Chapter Thirty-One
I drop Rika and Yasmin off at the ferry, standing in line with them until they board, waving as the boat motors out to sea.
And then I text Nathan as I walk back to my car: Hey, where are you?
At the pond, he writes back.
Just like yesterday, he’s sitting alone when I walk out to the end of the pier, but this time, there’s no sign of a bottle
or a cigarette. He’s changed his clothes too; he’s wearing fresh jeans, torn at the knee, and a T-shirt the color of the deep
green leaves behind us on the shore. He leans back on his hands, squinting up at the sun slowly sinking behind the trees.
“Hey.” I sit down next to him, dangling my feet over the edge of the pier.
“Hey.” He looks tired, but he gives me a very small smile.
For a while, we’re quiet, looking up at the scattered clouds turning orange and pink in the sky.
Then Nathan says, “How did you know they would be there?”
I pick at a fingernail, looking down at the ripples in the water under my feet. “Because I saw people too.”
I feel his breath catch. Feel him look at me, but I keep staring at my hands.
He turns his head again, looking back out at the water. “Who?” He says it gingerly, like he’s afraid he shouldn’t be asking,
but desperately wants to know. Looking for a way to feel less alone.
“My dad,” I say. “And my ex. And my thesis advisor for my PhD, weirdly enough.” I hesitate. “And you.”
His eyebrows slowly rise. “Me?”
“A younger version of you. From the summer you worked in the cottage.” I lean my hands on the edge of the pier. “That’s why
I knew your name when I walked into Cuppa Cove the first time. I’d seen you. The other version of you. You were patching and
painting this wall in the bedroom.”
He’s silent, absorbing this. “Wow. That must have been weird.”
I smile. “You have no idea.”
A duck takes off from the surface of the pond in a sudden flurry of beating wings, sending up a spray of water. We both watch
it climb into the sky, heading for the trees.
“I still don’t understand,” Nathan says. “Even if you saw these people you knew . . . how did you know that I would—”
“I didn’t,” I say quickly. “I mean . . . not for sure. Not until we walked in.”
“But you guessed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guessed.”
He picks up his hands, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Did you know they would disappear?”
I chew at my lip. “No. But I knew they could. My thesis advisor and my ex disappeared, and once I realized why, and I realized
who you’d probably seen in the house . . .”
“You wanted me to come back.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
Somewhere in the distance, a truck goes by on Willet Lane, and the rumbling engine echoes through the trees.
“I don’t remember patching any walls,” Nathan says. “I remember painting the living room in the little cottage, and pulling
up some old flooring in the kitchen, but . . .” He looks at me, eyes narrowed, a vague frown on his face. “I don’t remember
patching any walls. I’m not sure I ever went into the bedroom.”
I ask the question that’s been hovering in the back of my mind. “So, you don’t remember seeing me?”
“No. I don’t think I did.”
I feel a strange twinge of disappointment. I don’t really know why. None of the other visitors in the cottage were really
real. That wasn’t really Jackson in the bathroom. I wasn’t talking to my real dad in the kitchen. They were just . . .
Well, I don’t know, really. Whatever the cottage conjured up. So why would the Nathan I saw be any different?
“I finished Katy’s bike today,” Nathan says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Took me long enough, but it’s done.”
That makes me smile, something warm lighting in my chest. “Did you give it to her?”
“Not yet. I have to figure out the right time. But it made me think . . .” His blue eyes flick to my face. “I think it might
be time to take the plunge. Actually open the bike shop. I . . . I have some money that my parents left me. And it’s enough
to get me started. I was thinking I might ask Dina if I could take over the lease on the Queer Punx space.”
He’s searching my eyes, hesitating like he wants an answer.
“You should do it,” I say. “It’s a great location.”
He smiles—that quarter of a smile, one side of his mouth lifting. He leans closer and bumps his shoulder against mine. “Yeah.”
There’s another question hanging in the air between us, like the fog that hovers over the pond on muggy mornings—the question of what happens now. What happens next. For us.
But it’s not one that either of us can answer. Not right now.
So I hold out my hand, palm up, and he laces his fingers with mine, and we sit in silence, watching the colors above us change
from blue to orange and pink and purple, while the tree leaves rustle and the water laps gently at the pier underneath us,
and the whole pond turns into a mirror of the sky on fire.
It takes me a few days to work up my courage to talk to Dina. I know I’m just putting off the inevitable, but I tell myself
she’s busy. Which she is. She and Sharon are constantly rumbling up and down the drive in Dina’s 4Runner, shuttling boxes
from Queer Punx to her house and piling them in the basement.
“How many leftover T-shirts do you have?” Nathan says, grunting as he carries another box down the narrow basement stairs.
The two of us have spent most of the day helping Dina and Sharon unload boxes.
“Just whatever didn’t sell on clearance,” Dina says defensively. “They’re nice designs.”
“And everybody we know will be getting T-shirts for Christmas for the foreseeable future,” Sharon mutters.
On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, I spend the day by myself, alone in the cottage. Nathan is out at the store formerly known
as Queer Punx, looking over the space with Dina. It seemed like something the two of them should do alone, so I stayed behind
in the cottage. I make coffee in the kitchen, pacing slowly back and forth, taking up the whole space with just myself. I
eat breakfast at the dining table. I sit and read on the couch.
It’s wonderful.
And it’s also lonely. The house feels different, and it’s not just because it’s empty. I feel like I’m sitting in a place
that’s no longer quite mine.
So in the afternoon, I walk down the flagstone path and ring Dina’s doorbell.
She answers in a teal caftan printed with pink sailboats, blowing a wisp of hair out of her face that’s come loose from her
messy bun. “Ah,” she says. “I thought I might be seeing you today.”
“Yeah.” I shove my hands in my pockets, suddenly feeling strangely awkward. “I did everything I needed to do, so . . . I guess
I’ll be leaving tomorrow. I just wanted to ask about check-out instructions. Should I strip the bed or . . . ?”
“No, no.” Dina waves a hand. “I’m perfectly capable of doing laundry.” She considers me. “Have you told my nephew?”
My heart twists so painfully that I can’t breathe. My lungs won’t expand. “Not . . . not yet.” But I can’t manage to say the
rest: And I don’t know how. Even though I could feel that question hovering between us, with every box we carried down to Dina’s basement, I still haven’t
figured out what to say. How to say anything without breaking him. Without breaking me.
“Well.” Dina folds her arms, leaning against her doorframe. “Where are you heading next?”
“Back to Boston, I guess.” I try to shrug, but I barely manage a shoulder twitch. “I don’t have an apartment lined up, but
I found a couple possibilities, and I can crash with Rika and Yasmin in the meantime.”
“Hmm.” Dina nods thoughtfully, eyes narrowed. “Would you ever consider living here?”
“You mean on the Cape? I didn’t see that many regular apartment listings—”
“No, not on the Cape. Here.” Dina points at the porch under my feet. “In my house. Would you consider staying at my place and taking over management of the cottages while I’m traveling?”
I stare at her. The apartment listings still open on my laptop, Rika and Yasmin, even thoughts of Nathan evaporate. “I thought
you were going to sell.”
She slowly lets her breath out, looking away, up the flagstone path. “I was. But if I’m not paying all the Queer Punx costs . . .”
Her eyes come back to me. “I did a little bit of poking around at the going rates for one-bedroom apartments in Boston. If
you could do two thousand dollars a month, help me wrangle renters for the little house, and take care of the upkeep, do the
laundry, all that . . . I could swing it.”
My breath sticks in my throat. “But . . . won’t you want to come back?”
“I suppose,” Dina says. “Eventually. But I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and I don’t really feel like planning. I’ve been
running a business and taking care of two houses for thirty years. I could use a break. Besides, I have a feeling you’d be
good at finding people who need the cottage. And somebody should keep an eye on Sir Duke, and he seems to like you.”
I blink. “You’re not taking him with you?”
“That murderous hairball?” Dina raises an eyebrow. “Absolutely not. He’d escape the camper constantly and I can’t spend my
whole trip chasing after him. I was going to leave him with Dave and Bill, but honestly, I think everyone would be happier
if Duke stayed with you.”
“Oh,” I say, but my mind is far away, listening to the roar of ocean waves and the wind rattling against the windows.
The rustle of birch leaves and the hum of crickets.
I wonder how empty the roads will be as the leaves change from green to fiery orange, as snow falls, as a blanket of quiet settles over the beach.
I wonder if I’ll actually be able to find a parking spot in Provincetown, once the summer crowds have disappeared.
I wonder how different Cuppa Cove will feel in the dead of winter.
I wonder how the branches that arc over the long gravel drive of Spyglass Beach Way will look when they’re bare and clacking against each other.
How they’ll look as they bud and turn green again.
I picture the roads slowly filling back up. The drive-in opening. The shops full. The towns contracting and then growing again,
like the whole place is slowly breathing.
“I don’t know anything about managing houses,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if someone rents that place and
sees someone and goes screaming for the hills or—”
“Well, I’m not going to Mars, Harlowe,” Dina says. “You can call me. And I’ve got a whole list of people who fix things. I’ll
show it to you. I learned that lesson the hard way, the first time I tried to fix a broken toilet. Just call the professionals!”
She pauses, thoughtfully. “Although Nathan might be willing to do the smaller jobs, if you ask him.” Another pause. “My house
is a nice size, you know. Nowhere near as cramped as the little one. Plenty of room for two people, if you ever decided you
didn’t want to live alone.”
My thoughts spin. I could keep my job—it’s already remote. I’d have to find a new clinic to go to. Someone else to write my
T prescription. But Katy’s already cut my hair. I already know where to buy coffee. The groceries are a little pricey, and
maybe it will feel dull and quiet sometimes, when so many things are closed for the winter, but Boston isn’t so far away.
Rika and Yasmin could visit. I’d have room for them to stay.
And Nathan. More than anything, I think of Nathan.
Of swimming in the pond and watching the sunsets.
Of stopping by the store-formerly-known-as-Queer-Punx, just to visit him, to see how things are going, because I want to see his smile and I don’t care if that means driving forty-five minutes in tourist traffic.
Of movies at the drive-in in the summer and evenings curled up on the couch in the winter when it’s dark and cold and the pond is covered in ice.
Of the struggles waiting for us, along with a hundred mundane moments I’ll forget the details of, except for the feeling of being close to him.
Like for all the ways we’re broken, our brokenness fits together, and I am, finally, home.
I shake my head, pressing my fingers against my eyes. “Are you sure this is okay?” I ask. “What about Nathan? Does he want
to take over the cottages? I mean, if they belong to you, they kind of belong to him, don’t they?”
Dina’s quiet, watching me, and I feel as though she’s looking right through me, reading every thought in my head. “They might
kind of belong to him, as you say,” she says, “but I’m quite sure my nephew wants nothing to do with cottage management.”
My heart beats wildly in my chest. I look away, up the flagstone path to the grove of skinny birch trees, and then to the
ground falling away in front of Dina’s house, and then to the trees and the shrubs and the winding gravel road leading down
the hill.
“I budgeted twenty-four hundred a month for an apartment in Boston,” I say. “And that wasn’t counting the furniture I’d need
to buy, so . . . I mean, if you’re leaving everything, then . . . I can’t do less than twenty-five hundred, Dina. Not for
all this.”
Dina smiles, a small, slow smile. “All right, then. It’s a deal.”
I smile too, hope blooming inside me. “It’s a deal.”
She takes a breath. Holds it. And then says, “I do have one favor to ask.”
“Anything.”
“I’d like to stay in the little house one more time, for old times’ sake, before Sharon and I head out.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow it wasn’t that. “Sure, of course. I mean, it’s your house, you can stay
there now if you want—”
“No, no,” she says quickly, holding up a hand. “Just the night before Sharon and I leave will be fine. You can move your things over here and we’ll swap earlier in the day. I’ll get a lease all drawn up and we can worry about the security deposit and all that stuff then too.”
“Okay. Sure.”
She smiles again and steps back inside her house.
“Wait,” I say. “Should I tell Nathan that I’m staying?”
“You should,” she says. “But let me tell him too.”