Lucy
The ground gets ripped out from under her again.
This house is special, unusual.
It’s an overgrown cabin built to accommodate several generations under one roof, though that never materialized for the Levy family.
The blond wood A-frame is built post-and-beam style around a stone fireplace and chimney.
Three levels of large windows overlook the lake.
The grand living space is open and airy, triple height, with raw beams stretching lengthwise overhead.
The sagging cream sectional was purchased sometime during the Vietnam War, and the rest of the furnishings and appliances aren’t much newer.
A deep red Persian rug sprawls across the floor, and a bronze bucket filled with hand-chopped logs sits by the fireplace along with wrought iron pokers.
A box of VHS tapes collects dust underneath the ancient TV, and sun-bleached baseball caps hang from scattered nails.
There’s a curled, yellowed strip of a grocery list her dad thumbtacked to a wooden beam in the kitchen and forgot about at least twenty years ago.
The last time the landline was in service, Lucy had braces.
This isn’t just a house.
To Hank, who’d rather see the inherited furniture sag and fray than replace it, it was the temple where his parents could live on.
To Lucy, it’s the one place she never had to be embarrassed about her relationship with her dad.
Here, she didn’t have to ignore whispers or twist the truth to protect his reputation.
Secluded in the woods, flanked by out-of-towners who didn’t know or care about Hank and Lucy, they had barbecues, card games, movie marathons.
It was the backdrop for long, meandering conversations out on the water at sunset and heartbreaking silences when she asked to visit him in New York.
This year in particular, she needs this place as a refuge.
Lucy has been sleeping at Dawn’s ever since Patrick asked for a divorce.
Her childhood bedroom has become infested with gloom.
The sheets are sweaty, the mattress is depressed from overuse.
A daunting pile of worn clothes tumbles from the chair to the ratty carpet, which badly needs to be vacuumed.
Dawn would never kick her out.
(Just the opposite—Lucy suspects she’s secretly glad to have her around again.) Lucy would’ve been more comfortable staying here at the lake, but she hadn’t been ready to tell her dad that her marriage was over.
She’d been planning to ask Hank if she and her mom could both stay here this fall, once he was back in New York with the famous wife he never talks about—not that she’d ever say that last part out loud.
Her mom finally saved up enough money for long-overdue home repairs and had been expecting to stay on Lucy and Patrick’s couch while the construction took place.
Both of the Webster women had been banking on Hank saying yes.
“You can’t sell,” Lucy pleads.
“It’s not your call to make.”
“We’re both his daughters. We have equal claim to this place.”
Vivian takes a sip. “Actually, we don’t. The house is now technically my mother’s. And no offense, but she’s probably not looking to do a time-share with you.”
Lucy gapes. She loathes confrontation but can’t let this go. “When are you selling it?”
“As soon as possible. I’m here to get the house ready to go on the market, and then I’ll go back to the city. My boss gave me some time off work, but I can’t stretch that out forever.”
Lucy’s heart sinks. “So, you’re going to scatter his ashes here, then give this up to some stranger and walk away for good? Doesn’t this place mean anything to you?”
“It’s just an old house.”
“But it’s our old house.”
Each summer earns another layer of lived-in charm. Every sun-bleached, worn-down, threadbare inch of it is proof her family has gathered here year after year. The house is a time capsule embalmed in grief but also in love. She loathes when cabins bursting with vintage character are torn down to be replaced with stark, bland new construction. The white trim around the windows is always a little too bright.
“People sell houses all the time,” Vivian says, seemingly unbothered.
Is she actually enjoying staying calm as Lucy reels?
She tries another tack. “This was our grandparents’ place. We’re the third generation here. That’s special.”
“?‘We’? There is no ‘we.’?”
Lucy takes in Vivian for who she is: thirty, lanky, with thick eyebrows and a hint of crow’s-feet, but that’s not who she really sees. To her, Vivian will always be thirteen, scrawny with slick lip gloss and flat-ironed hair streaming out of a scarlet knit beanie. Despite all these years of obsessing from afar, Lucy never would’ve imagined she’d be this cold. If anything, she always assumed Vivian was the kind of daughter any father would dote on. She’d seen that once for herself. It had been excruciating.
“Please. You had his whole world. This was all I got.”
It’s a dramatic guilt trip, especially because of the way her voice cracks at the end, but it’s also the pathetic truth.
“I’m sorry,” Vivian says haltingly, pushing away from the table. “That’s not my fault.” She pours another enormous glass. “I’m going to be staying here for the next few days, so…”
“But it’s July!”
“So?”
“It’s my month. It’s my turn to be here. Your month is August.”
Lucy wishes she had less of a juvenile response, but what else is there to say? She doesn’t want to be anywhere else tonight, and beyond that, she really needs this place. Patrick doesn’t want her. Going home isn’t an option; she doesn’t have the strength to relay this to Dawn today. She’d crash with her best friend, Paige, except it’s her anniversary. Paige and Kyle haven’t had enough nights out together since Nora was born eighteen months ago, and Lucy isn’t going to ruin that. Caleb, her best guy friend, would take her in, but it’s the last night of his camping trip. He’s still in Acadia.
Vivian’s nostrils flare. “He’s gone, okay? Whatever twisted ideas he came up with to hide you away, they’re over now. It’s my house, not yours.”
Lucy stands, too, appreciating the extra inch she has on Vivian.
“I’m staying. I’m sure you can afford a hotel.”
As it turns out, there are some things money can’t buy. It’s the week of July Fourth, the height of the summer season, which means every rental on the lake has been booked for a solid year. Vivian dials a bed-and-breakfast in Kennebunkport and a few hotels in Portland before finally locating a room for $400 a night. But by that point, three glasses in, she says she doesn’t trust herself to make the hour-long drive in one piece. Lucy certainly isn’t going to volunteer to chauffeur her around, not even if it means having the house to herself.
Vivian scrounges through the cupboards and freezer to find anything edible to sober her up. Hank apparently did a thorough job emptying out the kitchen at the end of last summer, though, because all she finds is an expired jar of peanut butter and a half-empty bag of brittle potato chips.
Resigned to the fact that Vivian isn’t going anywhere, at least not immediately, Lucy sinks onto the couch in a daze. She stares at the snag in the carpet and the whorls in the wood, committing every detail to memory before the house is no longer in her life. Gone like her dad. It’s unthinkable.
She stands abruptly. “I’m going out,” she tells Vivian. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
Lucy makes it halfway to her car before the weight of her dad’s death finally crushes her. She sucks in uneven, gasping breaths, crumples over the steering wheel, and sobs. Losses stack up on top of each other like a looming tower: Her husband doesn’t want her anymore, her dad is dead, the house will soon be gone, and the childhood fantasy she once had of finding a platonic soulmate in Vivian has shattered. That woman has the warmth of an executioner.
Just when Lucy thinks she can catch her breath, she bursts into another round of tears. She’s used to her dad’s absence, but not like this. The grief is complicated and overwhelming, and Vivian’s nastiness stings. Lucy feels small, like she’s been reduced to a stereotype, illegitimate hillbilly spawn.
Lucy is grateful when her growling stomach nudges her focus away from this nightmare. Finally steady enough to drive, she rolls past the familiar houses lining Loon Road: a 1970s bungalow still wearing brown paint and avocado-green shutters; a weathered, cedar-shingled cottage with a pair of colorful Sunfishes flanking the dock; a two-story house with the whole extended family’s cars crowded in the driveway, one with the tailgate open and a pile of sand-streaked beach chairs inside. She imagines what it’ll feel like in the near future when she can no longer call this street home.
Up the hill and around the bend, her spotty cell service kicks in again. She places an order of chicken wings from Foxy Roxy’s, her comfort food since childhood. This meal has been on heavy rotation since Patrick confessed he was done. A spontaneous flash of guilt pushes her to add, “Two of those, actually.” She hates the idea of buying Vivian dinner, but walking back into the lake house with only takeout for herself requires a selfish brazenness she doesn’t possess. She was raised to be better than that.
In the pub’s parking lot, Lucy jams a baseball cap on low and steels herself for a quick dash in. She doesn’t have the strength to make it through small talk with anyone she bumps into—and considering this is the only place in town to get a meal, chances are high she will. Foxy Roxy’s can get sleepy during the offseason, but now whole families are crammed into booths. Twenty-somethings are crowded around the bar, letting loose under the blare of an ’80s rock song. The walls are covered in license plates and signs promoting various beers. The menu lists “clam chowda” under “Soups ’n Salads: Light Fare!” Ten years ago, there was an uproar when the new manager tried to revamp the place. He draped every booth with white tablecloths; the cheesy potato skins and buffalo chicken dip vanished in favor of a vegetable medley with hummus; he even took out the pool table. People revolted, and he was forced to restore the pub to its former casual glory.
The hostess recognizes her and goes to retrieve her order. Lucy scans the room. She grew up with a quarter of these faces and has since taught another quarter; the rest are probably summer people. Actually, Wimbledon is on the TV hanging over the bar—definitely summer people. Nerves sink into actual dread when she spots Patrick in a corner booth with his friends. Brody seems to be telling a story over the spread of burgers and pints, and the other guys are laughing, but Patrick’s attempt at a smile isn’t convincing. His dirty-blond buzz cut is freshly shorn; she misses running her palm over its soft bristles. The sight of him makes her chest ache. She never thought he had the capacity to hurt her.
When he notices her, he offers a hesitant wave. No wedding band. She wasn’t prepared for the sight of his bare hand. She still wears hers, though her mom has gently suggested she take it off. She prays he won’t come over, even though he’s the only person who could possibly comfort her. If he does, she’ll fall apart again. Her sinuses start to throb, the telltale sign that tears aren’t far off.
Still waiting for food, Lucy pretends to check her phone. Although she feigns intense concentration, she manages to see Patrick rising in her periphery. He glances in both directions before crossing the room.
“Hi, Luce,” he says quietly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts.
His shoulders are hunched, and he’s wearing the old Red Sox T-shirt he now reserves for the last possible day before laundry.
It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since she moved out. He’d dropped the bomb on her on Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, and she’d protested, negotiated, and pleaded all through Monday afternoon. He’d purposefully left the house when she came back a few days later to haul out her life’s possessions. A hand would’ve been nice. Everything—truly everything—is different now, but his soft sea-glass-green eyes are the same as always. That’s what had reeled her in when she was fifteen. He was the high-school-sweetheart fantasy wrapped up in a cozy plaid flannel and tied in a bow. Until he wasn’t.
She swallows. “Hi.”
She feels shyer than she did around Vivian earlier—a high bar.
He scratches his arm. “How’s it going?”
Their old intimacy has morphed into something painfully rigid. It’s horrifying, just another thing to grieve. She can’t lie to Patrick, but the truth is too awful to say out loud. She opens her mouth to insist everything’s easy, breezy, fine, but she can’t do it. Not to his face.
“It’s been a bad day,” she admits.
He nods. “Mm. Sorry.”
In a tiny voice, she tries saying it for the first time. “My dad died?”
She’s right; she couldn’t do this.
His jaw drops. “Luce, oh my God.”
He slings his arms around her and holds her close. One hand cradles the back of her head; she hides her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder, savoring the familiar comfort as she chokes up a humiliating sob. He hesitates, then relaxes and rubs soothing circles over her back. She hasn’t been touched like this in weeks.
“I’m so sorry. What happened?”
She glances around the crowded pub, hyperconscious of the gossip mill that keeps small towns humming. In Fox Hill, there are no sports arenas, no shopping centers, no museums, no movie theaters. Scandalous stories get passed around as the ultimate form of entertainment. Lucy knows this better than most. Growing up, she overheard classmates referring to her as a “love child” more than once. She’s sure people know she’s separated now, too. She’s grateful she never changed her name; changing it back would cause more of a stir. Patrick gently steers them toward the door, out of most tables’ earshot and line of sight. It doesn’t matter—at least one big mouth has probably already seen her crying on his shoulder.
Her voice comes out as a whimper. “He had a h-h-heart attack.”
“Here?”
“In New York.”
“But it’s July,” he says, confused.
Lucy is a little embarrassed that her tears have puddled on his T-shirt, but she sinks into another hug anyway. The door whooshes open behind them as a couple walks in. She badly wants to tell him the whole story, but not here.
The waitress hands over her takeout. Lucy gives Patrick one last squeeze. “I need to go,” she says, swallowing the “I love you” that’s right on the tip of her tongue.
She drives back to Fox Hill Lake with the enticing aroma of the barbecued chicken wafting through the car. For the first time, it’s not enough to comfort her.
Lucy had hoped Vivian would’ve taken off by the time she got back, but the truck is still in the driveway. She finds her sipping another glass of wine in a weathered Adirondack chair on the back deck, morosely staring out at a pink-streaked sky. Wasn’t the entire point for her to sober up?
Vivian barely turns around. “I called the hotel back ten minutes ago. The room’s gone.”
It’s hardly the worst thing Lucy’s heard all day, but still, she grinds her teeth. She’d like to eat dinner outside—alone. For as long as she can remember, Lucy has capped off every dry July day outside, on the deck or the boat, watching the afternoon’s glorious slide from dusk to twilight. She and Hank analyzed sunsets the way other families got caught up in football. They tracked sundown times and weather reports, made predictions about how colors and cloud formations would evolve over the course of the evening, and admired the loons. “Just another family out to watch the sunset,” she’d say, which made him smile, though he never repeated the F-word. The morphing sky was enough to keep the conversation afloat, letting them avoid thornier subjects. It is—was—their favorite time of day. The idea of giving it up, even for a single night, prickles.
“Here, I got you dinner,” she says, handing over the box.
Vivian looks surprised. “What is it?”
“Foxy Roxy’s chicken wings.”
Vivian’s nose wrinkles. “Oh. Thanks. What’s your Venmo?”
Not only does Lucy know Vivian’s Venmo username, she’s also tracked the flow of dollars and wine emojis between Vivian and her friends for ten years.
Exasperated, Lucy gives it to her and retreats to the kitchen. It’s strange, sitting inside at sunset. She’ll never have another one with her dad again, and she’ll never hear his voice again, either. He spent his childhood in a well-to-do Boston suburb, the kind of place that isn’t always infused with the pahk yah cah in Hahvahd yahd accent, but traces of it would come out whenever he poured himself a Scotch and settled onto the couch for one of their movie nights. “Pass the clickah,” he’d say. She liked those moments best, when they could pass for a real father-daughter pair, not just a temporary family cobbled together during summers and long weekends. Most of the time, though, he sounded as mainstream as a newscaster, like Vivian does.
The back door slides open; the bathroom door clicks shut. Seconds later, a shriek pierces the air as the toilet lid clangs against the seat.
“Are you okay?” Lucy calls, not moving from her chair.
Vivian darts into the kitchen. Her shoulders tense toward her ears.
“There’s a rat. In the toilet bowl. I think it’s dead.”
“Well, yeah. It’s the start of the season. They crawl up the pipes every winter.”
Vivian stares in disgust.
“Just toss it outside.”
Vivian blanches. “Right. Okay. I can do that.”
She doesn’t look so confident. She retreats to the bathroom with a pair of rubber gloves. There’s a long, pathetic silence before she rushes through the kitchen, prissy and squealing, and hurls the bloated rodent into the woods. It’s all very dramatic. Isn’t New York City famous for its rats?
Paige is calling. She must know something is up; she typically prefers texting to a phone call, though these days, it’s mostly voice memos with occasional interjections of “No, don’t put that in your mouth!” Lucy is deeply happy for her best friend and adores her goddaughter. But sometimes—mostly when she’s wistful about the family she could’ve had by now, had life gone differently—she misses what their friendship used to look like.
She slips outside to answer. “Hello?”
The sky is nearly navy now. Only a few embers glow above the hills on the horizon.
“Patrick told me what happened. Lucy, oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. I didn’t mean to tell him and not you—today has just been a lot, and I ran into him, and—”
“Don’t you dare apologize right now. Most importantly: How are you? I mean, terrible, obviously, but…”
The overpowering warmth of Paige’s voice makes her feel a fraction of a percent better. She’ll take it. She recounts the full story, starting with Vivian arriving at the house. Paige has participated in several Facebook-stalking sessions over the years and calls Vivian’s plans to sell the house “sociopathic.”
They talk for nearly an hour while Lucy meanders the grounds, making her way down the forty-seven wooden stairs to the waterfront. Each flight of steps zigzags down the sloped hill behind the house, and at two of the landings, there are wooden benches. Hank used to say they’re “for the old folks to catch their breath on the climb up.” He made it sound playful, but she used to wonder if the sight of those benches made him sad. There weren’t ever old folks here in his lifetime. He was barely out of college when his parents died in a car crash. And now, of course, he’s gone, too.
Dangling her feet into the lake, Lucy cries again, though this time, it’s more of a gentle trickle than a desperate howl. She isn’t alone. Paige is there to murmur all the right things. She chimes in with what she loved most about Lucy’s dad, even though she barely ever saw him.
Paige finishes with, “And he was so thoughtful. I mean, the blanket…”
“I know.”
He had it monogrammed in lilac embroidery that matched Nora’s nursery. It’d been Lucy’s suggestion.
“Vivian hasn’t cried once since she’s been here, and I’ve been a wreck,” Lucy says. “I feel like she’s judging me, as if I don’t have the right to be upset.”
“Only a monster would judge you for crying right now.”
“I know, but—”
“He was your dad just as much as he was hers.”
Lucy bites her lip, hating that Vivian is making her question that. “Yeah.”
She warns Paige to keep this quiet for now, since she hasn’t told her mom yet. This shouldn’t get to Dawn before Lucy can break the news herself.
“Of course. And I’ll text Patrick to keep his mouth shut so you don’t have to.”
“No, I can call him,” Lucy says.
“You sure?” Paige asks.
Lucy hadn’t told her how good it felt to curl into Patrick’s arms today, how it was easier to breathe when her cheek rested on his shoulder.
“I’ll be fine.”
More than fine—she’s relieved she has a reason to talk to him again.
“But I’m not up for the bonfire tomorrow,” Lucy adds.
Hank’s annual Fourth of July gathering was her favorite tradition, not to mention the one time a year he let her bring her friends into his world.
“Don’t worry about that. I love you so much, Luce.”
“Love you, too.”
During what felt like a different life, Lucy and Patrick dated long-distance while she was at UMaine in Orono and he stayed behind for a four-year carpentry apprenticeship. They carved a groove in the three-hour stretch of I-295, shuttling back and forth on weekends and breaks. She missed him terribly. Seeing the stress her new friends’ love lives caused them, she was extra appreciative of caring, reliable Patrick. One night, her roommate dulled the pain of a breakup with tequila shots at Half Acre, apparently scream-singing the chorus of Icona Pop’s takedown of older men—“You’re from the ’70s, but I’m a ’90s bitch”—despite the fact that she was a ’94 baby, and her ex was only three years older. Lucy didn’t see it. She was in the parking lot with one finger jammed into her ear, listening to Patrick on the other end of the line. Even shivering in her parka, she felt a sturdy sense of peace just by talking to him.
Their plan was to find jobs in Portland after graduation. Lucy would teach in a classroom with big windows that let in briny seaside air, while Patrick would reel in city prices fixing up the old Victorians. They’d live together for the first time in a snug place in the West End, maybe get a cat. She fantasized about it constantly: the quaint brick sidewalks warped with age, taking the ferry over to Great Diamond Island for hiking and picnics, lazy Saturday mornings at the Holy Donut, a new brewery each Sunday afternoon—they kept popping up. And then, someday, a proposal by the lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth. She was more excited about the city than he was, but he liked the idea of making more money there, and besides, they’d only be an hour from Fox Hill. They compromised: a few years in Portland for Lucy, then back home when it was time to start a family.
Then, during Lucy’s last semester of college, Dawn was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer. Lucy moved home right after graduation to help care for her. She had loved Patrick for years by then, but once she realized he’d been driving Dawn’s trash to the dump and mowing her lawn without being asked, without mentioning it, she knew he was more than just a boyfriend. He was family.
By the time Dawn was in remission, Patrick’s calendar was fully booked six months out with carpentry jobs, and Lucy had just begun her second year of teaching at Fox Hill High. They rented a tiny two-bedroom house on rural Quaker Road, and he bought a truck that would never fit into Portland’s narrow street parking. Moving made even less sense the next year, while they were saving up for their wedding. They got married, and momentum took over. Now Lucy saw moving away from home like driving cross-country in an RV or piercing her nose—fun to think about at twenty-two, but not practical as a real adult.
At thirty, Lucy felt ancient and boring. For the thirteenth year of her life, she was spending Monday through Friday, September through June, reporting to the same two-story brick high school she’d once attended. Patrick liked to watch ESPN after work, but she could only take so much of it. Often, she’d go off to read or watch The Great British Bake Off in bed and fall asleep before he turned in for the night. She’d wake up with a crick in her neck. Rinse and repeat. Dinner was their time to truly connect, but the ease of those conversations had slipped away, too. Now she strained for interesting things to say. Ashley, the history teacher in the next classroom, was planning her sister’s baby shower. The washing machine was making that noise again. Was the chicken two minutes overcooked?
Sometimes, the sameness of it all was comforting. She had an easy, predictable life with the man she loved. She was grateful. Other times, the prospect of decades slipping by this way felt like the entire high school wrestling team was sitting on her chest. Kids would change things—she wanted a big, lively family—but Patrick’s answer was always “Maybe next year.”
One night, over frozen pizza, she said, “I think two of my students might be dating.”
She’d been looking forward to telling Patrick about them. On the drive home, she’d imagined how she’d tell the story, finessing the punch line. It was a good one.
“Remember that kid on the hockey team, Zach, the one who never pays attention or takes notes?”
He looked up from his phone. “Always texting under his desk or staring off into space, right?”
“Or at least I thought! I have him for third period, and Ashley was telling me about this girl in her third period who has the same kind of thing going on. She had to confiscate the girl’s phone because she wouldn’t put it away after being asked twice. She didn’t mean to see, but there were all these texts from Zach.”
“Huh.”
“Wait, this is the good part. I realized that neither of them are staring off into space. You know how the door between my classroom and Ashley’s has that glass panel? They’ve been staring at each other!”
Patrick nodded and chewed. “Cool.”
This was where he was supposed to tell that charming story about working up the courage to flirt with her at her locker half a lifetime ago. Instead, wordlessly, he went back to his phone. She watched him scroll. She hated that she was sensitive enough to wish for a more enthusiastic reaction. The silence stretched out and out.
“Patrick, we’re having dinner.”
“Yeah.”
“And so I want to talk to you.”
His eyes flicked up. “Okay.”
“Don’t you want to talk to me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you think we still have things to talk about, though? We’re not old enough to have run out yet.”
“We have plenty to talk about. But, Luce—” His voice was heartbreakingly gentle. “This is normal. We’ve been together forever.”
“I know,” she said defensively.
“We don’t need to entertain each other every minute of every day.” Patrick leaned across the table and took her hand. His fingers brushed the inside of her palm. “Hey.”
She was too comfortable with him to ever be truly embarrassed, but this came close. “I’m sorry. I just…miss how things used to be. We didn’t used to be this boring.”
“I could get a kilt,” Patrick joked warmly. “And a sword. You’d never be bored around Jamie Fraser.”
He was talking about Outlander , one of the few shows they’d both gotten sucked into; it was the romance and history for her, the action and suspense for him. Patrick liked to tease Lucy about her obvious crush on the male lead. Except, as a thirty-year-old wife with a pension fund and a flossing routine, she was too old to hold a real flesh-and-blood human to the standard of a fictional heartthrob.
“No, seriously.”
“What do you mean, ‘boring’?”
She’d already googled plenty of advice on this and knew what to suggest. “What about doing a date night? Just once a week. We can take turns planning it.”
He frowned. “We need to schedule hanging out? What’s next, scheduling sex?”
That wouldn’t hurt, either. “Never mind.”
Maybe the problem was just in her head. She felt frustrated, though she wasn’t sure by whom.
“No, no, I’m sorry—you’re right,” Patrick said, softening. “Let’s try it.”
Just like that, they had plenty to talk about over dinner: what to do together next.
Mosquitoes force Lucy back inside. Vivian carries linens into Lucy’s bedroom, the one adjacent to their dad’s. Something dawns on Lucy, spurring her up the spiral staircase.
“You sleep in that bed, don’t you?”
“Yeah, this is my bedroom,” Vivian says, stretching a pale green fitted sheet over the queen-sized mattress.
Lucy’s favorite patchwork quilt is folded on top of the dresser. “Mine, too.”
“Oh.” Vivian bristles. “Well…”
There are plenty of other beds: two rooms with twins on the third floor, plus Hank’s, of course.
“I don’t want to sleep over there,” Lucy says, tilting her head toward their dad’s bedroom.
Her instinct is to leave it untouched. She’s never slept there, and starting now would only serve as a painful reminder of why she’s not in her own bed.
“Neither do I,” Vivian protests.
“You could sleep upstairs,” Lucy points out.
“On a twin? I haven’t done that since college.”
Lucy did it last night. And the night before that. And the one before that, too. Besides, Vivian got a cushy New York upbringing in a two-parent household. All Lucy wants is her bed.
“It’s July. It’s my month. This is my bedroom. I’d like to sleep here.”
Vivian sighs. “You know what? Fine, you take it. I’ll sleep upstairs.”
She drops the linens—one corner of the fitted sheet springs back across the bare mattress—and sweeps past Lucy without a glance. It’s Lucy’s first tiny victory.
She brought plenty of her own pajamas, assuming she’d stay for the whole month, but now she’d rather wear something of Hank’s. She winces at the threshold of his closet, taking in the sight of faded jeans and rumpled flannels he’ll never wear again.
She riffles through his clothes, running her fingers over the sun-bleached T-shirt bearing the color-blocked logo of his private wealth management company. She holds the fabric up to her nose in case she can get a whiff of his sunscreen and Scotch. Instead, all she can detect is the faint scent of laundry detergent. It hits her again: He’s gone. She slips the shirt over her head.
Lucy is the first one to turn in. She doesn’t bother saying good night.