Chapter Forty-Four #2
“We’d have had a different life,” my father says. “All of us. I can’t tell you what that life would have been, better or worse, but it would have been different. I made the choices I made. So did your mother. And so did Reid. That’s all we can know.”
“Very Zen,” I say.
“Try spending twenty-five years mostly by yourself,” he says. “You’ll find your Zen, too.”
Behind me, the bells over the door ring. A second later, something cold and wet nudges my hand. Ginger stands by my stool, tail wagging, Freya beside her. “Harold,” she says. “Mark, it’s good to see you up and about.”
My father nods hello, like someone not yet used to engaging with the public.
“Maude,” I say.
“That’s a bridge too far,” Freya says. “I may sic Ginger on you.”
“Or she can be a dog now.”
“You mean no more killing machine?” Freya asks. “She probably has it in her to change, like we all do. And now that the stalker’s been caught, let’s hope he doesn’t make a return appearance for Sweeps Week.”
“Let’s hope,” I say.
“I was at Burkehaven this morning,” she says. “The new construction is looking good. I like seeing you take charge.”
Freya’s opted to stay in Hero for the time being, though she’s not giving up the co-op in New York.
After confessing, Paul took a plea deal that kept him from facing federal charges.
Freya agreed to buy the lot of land at the end of the point if he’d put the rest of the lots in conservation.
Soon, the town will set about replanting the shoreline to restore Burkehaven to what it used to be.
“Maybe construction is your calling, Charlie,” my father says.
I’m not sure what my calling is. The firm is mired in debt, but if I can turn things around, it could be worth some money.
I also have the recordings I made, and a lurid story, one that’s mostly mine to tell.
My father’s reappearance and Paul’s arrest garnered attention in the media, but for all the gossip and small-town whispering, the people in Hero protect their own.
They closed ranks and froze out the reporters, so that a week after the story blew up, it fizzled away on its own.
The bells over the door ring. This time, Duncan Gilcrest enters. I haven’t seen him since the EMTs lifted him onto a gurney and wheeled him down the mountain. Now, two weeks later, he’s as handsome and charismatic as ever.
“He really is ridiculous,” Freya says as Gilcrest talks to anyone who will listen. “But he’s also been working with Lisa Lawson, Wendy Burrows’s widow, to see if she can qualify for survivor’s benefits now that we know Wendy died on duty. He’s a lot more good than bad.”
“What about Gilcrest’s wife?” I ask.
“Near-death experiences bring clarity. For everyone,” Freya says, in a way that tells me she not only likes every inch of that ridiculous detective but has found her own clarity.
“I’m glad,” I say.
“Come out tonight,” she says, then kisses my cheek. “I have a show at seven. We can have a drink afterward.”
“I’ll see you then,” I say.
She joins Gilcrest and clasps his hand in hers, dragging him toward the door. He catches my eye. “Charlie Kilgore,” he shouts. “My man!”
I hate to admit it, but something tells me Gilcrest and I might wind up being friends.
My father pats my back. “Freya’s like me,” he says.
“In the third act, looking backward, wondering what she could have done differently, asking what she still has time to accomplish. You have your whole life in front of you, with plenty of room to make mistakes. Find someone to make those mistakes with.”
It takes a moment for me to realize my father’s offering advice on my love life, that he thinks Freya’s left me brokenhearted. I don’t correct him. There’s a comfort in his offer. The advice feels fatherly and honest, as though we’re both on the inside being seen.
I could get used to this.
When I get home to Idlewood, Seton waits for me in one of the Adirondack chairs on the dock. She wears that same boxy uniform I saw her in the first day I drove into town. I slide onto the chair next to her.
“Want a drink?” I ask, resting a hand over hers.
“I’m on duty, you idiot,” she says, but she doesn’t take her hand from mine.
“Are you here to arrest me?” I ask.
“Consider this a wellness check. You’re out here all by yourself. Why not ask your dad to stay with you?”
“Soon,” I say. “Once we know each other better.”
Seton scans the cove. “What will you do with Idlewood now?” she asks.
“I can’t afford to keep it.”
“You’re selling?”
“Not in a million years. I’m donating it to the town. I’ll hang on to this dock so I have a place to keep the boat, and enough property to, I don’t know, have a firepit. Otherwise, I’ll stay in the bungalow.”
“It’s not a bungalow!” Seton says. “And that’s a lot of money to pass on.”
“Who needs money?”
Seton squeezes my hand. “I’m glad you figured out what happened to my dad. I didn’t realize I needed closure till I had it. The whole thing has been healing, in a way I never could have imagined. Thanks for pushing when I told you not to.”
In the two weeks since Paul’s arrest, that imaginary wall between us has begun to dissolve.
What’s on the other side is taking shape, but I’m looking forward to finding out what’s there.
For that to happen, I need to be honest about the side of myself I saw on that mountaintop, a side that scared me. “I almost shot Paul that night,” I say.
“You didn’t, though,” Seton says.
“If you hadn’t shown up—”
She takes my hand to her mouth and kisses my fingers. “Do you mind?” she asks.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead on hers. Our lips nearly brush. “Not at all,” I say.
“I did show up, though,” she says, her voice soft, “and once I was there, I’d have shot you in the leg before I’d have let you do anything to ruin your life.
But I didn’t need to be there to save you.
There’s a difference between wanting to kill someone and following through.
I want to shoot my mom ten times a day, but I wouldn’t do it.
You wouldn’t kill anyone, either. You don’t have it in you. ”
The radio on her shoulder chirps, something about two free-roaming Rhodesian ridgebacks out on Sheridan Road. “That’s Juna and Autumn,” she says. “Off on an adventure.”
I take her hand to my lips and kiss each of her fingers. “You should probably find out where they went.”
“I should,” Seton says without moving, but I sense her pulling away.
“Are we back to the friend zone?” I ask.
She turns to face the water, her body hunched forward. “I came here for another reason. I had the DNA from the pint glass tested.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “It was my father’s DNA.”
“It was,” she says, and I can tell she’s weighing what to say next.
“If there’s more to it, tell me. I’m done with secrets.”
Seton bites her lip. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
Her fingers tighten on my hand, and I suddenly don’t know whether she’s talking about the DNA test or something much more important—the two of us.
In my mind I flash forward fifty years. We sit in this same spot on another summer day like this one, our hair white, our joints creaky.
I wonder how many tattoos Seton will have by then, or what we’ll be planning to accomplish in our own third acts.
It’s a life I want, and one that’s anything but a mistake.
“Tell me whatever you need to,” I say.
Hadley’s head bobs among the daisies in the perennial garden beside the bungalow. As I approach, she glances up from under her sun hat. “Good thing you’re here,” she says to me. “I need some muscle.”
I flex my arm. “You’ll have to look elsewhere.”
“Fill that wheelbarrow with mulch. I’m heading out to Port-au-Prince later this week. You can help me get these beds ready before I leave.”
I roll up the sleeves on my shirt and shovel mulch into a wheelbarrow.
“I’ll be gone for most of the summer,” Hadley says.
“But you can call, no matter what it’s about.
You know that, right? I’ll always be here for you.
” She crouches in a second bed and yanks at a patch of clover.
“Weeds are insidious. And hard work helps keep your mind off things, things that maybe you don’t want to think about otherwise. It does for me.”
Behind us, the kitchen door opens, and someone with a thick Australian accent says Hadley’s name. She pops her head over the daisies to where Lee, the helicopter pilot, stands in the doorway, shirtless. “Charlie and I are talking,” she says to him. “We’ll be done in a bit.”
Lee gives me a wave, calls me mate, and retreats into the house.
“Looks like you have an ample supply of muscle,” I say.
To her credit, Hadley blushes. “Lee and I, we’ve run into each other around the world. Now we’re running into each other here.”
I dump the load of mulch onto the bed. “That morning I shouted your name, when I called 9-1-1—” I begin.
“I was on my way back from Lee’s place,” Hadley says. “That’s why I wasn’t home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask,” Hadley says. “And a girl’s gotta have a few secrets.”
“Secrets,” I say, spreading the mulch with a rake. “There are secrets everywhere. I was talking to my father this morning—”
“I haven’t seen him yet,” Hadley says, cutting me off.
“And I’m not sure what I’ll say when I do.
But your mother didn’t tell me he was alive, if that’s what you’re asking.
Jane knew secrets had to be controlled. If they get out into the world, they aren’t yours anymore.
She also knew I had feelings for your father, that I’d had them for a long time, and that I might do something stupid if I knew too much. ”
I kneel beside her, still processing what Seton told me out on the dock, weighing how much I want to share with Hadley, how much I want her to know that I know.
“I had the pint glass tested against your DNA,” Seton said to me, “but I also had your DNA tested against your mother’s. The results weren’t what I expected.”
I touch Hadley’s hand. “You and my father,” I start to say. “The two of you—”
Hadley cuts me off. “Your mother was your mother, and I’m your aunt. Your favorite aunt.”
“My only aunt,” I say.
“Your favorite. And nothing will change any of that, ever. Jane loved you in a way I couldn’t have, in a way I didn’t want to.
She was right about a lot of things, and one is that I’m selfish.
I mean, look, I’m flying to Port-au-Prince when I should be staying here and offering support, but I like things my way, and I don’t compromise, no matter who’s asking. ”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask.
Hadley sits cross-legged on the pile of mulch.
“My father cut me out of his will, and I was angry, much angrier than I’ve ever admitted.
I took that anger out on your mother. Your father and I .
. . we had feelings for each other, even after years apart.
And one night, we got drunk, and it went too far, and you showed up nine months later.
That indiscretion is what led Jane into having an affair with Isaac.
It was the catalyst to all of this, and I’ve spent a lifetime wondering what would have happened if I’d left well enough alone. ”
She grips a tiny maple sapling in her fist. “See this. It’s got to go because we don’t want a maple tree growing in the middle of the cutting garden.
Those are the choices you make, right? And you don’t look back, no matter what.
The only thing you need to know is that your mother loved you more than life itself, and more than anyone else ever could have.
She felt that way from the moment I handed you to her. And she never, ever stopped.”
I place my hand over Hadley’s and try to picture the two of us, traveling the world, far from Idlewood, but the images don’t come into focus.
As my father said over breakfast this morning, the only thing I know about that imaginary life, better or worse, is it would have been different from the one I’ve already lived.
We yank the tree from the ground. “You are my favorite aunt,” I say.
“Don’t ever forget it,” Hadley says.
Later, after we finish mulching, I change into sneakers and start to run, up the road, past Burkehaven Farm, onto the trailhead.
When I reach the summit, I sit on the granite outcropping, where the lake stretches to the horizon. These last few weeks could have broken me. Instead, I feel as though I’ve started on a path toward discovering who I might be, and I can’t wait to learn more about that person.
Still, I can’t forget what I’ve lost.
I take out my phone and delete each of the audio files from the cloud, all but the last conversation with my mother.
I listen, her voice floating over me: You have a right to know your story and to understand who your father was, she says toward the end of the recording.
I should have told you about him a long time ago.
“I love you, Mom,” I say, my chest tight. “Always and forever.”
That, I know, will never change.
I move the recording from the cloud and save it in a place where only I will ever be able to find it.
I don’t owe Julian, but I’ll make sure he understands the podcast is off when I hand in my resignation at the radio station.
I’ll also tell Gilcrest we aren’t writing a book or making a TV series.
Right now, I want to give Hero a chance.
I want to water-ski with Mrs. Haviland, and learn more about my father, and explore a friendship with Freya and Gilcrest, and be here when Hadley returns from her trip to see what else she might reveal.
Mostly, I want to spend a lot of time with Seton.
This story is mine, and mine alone. I’ll pack it away and keep it for myself. I’m pretty certain that’s where it belongs.