The Days I Loved You Most

Chapter Sixteen

Sixteen

Joseph

May 1969

Evelyn stands by the counter, beating eggs and directing Violet to sift flour as I tinker with the gas range, the pilot light out. Violet chatters as she rolls out dough for a piecrust for our Memorial Day party. “I still need a new dress. I’m not wearing anything from Jane’s old bin.”

At thirteen, she has started to resist the position as Jane’s little sister, her hand-me-downs, their shared bedroom kindling for contention on both sides.

Knowing her mother stews inside her house alone all day when she isn’t with us, Evelyn invited her over to help with preparations. Mrs. Saunders perches at the counter, squints at Violet’s technique. “Oh, not so thin, you’re going to rip it.”

Thomas, fifteen, sits at the table cramming for finals. He’s always studying, relentless about a good night’s sleep so he can go on early morning runs, homed in on enlisting in the air force and becoming a fighter pilot. We encourage him to meet up with friends, to ask girls on dates, but he insists he needs to focus. I’m torn. I’ve seen war. I know what it can do, what it really means. But it’s the one thing he speaks about with any enthusiasm, the only thing we can get him to talk about at all these days, and I can’t bring myself to steer him away.

Jane pokes through the refrigerator, covering the counter in an odd assortment of sandwich ingredients. Things have been especially rocky between her and Evelyn these last few months. Jane hates her curfew and keeping her music down, she holes up in her room most of the time listening to the news on the radio. She comes home smelling of beer, babbling and incoherent, and sneaks out after we forbid her from leaving the house. Most of it is normal teenage behavior, I rationalize, and truthfully, things between Jane and me have always been smooth; she’s smart and gets good grades, she’s independent like her mother, and I’ve always trusted her to make the right decisions in the end.

But recently, Jane announced she wants to take a year off before college, to move to Boston this fall, after she turns eighteen. She’ll rent an apartment with a friend and try to get a job at a newspaper or radio station. To get life experience, she says, before applying anywhere. We aren’t exactly pleased; we were sure Jane would be thrilled to go off to college, and had saved for it. But we know better than to force her. Still, Evelyn is struggling to let her go, knowing in a few months she’ll make mistakes without our safety net beneath her. Last night, they fought about Jane’s graduation. I walked in on them, corralled in their doorways.

Jane braced against the door trim, cocked toward her mother. “It’s stupid, and a waste of time. I get my diploma, whether I go or not.”

Evelyn’s voice was low, threatening, her arms crossed. “That’s not the point. You worked hard to get here, what’s the alternative? Drinking with your friends?”

Jane screeched, “I’m not going! Have you seen what’s going on in this world? You and everyone else, you’re focused on all the wrong things.”

“What’s going on in the world has nothing to do with you, or this conversation. You have so much potential—”

“This is the shit I’m talking about! You don’t care about anything that actually matters, you never have.”

“Jane, enough!” I yelled, late on the scene, as she slammed her door and Evelyn stormed into our room. When we went to lock up for the night, there was money missing from Evelyn’s purse, and Jane’s bedroom windows left open, her bed empty. I want to address it, but reprimanding Jane in front of everyone, especially her grandmother, would only make it worse.

“We actually have something to tell you all. Thomas, Jane, are you listening?”

Thomas glances up from his homework, silently agreeing to pay attention.

“Kind of,” Jane mumbles, her head stuck in the refrigerator.

“We hired someone to work here, to help out for the busy season. So you can enjoy being teenagers, so we can all enjoy this last summer before Jane leaves.” Evelyn says this, a peace offering we had planned weeks ago, but there is an edge to her voice now, the missing ten-dollar bill not forgotten.

“What? Who?” Jane asks, her mouth full of sandwich.

“A law student from Yale, his name is Sam. He applied through Professor Chen, you remember him?” Her question is met by blank looks from the kids. “You should, he’s stayed with us for years...well anyway, he set up some referral program all over the state for course credit, and asked if we wanted to participate. One student works here in exchange for room and board, and writes a paper or something about it at the end? I’m not sure exactly how it works. All I know is it’s an extra set of hands. I know it’ll be a bit different around here, but we’re hoping it frees us up, gives us more time as a family since it’s our last summer all together,” Evelyn says, her excitement peeking through. “He’ll start Memorial Day.”

Jane chews her final bite slowly before answering. “You hired some strange guy to live here without even telling us? Great. Really nice.” She drops her plate into the sink with a clatter. “I’ll be in my room.”

“Jane—” I call out, but she is already up the stairs, her only response the slam of her bedroom door.

Sam begins with us that Monday. He takes the train from New Haven and I pick him up. He is from Madison, Wisconsin, he tells me on our drive, and he is looking forward to a summer spent on the coast. He is lean, in the way that suggests he hasn’t done much hard labor, his arm muscles undefined beneath his white T-shirt, but there’s a certain confidence to him, and something else, like he could hold his own in a fight. On the drive we share brief histories, how my family had run our inn for generations, how he spent the last few summers in different parts of the country, seeking new experiences as a way to gain perspective, live a little between his demanding academic years.

“I spent last summer working along the Missouri River, trying to see what Mark Twain saw, when he was there working on steamboats. He’s a Hartford man, too, you know. Raised his family right here in Connecticut. I read all his work while I was down there.”

He says it casually, without hubris, and his easy smile reminds me of someone I can’t place, Tommy, maybe, but not quite, and it makes me feel like I know him, somehow. His face is good-looking in an obvious way, magnetic, something part of me wishes I had known before bringing him home to my teenage daughters. He lounges in the car beside me like it belongs to him, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be here, arm out the open window, and as we round the bend to Bernard Beach he says, “I can see why you’ve never left this place.” I like him immediately.

Evelyn and Violet are draping red, white and blue streamers onto the porch when they hear us arrive, linen-covered tables scatter the lawn, set with pitchers of lemonade and iced tea, croquet wickets and mallets in the grass. Sam lifts his single suitcase from the trunk, and waves a hand in greeting, and they meet us on the driveway.

“All this for me?” He winks at Violet, before shaking Evelyn’s hand, holding it a second too long. Violet giggles and thumbs her curls, adjusts the hem of her sundress, looking suddenly a bit older than I would like her to, giddy with his brief attention.

“Is this not how everyone welcomes new employees?” Evelyn says, gesturing around at the party. “Forgive us, we’ve never done it.”

Sam gives a hearty laugh. “Trust me—” his gaze lingers on Evelyn “—this is already better than any place I’ve worked.”

And it can’t be my wife, blushing over this comment, pink splotches rising on her chest. I consider saying something, telling him to watch his mouth, but no, it’s in my head. Surely, it’s not what he meant, who would be so bold their first day of work? A harmless compliment, a reference to the beach, to the party, to this beautiful summer day. This stranger thrust into our sanctuary setting us off-kilter. A kid. Too handsome for his own good, maybe, used to a world where doors open, where women can be made to feel beautiful with a glance.

We usher him inside, where we find Thomas at the table, bent over his textbooks. Sam cocks his head to read the spines.

“Geometry proofs...man, I used to hate those. Until I realized it’s like winning an argument, a lot like what I do now, actually. Saying something and backing it up, line by line, until no one can disagree.” Thomas looks up at him, the faintest smile on his lips. “I’m Sam, by the way. Sorry to interrupt.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s, yeah, I think about it that way too. That’s funny.” Thomas puts his pencil down. “Thomas.”

“Let me know if you need a study partner, I’m happy to help. Although from the looks of it,” he adds, drumming the covers of the books with his knuckles, “you have it under control.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” Thomas says, concluding the longest conversation any of us have had with him in weeks.

We give Sam a brief tour, Violet leading the way, and give him some time to unpack and get settled in his room. Violet leaves to finish crafting centerpieces of driftwood and seashells, and we are back in the kitchen slicing tomatoes and chopping lettuce, burger toppings for later, when he rejoins us.

“How can I help?” he asks, as Jane plods down the stairs in a top that shows too much of her midriff. She stops at the landing when she sees him.

“Actually, Sam, meet our oldest daughter, Jane. Why don’t you two head outside and set up the chairs?” Evelyn says, surprising me. I brace for Jane’s resistance, hoping a fight doesn’t break out in front of Sam, at least not on the first day.

“Sure,” Jane says, agreeable in a way that is disconcerting, and he follows her out back.

“You really think that’s a good idea?” I ask, eyeing the two of them as Jane guides Sam to the storage shed.

“Sam’s in college. Maybe he can convince her in a way we can’t.” A benefit to this temporary hire that hadn’t occurred to me, but had been clearly tallied by Evelyn. I watch them together as we chop, Jane’s head tipped back in laughter, a sound I barely remember, setting up the party to usher in the summer season, her last with us. Sam gestures animatedly as they unclench folding chairs, closed tight like all the years of Jane’s resentment, one by one, open to the sun.

We get into a flow quicker than I expect. Sam and Evelyn tag team most of the front desk operations, check-ins and checkouts, and I handle back of house, turning rooms and tackling projects I’ve been putting off. Regulars stop me in the halls to comment on how wonderful Sam is, how helpful, how welcoming. Hiring him does what we intended, cuts our work significantly, but now it is not only our new employee’s help that we have. Jane slices cantaloupe beside Evelyn in the kitchen, lingers by the desk, answering phones and taking messages and chatting with Sam. Violet, enamored, pops up everywhere, seemingly anticipating his needs, showing how to jiggle the knob on the linen closet when it sticks, and where to find the 1970 calendar for guests who want to return next summer, and how to properly fold a fitted sheet. Thomas even chops wood outside when he sees Sam forming a pile, and I overhear him asking questions about Yale, about his classes and professors, life on campus. Not going to college had never bothered me before. I know enough to navigate my way through our ledgers, but Sam makes it sound like an awakening, learning about yourself more than the texts, the deepest knowledge that I always envied in Evelyn and Tommy. Regret creeps up for the first time, an opportunity missed.

One set of hands hired for the summer becomes four with the unexpected participation from our children, and there is more help than we need, not enough to do in this inn usually run by two. We throw barbecues for guests and neighbors, the whole yard thick with the tantalizing smell of meat and smoke. Sam shows Evelyn how to marinate chicken thighs in Cajun spices, something he picked up in New Orleans, our tongues sharp with the heat. We carry beach chairs overhead at low tide, claiming spots on the sandbars, staying until the water rises past our knees. Dinner parties of clams baked on the half shell and buttery lobsters devolve into dancing, couples slinking off to darkened corners of the beach. Mornings nursing headaches, foggy recollections tinged with embarrassment. Bonfires in the sand late into the night, our voices carrying out to Captain’s Rock, laughter and liquor shared by flickering flames, faces lit by the moon and fire, foamy waves rolling in the dark.

One afternoon, Evelyn and I recline under a cloud-strewn sky. Jane pushes Sam beneath the water at high tide, surfacing on his shoulders, challenging Thomas and Violet to a chicken fight. Violet, no match for Jane, is tackled quickly, and roughly, and after the second round, she comes up sputtering and gasping, declaring the game over. She mopes back to the beach, wrapping herself in a towel.

Sam drags Evelyn out in her place, grabbing her hands to pull her to standing. Jane grumbles about having to be on Thomas’s shoulders, but Sam assures her it is only fair to switch up teams. Evelyn looks back at me, shakes her head as though she has no choice, but she is laughing, and goes easily.

Together in the waves, Sam submerges to lift her, Evelyn’s legs wrapped around his neck for only a moment, but I’m taken aback by the intimacy of it, the places of Evelyn only I know, pressed against the back of his hair, her swimsuit dripping, wet and friction and bare skin, before Jane topples her over. My chest tight with something I can’t quite name, as I watch from shore.

Evelyn

Sam walks into the kitchen shirtless, his hair damp from a morning swim. I am brewing coffee to set out for guests. Violet, Jane and Thomas are still asleep upstairs, Joseph is in town to pick up paint to fix the peeling porch.

“Coffee.” He sidles up beside me, holds out a mug with gratitude, a savior with a fresh pot. He smells of salt, of sweat, close enough the hair on his arms brushes mine.

I take a half step away, too aware of his body. “You were the one making whiskey sours.”

This summer with Sam is unlike any other. The freedom hired help can apparently bring, the valve we had wrenched so tight all these years, loosened. An instrument finally in tune. The ease of it, handing over tasks I had wrongly assumed only the two of us could manage. Our busiest season passing swiftly, smoothly, neither of us stretched to the breaking point. The renewed novelty of Bernard Beach in July, without having to rush back, without feeling guilty about what isn’t getting done. Parsing out moments of joy between tasks, watermelon eaten off the rind on the back porch, a sunrise stroll alone on the sandbar as the sky turns pink, the way I had always imagined it could be, but never quite was. Even Jane is changed, no longer scarce, her defenses down. The burden of the work awaiting us each morning, released. Giving us the ability to be irresponsible, spontaneous, for once, knowing it’s not all on us to steer the ship. Lets me stop resisting, holding on to everything outside of my control with a white-knuckle grip. To exist in the night instead of turning in early to bed, to be reckless, to feel young, to be young, to welcome that teenage feeling of endless summer, to give in to revelry.

“A man on the moon.” He flashes me a grin, closes the space between us once more. “We had to drink to that.”

Walter Cronkite on the television, a broadcast lasting twenty-seven hours. The grainy images we watched in our living room, the windows open to our cheers and our yells and the sticky summer air, drinks poured and records spun and we could barely hear the updates over the din, every now and then someone shushing the crowd, only to be drowned out again by the laughter and clinking glasses. Neil Armstrong in his space suit, the American flag lifted as though by a breeze, an astronaut achieving the unbelievable. A man, like us. Walking on the moon. The future, limitless, no longer capped by the sky. The world a place of magic, of mystique, once more.

“It’s still hard to believe,” I say, turning to rest my back against the counter, facing him.

“Oh come on.” He sips from his mug, eyes on mine, teasing me, reading me, seeing me in ways that are unsettling. “We knew this was only a matter of time.”

“Well, sure.” I feign competence, indifference. “NASA has been working on it for a while.” I search for specifics, something to show I’m not so easily impressed, a moon landing a footnote on a long list of incredible things I’ve seen. “It was bound to happen sooner than later.”

“Of course,” he agrees, laughing. “But geez, Evelyn. You’re a tough one to impress.” Turning the tables on me once more, conversations with Sam a tennis match, a volley I try to keep up with at every serve. “A guy may as well not even try.” He winks, and my stomach flutters. “Shower time. I’ll be there if you need me.”

The warmth between my legs startles me, the image of him naked between the stream of water, waiting for me. I immediately banish the thought. I could be his mother. This is how Sam speaks to everyone. I’ve seen him make old ladies blush, regular guests who stop by the front desk asking the way to the beach, requesting extra towels they never use. At bonfires, the tales of the women he’s slept with, shared past midnight across embers, told not as conquests but as invitations to imagine him doing so. To imagine myself, what it would feel like to experience a different body, sweaty and pressing, against my own.

Sam’s twenty-three, I tell myself, and that’s how people are these days, freer with sex than we ever were, promiscuous now because of the pill, and open about it, an adjustment of our expectations, nothing more.

Then what is it that makes me eager to get downstairs, to hope he’s awake, to catch him alone, to bask in the heat of his attention? The conversations that keep me guessing, have me lying awake, rethinking my answers, what I could have said, the different ways I could have preened, shown my feathers. The performances he begs for since he discovered I play piano, an interest we share. “I could listen to you play all day,” he murmured once as he passed through the study, as though this hobby of mine is something sexy, smoke passed between parted lips. Something worth chasing once more because Sam says so, because he makes me feel like it’s not too late, because he understands the one thing I’ve always had to explain, without me saying a word.

Joseph

Jane’s eighteenth birthday falls on a sunny Saturday in late August, the final stretch of summer that feels both infinite and fleeting. Mrs. Saunders is beside me at the counter, threading cloth napkins into rings adorned with starfish. Sam and Evelyn are setting up outside, Violet and Thomas tasked with hanging linens and folding towels and sweeping the porch, Jane still fast asleep in her room.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do without Sam after Labor Day,” I say, watching as he and Evelyn recover a tablecloth carried on a breeze, hold either end and secure it with clamps.

“Really? I’ll be glad to see him gone. Inserts himself where he doesn’t belong, if you ask me,” Mrs. Saunders says, her gaze held a second too long on my wife outside, the exact moment Evelyn playfully shoves Sam, before going back to rolling napkins.

Usually I ignore her criticisms, often off base and steeped in envy, but as she says it, instances lift in my mind. Sam rubbing sunscreen on Evelyn’s back that morning I was occupied on the roof ladder. Showing her how to mix vodka and ginger beer and lime juice, topping her off each time. Cramped together on one piano bench, trading performances. How he strips his bathing suit off under his towel, hanging it to dry while he waits his turn for the outdoor shower, naked except for the towel at his waist.

I find myself peeking through the kitchen window too often, until I feel Mrs. Saunders watching me, too, my attention a confirmation I never meant to give.

Jane stops halfway down the stairs, already dressed in her bikini, her disappointment evident that her entrance was wasted on her father and grandmother.

“He’s out back,” I say, jutting my thumb in Sam’s direction, eager to break up the twosome outside. “Happy birthday, Janey.”

She grins, and says, “Eighteen, finally!” and nearly dances down to meet us, planting a kiss on my cheek, to my astonishment, before rushing out the screen door into the glaring late morning sun.

“I wonder why she’s so excited to turn eighteen,” Mrs. Saunders says dryly, as Jane leaps onto Sam’s back, exposing the little modesty her bathing suit bottom covered.

I dry wineglasses from last night in silence, unsure how to respond without her reading into all the things I don’t intend to say.

We work with haste all morning, eager to get to the beach, and soon the sand is scattered with bodies stretched on towels slathered in baby oil, Jane’s friends making wide circles in the water, smoke from their cigarettes going out to sea. Sam pulls his chair up alongside the other side of Evelyn’s, Jane on his left. I overhear them all talking, impassioned snippets about a commune out in California, a trip he was planning to Morocco, some pilgrimage for spiritual enlightenment, the anti-war movement, but I am two chairs away, too far to engage in a conversation not meant for me. I try to think of something interesting to add, something Maelynn said once about her travels, maybe, but come up empty.

The day sinks into night, the party spilling out onto our lawn, guests as always interspersed and welcome to join in the festivities, to fill plates to the brim with potato salad and chicken wings, to spike their lemonade with gin. The drinks are poured and passed, passed and poured, and someone I don’t recognize lights a fire out back as dusk falls. We send Violet to bed, despite her protests, and, a bit later, Thomas, who is furious to be looped in with his younger sister instead of the adults. Evelyn begins to collect dishes, though she dances while she does it, big stacks piled in the kitchen, cleaning left for another day.

The darkness gives the alcohol a feeling of wildness, or perhaps the alcohol gives the darkness a feeling of wildness, of the possibility that anything, and everything, could happen tonight. I lose track of Jane, and immediately look for Sam, who I have lost, too, in the throng. Evelyn is perched by the fire in clear view, in deep conversation with our neighbor Linda, and I am ashamed of the relief I feel when I spot her. When I sidle up beside them, Linda wanders off and never reappears. My head begins to get fuzzy, aware of bodies in motion all around us, but Evelyn is clear before me, asking if I need another beer, if I could refill her cup on my way. I don’t need one, but our oldest daughter is eighteen, and we made it all the way here, across space and time and heartache and children, to raise one to adulthood, together, and I will certainly drink to that.

I wander through the diminishing crowd, and get caught in conversations I try to extricate myself from, to reach the table littered with mostly empty liquor bottles and grab a beer, mix a vodka soda with lime for Evelyn.

Behind the bushes, Jane and Sam stand a foot apart, in my view, but blind to me.

“Now that summer’s almost over...” Jane starts, sounding nervous, muffled. “You know, I’m eighteen now.” My stomach drops, not wanting to overhear this, split between an urge to intervene and to disappear, remembering how it feels to be a teen, the intoxication of first love, and a father’s need to shelter his daughter, now grown.

“I know.” Sam pats her arm. “Happy birthday, kid.” Relief washes over me, layered with surprise, that he wouldn’t take advantage of a girl so obviously infatuated, who pined after him all summer, who could easily be his before he leaves, and never be seen again.

“I’m not a kid,” she says, her voice syrup, pulling him close.

“Sure,” Sam says, peeling her arms off him.

“I could go with you, you know. To Paris. Like you said.” She’s dripping with desperation, her speech slurring, and now it’s nearly too late, I need to leave, to have walked away already. She can’t catch me here, would never forgive what I’ve heard.

“Listen, you’re great. I’ve enjoyed hanging with you all summer. But, we’re just not...” I can’t see her face, but can hear her sniffle, her breathing quick, a wilted version of Jane I’ve never seen. “You’re still so young. You know?”

She sniffles hard, leaning into him. “I’m not that young.”

“How much did you drink?” He sounds annoyed, her affection a gnat to swat away.

“Enough to know I’m not too young for you.” She tilts her chin up to his, and kisses him.

He pulls back, hard. “Jane, please, don’t. Okay? You’re embarrassing yourself.” He looks behind him, and says, “If I wanted you, you’d know.”

I feel his words like a punch, ready to hit back, but before I can say anything, do anything, Jane runs off, audibly crying, and Sam slinks off into the dark. I debate chasing after Jane, but what would I say? Her dad is probably the last person she wants to see.

Shaken and sobered, I busy myself clearing stray cups and empty bottles before heading back. Berating myself for not jumping in, for not protecting her from humiliation, heartache. I tie up overflowing garbage bags and haul them to the bin, anything to calm myself, steady my trembling hands before facing Evelyn, sure she will read me, and unsure what good it would do to confess what I overheard.

I force it out of my mind, and navigate the best I can through the shadows, the sky above a black swath reflecting nothing, stars swallowed in clouds. As I approach the fire once more, the lawn is mostly deserted. Sam has reappeared beside Evelyn, the two of them alone by the fire, and I’m jolted by the sight of him. A flare of anger at how he treated Jane replaced by something worse, because somehow when I approach it feels that I am the one interrupting, unwanted. A sudden flush of heat, a twinge in my gut, this feeling I can’t explain, but know is true. My wife, who loves me, who wants me gone.

I hand Evelyn her drink, but stay standing by her side.

“Aren’t you going to sit?” she asks, motioning to the open chair across from Sam. Their knees too close, nearly brushing. The laughter that stopped as I approached. Her smile waning as she asked, the courtesy tucked into the question, the invite sterile. The way he doesn’t look at me at all, waiting for the answer, my presence an imposition to their fun.

“The beer is warm.” I lift my bottle in response, my throat tight. “I think I may call it a night.”

She gives me an uncertain look. “Want me to come in?” Asked out of obligation, a consideration expected in a marriage. She holds my gaze, and I can see it, the hope that I say no.

“No, stay. There’s still a little fire left,” I say, hating myself and hating him, and wanting to toss her over my shoulder and lay her in our bed, to see her skin flush with pleasure, to feel the charged air between them between us instead, but I don’t. Because the worst part of me fears she would close her eyes, and imagine him.

“Alright, well, good night,” she says, too easily, already shifting her body so I’m out of her line of view.

I turn away, wondering if, even though I trust her completely, I am making a mistake. Presenting a route she may follow, a chance to leave me gutted. But a choice that’s hers to make, a way to know for sure if loving me was more than merely the circumstances of our lives, growing up together, forever entwined.

As I leave, Sam adds logs to the firepit, stoking the flames.

Evelyn

I can smell the smoke on my clothes, in my hair, as I stand, my head spinning. I shouldn’t have stayed out, should’ve gone to bed with Joseph. Should never have put myself in this position, the drinks and the fire and moon poking through the clouded sky, a reminder that things are dangerous when everything is possible, when there’s no limit to where a man may land.

I stumble away from the glowing embers, alone in the dark. Had I fallen asleep here, curled up in the cinders of my own shame? Who had left first? What time was it? No signs of pink on the horizon, the lights clicked off in the house. I push my hair out of my face and wipe my lips, my mouth cotton. Knock my knees against a reclined lawn chair as I pass by the table of liquor, all but drained, and nearly trip over Jane crouched by the bushes, clutching a bottle of gin.

“Jane?” I whisper, “What are you still doing out here?”

She laughs, a cruel, hollow sound. “You didn’t think anyone was here, did you?”

“How much have you had to drink?” I peer at the bottle, hoping she’s not the reason it’s nearly empty. Not like I am in any position to talk.

“Why do people keep asking me that?” She clutches it close, like it will absolve her, the bandit declaring innocence while gripping the money bag.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” I attempt to lift her by the arm, but she wrenches away from me.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks, backing away, farther into the bushes, her curls getting snarled in the branches.

“Jane, you’re being ridiculous. Come inside.” My head pounds, my vision swimming.

“I’m ridiculous? Look at you. At least I’m acting my age.” She looks at me with hate, with disgust, with fury, and this fight is the last thing I need tonight.

“Fine, sleep out here. Christ.” I can’t keep protecting her, talking her out of her bad choices. It won’t hurt her to sleep in the grass, maybe it’s the wake-up she needs.

“Yeah, go ahead. Leave. It’ll be good practice.” Drunken mutterings I can’t begin to dissect, have no energy to understand, my bed calling to me, my husband beneath the sheets, waiting, my shame spinning circles, making me nauseous, even as I close my eyes.

Joseph

Normally we host a Labor Day party, a final send-off to summer before the inn slows for the season, but it feels flagrant, opulent, after a summer when celebration was our steady state. Without much discussion, we decide to ease out of the summer with a quiet weekend. School starts tomorrow for Violet and Thomas, and they are spending the day with Evelyn, picking out supplies and clothes. Sam is packing in his room, while I sip coffee alone in the kitchen. I offered to drop him at the train station, but a friend is driving him to the airport. Apparently, he got approval to miss the first couple weeks of classes for some European trip, details I tuned out as he began to talk. I’ve been avoiding him as much as possible since Jane’s birthday, leaving the room as he enters it. Sam, who can skip weeks of classes at an elite university, travel without having worked for pay all summer. Who stayed with us as an experiment, a research project, our quaint town another box to check on his list of escapades. A taste of a life kept small, a tale to tell another man’s wife across a roaring fire.

I was sure I would be shooing Jane out of Sam’s room all morning, but she hasn’t come downstairs. She’s become impossible, surly and hostile, picking fights with Evelyn over issues I had been fooled into believing our summer together had smoothed. Nasty comments as she passes through a room, antagonizing everyone in her path, ignoring her mother when she asks her to help. I don’t know if it’s the imminence of Sam leaving that has brought on her bad mood, or the fact that he rebuffed her advances, or both, but the last week, she has been as scarce around him as I have tried to be. He appears through the swinging kitchen door, lifts his suitcase in hand in explanation.

“Ah. Ready, then?” I ask. He nods. I lean on the banister, and call upstairs to Jane. “Jane, Sam’s leaving!” There is no reply, not even the pad of her footsteps toward her door. “Maybe she’s still asleep. I’ll tell her you say bye.”

“Please do,” he says. “Thanks, Joseph, for everything.”

“Yep. Sure thing.” I can’t bring myself to meet his eye. “I’ll walk you out.”

A red Camaro idles in the driveway, he slips into it as though out of our waking dream, and I stand there until the car vanishes from view, the only sign he had been there the faint crunch of tires, the engine fading into the distance.