Chapter 4
We turn into the drive a little before five.
I am in the back seat with my head against the window, watching the gravel roll past, and I am thinking about the first time I came up this drive.
The first time I arrived at the Graves Estate.
By myself. All my stuff in two duffel bags.
A full prescription bottle in my pocket.
And a head so loud with worst-case scenarios I had stopped trying to sort them—what if Margot has changed her mind, what if Richard finds me embarrassing, what if his sons hate me, what if I make it three weeks and Margot is having to rent me another place to stay because I can’t stay here and–.
My mind was scrambled with all the terrible things that could have happened.
And look what did.
Same drive. Same gravel.
But my feelings about this place have completely changed.
I used to catalog every detail of this place as evidence I didn't belong in it.
The boxwoods clipped within an inch of their lives.
The three flagstones at the front entrance worn smooth from a hundred years of feet that weren't mine.
The size of the front door. The size of the windows.
The size of everything. Months and months of telling myself this house was a hotel I was staying at on borrowed time.
The hedges roll past. The fountain comes into view—stone, lichened, water running.
I look at it now and can imagine: Bane sitting on the lip of that fountain telling me to stop apologizing for breathing.
"Home, baby." Margot, soft, from the front passenger seat. "Doesn't it feel good?"
I don't answer right away. I am trying to decide if the word is true.
It feels true. Even if the place doesn’t feel quite right without my three guys.
"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, Mom. It does."
She turns and her eyes go a little glassy. Richard, at the wheel, doesn't say anything, but his eyes flick to mine in the rearview and stay there a beat. The corner of his mouth softens.
He pulls up to the front entrance and kills the engine.
I get out and stand on the gravel for a second longer than I need to.
The air is cooler here than at the beach. Inland air. Clipped grass and warm stone. Margot unfolds herself from the passenger seat with the small contented groan she makes after long drives.
I go around to help Richard with the bags.
He has the trunk open. He hands me my duffel without comment, hooks the strap of Margot's bag over his own shoulder, lifts the cooler out by himself when I reach for it. I've got this one, you take yours. His everyday version of taking care of things. He shuts the trunk with his elbow.
We walk up to the house together. Margot is already ahead, keys in hand. The front door of the house is right there—carved oak, brass handle worn dark from decades of palms—and she gets it open and props it with a hip and waves us through.
I walk to the door, bracing for the feeling of being small–of feeling wrong and unwelcome.
The half-flinch, the held breath, the version of me that walks into every room ready to be tolerated and not invited.
I have had it at every door since Linda. Every door. Foster doors, school doors, this door.
I wait for it.
It doesn't come.
My breath stays even. My shoulders stay where they were. I cross the threshold and—
—I am inside. Slate floor. Late light coming sideways through the west window. My body has not flinched.
I stand there. Stupid with it.
Home does feel nice. And this is home.
Margot is already through the foyer and into the kitchen with the cooler bag from the car, calling back over her shoulder to ask if I want lemonade.
"Yeah—be right down. Just dropping this upstairs."
"Take your time, sweetheart."
I shoulder the duffel and start up. Fingertips trailing the bannister. Past the little brass bowl on the side table where Richard drops his keys. Past the grandfather clock in the hallway that runs three minutes fast no matter how many times anyone resets it.
I push the door of my room open with my hip and stand in the doorway looking at the room itself.
It looks the same.
It does not feel the same.
The bond in my chest hums faint and far—Bane's thread up and to the left, Atlas's lower and steady, Zero's a little out and bright. I know without thinking about it where each of them is.
The beach house. My boys. Cleaning, allegedly.
The promise from this morning is still warm in my head.
"We'll be on the road by ten tonight, baby.
Eleven at the latest." Bane, kissing me up against the wall of the kitchen in the beach house while Margot was outside loading the car.
"I am going to drive directly to your room.
I am not stopping for gas. I am not stopping for food.
I am going to climb in your window like a teenager and—"
"You are not climbing in my window. There are stairs."
"I am romantic, Maxie."
"You are unhinged, is what you are."
"Tomato, tomahto."
And Zero in the doorway, leaned against the frame, watching us with the small half-grin he never lets the parents see.
"Hate to break it up, but Atlas and I have made other arrangements. We drew straws. I won."
"Excuse me, what."
"Cleaning is a three-man job. Atlas and Bane are cleaning. I am driving home tonight to be in your bed when you get there."
"You're—Zero, you can't be in my bed when I get there, Margot will—"
"Well then maybe not when you get there. But I’ll be in your bed tonight. Trust that."
A look between Bane and Zero. Years of brother-shorthand in two seconds.
"We'll see who gets there first."
"Bane, you are not racing me—"
"I drive fast."
"You drive like a senior citizen."
"I drive carefully. Atlas, are you hearing this?"
And Atlas, hauling the cooler past us toward the front door, calm and amused: "I'm hearing all of it. I am also driving home tonight. I'll be there before either of you."
"You are not."
"I am the only one of us with a coherent route plan."
"Atlas."
"And the only one with a key to the back gate that doesn't squeak."
Zero went after Bane before the dishwasher was half-loaded.
Pinned him to the fridge by the front of his shirt, low, almost calm, the way Zero only gets when he is genuinely going to put hands on someone.
Bane took it standing up, grinning. Then Atlas walked past on his way to the trash can and slapped the back of Zero's head without slowing down.
Drop him. Zero dropped him. Bane straightened his collar like a gentleman and went back to rinsing plates.
Margot came in two minutes later to ask if everyone was alright.
They told her they were debating the dishwasher loading method.
She told them she wished they were always this passionate about chores and went back outside.
I am still smiling about it.
I drag a hand through my hair and go back downstairs.
Margot has the lemonade pitcher out of the fridge.
It is the one she brought into the marriage—heavy cut glass, slightly chipped at the lip, embarrassingly retro. She used it to pour me lemonade my first full night with her as her son.
To say that thing holds memories is an understatement.
She pours three tall glasses at the kitchen island and slides one to me and one to Richard, who has settled onto a stool with the day's mail and is sorting it into piles before he reads any of it.
I pull up a stool. Margot leans across the island on her elbows. The afternoon light is coming through the big window over the sink, gold and slanted, catching the dust in the air.
It is the most ordinary minute of my life.
I take a long drink. The lemonade is too sweet, the way Margot makes it—honeyed, real lemons, a slice floating on top. I close my eyes and let the cold of it run down my throat.
"Thank you guys," I say. "For the trip."
Margot tilts her head. Richard looks up from his mail.
"I mean it." I am looking at my lemonade now because eye contact is going to make me embarrassed. "I—honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it. The whole drive up I was waiting to feel weird. And I just—didn't. It was a really good week. The best one I've had in a long time."
Margot is very still. Her palm spreads flat against the marble.
"Aw, Max."
"It's true."
"...I'm so glad."
"Yeah."
Richard sets his mail down. "For what it's worth," he says, mild, "the boys had a real good time too. Atlas told me yesterday it was the best vacation he could remember. Best he could remember, his words. For a second I thought I was hallucinating."
"He said that?" I ask, licking my bottom lip after taking another sip of the too-sweet lemonade.
"Mm. And Zero was actually civil that night we got back from our beach walk, remember Margot? Voluntarily."
“It was lovely.” Margot smiles.
"That is rare,” I murmur.
"It is exceptionally rare. He’s a prickly one. I told Margot that from day one, didn’t I?"
Margot hides a smile behind a long sip of lemonade and I can’t help but smile too.
He’s right. Zero is quite prickly. The bond hums like a response–a little shiver down my spine.
The kitchen settles a degree warmer.
Margot reaches across and squeezes my wrist.
"This is what I always wanted, you know," she says. Quiet. "You and the boys. A real family. All of us at one table."
"I know, Mom."
"I worried it wouldn't take. Boys with grown lives, a son just starting one, all of you at different speeds—"
"Honey,” Richard says, as if he doesn’t want her to get all sappy.
She does anyway.
"It took," she says. To me. Steady. "That's all. It took. I'm grateful every day."
"Me too."
I mean it. Definitely not in the same way she does, but I’m grateful for how things have turned out anyway.
Richard, still holding Margot's hand, lifts his glass with the other.
"To the trip."
We clink. Lemonade against lemonade against lemonade. Margot's eyes are full but not running over and Richard is seconds from cracking up at how sentimental she is. She always has been, it’s one of her greatest strengths.