Chapter Three
She looks up, eyebrows arching. “Ah, Harlowe. Thank you for coming by.” She gestures to the chair across the table. “Have
a seat.”
She looks exactly the same as I remember: a small, almost birdlike white woman in her mid-fifties, dyed blond hair in a loose
curly bob, tortoiseshell reading glasses slipping down her thin nose, her dark eyes bright and sharp.
“Well?” Her eyebrows arch higher.
I can’t move. My feet are glued to the floor. Blood pounds in my ears. “Uh. What are you doing here?”
She blinks at me and turns her head, barely, from one side to the other, looking around the room. “Where else would I be?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t figure out what to say. In your office in the history department of Boston University doesn’t seem helpful—she’s clearly not in Boston. She’s in the dining room of the cottage I’m renting for the summer to escape
Boston.
Oh god. There’s been some awful mix-up. Some double-booking error, and somehow I’ve ended up renting the exact same cottage as my
former thesis advisor, who basically told me I’d never get an academic job—and then turned out to be right.
The chicken wings in my stomach dissolve into acid. “Does . . . does Dina know you’re here?”
A delicate crease appears between her eyebrows. It’s so familiar it sends an actual shiver down my back. “Who?”
I swallow, my throat as rough as sandpaper. I haven’t seen Professor MacAndrew in two years, and I still feel exactly as stupid
and superfluous as the last time we were in the same room. “Never mind. Nothing.” I need to get out of here. “Just give me
a second, okay? I’ll . . . I’ll be right back.”
I push through the bifold door to the kitchen, groping for the faucet. I need cold water on my face. I need to breathe because
what the fuck is Professor MacAndrew doing in my rental cottage—
“Oh, there you are!”
I jump, letting out a yell and stumbling back into the door behind me. Standing at the kitchen sink in mid-wash jeans and
an old T-shirt that says Alaska, washing dishes like he belongs here, is my dad.
“I was wondering where you were,” he says.
“Wh-what . . .” I work my mouth like a fish. The pounding in my ears turns to a roar. “Dad, what are you . . .”
And then it hits me—the phone call in the car. I should have known. My dad only ever calls me for one of three reasons: It’s
my birthday, it’s Christmas, or he wants to visit. And since it’s not Christmas and my birthday isn’t until October . . .
“Is this why you were calling me?” I ask. “Someone told you where I’d be and you decided to drop in and drop out, like always?”
His glasses are sitting crooked on his nose, and when his forehead wrinkles up, they lean even more. “What are you talking
about?”
“How did you know I was here? Did someone tell you about me and Jackson?”
Now he looks genuinely lost. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We haven’t talked in months, Dad. Why are you even here?”
“What are you talking about? We just talked yesterday. And I was going to ask if you wanted a cup of coffee.”
This is too much. We didn’t talk yesterday—I would have remembered that, since a side effect of only hearing from my dad a
few times a year is that I tend to remember when those conversations happen.
I push past him. I need to call Rika and Yasmin. I need to tell them what’s going on. I need someone sane to explain to me
what on earth is happening, and I need to do it from the safety of a locked bathroom where neither my dad nor Professor MacAndrew
can bother me . . .
I round the corner in the kitchen and open the bathroom door on the other side of the awkwardly short hallway.
I walk right into someone standing in front of the sink. My face collides with a shoulder. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Okay, I know we live together now, but you could still knock.”
I look up, and the roaring in my ears vanishes. My mind goes silent, like a TV on mute.
Jackson is standing at the sink, barefoot, in gym shorts and a stretched-out Boston University T-shirt, holding his toothbrush
and frowning at me. The fading sunlight streaming through the tiny bathroom window catches on every familiar freckle scattered
across his nose, every faint line at the corners of his deep brown eyes. It glows on his pale skin and his dark, buzzed hair,
throwing a shadow into the hollow of his throat. He seems too big for this cramped bathroom, a tall and broad-shouldered collection
of sharp angles.
Somehow, I find my voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He just turns on the tap and rinses his toothbrush. “What do you mean? This is my bathroom too.”
He says it easily, like we haven’t spent the last month barely speaking to each other. I almost forgot what his voice sounded
like when he wasn’t annoyed or tired or running out of patience.
“No.” I rub my temples. My breath comes in shallow gasps. “This is not your bathroom. This is my cottage. You need to go.”
Jackson turns off the tap and looks at me again, his thick eyebrows pulling together. Even frowning, he’s still beautiful,
with his high cheekbones, angular jaw, and dark eyelashes. “Go where?”
I stare at him. “How about your apartment?”
He gives me a look that’s half exasperation, half amusement. “The apartment I moved out of a month ago so we could move in
together? Kind of late for that.” He shakes off his toothbrush and sets it on the counter. “Speaking of apartment stuff, though,
could we please talk about the couch today? I know it’s a big purchase, but we have to stop overthinking it.”
Cold prickles at the back of my neck. Something about this is familiar. Really familiar.
I close my eyes, rubbing my temples again. My head hurts. “This is a joke. This is a completely unhinged joke.”
“What’s a joke?” Now there’s a sharp, annoyed edge to Jackson’s tone. “Our relationship? Moving in together? Trying to act
like adults?”
It’s familiar bait, and my stomach knots. “No, I’m not doing this with you.” I fumble for the doorknob behind me. “I’m not
going to listen to this. You’re not supposed to be here. I let you keep everything!”
“Harlowe—” he says.
But I’m already closing the door, moving quickly through the living room, pushing my way out of the cottage and into the dappled
sunshine of the birch grove. Forget calling Rika and Yasmin. I need Dina. This is her cottage. She must know what’s going
on. She’s the only one with the keys, after all. So if this is some kind of bonkers double-booking error or an unhinged joke—well,
she has to know.
My hands are shaking by the time I reach Dina’s front porch, and I accidentally punch the doorbell three times in rapid succession.
The door opens, revealing Dina, barefoot again. She frowns at me. “Did he get in the house?”
My knees go weak. “You know? Why did you let them in?”
“Them?” Dina raises an eyebrow. “Goddamnit, don’t tell me Duke has a posse now.”
“What?”
“My cat! Sir Duke!” She leans out of the doorway, looking up one path and down the other. “Still haven’t found the asshole.
Always finds his way back, usually with a dead bird as an offering. So did he get in the little house?”
“N-no . . .” My brain is melting. Actually melting. “No, I’m not talking about the cat, I’m talking about . . . about the
people.”
She looks at me, face as blank as a marble statue. “People?”
“Yeah. You know . . . the other people in the cottage? The ones you let in? Or . . . gave keys to?” I run a hand through my
hair—auburn, like my dad’s used to be before it thinned and faded to blondish gray. “Look, if there’s something going on,
if it’s a joke or a prank . . . I just want to know. I need to know.”
Something crosses her face—something I can’t quite read. Then she blinks and it’s gone. “Not sure I’m following. If you want
to add more people, there’s an additional fee—”
“No, no, I’m talking about . . .” Does she really not know? “Look, can you just come over to the house for a second?”
Her eyes skip past me to the flagstone path, and then she sighs. “All right.” She grabs the red rain boots again. “Let’s go.”
She pulls on the boots and leads the way back to the cottage, climbing the porch steps and pushing open the front door herself.
“What’s the issue?”
“In here.” I beckon her to the dining room, where Professor MacAndrew is still sitting at the table, paging through a book.
Past her, visible through the kitchen doorway, is my dad, washing dishes, just like I left him.
Dina peers into the dining room, eyes sweeping from side to side. “Sorry. What am I supposed to be looking at?”
I stare at her. And then at Professor MacAndrew. “What do you mean?”
Dina follows my gaze, but she seems to look right through my former thesis advisor—as though Professor MacAndrew is invisible.
“Everything looks fine to me.”
Professor MacAndrew clears her throat, frowning at me over her glasses.
Dina doesn’t so much as twitch.
She’s not playing a trick on me. She really doesn’t seem to have any idea that Professor MacAndrew is there.
Oh god.
“Could you please come into the kitchen?” My voice, at least, sounds calm.
Dina follows me, but she doesn’t seem to see my dad either. Not even when he turns around, looks right at me, and says, “Change
your mind about that coffee? We could always do decaf.”
“Maybe you heard Sir Duke,” Dina says, a slightly soothing note in her voice. “I swear that cat sounds like a herd of buffalo
sometimes. Or a bunch of burglars.”
I look from her to my dad. It takes everything I have not to shout, He’s right there! “But—”
“You should get some rest,” Dina says firmly. “Take a nap. Try to relax.” She hovers for a moment, and then she turns and
leaves the kitchen, heading for the living room. “You had a long drive. First time out in the country can make people jittery.”
“It’s not my first time in the country,” I say, following her. My voice sounds very far away in my own ears. “I grew up in
Indiana. My grandparents lived on a farm.”