBelle. I wondered if she still fit into that tight Mardi Gras dress. She wrote to tell me Robert had died at her house in Tennessee. She heard him yell out in his dreams, which wasn’t unusual, so she shushed him and went back to sleep. In the morning, he was dead.

  As his wife I was asked to write his obituary. His parents tried to change my words, but I’d already sent it to the newspaper to be printed by the time they read the proof.

  MR. VAN BUREN DIED IN THE ARMS OF HIS LOVER, ANNABELLE WHITAKER, IN TENNESSEE. HIS WIFE, MAGS, CAN NOW REST IN PEACE.

  31

  SARA

  JULY

  As the days went on, I dug through drawers and closets, cleaning out forgotten cardboard boxes, duffel bags, and file folders. Drywall dust, paint thinner, and wood polish swirled around me to create a headache-inducing fog, but I kept searching for anything that held meaning. Someone had saved stacks of newspapers and crates of plastic egg cartons, but I didn’t care about those—I wanted to find things that would show me more of who Mags had been.

  While sorting through the drawers of an old rolltop desk in the parlor, I found a thin photo book in the back of the bottom drawer. When I pulled it out, a portion of the back page disintegrated in my hands.

  The swirly, vintage script on the front read “Picturewise Vantone Prints Are Better!” A sticker on the back said “Mann’s Photo Supply—The Gulf Coast’s Top Photo Finishers.” The photos showed random people in various states of work and relaxation. Each black-and-white photo bore a date stamped along the white edge—June 1960—and a handwritten name.

  There was a young and handsome Mr. Norman standing next to a rock-faced furnace built into the grassy slope next to the house. He held a long tube into the fire with a clear bulb of glass attached to the end, the flames just reaching the bottom of the bulb. “Nella” sat in what appeared to be her bra and sturdy underwear out on the dock, a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil next to her on the chaise. “Daisy” stood before an easel in what I recognized to be the front parlor, her paintbrush poised over the canvas. Several pages of the book had been torn out, leaving just jagged edges behind. Who had filled those pages? And what moments from The Hideaway’s past were captured in those photos, now forgotten forever?

  As I stood to place the book into my shoe box of items to keep, two photos fell to the ground. I leaned down to retrieve them and crouched back on my heels to look closer. The first one showed a man standing on a beach, the shoreline just visible at the edge of the frame. I’d seen one photo of Robert in my life, and this was not him. Robert had been young in the photo, clean-cut, dressed in a serious suit, and carrying a briefcase.

  This man had shoulder-length light hair that looked damp at the ends. He wore blue jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt. I felt sure I was looking at the face of William, my real grandfather. With his eyes closed and his mouth just barely open, he seemed to be caught in that moment just before laughter takes over. I brushed my fingers over the photo, trying to find bits of me in his face. A wave of longing pulsed through my chest.

  The second photo was similar to the funeral photo of Mags that Dot had placed next to the casket. It had the same huge, moss-draped oaks in the background, and she wore the same button-down shirt, one tail hanging free. Her eyes still crinkled in happiness, but her angle was different. In this photo, she didn’t hold her hand up toward the camera, as she had in the photo at the funeral. She’d crossed her arms lazily in front of her body, and her stance was confident, flirtatious even.

  I held the two photos next to each other. Even though the images were gray and blurred with age, their faces spoke of love and desire.

  The front door opened and Dot and Glory’s animated conversation filled the house. Glory walked past the living room toward the kitchen without seeing me, but Dot paused in the doorway.

  “Finding anything interesting in here?”

  I held up the two photos.

  She walked closer and peered over my shoulder at them, then fumbled a hand on top of her head searching for her glasses. “Never have ’em when I need ’em,” she said under her breath. She took the photo of Mags and held it out at arm’s length.

  “This one, I’ve seen—or at least one like it.” She tilted the photo to look at the date. “A little three-by-five of Mags smiling this same unbelievable smile was in the junk drawer in the kitchen for as long as I can remember. Whenever I’d ask Mags about it, she’d just say it was a long-ago happy day. That’s why I wanted to use it at the funeral. I didn’t know there was another photo from that same day. Now this.” She took the second photo. “I’m guessing this is William. I’ve never seen a picture of him.” She rubbed her thumb over William’s face. “I can see why she was so smitten.”

  I stood and stretched my sore legs. Dot patted my shoulder and moved back toward the hallway, then stopped.

  “I know I told you a lot the other day—William and Robert and all. Are you disappointed? Do you wish I hadn’t told you?”

  “No, I’m glad you told me. It was shocking, and still is, but I’m glad I know the truth—or at least parts of it.”

  “Good. I was so worried I’d ruined the picture you had in your mind of who Mags was.”

  “Well, you did, but the picture I had in mind wasn’t the right one. I’d rather know the truth than forever think she was just a woman who liked to wear caftans and weird hats and poke fun at the neighbors.”

  “She was all those things,” Dot said, “but it was just her armor. Underneath, she was tender. Not as unbreakable as everyone thought.”

  “But why did she keep it all such a secret?”

  “You know how most women tend to talk a lot about feelings and emotions?”

  I nodded.

  “Mags wasn’t that kind of woman. I was her best friend and she didn’t even give me all the details. She told me a little, but I had to string most of it together as best as I could. I think it was too hard for her to talk much about William.”

  She paused for a minute. “William’s shadow followed her all those years. She never fully admitted it, but I could see it. Even as an older woman, his presence was still very much a part of her.”

  “Those nights she�
�d sit in the garden . . .”

  “Oh yes. William made her that bench. He made a lot of the pieces in this house. I’m not exactly sure which pieces, but I know he made some of them.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m not sure I answered any of your questions.”

  “You did. Thank you.”

  She padded away to the kitchen, leaving me in the parlor with the photos in my hand. I placed the photo book in the shoe box but stuck the two loose photos in my back pocket. Those were staying with me.

  I continued my rummaging that afternoon. In the downstairs coat closet, I found a black leather jacket with laces on the arms and braided tassels hanging off the bottom. It had been pushed all the way to the back for who knows how long, hidden by more useful raincoats and light winter jackets. Allyn would snag something like this from a cluttered vintage shop and wear it until it fell apart.

  I laid the jacket across the back of the couch and picked up my phone. He answered on the first ring. “Bits and Pieces, how may I help you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Hello, you.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Checking up on me?”

  “Nope, just calling to check in. I’m following your orders.”

  “We’re doing fine. I got that order of linen pillows we ordered months ago. They got a piece of my mind, and we got a 10 percent discount on our next order.”

  “Good for you. Go ahead and call—”

  “I’m all over it. Mrs. McMurphy has already picked them up. I can’t talk long, but fill me in. How’s it going with Mr. Sexy?”

  “It’s Crawford. And he’s wonderful.” I couldn’t say it without smiling.

  “Mm-hmm. I know that voice. You’re happy.”

  “So what? I’m always happy.”

  “Not like this, you’re not. So you two have been out again?”

  “We’re not exactly going out. He’s just spending a lot of time at the house. After work.”