CHAPTER TEN
Thursday, March 30
Andrew
From behind his desk, Andrew watched the 11:00 a.m. drawbridge reach into the morning sky, while his thoughts circled around the son he’d never met. He recalled himself at nineteen—horny, arrogant, naively optimistic—before he pulled his laptop across his desk and tapped Max’s name into Google. When he located the boy’s social media profiles, they were sparse, the most recent posts from over a year before. He clicked on an album aptly titled Salt Life , and a dozen or so tiles lined up on his glowing screen. Andrew recognized Max among a group of five boys in their midteens, smiling back at him from the immaculate white deck of what looked to be a thirty-foot fishing boat. The boys’ tan arms were draped over one another’s shoulders, and all wore crisp white T-shirts silk-screened with various vibrant swordfish and marlin.
There were a few far-off shots of choppy, slate-blue waves dotted with surfers beneath a low, threatening sky. Then a close-up of Max beside another boy, holding their respective surfboards, flashing beaming smiles.
The pictures ignited an insatiable curiosity in Andrew, and he scooted his chair closer to his desk. Rapidly clicking through the slides animated the images, and Andrew watched as Max ran a hand through his wet hair and turned to laugh at the boy beside him. This must be Javi. Andrew’s best friend was dark haired and shorter than he was, and it was like looking at Nick and himself two decades in the past, leaving him with a cloudy sense of déjà vu.
His fingertip crept across the trackpad. The next set of pictures had been taken in the backyard of a sprawling stone house, in a lagoon-like pool built out of the same gray stones as the house in the background. It was filled with a dozen or so teenagers, and Andrew recognized the same group of boys mixed among bikini-clad girls. The boys were noticeably older, the party time-stamped nearly two years after the photos on the boat. In one of the pictures, Max stood in a swimming pool, his arm resting on the edge, a red plastic cup in his hand. Beer cans littered the side of the pool, along with more red cups. The glass table behind Max housed half-empty bottles of clear and dark liquid. Andrew zoomed in on the image, over his son’s shoulder, and shuddered, the memory of the warm burn of a healthy pour of hard liquor spreading in his belly.
Still zoomed in, Andrew passed over Max’s face. The boy’s eyes were shadowy and unfocused, and a weight—solid and heavy like one of the stones surrounding the pool—settled in Andrew’s stomach. He recognized his own face in Max, from the period when he’d passed through each day in a drunken haze, detached from the world around him.
Andrew snapped his laptop shut. He’d thought gaining insight into Max’s life might quell some of his curiosity, but the expression on his son’s face in the pool etched in his mind. It was such a stark contrast to the carefree boy on the boat, and he wondered what had happened that had left Max so deeply unhappy. A picture of his son had started to form. Max was a whole person, faceted and complex, and Andrew had gotten only a tiny glimpse into who he was. It wasn’t enough, not by far, but with every detail he learned, he craved more.
He’s like you, in a lot of ways . Kathryn’s words whirled in his mind. The most intimate parts of what made Andrew who he was had been replicated without his knowledge, and he wondered what other parts of himself existed inside Max that couldn’t be captured by the shutter snap of a photo. The boy who shared his face seemed to also share the darkest parts of him, the part that had nearly taken his life.
His phone buzzed, and Andrew startled. Kathryn? He snatched it. Nick: Lunch?
Andrew’s palms tingled, but his mind switched tracks. An olive branch from Nick? And a tick of curiosity: Nick’s job allowed him insights into the lives of the residents of Delray Beach. Nick must be privy to Max’s activities. Likely privy to things even Kathryn may not know.
An hour later, Andrew and Nick piled out of Nick’s SUV in front of their favorite Cuban hole-in-the-wall. The bell on the door chimed while Nick nodded at the owner, a man with a bald dome of a head who sat at a corner table, reading the newspaper. The sunlight was muted through the grimy window, scrawled with faded chalk paint.
Nick didn’t waste time. “You’ve been talking to Kat?” he asked after they’d ordered. They each sat with a tiny Styrofoam cup of sweet coffee before them.
“Yup.” Andrew forced indifference in his tone, concealing his excitement.
Nick’s eyes were shadowy, and he wore a few days’ worth of stubble. “You look tired. What’s going on?” Andrew probed.
Nick rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. “Some shit’s going on at work.”
“Again?” Andrew hadn’t meant the word to come out pointedly. Nick stopped rubbing his eye, but didn’t respond. Andrew asked, “Care to elaborate?”
The bald man sat Cuban sandwiches before them, the bread glistening with melted butter, then shuffled back to his seat in the corner and unfolded his newspaper.
“Not really.” Nick yanked a napkin from the caddy. “Just more bureaucratic bullshit. Not everyone gets to work in air-conditioned offices, kissing rich people’s asses like you and Kat do.”
You and Kat. The first bridge between Andrew, Nick, and Kathryn. Somehow they’d all found their way back into one another’s lives. Only now Amy was in the mix, too. “You don’t think I have to deal with bureaucratic bullshit at an investment firm?”
Nick made a noncommittal noise. “You don’t have to see what I see at your job. The violence. Blood literally on the street.”
That was true, Andrew conceded, but only to himself, and sipped his coffee.
“So.” Nick shifted. “Kat won’t let you meet the kid?”
A muted TV bolted to the ceiling played a silent soap opera. “Max has had a rough time recently, and Kathryn doesn’t want to do anything to upset him.”
“Yeah. Rough.” Nick snorted. “You obviously don’t know Kat. She’s good at stringing things along for as long as it suits her.”
Irritation brewed. Just because Max was rich didn’t mean the boy hadn’t struggled. And Nick insulting Kathryn flared something deep within him. But he bit back his words and chewed. “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Nick closed his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? Is that what you want? An apology. But I told you, Kat told me not to.”
Nick’s loyalty to Kathryn still burned.
“And the kid he ... got in some trouble recently.” Nick looked at his food. “Drinking and stuff.”
A hot spike of fear. “What else?” Andrew pushed.
Nick shrugged. “Spoiled-rich-kid shit. He runs around with these other brats partying. Popping pills. None of them ever face any consequences until they end up dead or in rehab ...”
Nick’s words faded to a din, and Andrew’s palms tingled, a familiar, panicky heat rising in his chest. Acid burned his legs, like he’d run a marathon. He raked his fingers through his hair. “The drinking. The drugs. Was it just high school–kid shit? Or is it—is he—like me?”
Nick’s eyes danced across Andrew’s face. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “But trust me, Drew, it’s best to stay far away from Kat and that kid.” Nick was almost begging, but his desperation didn’t register; heat rose in Andrew’s face, and the undercurrent of fear rushed to the surface. He thought of Max’s eyes in the photos by the pool. The resignation behind them. Andrew had spent years running from the darkness inside him, but if it was alive and well inside the son he’d never met, it could be for any future children Andrew and Amy may have. The secrets he was hiding from his wife were adding up, each one a stone on a wall, getting higher between them.
“When are you going to tell Amy?” Nick asked, as if he could read Andrew’s guilty thoughts.
Amy was so absorbed with her job, she hadn’t suggested another visit to Dr. Cassidy, hadn’t raised the subject of IVF again. Andrew gripped his Styrofoam cup. “I need to find the right time. It’s a delicate situation—”
“Which you’re making less delicate by going to dinner with your ex?”
Andrew dropped his arms into his lap. “Amy’s under a lot of pressure. I’m ... I’m trying to learn everything I can about Max before I tell her. It’s twenty years of my son’s life that were stolen from me.”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t waste my time.”
And there it was again: something in Nick’s tone that spiked the hair on Andrew’s arms. But he told himself it was the proximity to Nick’s firearm, strapped to his side, which had always made him uneasy.
“What else do you know about him?” Andrew asked, suddenly desperate for any details about his son. “Where does he hang out?”
Nick dabbed his lips with a napkin. “Why?”
Andrew’s curiosity was insatiable, but he tried to hold his tone steady. “It drives me crazy that everyone knows this kid, my kid, but me. I’m sure you know what he’s up to. Something. Anything.”
Nick’s face tilted toward Andrew; then he gave a sigh of surrender. “He doesn’t go to school, doesn’t have a job. His best buddy is Javier Quintero; he’s the one with that obnoxious orange Jeep, and his parents own a handful of nightclubs in Miami Beach. They spend their time surfing and cruising around town with fifteen-dollar smoothies from Juice Papi.”
A dusty fan stirred the still air above them. “What else?”
“They belong to the gym on West Atlantic, a different one than the gym Kathryn goes to—I guess he doesn’t want to work out with his mom—but don’t go looking for him there. Stalking is a crime.”
“I’m not going to look for him.”
“Anyway.” Nick balled his greasy wrapper. “Stick around this town long enough and he’ll pop up. Delray is full of gossipy people, and sooner or later, everyone’s secrets come out.”
But Andrew was soaking in the details. Max’s world sat a few miles from Andrew’s house, his beach the same Andrew ran each morning. The backdrop of Max’s life was vibrant Atlantic Avenue. His son was so close, yet untouchable.
A memory of Kathryn leaning into his chest in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant rose to his mind with a bubble of optimism; maybe in time Kathryn would open up, she’d let him in, and he could finally get the answers he’d always needed from her. There was a chance he could get to know Max—all of him.
And maybe he’d find the courage to tell Amy all the things she didn’t know about him.
At home that evening, Amy stepped through the garage door into the kitchen, fatigue emanating from her body, her eyes sunken. “Bike week is officially upon us. The ER is overwhelmed, and it’s going to be a long weekend. I’m going to get a few hours of sleep and head back in.”
“You’re going back to work? Babe, you look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted. My back has been throbbing all day,” Amy snapped, a hand on her hip. “But this is the job. We both knew this when I accepted.”
The crackle of a disagreement brewed. Andrew relieved her of her lunch bag and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Take a shower, dinner’s almost ready. I’ll pack extra for you to take to work.”
He slid chicken breasts into hot oil, his thoughts circling back to every word he and Kathryn had exchanged when they’d met for dinner, examining them like stones found on the beach. The inertia of the things he was hiding from his wife swelled through him.
Andrew’s life had collided with Kathryn’s on a spring day at the tail end of his junior year of college. Carlisle University sat just outside Gainesville, and on that Friday afternoon, after their final class of the week, he and Nick had meandered the shady grounds, giddy with freedom, the weekend stretching before them. A keg had been procured by a nearby frat house, and Andrew had been in the midst of coaxing Nick to join him that evening. It was their dance: Nick would come out; Andrew just needed to work him. Yes, the frat bros were douchebags , Andrew conceded, but the draw of free beer could not be ignored.
In the crowd ahead, a towering girl caught Andrew’s eye. Her long chestnut hair spilled in waves down to the middle of her back, the April sunlight infusing it with a honey-red glow. Andrew nudged Nick and motioned with his chin. I’ll get her number, just watch .
Andrew called out, and the girl turned her body halfway to regard him, and her full lips pursed. The gentle tilt of her head and a blush to her neck nudged his confidence. “I’m sorry, my watch broke.” He motioned to his wrist. “Do you have the time?”
It was a lame excuse, they both knew, but the smile she gave him—curious, full of possibility—told him it had worked, and she didn’t concoct an imaginary meeting to escape. Instead, she fell in step with him and Nick and the three chatted as they strolled across campus. When they parted ways, Andrew asked Kathryn for her number, and though he was the one to call her two days later, she led the relationship in every way from that day forward.
Kathryn was basking in the freedom of her last few weeks of college before she earned her business degree, while Andrew had one more year ahead of him before his graduation, which felt like an eternity. Kathryn merged into his life seamlessly. Her smile was electric, her laugh unapologetic. She was confident in her place in the world, yet grounded. She was assertive in the way she introduced herself into his life, into his group of friends, even in the way she’d unbuttoned his jeans when they made out two weeks later, the way she wrapped her hand around him with a gasp of approval. Kathryn kept him out late on school nights, pulled him from his studies, kissing his neck until she had his undivided attention before she dragged him down on the bed with her.
In the summer, without the distraction of school, their days flowed together. They packed his car with their friends and drove to the beach, where they hauled a red-and-white plastic cooler full of beer across the sand. They spent the entire day there, lounging in cheap plastic chairs, Andrew’s eyes on Kathryn’s bronze skin against her sun-faded beach towel. When the sun set and the air grew chilly, they built a bonfire, the sand around them littered with empty beer cans. Andrew grabbed a sweatshirt from the trunk of his car, and Kathryn pulled it over her head and wrapped her arms around him, her delicate fingertips poking out of the sleeves.
They slept until late morning, the curtains drawn, and he flipped pancakes with Kathryn perched on the kitchen counter. She reached out, pulling him close, her long legs wrapped around his waist, and when Andrew turned back to the frying pan, smoke billowed in the air.
Andrew’s mother and stepfather were an aggressive picture of toothy-smiled upper middle class, and had modeled an affectionate, polite partnership, focused on the logistical aspects of raising Andrew and his younger brother, Timothy. Andrew fit into their portrait of glossy suburban life with his toothy-smiled, blond-haired, blue-eyed, middle-class Americana physicality.
In his mother and stepfather, Andrew had never seen the fire that existed between him and Kathryn, hadn’t known of its existence outside of a movie screen. When his love for her took hold of his life, he was blissfully surprised, and that summer he surrendered, letting it blind him to the realities of life. By July, those romantic movies and sappy love songs started to make sense, and he’d begun to believe the things he’d only read about before: that people were fated to meet, that their love was written in the stars , had existed long before the two of them had locked eyes.
Their future was a stretch of nothing but promise; he pictured the house they’d buy, the sparkle of a swimming pool, a lush lawn he’d obsess over. They would have it all, the summer vacations, the envy of their coupled friends. In the meantime, Andrew indulged himself in her exquisite body between his bedsheets. He was sure he had all of her, that Kathryn loved as much of him as she knew, that she might have the capacity to love all of him entirely. In the limited scope of a twenty-year-old boy, he attempted to articulate his feelings, reducing his sentiments down to two promises: I’ll study hard to build us a solid future. Then I’ll marry you.
Now, twenty years later, Andrew stared at his backyard, at the dull glint of his stainless-steel grill in the floodlight. This magnificent house was his. The living room window offered a stunning picture of a blue ribbon of the Atlantic. The world on the other side of the paned glass seemed alive, from the cadence of the tides to the towering palms that yielded to the whims of the wind, even if, inside, the space was still and sterile. He had everything he’d imagined, all the trimmings life could offer. Only the woman he’d envisioned sharing it with had changed.
He had Amy. He was the luckiest man alive. So why did he feel that flicker, like a dream he couldn’t remember, of what it would be like to throw it all away, just as he had all those years ago? Andrew had heard the time it takes to get over a relationship is half its length, but he knew that wasn’t true. Did he still crave a sense of closure he’d never gotten with Kathryn, or had he never truly gotten over her?
Amy’s footsteps came from behind, and he set two steaming dishes at the table and brushed his thoughts aside.
Amy lifted her fork. “I got tickets for the breast cancer research fundraiser. First week in May, just like last year.”
When he married Amy, he’d anticipated, in some form, the long hours, that he’d have to share this brilliant woman with the people who needed her. He didn’t mind carrying the bulk of the household tasks. But he hadn’t imagined donning a tuxedo and smiling for local newspapers at multiple charity events each year. The crowds. The cameras. His neck grew hot thinking about it. But after their fight, he had no interest in making waves. He speared a piece of chicken. “Pink tie again?”
“Pink tie.” A smile teased her face. “You know I can’t resist you in a tux.”
Andrew smiled at his plate. Amy filled the space, chatted about the hospital. Andrew knew she held back, that she spared him the most heartbreaking aspects of her job. He could tell when she lost a patient by the haunted look she’d carry for a few days and wondered when she would come across the case that would break her. He hoped he’d be there to catch her when it did.
After dinner, Amy went upstairs to shower, and Andrew loaded the washing machine. A white scrap of plastic fluttered from that day’s scrubs, and he bent to collect it from the cold tile. A corner, corrugated. A tampon wrapper? It wasn’t Amy’s usual brand, not a cheery yellow. Maybe she’d had to make do at the hospital. A deluge of relief. He’d been bought another month—another month to learn what he could about Max. Amy hadn’t agreed to take a break from trying to get pregnant, but she hadn’t raised the subject since the day of their appointment with Dr. Cassidy.
Andrew slipped between the sheets. Beside him, Amy dozed, and he worked his way close to her body, settling his face in the crook of her neck, relishing the time he had with her beside him before her alarm would blare and she’d slip away, leaving him to wake in an empty bed. Amy’s hands were rough from washing, despite the greasy, minty salve she applied each evening, but the rest of her body was impossibly soft, and Andrew let himself sink into her velvety warmth. In that moment, weighing everything Amy was facing—her mother’s cancer, her job—the idea of sharing the news of his secret son seemed downright cruel. Andrew had collected tiny bits of information about Max, but the evidence of the striking similarities between the two of them was already manifesting. The vivid image of Max’s expression in the swimming pool again slipped into his mind, and the draft from the air-conditioning vent sent a shudder through him, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck. Nick was right—Andrew couldn’t let Amy discover this secret by accident.
As he grew drowsy, a final thought slipped into his mind: he knew for certain no amount of time would help him get over Amy. It would be like his house burning to the ground, everything he’d worked for reduced to ash. So why did he feel like he was standing in front of his life, holding a lit match?