Chapter 26 Hailey
Hailey
“Why aren’t you happier?” Hailey said to her sister, upstairs in the girls’ room. She was rooting for a cardigan in her suitcase,
which she’d hauled in from The Closet and flopped open on top of the twin bed that hadn’t been slept in. Their mom, after
getting tipsy on wine—super unusual for her, but maybe she’d been inspired by Aunt Kate in recent days—had ordered everyone
off to get some rest, but Hailey needed to go over to Seabreeze. Jack had already agreed to pick her up at 5:15 again tomorrow
morning to go out searching, and she needed to tell him the search was off. “Dad’s okay!” Then she reminded herself: That
likely wasn’t the only thing on her sister’s mind. “I mean, I know you’re upset about Reese leaving. What was that all about,
anyway?”
Emma, stretched out on her rumpled twin bed, ankles and arms crossed, let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know,” she said glumly.
“She said she thought Dad was having an affair. I told her there was no way.”
Hailey was glad, then, that Reese was gone. “Well, Dad’s not having an affair. He’s up in northern Maine camping.”
Emma propped herself on her elbows. “Mom said he used to, like, go off by himself camping sometimes, back before we were born. Did you know anything about that?”
“No,” Hailey said, still digging through her suitcase. Where was that damn sweater?
Emma lay back down and sighed again, staring at the ceiling. “I just wish we knew when he was planning to come back.”
“Didn’t Mom say end of the week?” Already their mom had called the police and the TV stations to say there was no need to
look for their dad’s car or run his story anymore. Lindy said she’d even assigned Uncle Josh to travel the coastline one more
time tomorrow to take down the MISSING flyers that had been posted everywhere. That was more than enough to convince Hailey: their dad was definitely fine.
“Yeah, I guess,” Emma said, not sounding convinced.
Hailey finally found her cardigan, yanked it out, and put it on. “Listen, Dad is fine, he’s not having an affair, and he’ll
be back soon. I’m going over to tell Jack.”
That got a little smirk from Emma. “Did you tell Noah yet?”
“Shut up,” Hailey said automatically, stopping to look in the mirror by the door. She wondered if Noah would even be happy
at the news, or if he’d just say, Told you so. She wiped a smudge of mascara from the outer corner of her eye, wishing she had time for a shower, a little fresh makeup.
She caught herself. Ridiculous. Also, she could just call over to Seabreeze, landline to landline—but that would probably wake Marjorie. Hailey knew she could get Jack’s
attention by tossing pebbles at his upstairs window, the way she used to do.
“Mom’s not going to like you going out alone at night,” Emma said. “Even if Dad’s supposedly okay.”
“Then let’s not tell her.”
Emma let out a mock gasp. “Hailey Marie Kauffman! What happened to being the perfect daughter?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hailey muttered. In her mind, she saw a fractured shell.
Wow, Jack better not have permanently altered her.
She was not ready for that. But. “Just don’t tell her,” she said, and walked out, shutting the door quietly behind her.
Through the closed attic door, she heard her brothers shouting and moving around up there—playing with their Nerf basketball?
Most likely. Otherwise, the cottage was quiet and dark, and she tiptoed down the stairs, hoping the screen door wouldn’t squeak as she pushed her way outside.
The night was starlit, black, and cool. Few lights burned in the cottages she passed as she made her way down toward the ocean,
then around the point and back up the road toward Seabreeze. The moonlight shone on the water, and gentle waves lapped the
rocks below.
She was trying not to think about what Emma had asked in mock alarm—what happened to being the perfect daughter?—but it had cut too close to the bone.
Because, yes, Hailey should definitely call Noah and tell him the good news about her dad. She should do what she could to
try to appease him, repair things before the wedding, in which her parents had invested so much time and money.
Unfortunately, ever since Jack’s game of “what if” this afternoon, she was having a hard time ignoring how badly Noah had
been acting. She was also having zero luck keeping her thoughts from spinning out into what his bad behavior might portend
for her future.
And now that Dad was okay, and Mom was hell-bent on going full-bore on the rest of the wedding preparations starting tomorrow,
Hailey had no excuse to continue to think about postponing it.
As she approached Seabreeze, Hailey saw the light on in Jack’s room upstairs.
She scooped a handful of mulch from the hydrangea bed below his open window and tossed it up to hit the screen, scooting away before the pieces rained back down.
He came to the window, a dark shape framed in the light, wearing only a pair of shorts.
She gave him a little wave, feeling sheepish suddenly.
When he spotted her, she heard him laugh. “Meet you at the front door!” he called, then disappeared.
So much for being circumspect. Also, she’d imagined he would have her come to the back, the way he used to. The back door
led almost straight to a back staircase, which led almost straight up to his room—
Damn it. What had she been thinking, seriously?
She made her way around to the front and up the porch steps, feeling off-balance now, twisting her ring around her finger.
She should have just called. Obviously, Jack wasn’t going to invite her upstairs like no time had passed, like she wasn’t
engaged to marry Noah in ten days’ time. Was she just out of her mind with relief about her dad being okay? That had to be
it. Yes. She felt a fresh wave of solace at the explanation.
Jack didn’t turn on the porch light. He opened the front door and closed it quietly behind him as he stepped outside. He had
put on a blue T-shirt, and he didn’t look surprised that she was there, which made her wonder how many other girls threw mulch
at his window, here or back in California. She decided: She would tell him the news, then leave. Immediately.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi!” She spilled it all out quickly—her dad had called, he was safe, he was camping up north by himself, there was no more
need to worry or search for him. “So, I just wanted to tell you that we don’t need to go out tomorrow morning. And thank you!”
“Well, that is great news!”
At the sight of Jack’s genuine smile, Hailey shoved aside a niggling thought of Emma’s unease about when their dad would actually
come back. She wasn’t going to tell Jack about that.
Jack cocked his head toward the rocking chairs nearby. “Want to sit for a minute?”
“Yeah, sure! Great,” Hailey blurted, then bit her lip.
Well, staying for just a minute would be okay.
She crossed the porch to sit in the farthest chair. “Won’t we bother your grandma?” she whispered, imagining Marjorie would
have her bedroom window, directly above them, open.
Jack sat in the other chair. “Don’t worry. Once she takes her hearing aids out, she wouldn’t hear an airplane crash into the
cove.”
Hailey sat up straighter. “You shouldn’t say things like that. Don’t you think it invites trouble?”
Jack shrugged, with a mysterious little smile that somehow took away Hailey’s ability to form words. She looked out at the
swirls of moonlight on the black, rippling water, twisting her ring again. It popped into her head to wonder where she’d be
a year from now. It would be her one-year wedding anniversary, her grandparents’ fifty-first, and her dad’s fifty-first birthday.
Maybe they’d be able to throw him a big party for that one. Maybe they’d all be able to spend time together at Innisfree again,
despite the fact that her mom had made such a big deal about this being “the last summer” that they would all be together.
(Would Hailey be pregnant by next summer? She almost shuddered at the thought.)
The two chairs were angled toward each other with a small table between them, and she was conscious of Jack’s legs stretching
toward her, his crossed ankles and large bare feet, even as she imagined Marjorie sweetly prying confessions out of one neighbor
at a time here in these chairs, afternoon by sunny afternoon, over strong gin and tonics and generous slices of cookie cake.
Maybe that was how Marjorie maintained dominion over The Cove—because she got everybody to dish their secrets not only in
her kitchen, the way she’d always done with Hailey, but right here on her front porch.
“So, you’re not doing any writing anymore?” Jack asked suddenly.
“Oh! Oh, well, actually . . .” Apparently, he took after his grandma when it came to prying information out of people, because
Hailey never talked about her story, but within seconds she was divulging everything about her spiral notebook, the twenty-two chapters,
her frustration over how little time she’d spent working on it the past year, her certainty that she wouldn’t have any time
for it once she was in law school.
“What is it about?” Jack asked.
Her face heated up. “It’s a coming-of-age story, but also like a mystery.” The truth was, it featured a teenage girl and boy
in a small coastal village in Maine, falling in love one summer while they solved a cold 1930s murder case after finding clues
in the guy’s grandmother’s attic. Hailey had not realized till literally this moment how much of the story had been inspired
by her long-ago summers with Jack. She’d started writing it four years ago, imagining she was making the thing up out of whole
cloth.
“Well, you can’t give up on it.” Jack grinned. “I want to be able to say I knew you when.”
She laughed, as her face grew hotter. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She hoped that, in the dim light, he couldn’t see
her blushing—
She caught herself. “I should probably get home,” she said. “Lots to do for the wedding!”
Jack shifted slightly in his chair, then said, “Yeah, I guess it’s getting late,” which for some reason caused a pinprick
feeling in her heart.
That was going to do nobody any good. She quickly stood.
He stood at the same time, and they ended up too close to each other. Whoops. Hailey tipped up her chin, studying his face,
and the scent of him—his fresh-out-of-the-laundry shirt, the salt and heat of his skin—was all around. She felt the rise and
fall of his chest as he breathed, and her eyes, without her wanting them to, traced the shape of his mouth.
“What if everything were different, Hales?” he said quietly.
She stepped back like he’d kicked her shin. “Jack,” she scolded.
But he was looking at her softly. Almost like he was thinking about kissing her . . .
Okay, seriously. She hadn’t wanted to ask—it would’ve felt too intimate, too suggestive—but it was impossible to imagine that
he didn’t have a girlfriend back in California.
Which meant he’d stand there and think about blowing up Hailey’s whole life, without having any intention of sticking around.
And she would be seriously complicit, what with the whole throwing mulch at his window thing.
“I’d better go,” she said. “Night, Jack.” He opened his mouth, but she scooted around him and hurried down the porch steps and out to the road.
What if everything were different, Hales? she thought as she hurried toward the point, toward where the moonlight scattered across the rolling ocean, the familiar landscape
feeling off-kilter now.
Well, everything couldn’t be different. And that was that.
Okay. At least now that her dad was definitely okay, she and Jack wouldn’t see each other except around the neighborhood.
They’d have no reason to.
What a relief, she thought, even as part of her was tumbling headlong into a sorrow she could not name as she turned up the hill to head
back to Innisfree.
She went inside and switched on the lamp in the living room, then tiptoed upstairs to grab her book bag—fortunately, Emma
slept like a rock—and hauled it back down again. She had to remind herself of the facts of her life, she’d decided.
She sat on the couch and used both hands to pull out her thick wedding binder. The thing had to weigh eight pounds. She laid
it flat on the coffee table, opened to the to-do list, and read: Finalize seating chart. Confirm details and payments with all vendors. Confirm details and schedule with wedding party . . .
She was feeling nauseous again.
She guessed she’d let Jack get into her head too much. But life with Noah was going to be great. They’d just had a rough few
days, that was all.
She dug into her bag for a pen to make notes. She needed to find out exactly when Chelsea, her maid of honor, was planning
to arrive from Rhode Island, and schedule a manicure for Emma to get that black nail polish off, exchange it for petal pink
to match the bridesmaid dresses—
She found the notebook that contained her novel.
Why had she even thrown it in there? It wasn’t like she’d expected to have time to work on her writing.
But she did tend to bring it with her wherever she traveled, and she’d also always done some writing during summers at Innisfree.
So maybe it was just old habit to bring the notebook along.
Also, she hadn’t wanted to leave it at the apartment for Noah to find. He didn’t know she was writing a novel. (Or . . . a
“story.”)
She pulled the notebook out and opened to where she’d left off, to the last page grooved by the loops and lines and swirls
of her ballpoint pen. She read the words they made, running her hand over the paper, loving the contrast between the textured
page and the smooth blank one.
She dug into her bag again for the pen she knew was in there.
She found it, pulled it out, uncapped it, and, at the top of the blank new page, began to write.