Chapter Three #2
“That’s nice,” Dina says. “You should still let yourself get used to everything.” She opens the front door and sweeps out a hand, gesturing to the view beyond.
“Walk on the beach! Go for a swim! If you run into any more problems, I’ll check them out tomorrow; I’ve got to head over to Queer Punx for a bit. ”
Her words go by too fast for me to keep up. “Queer Punx?”
“My other job,” Dina says. She’s out on the porch now, descending the steps to the flagstone path. “Half store, half art space
I run out in P-town with my friend Sharon.”
“Right.” Now I remember—the picture of her I found when I was googling. The one that said she owned a place called Queer Punx.
Dina gives me a long, deep look. “Take it easy,” she says, “and don’t let Sir Duke in the house.” And then she walks away
toward her larger cottage, leaving me standing alone on the porch. Distantly, I hear her front door open and close. A few
minutes later, an engine roars to life and I catch a glimpse of the old silver 4Runner rumbling off down the gravel drive,
disappearing into the thickets of trees and shrubs.
I sink down on the porch steps.
I’m hallucinating.
That’s it, right? That has to be it. If Dina really couldn’t see my dad or Professor MacAndrew, then there’s no other explanation.
My brain is showing me people who simply aren’t there.
My mouth turns dry. I dig my phone out of my pocket and call Rika.
She picks up after the first ring. “Hey! How’s beach life? Are you calling to make me jealous already?”
I can barely hear her over a buffeting roar in the background. “No, I was actually . . . What’s that noise?”
“Probably the ferry engine!” She’s practically yelling. “Or maybe the wind. We’re freezing our asses off on this boat, but
at least we have booze!”
“Booze?”
“Yeah, you can buy booze on this ferry. How great is that?”
“Great,” I say. My head pounds. “I need to ask you guys a weird question.”
Yasmin says something in the background that I can’t quite make out. “Okay,” Rika says.
“You didn’t give Jackson the address for the cottage, did you?”
Silence. Except for the distorted roar of the engine.
“What do you mean?” Rika asks.
“There’s no way he’d show up here, is there?”
More silence. I’ve done it now. I’ve waded right into the middle of everything we’ve been carefully avoiding.
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Rika says slowly. “Especially since he’s picking us up in Boston.”
For a second, I feel nothing at all. And then, deep in my gut, I feel an icy prickle. Jackson is in Boston, probably already
driving through city traffic toward the Seaport in his Volvo. Which means there’s no way he could possibly be in the bathroom
of the cottage.
But maybe out of a sense of self-preservation, my brain chooses not to focus on that part. “He’s picking you up?”
The silence turns jagged and awkward. I hear Yasmin’s voice, muffled, and then Rika saying, “Well, what was I supposed to
say?”
Something buzzes on the other end of the line.
“Shit,” Rika mutters. And then, louder, “Harlowe, Jackson’s calling me. We haven’t exactly figured out where we’re meeting
him, and I’m kind of worried I’m going to lose signal out here, so—”
“Yeah. Go ahead. We’ll talk later.”
“I can call you back,” she offers.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, and hang up.
It’s perfectly reasonable for Jackson to pick Rika and Yasmin up from the ferry. They don’t live super close to the T, there’s
a lot of construction fucking everything up this weekend anyway, and Jackson has his Volvo.
He was always pointing out how ridiculous it was that we had two cars when we were together.
I worked from home. We lived in a major city with a subway and a ton of buses.
Any time we left the city—driving up to New Hampshire to see his parents or down to Connecticut to see his sister—we took his car, because the Volvo was bigger and newer and nicer.
But I wouldn’t get rid of my Honda. It was just a feeling I had that I couldn’t really explain—a feeling that I didn’t want
to be the additional driver on Jackson’s insurance policy, didn’t want to ask him for permission to drive somewhere, even
though there wasn’t really anywhere to drive.
I lean my head in my hands, trying to push away the clammy sense of panic settling over me.
Something jingles nearby. I look up just as a large gray tabby cat leaps onto the porch. It’s shaped like a barrel, with a
short, fat striped tail, wearing a red velvet collar with a silver tag and a bell. The tag says Sir Duke.
I let out a small, very pathetic laugh. “So you’re the devil.”
The cat just sits down next to me and lets out a low rumble. I’m pretty sure he’s purring—though it sounds more like a cross
between an idling motorcycle and a leaky balloon. I hold out my hand, letting him sniff me, and then gently run my fingers
over his back. His fur is surprisingly soft and fluffy. From the way Dina talked about him, I half expect him to try to bite
me, but he just closes his big orange eyes, looking perfectly content.
There’s something grounding about petting him, my fingertips bumping over his spine. It pulls me back into my own body, until
I can feel the wooden steps under my feet and hear the cicadas buzzing in the trees and the waves tumbling distantly on the
beach.
Maybe Dina’s right. Maybe all I need is a nap. Maybe this is some giant attack of accumulated stress. I feel like I got run over by a cement truck, so clearly I’m tired. Maybe I just need to go back inside, lie down on the bed, and go to sleep, and everything will be normal when I wake up.
It could happen.
I desperately want to believe it could happen.
I push myself up. Sir Duke stays put when I open the cottage door, like he couldn’t care less about trying to sneak in.
The cottage is quiet when I step back into the living room. No voices from the dining room or the kitchen or the bathroom.
All the doors are closed—I must have closed them as I was following Dina out, although I have no memory of doing so. I consider
opening the bathroom door as I walk past it, heading for the bedroom, but that feels like pushing my luck.
The bedroom door looks older than every other door in the house—made of dark wood with an old-fashioned glass knob that wobbles
in my grip, like it’s loose. I have to twist it back and forth a few times to get the door open.
I get a split-second view of a guy balancing on a chair on the other side of the bed, before he notices me, we both yelp in
surprise, the chair tips, and he disappears behind the bed with an epic crash.
My heart thuds against my ribs. Dina didn’t check the bedroom.
There’s a random stranger in the bedroom and now she’s gone and left me here and why won’t my fingers cooperate?
I fumble my phone out of my pocket, but my hands are so shaky I can’t seem to pull up the keypad to dial 911. “Who’s in here?”
I yell. “What do you want?”
A groan. “I’m just . . . just fixing the hole in the wall.
” A hand appears, flat on the patchwork quilt, and the guy slowly pushes himself up.
He’s young—barely into his twenties—with a deep tan, a long, straight nose, and overgrown blondish-brown hair tucked under a worn baseball hat.
He points up to a section of the wall next to the bed, which is a rough white color, unlike the cream of the rest of the room.
“Oh.” I frown. “I guess I didn’t notice a hole.”
“Well, I patched it. It wasn’t that big or anything.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, and I catch a glimpse of a dolphin
tattooed in blue and green on the inside of one forearm. “I just need to sand it down and paint it.” He holds up a block of
sandpaper in his other hand.
“Right.” I rub my forehead, staring at the white patch on the wall without really seeing it. “Sorry, Dina didn’t tell me anybody
was going to be doing repairs. I’m renting this place for the summer.”
The guy blinks at me, and then lets his breath out with a huff. “Well, she didn’t tell me anyone was renting.” He looks at
the wall and then back at me. His blue eyes are eerily familiar. “I’m Nathan Daley. Dina’s my aunt.”
Now it makes sense—his eyes are the same shape and color as Dina’s. Not pale like the sky but deep blue like the ocean outside.
Another thought occurs to me. “How long have you been here?”
He glances at the watch on his wrist—a dated digital thing with a black plastic strap. “Maybe an hour or something. Why?”
So he must have come in while I was taking Rika and Yasmin to the ferry. “Nothing. Just thought Dina would have told me.”
Especially since I told her there were people in the cottage. You’d think that would give her a clue.
Nathan Daley leans down to pick up the tipped-over chair. “She can be kind of flaky.”
I feel a twinge of guilt, watching him rub at his elbow, wincing. “I’m sorry I startled you. Do you need—I don’t know—ice
or anything?”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Well . . .” My eyes go again to the wall. “Do you have an estimate of how long this will take?”
He pulls off his baseball hat (a Red Sox cap, I notice) and runs a hand through his shaggy hair. A thin gold hoop winks high
in the cartilage of one ear. “I’m almost done sanding, but I still need to prime and paint, and that’ll take a little while
to dry . . .”
I run a hand over my face, very tempted to ask why he couldn’t have done all of this yesterday before I got here. But I don’t.
Partly because it would be rude. Mostly because at this point, I’m too tired to care. “Look, is there any chance you could
finish tomorrow? I’ve had a long day and I was hoping to crash.”
He glances at me, the sun sliding in through the window catching on his blondish-brown eyelashes, and then he looks back at
the wall. “Yeah, I could definitely do the painting tomorrow. Would you mind if I finished the sanding and put on primer now,
though? Won’t take long; maybe half an hour.”
I don’t have the energy left to argue. “Sure. I’ll just go out for a bit.”
“Thanks.” Nathan glances at me again, this time with a hint of a smile—just the corner of his mouth turning up, like he’s
only smiling a quarter of the way. “Sorry.”
I shrug. “Let yourself out when you’re done, I guess?”
He hesitates, his eyes going past me to the hall, and then he nods. “Yeah. Will do.”
I turn and leave the room, pulling the door closed behind me. The knob wiggles again in my hand. Maybe I should ask Nathan
if he can fix that too, while he’s here. But I don’t want to open the door again. I don’t want to keep talking to someone
I don’t know about something else wrong with today.
So instead, I go back outside. Sir Duke has disappeared, and the shadows of the birch trees are growing long and skinny as the sun sinks toward the ocean.
There’s a narrow trail mowed through the grove, leading off toward the ocean instead of back toward Dina’s, and on a whim, I follow it until it comes out at the edge of the dune.
Dina’s house is behind me now, the sunlight glowing golden on a wide back deck held up by stilts against the sloping hill.
In front of me, a wooden stairway, built into the side of the dune, leads down to the beach below.
Dina said I should explore, and the cottage listing promised beach access, so I carefully creak my way down the stairs, fingers gliding over the rope railings on either side, both bleached and weathered to gray, dusty and slightly crumbling.
Reedy grass grows up around the small wooden landing at the bottom. I pull off my shoes and socks and leave them behind while
I walk out onto the sand, still warm under my feet from the heat of the day.
Down here, the wind is stronger and the waves are much louder, roaring onto the shore. Goose bumps prickle up my arms and
I fold them tightly to my chest. The beach stretches on for miles, curving away into the distance, like an arm cradling the
bay. Farther down the sand, someone is throwing a stick into the ocean for the dog who’s gleefully chasing after it.
I wade into the water, up to my ankles. It’s cold—colder than I was expecting for late May. My heels sink deeper into the
sand with each retreating wave, and I stuff my hands into my pockets, hunching my shoulders up against the chilly breeze.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but it’s long enough that my feet turn numb and white under the water, and the sun melts
into a fiery disk that slides into the ocean, sending an orange glow across the waves.
I’m fine.
I say it silently to myself over and over.
Everything’s fine.
Just as soon as Nathan’s done sanding, I’ll go back to the cottage, and I’ll fall asleep, and somehow, that will fix everything. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and the cottage will be empty. It’s just stress. A long day. An extremely weird case of food poisoning.
Everything will be fine.
I close my eyes and focus on the waves around my ankles, and try, very hard, to make myself believe it.