Chapter Fifteen
Vivian
One lazy afternoon in mid-August, Vivian makes an accidental discovery. She’d been nibbling on a caprese salad and leisurely working through the crossword puzzle she found in an old magazine when her pen runs dry. She rummages through her purse and the kitchen junk drawer for another pen and comes up with bubkes. That’s when she has the idea to check the bedside drawer in her dad’s nightstand.
She holds her breath as she pulls it open, praying she doesn’t find anything weird or deeply private. The drawer comes out halfway, then jams. She relaxes at the sight of an innocent assortment of items: a bottle of melatonin, a spare pair of goggles, loose change. She sweeps her hand toward the back half of the drawer, hitting something solid. With a little maneuvering, she pulls out an old, narrow shoebox.
Inside, plain white envelopes are stuffed, sealed, and packed like sardines. There must be more than two dozen. She pulls one out and spots Dawn’s name in her dad’s angular handwriting on the front. The next one does, too. She riffles through the rest. They’re all nearly identical, with two exceptions: one for Lucy, one for Vivian. As much as she’s dying of curiosity, she knows it would be wrong to open them all.
Vivian doesn’t care about the pen anymore. She puts the envelopes back in the order she found them, then carries the box down to the lake, where Lucy is reading in the boat. Her footsteps pound down the dock.
“You’re never going to guess what I found.”
Lucy glances up from yet another one of Celeste’s novels: Tied Up in Tahoe . It came out the year before Fifty Shades of Grey did. Celeste was still bitter that the other author got all the credit for sparking an international BDSM craze.
“What is that?”
“I think Dad wrote a bunch of letters and never sent them. This is full of envelopes with your mom’s name on them, plus two separate ones addressed to us.”
“What? Let me see.”
“Not here, I don’t want them blowing away.”
They move to the circle of chairs by the bonfire. Vivian rips hers open; Lucy carefully unseals hers. Both are dated to May of their senior year of high school.
Vivian,
I wish I could be in New York to see your art show today. You’ve worked hard and done a beautiful job. With your graduation right around the corner, I’ve been thinking about the past 18 years, including how I could’ve been a better parent—which brings me here. I have something difficult to tell you, though I believe you already know some of it. I probably should’ve discussed this with you sooner, but I didn’t think you were ready. I’m putting this in writing because I think it will be easier for both of us this way. Come to me if you’d ever like to talk about it.
Before Mom and I were married, I reconnected with an old girlfriend, Dawn Webster. We dated on and off while I was in college. After our relationship ended, I was surprised to learn that she had given birth to our daughter, Lucy. I had my life in New York—my work, then you—and it didn’t make sense for me to uproot our family. Instead, I see Lucy a few times a year, primarily in July. I’m not really on a business trip right now. I’m in Fox Hill to celebrate Lucy’s graduation.
Up until now, I haven’t shared any of this with you or Mom because I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want you to have to live with my mistakes. I’ve done my best to be discreet, but clearly, you’ve caught on. I’m sad to see that we aren’t as close as we once were, and I hope that we’ll find a way through this.
Family is always the most important thing, and I got lucky with two great kids. If you’d like to meet Lucy, now or in the future, I can see if she’d be open to it. I think you’d get along.
I hope you can forgive me. I love you.
Dad
Vivian is dumbstruck. Furious. Writing this down instead of telling her face-to-face was a cop-out. He was a lying coward ’til the very end. She’s stunned by the verbal gymnastics he used to tidy up the timeline of his affair, and the arrogance of his assumption that Vivian could just swallow this and ride off into the sunset with him and Lucy. He called her a “great kid,” not that he ever said as much to her out loud. The words “I’m sorry” do not appear even once.
If she’d read this twelve years ago, she probably would’ve forgiven him eventually. She could’ve had more of a father, and then a more miserable—though less complicated—experience grieving his death. Her parents likely would’ve divorced, but they could’ve been happier, and maybe she’d appreciate them more. She and Lucy could’ve forged a relationship back when they were on the cusp of adulthood, more pliable. She waits quietly for Lucy to finish reading hers. When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes.
Lucy
Lucy,
In a few short hours, you’ll be a high school graduate. Congratulations! I can’t believe you’re old enough to be walking across that stage. I know I haven’t been here for every milestone, but I hope this makes up for some of my absences. Please know I think about you every day. I’m sorry our time together has been so limited.
I used to think that avoiding the subject of my life in New York was the kindest choice I could make. I didn’t want you to feel left out. Sidestepping your questions was difficult, and made me feel guilty at times, but as the years piled up, the idea of being fully honest with you got more and more daunting.
You’re smart, resourceful, hardworking—I’m sure you’ve picked up on more than your mother and I have let on. Your poise around this subject has been remarkable. I imagine it hasn’t been easy. If you have any questions, or if there’s anything you’d like to tell me—about what growing up has been like for you, or maybe just telling me to go to hell—I’m ready to listen (though I hope it’s not too much of the latter).
Most importantly, I want you to know that I didn’t keep you at a distance from the rest of my family out of shame. I’m so proud of you, Lucy. I’m just not proud of the decisions I’ve made.
If you’re okay with it, I want to be a bigger part of your life. Let me know when you’d like me to visit next, or if you’d like to come to New York. If you’re interested in meeting Vivian, I can see if she’d be open to it. Maybe we can all spend time at the lake together this summer.
Love,
Dad
Lucy is gobsmacked. He actually apologized. It’s no small thing; he’d never once been so direct about his flaws and poor choices. She rereads the compliments several times, glowing: He called her smart, resourceful, hardworking, poised, and even remarkable. Remarkable. It’s nice that he suggested visiting Fox Hill more often, but it’s the invitation to New York that makes her cry.
He wanted to welcome her into his life—his real life. How many times had she fantasized about that? She wouldn’t care about catching a Broadway show or dining in steakhouses with twenty-five-dollar cocktails. Instead, she thought about sitting at his kitchen table on a Sunday morning, sheets of newspaper strewn between them as she passed the cream cheese. Or they’d bump into his friend on the subway and he’d say, “This is Lucy, my daughter.” Or she’d notice he was out of dish soap and pick some up at the bodega. Or she’d be the kind of person who calls it a bodega. Or he’d ask her to swing by his office, and he’d give her too many detailed directions, forgetting that she could pull up the route on her phone in five seconds. She wouldn’t interrupt him, even if it was a little annoying, even though they’d have had this same type of conversation too many times, because she’d know that’s just how he is.
Scraps. She wanted scraps. He’d apparently been right on the brink of giving them to her. And he changed his mind? It kills her.
Vivian asks if they can swap letters. Lucy hesitates, feeling exposed, but hands it over anyway. They’re in the trenches together. As she reads Vivian’s, it sinks in that Lucy was able to love him in a less complicated way because he truly treated her differently. Even while apologizing to her for serious sins, there’s an undercurrent of warmth. Meanwhile, he seems to have held Vivian at arm’s length, too afraid to show her any of his good qualities for fear of accidentally revealing his bad ones. It’s strange to see proof that in certain ways, Vivian got the short end of the stick. Jealous as Lucy was, she wouldn’t trade her relationship with her dad for all of Vivian’s financial privilege.
“Wow,” Vivian says, when she reaches the end of Lucy’s letter.
“What do you think?” Lucy asks.
Vivian’s nostrils flare. She pulls her knees up to her chest. Half her pedicure has chipped off.
“I can’t,” she says, glaring out at the water. “He’s… ugh .”
Lucy just listens.
“I could strangle him. Even when he was doing ‘the right thing’ by finally coming clean, he still lied to me. He spun the story in his favor. He didn’t apologize.” She spits out the last word. “But he apologized to you.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Lucy says quietly.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Still.”
“It’s just wild to see your letter, how sweet and caring and… paternal he was with you. And I wonder if…if he loved you more, why did he stick around for me?”
Lucy has no words. She’s used to Vivian breaking her heart but not like this. Finally, she manages, “I don’t know. It wasn’t fair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Thirty feet away, Hank’s boat sways in the waves. He got what he wanted: his two girls at the lake for the summer.
“How do you feel about yours?” Vivian asks.
In despair , Lucy thinks. But instead, what comes out is, “I’m done with him. That letter would’ve meant everything to me back then. It could’ve changed my life. And he just…what, decided not to bother with giving this to me after all?”
Vivian nods. “He was a coward.”
“Why do you think he didn’t send these?” Lucy asks.
“Because he was a coward.”
Lucy frowns. “No, seriously.”
“That was me being serious.”
“Did something happen that made him change his mind? Maybe your mom brought him to couple’s therapy or maybe…”
Vivian thinks. “No, this was right when my grandma died. My mom’s mom. I bet he realized it’d be a particularly bad time to walk out on her.”
He couldn’t leave her. Celeste was the one person Hank leaned on in the aftermath of his parents’ deaths. Apparently, that would’ve been too cruel even for him.
“Was it kinder of him to stay and support her?” Lucy asks. “Or would it have been better to leave—not right then, but in a year or so—instead of carrying on a charade for the rest of his life?”
“I don’t know if ‘kinder’ is the right word. Maybe it was easier for him to keep plodding along. That’s what he did with us.”
“That’s cruel.”
“My mother knew about you. She could’ve chosen to leave years ago—she didn’t.”
Lucy holds one of her mom’s letters up to the light, but whatever’s inside has been folded once or twice over, so it’s impossible to make out whatever he wrote.
“My mom has to see these.”
Vivian
Dawn is working, so they invite her over that night for dinner. Suddenly, the afternoon seems endless; Vivian is dying to know what the letters say. The prospect of sitting around the house for the next few hours makes her antsy, so she decides to kill time by preparing a true feast. If the letters contain something terrible and wreak total havoc, at least Vivian can soften the blow with an exquisite meal.
She and Lucy drive over to Millie’s, a general store that carries quarts of milk, cartons of cigarettes, six-packs of Sam Adams, and dark blue speckled lobsters crawling slowly along the bottom of a long tank. If you know to ask for it, you can pay cash for a growler of moonshine out the back door. It’s owned and manned by Millie herself, who’s been around long enough to have probably sold Hank’s parents their first Maine lobster. She has steel gray hair pulled back in a waist-length braid and a colorful fox tattoo on her forearm. When Vivian and Lucy walk in, she’s playing a handheld game of Yahtzee.
“Lucy! I was so sorry to hear about your dad.” She gets up, knees creaking, and comes around the cash register to give her a hug. To Vivian, she asks, “Where are you visiting from?”
“Oh, no, I’m—I—I’ve been coming up every summer since I was born.”
She’s been here a dozen times, always alone, never making small talk or lingering for long. She wouldn’t expect Millie to remember her, but still, Vivian feels left out.
“This is Vivian, my half-sister,” Lucy says.
Millie gawks. “Your dad…?”
Lucy tries and fails to wrangle a smile. “The rumors are true.”
Vivian steers the conversation firmly. “We’re here for lobsters.”
Millie blinks and clears her throat. “You’re in luck—we got big ones today. They’re beauts.”
Vivian bends down to examine them. The lobsters crawl more slowly than turtles. Thick yellow rubber bands hold their claws together. They only turn bright red once they’re boiled.
“How big are they?”
“Bigger than the rat my second ex-husband calls a Chihuahua.” Millie winks. “Most are pound-’n’-a-halfers. We got a couple pound-’n’-a-quarters in there, too.”
Vivian asks for three, a pound and a half each. Millie plunges a gloved hand into the tank and drops the wiggling lobsters into a white paper bag.
Lucy
Lucy plays sous chef to Vivian’s head chef, and together, they prepare a classic Maine dinner to be enjoyed alfresco on the back deck. On the cedar picnic table, there are bright red lobsters, hot to the touch; hunks of melted butter infused with basil; a verdant salad bursting with cherry tomatoes and drizzled in homemade balsamic vinaigrette; and sunny ears of corn wrapped in tin foil. A bottle of pale gold chardonnay sweats in an ice bucket, and there’s an assortment of silver lobster crackers and tiny forks made for digging out that precious, tender, speckled meat.
When Dawn arrives, she offers to help in the kitchen, but Vivian shoos her away. “No, go sit, enjoy.”
Outside, Lucy’s mom braces herself against the deck’s railing and soaks in the view. The sky is inching toward sunset, and tonight’s already promises to be spectacular. There’s a rosy glow with fluffy lilac clouds. Peach streaks of light will soon turn to fiery orange embers. A water-skier skims the lake’s surface in wide, arcing curves. Sweet barbecue smoke and Creedence Clearwater Revival wafts from a few hundred feet away.
Dawn exhales. “I haven’t been here in years. I’ve missed this.”
Lucy remembers her mom picking her up and dropping her off in the driveway here as a kid, but she’s never seen her mom enjoy Fox Hill Lake like this, though she must have spent countless summer nights here before Lucy was born.
“Is it weird to be back?”
“It’s like stepping back in time.”
Vivian ducks into the house to grab plates and handfuls of silverware.
Once she’s out of earshot, Dawn says to Lucy, “I can’t believe she’s giving it all up.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Lucy says quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“She said we can make the decision together—to sell it or keep it.”
Dawn is stunned. “Shut up. Seriously?”
Lucy grapples for words. “I mean, she sounds serious.”
“You want to keep it, right?”
It’s a good question. “I—”
The sliding door thwacks open. Lucy doesn’t want to get into it in front of Vivian.
Somehow, they make it through dinner while safely skirting around any sensitive subjects. They crack open claws and tails and discard the shells in a communal bowl. Lucy can actually taste the harmony between the buttery chardonnay and their feast—maybe she’s finally learned something through osmosis. When they take a sunset cruise, Vivian drives at precisely four miles per hour, what she’s christened Wine Speed because it’s the fastest you can go without spilling a drop. (According to her. Lucy could probably pull off a quicker, smoother ride, but won’t burst her bubble.)
Mostly, Dawn unearths more stories about Hank that Lucy’s never heard before: the two of them capsizing the kayak when she swatted at him for making some dumb joke; sneaking a handle of whiskey into disco night at the bowling alley; her and Cindy cheering on their men as they furiously competed in a swimming race to the island (Hank won, so Eric paid the whole bar tab that night). The stories are sweet. Lucy hopes the letters won’t tarnish those memories.
Once they’ve docked, Lucy says, “Mom, we found something in the house that we think you should take a look at.”
Dawn smooths down her bangs, whipped into a frenzy during the ride. “What is it?”
Vivian finishes knotting the last line and gives it a tug. It’s well done—Hank would approve. “I stumbled across a box of our dad’s things. It looks like he wrote a stack of letters to you and never sent them.”
Dawn blanches.
“Hope you don’t mind if I take a little more,” Dawn nervously says back at the house, pouring herself another glass of chardonnay. “Liquid courage.”
Vivian pushes the shoebox her way. “Please, go ahead.”
“God, I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she says, but she pulls off the lid and takes a shaky, reverent breath. “But I might as well get it over with.”
She unseals the first envelope, careful not to tear it, and slides out a folded piece of notebook paper. Even in thirds, Lucy can see it’s covered top to bottom in dark ink. Dawn’s hand quivers as she begins to read. She raises a hand to her mouth. Curiosity eats Lucy from the inside out, but the whole point of waiting was to give her mom the respect of having the first—and maybe only—look.
Eventually, looking pale, Dawn passes the letter to Lucy. It’s dated July 7, 1994—mere days after Hank learned of Lucy’s existence, and apparently, what would’ve been their fifth anniversary if they’d stayed together. It’s full of shame and regret. “I was shocked. I panicked. And God, I’m sorry for it. I love you, but you deserve so much better than a guy like me, Dawn, and so does our little girl. What’s her name?” A small splotch in the margins of that letter is a shade darker than the rest of the page. A tear? Lucy’s never seen him get emotional, not once.
“Can I?” Vivian asks gently.
Lucy hands it over. “I don’t understand why he didn’t reply to the letter I sent after his bachelor party.”
“Maybe he thought it was too late, you’d already moved on?” Lucy guesses.
“Fine, but later? He knew I was single. He could’ve come back to me—no offense to you or your mom, Vivian.”
“None taken whatsoever.”
Dawn’s right. When Lucy spent summers with Hank, he’d occasionally broach the subject of her mom’s relationship status with the same casual curiosity he had about her friends’ lives. She answered with the heavy-handed spiel of a salesman. No, she doesn’t have time to date right now, but she’s doing great. Amazing, actually. We were at Cindy Monahan’s wedding last month and the groom’s cousin kept asking her to dance all night. Do people like Lucy ever stop harboring a secret wish that their parents will get back together?
“Maybe there’s another letter in here that responds to the one you wrote the year before,” Lucy says.
Dawn carefully folds the paper along its original creases and slides it back into the envelope, treating it like a valuable antique. They repeat that routine again and again, mostly in silence, as they unpack all thirty. He wrote one a year on their anniversary.
The pages from the mid-’90s have a formal distance to them. He says he’s giving her space—partly out of respect, a desire not to interrupt her life, and partly out of self-loathing. “I hope this finds you well. That is, if I ever find the resolve to send this.” By ’97, the letters sound more content. Lucy spends Julys with him now. “I wish you could’ve seen her in the kayak. I took her for a ride—with a life jacket, of course—and she got such a kick out of it, asking when we’d find ‘fishies.’?” Lucy blinks back tears at that one. She’s never heard her parents bond over her.
There’s another shift in tone around the new millennium. He makes veiled hints to a less-than-blissful marriage in some letters, and outright statements in others. “Celeste believes divorce traumatizes children forever, but is the alternative any better?”
“Could’ve been,” Vivian mutters darkly.
And then: “I made a mistake. I hurt you. I chose wrong.” Another: “As I write this, Lucy is sitting on the end of the dock, splashing her feet in the water. I’m so happy she loves it here. The only thing missing is you.” A small sob escapes Dawn.
“Mom?”
She shakes her head, lips pressed together. “Let’s keep going.”
They tick up through the aughts and 2010s. It’s late—crickets chirp in the navy darkness—but none of them wants to stop. He offered resigned well-wishes during the years Dawn dated Dennis and Wayne. There are compliments on how well she’s raising Lucy (“so mature, so funny, such a brilliant kid”), and wistful nostalgia (“Remember when we went up to Acadia to sleep under the stars?”), and unabashed longing (“Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what could’ve been—I couldn’t stop if I tried” ). Every single letter is signed with “love.”
“I’ve never heard him sound like that,” Vivian comments. “So lovesick.”
“Really?” Dawn asks.
“About my mother? No way.”
Dawn lets out a weak little “oh.”
The more they read, the more heartbreaking the letters become. He must have known he wouldn’t have the courage to send these, either. Still, he wrote them faithfully every year anyway. Dawn finishes ’24’s letter and reaches for the next, but of course, there isn’t one. A heavy hush falls over the room.
After a moment, Lucy asks, “Mom, what do you think?”
She pushes back her bangs in frustration. “I thought he was done with me! I mean, how could I have known any of this? He iced me out.”
“Would you have gone back to him?” Vivian asks. “If you knew. If you could’ve.”
“I wanted him to want me. And he did, so…” Dawn offers a weak smile. “Everything would’ve been different.”
If Hank had left Celeste for Dawn in the ’90s, Lucy would’ve grown up with a solid nuclear family, sister included, probably in New York. Fox Hill would be just a kitschy vacation spot to her. She could work in publishing, maybe even write. Patrick would be an unimaginable stranger. Would Hank be alive if he hadn’t spent thirty years brokenhearted?
“I can’t believe I could’ve had all this for real.” Dawn sweeps her hand over the pile of Hank’s true desires. “He could’ve been here when…”
She doesn’t need to finish that thought out loud. When her parents died. When she got sick. When the diner nearly closed in 2020. Dawn puts her face in her hands. Her shoulders shake with sobs. Lucy gets up to hug her.
“I’m not crying because I’m sad,” Dawn insists. “I don’t like who he turned into, this uptight suit who could barely emote, who couldn’t bother to show up for any of us, not even his own kids. It’s just overwhelming.”
“I know,” Lucy says.
“You probably shouldn’t tell your mom about this,” Dawn says.
“Mom, you can’t ask her to keep secrets,” Lucy says. “There’s been enough of those.”
“No, I won’t,” Vivian decides. “She’s already a wreck. I mean, what would she even do with this information at that point?”
“I don’t know,” Dawn says.
Lucy has to wonder: What will her mom do with it?