Chapter Nine
The next morning, I wake up with a headache.
I roll over in bed, groaning. I knew this was going to happen. I really have nobody to blame but myself. The last time I had
two drinks in one night, I was probably in college. I don’t think I woke up feeling terrible, but I certainly didn’t feel
great.
I don’t know what I was thinking.
“Lightweight,” I mutter into the pillow. My head pounds in response.
I haul myself out of bed, full of regrets, and head for the kitchen, taking the back route through the laundry room to avoid
Professor MacAndrew. I need coffee. And painkillers. And something to eat so my stomach stops feeling like a lake of acid.
“Morning, Harlowe,” my dad says. “I was thinking about making coffee. Would you like some?” He turns around from the sink,
where he’s washing two mugs, just like he always is, and his eyebrows jump. “What happened to you?”
I ignore the implication that I look as shitty as I feel and open the refrigerator. It’s empty. There’s no sign of the bag
of coffee supplied by Dina that’s usually sitting on the top shelf.
“You want some coffee?” my dad says again.
I let the fridge door close and squint at him. “Did you get it out?”
“What?” he says.
“The coffee. It’s not in the fridge.”
“Who puts coffee in the fridge?” he says, turning back to the sink and the mugs. “Grab it out of the cabinet and I’ll make
some.”
I wander to the cabinet, feeling confused, but there’s nothing in it except a few mugs and bowls.
“You find it?” my dad asks.
“No. It’s not in here.”
“Sure it is,” he says without looking. “I just got some yesterday.”
I groan again and shut the cabinet. Of course. My dad thinks he’s in his kitchen in Michigan, where he keeps the coffee in
the cabinet, just like he and my mom did when I was growing up.
Anyway, now I remember. I used up Dina’s coffee yesterday. I threw out the bag and had a brief, fleeting thought that I should
really go to the grocery store or I was going to be annoyed the next day.
I turn and shuffle back out of the kitchen to search for Advil instead.
But I seem to have completely forgotten to pack any. There’s no sign of it in my toiletries bag or any of the pockets of my
suitcase. And there’s no magical supply hiding in the bathroom either. Just Jackson, brushing his teeth and asking why I can’t
bother to knock.
I stand in the hall outside the bathroom, fingers pressed against my eyes, for several minutes, desperately wishing Instacart
was a thing on the Outer Cape. And then I go back to the bedroom, put on pants, and make myself drive to Wellfleet.
According to Google Maps, the closest grocery store to the cottage is Wellfleet Marketplace, which sits at the end of a line of a dozen or so quaint buildings.
Wellfleet doesn’t have much of a commercial center compared to Provincetown, but at least that also means parking is easier.
I snag a spot across from the store, next to a green lawn with a flagpole and several park benches.
An elderly guy is sitting on one of the benches, reading a newspaper, while a dog snoozes at his feet.
Inside, Wellfleet Marketplace isn’t particularly big or particularly well stocked, but it’s got coffee, Advil, a bottle of
water, and a box of granola bars, which is all I really need. I buy all four things and head back outside, prying the lid
off the Advil bottle. I wash a couple pills down with water, aware that the old guy on the bench across the street is watching
me over the top of his newspaper.
I feel a little better once I’ve eaten a whole granola bar and finished most of the bottle of water. The Advil slowly kicks
in, and I look down at the bag of coffee and the box of granola bars in the plastic grocery bag.
What am I doing? I’m at the grocery store. I should actually shop. I can’t keep buying takeout and eating jars of olives out
of random cabinets. It’s obvious at this point that I won’t be able to find someplace else to rent on the Cape, and I’m not
ready to go back to Boston. The uninvited roommates are unpleasant, but the possibility of running into the real Jackson,
of trying to find a new apartment, a new barber, a new favorite coffee shop . . .
I let my breath out. I’m here. Realistically, I’m stuck with the cottage for the rest of the summer. So I should buy some
actual food and start cooking, like a responsible adult. I can deal with all of this for a couple months. At least in the
cottage, Jackson is confined to the bathroom.
I turn and walk back into the grocery store, and this time I grab a basket.
The sun is high in the sky and the cicadas are humming in the trees when I stagger back into the cottage over an hour later,
awkwardly balancing four bags crammed full of groceries.
“Ah, Harlowe.” Professor MacAndrew closes the book she’s paging through, peering at me over her glasses as I cross the dining room, heading for the kitchen. “Have a seat.”
“Sorry, can’t right now.” I push at the bifold door with my foot. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“We need to discuss your future,” she says.
I ignore her. On the drive back, I decided that if I’m going to get through the summer, I have to just treat the uninvited
roommates as exactly that—uninvited roommates with boundary issues who can’t read the room.
So I lean my shoulder against the bifold door to open it the rest of the way and go into the kitchen with the grocery bags
in my arms.
“Oh, there you are.” My dad is still at the sink, although I notice he’s set the mugs he was washing earlier on the counter.
“Decided you want that coffee after all?”
“Maybe later.” I sidle past him, which is not easy with four bags of groceries in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp.
“Well, what’s all this?” he asks, adjusting his crooked glasses and frowning at the bags as I shove them onto the strip of
counter.
“I went grocery shopping.”
“You don’t need to go grocery shopping, Harlowe.”
Is he serious? “I do if I want to eat, Dad.” I think over the last couple of weeks, and add, “If I want to eat without going
broke or clogging my arteries.”
“Is this about the fish?” he asks, still frowning.
I open the fridge, setting a carton of milk on the shelf and feeling pleased with my adulting abilities. “What fish?”
“The fish! The salmon! The dinner I made last night.”
Yogurt, cheese, and a carton of greens follow the milk. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He lets out a frustrated sigh. “I told you—it’s Kendra’s favorite, and . . . Well, it’s been a while. I forgot it wasn’t your
preference.”
Something pings in the back of my mind, and I straighten up, closing the fridge door. “What’s Kendra’s favorite?” I say slowly.
He runs a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable and annoyed and like he’s trying to hide it. “Salmon. I told you. Are
you trying to make me feel bad about this?”
Now a memory bubbles up—arriving at the house my dad built on the shores of Lake Michigan, five years ago, and trying hard
to be friendly. Exchanging niceties with his girlfriend, Christine, and her daughter, Kendra. It was the first time I’d met
them. The first time I was putting faces to the names my dad had been talking about on the phone for the past year.
Christine was younger than my dad—about ten years younger, with soft brown eyes and dark hair shot through with gray. And
Kendra had just finished her junior year of high school. She’d just been to prom. Just started dating. She was preparing for
the SATs and had a collection of wolf figurines. She made me feel about a million years old.
And apparently, she liked salmon, which was what my dad made for dinner that first night. He asked me if I wanted lemon on
it, if I wanted herbs, if I thought it looked cooked enough—apparently completely forgetting that I didn’t like fish. That
I’ve never liked fish. That he and my mom used to buy frozen fish sticks and heat them up for dinner when I was a kid and
I always thought they were gross.
He’d had his new family for a year, but he’d been my dad for twenty-five years at that point, and he didn’t remember that
I had never liked fish.
I managed to eat a few bites, and then I gave up, feeling vaguely sick. Christine asked me why I wasn’t eating, and in that
moment, my politeness wore thin, and I said fish wasn’t my favorite.
Since when? my dad asked.
And I said, Since always.
It was Kendra’s favorite, Christine explained, and my dad was so good at cooking for Kendra.
I nodded and smiled, and felt petty and hurt and mean.
I dig into another grocery bag, pulling out cereal and crackers and granola bars, shoving them into the closest cabinet. “We
don’t need to talk about the fish stuff, Dad.”
“Well, I did remember,” he says defensively. “After you reminded me about the fish sticks.”
“Okay.” I fold the paper bag, a little more violently than necessary, and throw it in the direction of the laundry room.
“And people’s tastes change. You’re grown now.” He clears his throat and his shoulders hunch up. He looks more uncomfortable
than ever. “You could have said something before I had it all on the table.”
I dig into the next bag, focusing on the bags of pasta and the cans of tomato sauce, just so I don’t have to look at his face.
Because I know if I look at his face, I’ll start to feel guilty. “We really don’t need to talk about this, Dad.”
“I’m just saying.”
I close my eyes. I feel like I’m suffocating, like I’m in a room that’s too small. It’s how I always feel when I’m around
my dad. Like every time we say something to each other, the walls close in a little more. “I was trying to be polite. You
were cooking, and I was a guest, and I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Don’t see how it would’ve been rude,” he grumbles. “I’m your dad. You’re not a guest.”
I go back to unloading groceries, because I don’t know how to tell him that if I really wasn’t a guest, if we were really
family, then he wouldn’t have forgotten something about me that had been true my entire life.
If we were really family, I wouldn’t have felt so guilty for taking up space at that table.
Instead, I say, “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You can just ask me to get groceries,” he says, turning back to the sink. “We want you to have a nice time here.”
The last of my patience frays. We want you to have a nice time here. It’s exactly how he talked that entire visit—we want, we think, we hope. As though he had ceased to be an individual and existed only as part of his new family unit.
As though “a nice time” was ever something I was going to have.
I give up on the last grocery bag. It’s all shelf-stable stuff anyway. I need a break. I duck past him.
“What do you say to that coffee now?” he asks as I reach the bifold door.
“No, thanks,” I say flatly, and close the bifold door behind me.
For a moment, I stand in the dining room with my eyes closed, breathing too quickly, feeling uncomfortably twenty-five again,
in that house where the bathrooms weren’t painted yet and the door handle was missing in the guest room and half the ceiling
lights were bare bulbs because nothing was quite finished. In my mind, whenever I think of my dad, I still picture the house
that way—not quite finished. As though he’s forever existing in a permanent state of incompletion.
“Well, I’m glad you weren’t actually blowing me off,” Professor MacAndrew says in clipped tones.
I open my eyes. She’s looking at me over her glasses, expectant.
“You know . . .” I let my breath out with a frustrated grunt, rubbing my forehead. “I really have no fucking idea why you’re
here, Professor MacAndrew. And I really wish you would leave.”
She stares at me, her lips parted, but I’m so annoyed that I can’t even enjoy that for once, I’ve actually rendered her speechless.
I just turn and stalk out of the dining room, slamming through the front door and out onto the porch. The air is warm and
thick, and through the birch leaves, the ocean is so bright in the sun that I have to squint.
I run a hand through my hair. Coexisting with the uninvited roommates is clearly going to be harder than I was hoping.
Maybe I should buy a hot plate. Plug it into an outlet in the living room, just so I can cook and avoid my dad.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and find a text notification on the screen, a name bolded at the top: NATHAN DALEY.
I tap on the message.
Hey, Marc and Katy and I are going to the pond later to swim. You want to join?
I stare at my phone. For a second, everything else disappears.
Three dots pop up. And then a second message comes in.
No pressure. But it’s a fun locals spot.
A smile creeps across my face, and somehow, the knot in my chest loosens. The invisible walls closing in around me vanish.
I run my teeth over my bottom lip. And then I type, I’d love to join. Where’s the pond?
A few seconds pass, and then Nathan writes back, I’ll send you a pin. Google usually can’t find it.
A few more seconds go by, and then my phone buzzes again. He’s sent a dropped pin location—a small spot of blue on Google
Maps, surrounded by a whole lot of green, just off a road labeled Willet Lane.
Another text pops up: See you around 1?
I send him a quick thumbs-up and then shove my phone in my pocket and go back inside the cottage to look for my bathing suit.
I got groceries. That’s enough for now. The cooking can wait.