by Lisa Duffy
Maggie nods. “But we’re leaving before the disco thing starts. It gives me a headache.”
Sky shrugs, slings her backpack over her shoulder, and walks up the stairs toward her.
“That’s fine. Frankie hates that part too. It’s all couples holding hands.” She wrinkles her nose and steps into the house.
Sky studies the room. Maggie is thankful she spent the previous night sprucing things up.
Mrs. Pearse’s family had moved all her belongings out of the house after she died, but they hadn’t exactly cleaned.
There was dust on every surface.
A rug in the middle of the room that looked as though it hadn’t been vacuumed in years. Maggie had started in one corner and worked to the other. Vacuuming first. The rug wasn’t salvageable, so she’d rolled it up and stood it leaning against the side of the house next to the trash barrels. Then she mopped the floor. Threw out the faded, old curtains and washed the windows.
Now, the wood floor gleams and the musty smell in the room is finally gone.
“Not as scary as you thought, is it?”
Sky lifts her shoulders, lowers them slowly. “It’s empty though.”
Maggie moves to the middle of the room. “That’s the surprise. Picture a tent.” She spreads her arms over the floor. “A little indoor camping experience for you and Frankie. And there’s a projector downstairs. Some old movies. I don’t know if I can get it to work, but it could be fun.”
“If it doesn’t, we can just watch a movie on my laptop. Can I call Frankie?”
Maggie nods. “Tell her to come over quick. We don’t have much time if you want to go to Pier Two.”
“Oh, we don’t have to do that,” Sky says. “This is better anyway.”
Maggie walks into the kitchen and gives a small clap. Success on two fronts. Sky’s inside the house, and Maggie doesn’t have to deal with the hell that is Pier 2.
* * *
After she unloads the groceries, she walks through the house, opening doors and poking her head in before moving to the next room. It’s empty, just as Leo had told her. Like all the houses on Winding Way, it’s the same layout as Maggie’s house except it’s a one-story, just two low-ceilinged storage spaces on the second floor.
She’d set up an air mattress in the smaller of the two bedrooms on the first floor. Yesterday, she’d planned to stay at the inn in town even though the summer rates would be ridiculous. Then they were waiting in the emergency room when Leo mentioned this house.
It was really just dumb luck that it came up at all.
She was sitting in a chair next to Leo’s hospital bed. They were waiting for the doctor when Xavier left for the restroom and Leo picked up his head, waved her over frantically.
She stood over him, leaned down. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Did Joe tell you I’m thinking about knocking down my old house. Building a new one?” he asked quickly, glancing at the door.
“No,” she said. “But that’s so exciting—”
“Shh,” he hissed, his eyes still on the doorway. “I’ll tell you about it later, but Xavier doesn’t know! And I’ve been lying here thinking you’re going to say something. So don’t say anything!”
She nodded dumbly, an idea popping into her mind. “Do you care if I stay there this weekend?” she whispered. “Don’t ask why. Just—is it okay?”
He screwed up his face. “Why the hell would you want to—” He paused. “Don’t ask. Okay—it’s a mess. Empty. Dirty. I don’t think Mrs. Pearse could see very well in her last years.”
“I’ll clean it,” she offered.
“I’m knocking it down anyway. It’s the basement that’s the problem. It’s all my childhood stuff. Pictures and whatever. I threw it all in a corner in bags years ago. Sort of forgot about it until I went down there a couple of weeks ago. It was so overwhelming, I left.”
“I’ll make you a deal. Let me stay there for the weekend and I’ll organize. Sound good?”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, just as Xavier walked through the door.
“What sounds good?” he asked, and Leo looked blankly at Maggie.
Maggie had to think quickly.
“My beet recipe—I was just telling him how Joe raved about it,” she said, smiling sweetly, as though she hadn’t just told two lies in one sentence.
Now she hears her cell phone ringing from the other room. By the time she walks through the house and picks it up, she’s missed the call. Pete’s name is on the screen.
They haven’t spoken since she walked out of the house. She doesn’t know if he saw her walk across the street to Joe’s. She’d stayed for almost the entire afternoon. Pete’s truck had been in the driveway when she’d hurried to get her own car to drive Leo to the hospital.
Hours later, Joe had delivered Leo’s car to the hospital and she’d driven them both back to Winding Way, dropping Joe at his house and driving straight down the street to Leo’s old house.
She thinks about calling him back, has a moment of panic that he’s calling about one of the boys. Maybe something has happened and she’s over here, clueless.
But that’s absurd.
PJ sent her a text yesterday morning that he was spending the holiday weekend with his girlfriend in Seattle, and Michael had rushed her off the phone earlier in the week when he was hurrying to catch a plane somewhere for work.
Her phone dings, and a text appears on the screen. Then another. And another. It’s Pete. Asking where she is. When she’s coming home. What this is all about.
She places the phone on the mantel and walks away. She’s been trying to talk to him for an entire year.
Now, she’s simply out of words. Or the desire to speak to him.
Maybe both.
* * *
By nightfall, the tent is up in the living room and the girls are in sleeping bags, the light from the laptop showing through the thin fabric.
Maggie was listening to them argue about what movie they were going to put on while she cleaned up the paper plates from their dinner and brought them outside to the trash barrel. By the time she came back, they were quiet. Only the muted voices of whatever they’d chosen to watch coming from inside the tent.
She wanders the house, restless.
She brought a book, but the overhead light in the bedroom is blindingly bright above the air mattress, and there’s not another piece of furniture to sit on while she reads.
Instead, she goes back downstairs to the basement. There are three bins she’s labeled and arranged on the cement floor.
Throwaway. Keep. Undecided.
Leo didn’t give her any instructions, but she has two sons of her own. She was the one who packed up their rooms once they were grown. She’d kept everything. Report cards. Trophies. Posters. Toys. Team pictures—on and on and on. She sorted it for them. Carefully packed all of it in bins.
They wanted next to nothing. A stack of pictures. Yearbooks. Each of them taking a small box, throwing the rest in the back of the truck to go to the dump.
Now, she sorts Leo’s things with this in mind.
She puts all the pictures in the Keep bin, sorting them in piles by year as best as she can. Leo as a baby. A teenager. The high school years and beyond.
There’s a picture of Leo at his college graduation, and Maggie holds it up, smiles at the familiar faces of Leo’s parents. She hadn’t known them very well. They hadn’t been familiar enough for her to call them anything but Mr. and Mrs. Irving—they’d always seemed so much older than her.
When she’d moved to Winding Way in her early twenties, PJ was just a baby. Leo was already a young boy, whizzing by on his bike or playing street hockey in front of her house with Brian. Then she’d started teaching, and Leo was in her class.
Her face still burns when she thinks of her first-parent teacher conference with his parents.
They’d arrived from work. A striking couple even in uniform. Mr. Irving, Harbormaster printed in block letters on his s
hirt, wore a hat, most likely to protect his pale skin from the sun. Fair and freckled, he was the polar opposite of his wife. Brown skin and dark-eyed, Mrs. Irving was stunningly beautiful, even in her baggy nurse scrubs.
She hadn’t known anything about the couple other than what Leo had told the class. He said his mother was from “the islands,” where Leo was born. Maggie wasn’t even sure which island.
“Welcome,” she’d said as they sat down and looked at her across the desk. “I can’t say enough good things about your son. He’s a delight, really. Polite. Works well with others. Does great on projects.” She dug a worksheet out of a pile, glanced down at it. “This is his most recent one on heritage. So what island are you from?” she asked curiously, smiling at Leo’s mother.
Mrs. Irving studied her, as though Maggie might be joking in some way.
“I’m from New York,” she said finally, clearing her throat.
Maggie’s face flamed. She realized she’d expected Leo’s mother to have an accent. “Oh my gosh—I’m sorry.” She looked at the worksheet. Leo’s precise handwriting on the page.
“We did a class presentation and the students talked about where they were born. And where their parents and grandparents were from. Leo wrote he was born in the Caribbean Islands. That you were born and raised there as well,” she said to Mrs. Irving, pointing to the paper, offering proof.
“Where am I from?” Mr. Irving asked, amused apparently, from the smirk on his face.
Maggie glanced down. “Rhode Island,” she said meekly.
“Well at least he didn’t lie about that,” he said.
“He shouldn’t be lying about any of it,” Mrs. Irving hissed. “Leo was born on Ichabod. Right up at that hospital I just came from. I have no idea why he told you that.”
“It’s not hard to figure out,” Mr. Irving said, frowning. “How many black kids do you have in this class?” he asked Maggie.
“Just Leo,” Maggie replied.
“Right,” he said. “And how many black kids in the school? Kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade?”
Maggie swallowed. “Oh, I don’t… I wouldn’t have that sort of information—”
“Four,” Mr. Irving said gently. “There are four kids in the entire Ichabod Island school system that look like my son. And that’s even not really true, because his skin is lighter. But what I’m saying is—he looks different. He’s used to being asked why he looks different.” He pauses, looks over at his wife. “Put yourself in his shoes. You’re a ten-year-old kid being asked to explain why you look different. Do you give a real answer? Or do you say you’re from somewhere faraway? Somewhere exotic. A place where maybe everyone looks like him.”
Mrs. Irving folded her arms, scowled at her husband. “Yeah, well, it’s still lying. And he’s going to hear it from me when we get home.”
Mr. Irving had smiled, reached over, and squeezed his wife’s shoulder while Maggie considered crawling under the desk, never coming out.
Even now, she winces looking at the picture. She’d never brought it up to Leo. Never knew if his parents had mentioned it. But it stayed with Maggie. The shame of that night.
How she hadn’t even thought about any of it.
She moves the picture aside and picks up the next one. It’s of a newborn baby, swaddled in a blanket. She brings it closer, realizes it’s Sky, remembering back all of those years when Brian and Ann had first adopted her. She puts it in her pocket to show the girls, walks up the stairs and shuts the basement light.
The girls are still watching the movie in the tent. Maggie walks over to the opening, bends, and peers in, blinking at the bright screen.
“What are you watching?” she whispers.
“Moana,” Sky whispers back.
“Again!” Maggie laughs, digging the picture out of her pocket. “I found this downstairs. It’s you as a baby. I thought you might want to see it.”
Sky takes the picture, but she’s distracted, her eyes on the screen.
Maggie hears a faint knocking from the front of the house. She straightens, squinting at the front door, her eyes adjusting to the dark.
She walks to the door and opens it to see Xavier standing in front of her. He startles, as though she’s scared him.
“Oh, you’re up,” he says. “I didn’t want to wake you or Sky. I knocked once, but nobody answered.”
“I was in the basement,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s only eight o’clock. I’m old but not that old.”
“I was thinking Sky might be in bed. But that’s silly, right? She’s ten.” He blows a breath out. “Exactly why I can’t do this. Zero knowledge of kids.”
She suddenly remembers Leo. And the house. Their secret.
“How did you know I was here?” she asks cautiously.
“Leo told me. He’s feeling better. Up and walking. He should be home tomorrow morning.”
“Well, that’s great news,” she says, and waits. She’s not sure why Xavier is here. Leo has her number. He could have easily called. “Is everything all right—”
“You’re a good friend to Leo. And Sky,” Xavier says. He looks down at his shoes, then back at her. “When I was first here, it seemed like maybe everyone was meddling. But I was wrong.”
“Well, you weren’t wrong about everyone,” she says, sliding her eyes over to Agnes’s house. “Do you want to come in? Sky and Frankie are watching a movie. But we could have a glass of wine.”
“Thank you, but I can’t. I have to go.” He doesn’t move though. Just looks at his feet, then back at her.
There’s a tension between them that makes the hair on her arms stand up. She steps out and pulls the door shut behind her.
“Xavier, did something happen—”
“Leo told me about the house. What he wants to build. It’s terrific, but it’s just—I’m leaving,” he says quietly. “On the last ferry tonight.”
“Oh. I thought you were here until Monday—”
“I don’t belong here,” he says. “There’s nothing about this place that makes me feel like I fit in.”
She doesn’t know what to say. What is there to say? She’s a fourth-grade teacher. Half her life has been spent drying the tears of the kids who didn’t fit in. And lecturing others about including everyone.
And then there are always the kids who don’t seem to notice if they fit in or not.
Or care.
Nothing she says will make Xavier feel as though he belongs. But she tries anyway.
“You fit in just fine with Leo. And you will with Sky. Just give it time.”
He smiles, nods dismissively, as though she couldn’t possibly understand. “That’s what Leo said.”
He turns before she can speak and disappears into the dark. Vanishing in front of her.
So quickly and silently, it’s as though he was never there at all.
35
She keeps an eye on her strength. Makes sure she’ll have enough left to step off the cliff. To push her body into the air. Though it won’t be hard. There’s hardly anything left of her. She barely eats anymore. The groceries she had delivered last week are more than enough to last her weeks. More time than she needs.
She won’t go in the forest again. Won’t take that chance. Instead, she paints.
She starts in the beginning. Two girls huddled together. One of them crying, the round bump of her middle the focus of the picture. Her and Mac. She paints her desperation. Colors it in with fear and self-loathing.
Even then, the picture can’t tell it all. Not how she felt trapped. Hopeless. She didn’t want it. Would never either. Not with her modeling career. Not with her insane family—she wouldn’t do that to her worst enemy, never mind a child. Her child.
She puts it aside to dry. Moves on to the next picture. She looks at the bed in the corner, the fireplace. Remembers the storm raging outside. Her body racked with pain that came wave after wave. And Mac. So calm. So confident.
“You’re my best frie
nd in the world,” she’d told Mac while a contraction ripped through her. Mac had laughed, patted her belly.
“Tonight, I’m your midwife,” she said. She doesn’t paint all that. Only the fire. And the hurricane outside the window. The two things she prayed to when she thought the pain might kill her. Might kill her baby too. Take away everything she promised Mac could have. Would have! A happy life. A family.
A baby of her own.
36
The first thing Sky asks him when he walks in the door from the hospital is the last thing he wants to talk about.
“Can my bedroom be on the second floor?” she blurts, having just skipped into the living room, Frankie on her heels. “Like in the back of the house. Looking out at the water?”
Maggie is in the kitchen, reading the newspaper at the counter, and she glances at him over the half wall separating the two rooms, gives him a baffled look.
“This was not my doing,” she says, and looks back at the newspaper.
“I’ve only just started drawing the plans. I was sort of waiting to see what you wanted—”
“I want to move,” she announces. “We slept there last night, and it’s definitely not haunted. We even went in the basement in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t even that scary.”
“You did?” Maggie looks over. “Why?”
The girls shrug. “We just wanted to,” Sky says vaguely.
Maggie stands, tucks the paper under her arm.
“On that note—I want a hot shower. Leo, call me if you need anything. Girls—I’ll see you bright and early on Tuesday at school.” She waves, disappears through the back door.
Frankie groans. “She had to remind us.”
“When can we start working on the plans?” Sky asks.
“How about we start with me putting my keys down. Maybe getting a cup of coffee. Taking a shower.”
“Fine,” Sky tells him. “But after that, we’re starting.”
He doesn’t answer. Just watches the two of them pile into the kitchen. Cereal boxes appear on the counter. The sound of spoons clinking together rings through the room. He considers walking into the kitchen and explaining that he might have changed his mind.
