Chapter Six
The docks are in, and the motorboat delivered from the marina.
Paul arrives at Idlewood and joins Hadley, Reid, my mother, and me on the dock, where we light candles at the base of paper lanterns as the sun dips below the foothills.
Around the lake, flames flicker, and white orbs rise into the air for the Lantern Festival, filling the night sky and reflecting their light in the inky water.
Afterward, on the screened porch, we uncork bottles of Chianti and fill our plates with Bolognese. Then the cards and the scorepad come out for a game of Oh Hell!
“What happened at Burkehaven this afternoon, anyway?” Hadley asks, as I deal.
Paul runs through the highlights of the confrontation with Andrea Haviland.
“Tempest in a teapot,” Hadley says. “I’d expect nothing less from a visit to Hero.” She points at my mother, who sits on my left. “Jane, what’s your bid?”
“Two,” my mother says. “But Andrea has a point, Paul. You don’t need to sell the whole property. There are other options.”
Paul bids zero. “Not ones that would line both of our pockets with cash,” he says. “I barely come here anymore. Keeping that property isn’t worth the tax burden. Besides, I won’t let Andrea pull what she did at Rocky Nook. She blocked that whole development.”
“What’s your bid, Reid?” Hadley asks.
“One,” Reid says, “and there’s something to be said for not getting hit with a tax bill for thirty grand every year.”
My mother rearranges the cards in her hand. “Don’t start, Reid. It’s my tax bill. My thirty grand, too.”
Every year, families around the lake sell properties because of the taxes, but this is the first I’ve heard mention of that happening to Idlewood. “Would you sell?” I ask my mother.
“Not in a million years,” she says.
“Take a guess at what a place like this one costs to maintain, Charlie,” Reid says.
My mother shoots Reid a glare. “Your grandfather entrusted me with Idlewood, and I’ll make sure it’s protected.”
Reid slouches in his chair, as I get the distinct impression this isn’t the first time he and my mother have had this conversation. Again, I’m left wondering what they might have discussed without me. “How old were you when Grandpa bought Idlewood?” I ask.
“You call him Grandpa but call me Jane?” my mother says. “You never met Tony Reid.”
“Tony, then,” I say. “When did Tony buy Idlewood?”
“It was the early eighties,” Hadley says. “I was twelve. Jane was sixteen. Our father liked that we lived on an island, especially after our mother died. He thought the island would keep us contained.”
“He thought it would keep you contained,” my mother says. “Hadley was wild. I was responsible.”
“And it paid off in the end,” Hadley says, studying her cards. “Nice house, here.”
“Seems like an even trade,” my mother says.
This time, there’s no mystery to the barbs.
My grandfather died from a heart attack right before his sixtieth birthday.
He and Hadley had been estranged, and he left Idlewood to my mother and cut Hadley out of the estate.
Most of the time Hadley seems to take what happened in stride, though once in a while she lets her guard down.
“He didn’t have much success containing us,” Hadley says.
“We met Paul right away. I mean, he lived next door.”
“Not that the Burkes invited us for cocktails,” my mother says.
“They’d been coming to the lake for generations, and Burkehaven was for the docksider crowd.
Paul’s parents had their unwritten rules: who knows who, Princeton eating clubs, stock market tips, visits to Nantucket.
If you didn’t know how to play, they didn’t ask you back. ”
“My parents weren’t that bad,” Paul says.
My mother slaps his arm playfully. “Your parents were snobs and so are you.”
Hadley chimes in. “Our father opted for the dog races at Suffolk Downs, not the polo grounds in Newport. But we managed to find Paul and become friends. We met the others then, too.”
My mother catches Hadley’s eye, a signal not to go further, an interaction I’m so used to happening whenever we get remotely close to mentioning my father that the exchange nearly passes me by. Instead, I grab on and press further. “The others,” I say. “You mean Dad.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” my mother says.
These are the moments I need to lean into if I want to learn more about what happened. “Why not?” I ask. “Dad’s part of who we are. I mean, look at tonight. The Bolognese, the Lantern Festival, the yellow Volvo. It’s like we’re reliving that night.”
“You weren’t there,” Reid says.
“I was there.”
“Not really,” Reid says. “You were an infant.”
Beside me, Hadley rearranges her cards. “I’ll bid two,” she says, steering the conversation away from my father. “That’s five tricks so far, Charlie. You have to bid at least one.”
I glance at my hand. Hearts are trump and I have a two of clubs, a four and six of diamonds, and an eight of spades. I won’t take a single trick unless I get lucky. “One,” I say, letting the topic of my father drop for now.
“Screw the dealer,” Hadley says as she lays down the ace of hearts.
Hadley wins the game, and I come in last. She folds the score sheet in half. “I may frame this one,” she says, but an unsettled quiet has descended over the evening since I mentioned my father.
My mother shuffles the cards and deals a hand of solitaire. Paul and Hadley bring dishes and glasses to the kitchen, while Reid stares over the darkened lake. “I’ll be at the firepit,” he says. “Don’t bother finding me.”
He slams the screen door behind him. My mother watches as he melts into the darkness.
A moment later, the smell of burning logs wafts through the trees.
“Today is hard enough,” my mother says. “It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of what happened.
Reid doesn’t need you to make it worse, Charlie. Frankly, neither do I.”
It doesn’t feel good when Reid and I argue, even silently, and I know it’s my fault he’s upset. Still, I’m not ready to let the conversation go. “Sometimes it seems as though none of it happened,” I say.
My mother touches a scar on her neck. “Not to me. Or Reid. It’s with us every day.”
It takes all I have not to apologize and let the conversation fade away. Instead, I ask, “How did you and Dad meet?” and sit in silence, waiting for a response.
My mother continues her game, the snap of each card resonating through the night as she works through the deck.
When I’ve almost given up on getting an answer, she says, “Mark and I met at Burkehaven. Paul’s parents hosted a party at the start of the season for the kids from town, plus the kids from around the lake.
It must have been 1981, and I was in high school.
Hadley would have been going into the seventh grade.
” My mother stops playing solitaire, caught for a moment in the memory.
“We listened to Rick Springfield and Blondie. Your father hovered at the edge of the party, hanging out with Andrea Haviland, though she was Andrea Powell then. The two of them, they were inseparable. I assumed they were sweethearts.”
Hadley appears at the doorway, wine in hand. “Lucky you had me,” she says. “Don’t forget Isaac and Paul. They were the other pair, always sneaking off, concocting some secret plan. Your mother and I showed up, these two awkward girls from the next cove. We didn’t know anyone.”
My mother smiles. “But I had my fearless sister at my side. She stepped right into the fray, and soon enough everyone knew who we were. After that night the six of us formed a little gang, Hadley and me, Paul and Isaac, and Andrea and your father. We did everything together.”
I picture them, the summer air close, the music playing, the beginning of something unknown. Not one of them could have guessed where these new friendships would lead.
Paul comes to Hadley’s shoulder, wiping his hands with a dish towel. “You’re talking about Mark again?” he says. “Now I really need to head home.”
“Let’s stay on memory lane,” Hadley says. “We can fill in details, see what Jane forgets. Mark—your father—he was cute. We forget that about him. I was the one who wanted to say hello.”
“You were a kid,” Paul says.
“I’d have been twelve that summer,” Hadley says. “Paul, you and Mark would have been fourteen. And you’d have been sixteen, Jane. You all seemed old, but I think I was the one who chugged a Schlitz!”
“I know you smoked a cigarette,” my mother says. “Because Dad smelled it on you when we got home, and guess who had to hear about it for the rest of the summer.”
Hadley waves a dismissive hand. “It was a good night.”
“It was,” my mother says. “One I’d live all over again in a heartbeat.”
Hadley catches my eye. “That would be a good line for the podcast.”
And with that, it’s as though my aunt pulls the needle from the nostalgia turntable and the music comes to a screeching halt.
My mother slams down the deck of cards. “A podcast, Charlie? Like the ones you make for the radio station? That’s why you’re asking all these questions.”
Hadley gulps her wine. “Oops,” she says, in a way that makes me wonder if she blew my cover on purpose.
“Thanks a lot,” I say.
My mother’s eyes flare as she turns on her sister. “How long have you known about this?”
Hadley holds up her hands in surrender. “This isn’t about me, Jane.”
“Hadley didn’t know till right before dinner,” I say. “She heard me recording. And I was planning to tell the rest of you.”
Paul steps into the room. “Did you record us tonight?”
“You’d have to sign consent forms first,” I say.
“No one’s signing anything,” my mother says, turning on me as I catch a glimpse of how she must react on a construction site when someone on the crew forgets who’s boss.
I wish I could go back a few hours in time and confess to my plan, though if I had, I doubt I’d have learned even the small details that came out tonight. “I should have told you what I was doing,” I say.
“You should have,” my mother says. “Now I don’t know if I can trust you.”
She storms into the house and disappears upstairs. I feel awful, sick to my stomach from seeing my mother so betrayed, and at being the source of her betrayal.
“Well, that’s that,” Paul says, gathering his things to leave. “Nice job there, Charlie.”
Paul has a way of making you feel worse when you know you’re in the wrong.
After he leaves, Hadley gathers the cards and returns them to the box. “You knew they wouldn’t be happy, but they’ll come around. Or they won’t. If this is important, it’s up to you whether you want to keep going, whatever the consequences. You get to decide.”
I doubt Hadley’s apologized for much in life and wish I could match her self-confidence.
She kisses my cheek and makes her way through the house and outside.
I slump into a chair, not sure what to do next.
Above me, my mother moves through the house, getting ready for bed, while out on the point, smoke billows against the moon.
I rest my hands on my knees and steel myself before stepping into the cool night air and following the path to the firepit, where Reid huddles beside the lake, the embers from the fire casting an eerie glow.
I stop in the shadows. Reid’s normally angular face has grown slack, his eyes shining as he stares across the inky lake surface, and I wonder if I’ve transported him to another night like this one, if he’s thinking of our father, too.
How often do these moments overcome my brother when no one’s watching? What terrors does he suffer in silence?
He takes a deep breath, seeming to return to the present, his face sharp, his eyes alert. “I can hear you,” he says.
I step out of the shadows and settle onto one of the boulders surrounding the pit. After a moment, I say, “I’m telling our story. Nothing more. I may tell the story for a podcast, and I may tell it for myself, but I want the whole story, not the pieces I’ve managed to cobble together.”
Reid stares into the fire’s embers. Where our mother seemed enraged, he simply seems sad.
“I know you were there that day, too, Charlie,” he says, “but I was actually there, in the boat, trying to survive while my own father waved a bloody knife at me, praying the whole time he couldn’t swim that far.
Praying the boat wouldn’t spring a leak and sink with both of us in it. ”
I imagine my father’s shouts, and Reid at the oars, breathing heavily with each pull. I imagine him cradling my tiny body between his knees.
“Dad was an angry, angry man,” Reid says. “There’s your whole story. Now find another one to tell, because this one isn’t yours. It’s mine.” He stands and puts a hand to my shoulder. “I don’t ask much of you, but leave this alone.”
He heads into the dark. He must bypass the cabin and cross the footbridge, because a moment later, his car starts and roars off into the night.
I owe Reid my life. It’s the one thing I know is true, and I could do what he asks and let this story go. If our situations were reversed, wouldn’t I want the same from him?
I send a text to Julian. They know. They’re angry. Sad, too.
It’s nearly midnight, but Julian responds at once. Anger’s good. Keep it going. There could be a story there, maybe even something to hide.
That’s what I’m afraid of.