Ann and Noah argued the whole ride down to the Cape. He assailed her with a litany of reasons not to sell. “We’ve gone over this again and again,” she said. “Old houses are a lot of work.”
“I’m the one who does the work. I got the whole place running when Poppy arrived. I can do it. I’ll open the house. I’ll close the house. I’ll fix the house. Dude taught me everything.”
“Is that really how you want to spend your time? What about when you get an internship? What if you want to be like Poppy and travel? You don’t want to be tied to a house. Houses tie you down.”
“Like kids? Kids tie you down. You knew that. You didn’t get rid of me.”
Ann smiled. “Maybe it’s not too late.”
Noah banged the car dash with his cast—he’d broken his arm at the skate park, and his friend painted the YouTube star Miranda Sings on it, with her pouty red lips and center part, and the words Hi Guys! It’s me. Miranda. “I’m serious! I like being tied down to that house. It’s ours, Mom.”
“Have you seen the tax bill? Hurricane insurance isn’t cheap, either. And it needs a roof. Carol calls it ‘deferred maintenance.’”
“Poppy and I have thought of a million ways to make it work out.”
Ann laughed. “The two great business minds in our family.”
“You gotta fight for what you love! Stop the car.”
“No. Please would you stop being dramatic.”
Noah twisted around and reached for the emergency brake with his good hand. “I said stop the car. I’ll walk the rest of the way there.”
Ann kept driving; she knew Noah was bluffing, or at least she thought she knew until she began to feel the pinch of brakes against her wheels. She swatted at his hand, alarmed, remembering how her own parents had died. “Noah Gordon! That’s dangerous.”
Noah was crying. His tears moved her deeply, but she couldn’t let him see that. “Please, Mom. Don’t sell. Keep the house for me even if you don’t want it.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
She didn’t tell him that Carol had left a curt voicemail saying simply that she’d canceled the contract. Why would a Realtor give up a commission? Ann was afraid to talk to Carol because she worried this had something to do with Michael, but how would he find out about the house? He was probably back in Milwaukee or Chicago or who knows where. Carol didn’t answer, and she didn’t return her calls. It was fine, fine. Ann didn’t care. She’d find another Realtor. She had to let go of the stupid idea that she’d feel better about her parents’ deaths once the house changed hands. She’d started to believe that her grief was part of the transaction.
Poppy wasn’t home when Ann and Noah arrived. He was still upset and walked into the girls’ bedroom, set his bag down on one of the beds, and shut the door.
She took a deep breath and looked around. The place was messy, so Ann went straight to cleaning, resentfully scrubbing the dishes that her sister had left in the sink, wiping the counters, taking out the garbage. The more she cleaned, the more messes she encountered—clumps of hair in the drain, wet towels on the hardwood floors, empty beer bottles on the end tables. She was putting the playing cards laid out for solitaire back into the box when Poppy blew through the door.
There she was, at long last. Her sister’s face was chapped and red from the outdoors, and her long hair was pulled back into a fishtail braid. She looked the same as always: fresh, soft, sweet. For a second, all the pent-up anger Ann felt disappeared. Despite everything, it felt good to see Poppy—better than good. She saw not just Poppy but also her mother, whose features were now more visible in her sister. She was overcome with an unexpected gush of warmth. Ann said, “Where’ve you been?”
All the energy drained from Poppy’s face when she looked at Ann. “Out.” Poppy kicked off her rain boots and breezed right past the spot where Ann stood, stirring up the dust pile she’d just swept. Ann might as well have been a piece of furniture in the wrong place. Poppy walked into her parents’ bedroom and threw her coat on the bed. It wasn’t just unmade; the sheets were so twisted it looked like people had been wrestling on it.
Ann was so surprised by Poppy’s dismissiveness that all of her emotions jammed up in her mind. Why was Poppy mad at her? She was the one who’d taken care of things—she should be grateful. Ann was trying to think of what to say next when a man walked through the kitchen door carrying a bag of groceries.
“Hello?”
“Oh hey, Ann.”
He set the bag on the kitchen counter and shook Ann’s hand.
“Brad? Milwaukee Brad?”
“The very same.”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Just got in last week.” He pulled a head of cabbage from the bag and set it on the kitchen counter. “I wanted to see your place here, and Poppy, of course. When she called and asked if I could come out, I booked the first flight.”
“It’s great you’re buying the house in Milwaukee. My parents would have loved that.”
“Yeah, so about that—”
Before he could say more, Noah emerged from the bedroom. “You’re here!”
Poppy gave him a fist bump followed by a warm hug—nothing like the cold shoulder Ann had received.
“Hey, man.” Noah’s face was lit with a smile. Hey, man. Since when did he talk like that? What had Noah and Poppy done together? Did they get high? Listen to Bob Marley? Chant? So, they were buddies now. Poppy could just sashay into his life and fist-bump her way into his heart.
“This is Brad,” Poppy said. “He’s the guy I told you about.”
“Your boyfriend,” Noah said teasingly.
For someone so natural and easy, Poppy seemed oddly thrown off by the word “boyfriend.” “Yeah, I guess.”
Brad came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and kissed her on top of her head. There was no denying the chemistry between them. “You guess?”
“You know I don’t like labels.”
Ann thought of the dates she’d gone on over the years, the guys she’d imagined introducing Noah to. Aside from safe Kevin, they never measured up, never seemed worthy of the emotional trauma she might inflict on him. He was possessive of her, sensitive, needy. Ann envied the ease with which Poppy could bring a man into Noah’s life. Everything seemed easy for her. She was in Milwaukee, what, two months? And here she’d sold a home and met someone willing to travel halfway across the country just to see her. Now she and Noah were thick as thieves.
“No surfing for us tonight,” Poppy told Noah. “Rain coming in. How about I teach you tomorrow? OK if Brad joins us?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You were going to surf?” Ann asked. “You never told me that. No way. It’s freezing. And aren’t there sharks?”
Noah rolled his eyes. “Mom, Poppy promised to teach me. A friend loaned her a wet suit for me to wear.”
“I’m down for surfing too,” Brad said. “I’ll fend off the great whites.”
It was obvious Ann was the only person who wasn’t invited to come along. “No.” She wasn’t about to let Noah get into surfing, but not because of the danger. She was worried that if he loved it, he’d disappear the same way Poppy had.
Brad started cooking dinner, a Polish dish called haluški that Brad said was a secret family recipe. Soon the kitchen was filled with the smell of cabbage and pork. Noah put her dad’s Gene Krupa album on the record player, and Poppy lit candles and turned on the string lights. The house, which had seemed so empty and abandoned this past year, felt warm and golden, almost like a home again, only Ann felt unwelcome.
“Noah, c’mere,” Brad said. “I’m going to teach you how to make this the way my babcia taught me.” Noah was eager for a cooking lesson, and hungry for attention from Brad, who drove a motorcycle, played a mandolin, and ran a machine shop. He told him stories about the characters he’d hired to work for him and the rats on the shop floor.
With nothing better to do, Ann started wiping down the walls so she could get them ready to paint. Poppy sat at the table in the area between the kitchen and the living room drinking wine. Occasionally, Ann would find her gaze cast in her direction. Ann thought about trying to strike up a conversation, but Poppy quickly looked back at her crossword puzzle. Poppy’s silence was out of character. So was her anger. She was the one who’d been gone all these years, the one who was AWOL when their parents died. Poppy knew something, and so did Brad, and that was why they were so cool to Ann. But what did they know?
“I’m worried about all these cracks in the walls,” Ann said. “There might be a problem with the foundation.”
“The foundation is fine,” Poppy said, her voice scolding, as if Ann were some kid who was worried about a monster under her bed.
“It can’t be fine. The house is over two hundred years old. There are problems, you know there are.”
“It looks OK to me,” Brad said, “and I know a thing or two about houses.” He’d set some plates on the table. “The walls are amazingly plumb for a structure this old.” He gently lifted the album off the record player and leafed through her dad’s album collection as if it were his own. “How about some dinner music? Look at this Grant Green. The LT Series. This is better than the Blue Note edition. I wonder where your dad picked this up.” The song “Solid” began to play, a song far too tinkling and light for Ann’s dour mood. Ann’s father called songs like that one “Sunday morning music.” For a moment, it felt as if he’d walked into the room to join them. Ann could picture him exactly, right down to his soft T-shirts, paint-stained carpenter shorts, and tattered sandals, his big toenail always split like a piece of old wood.
Poppy walked over to the bookcase and pulled out a yellowed, moth-eaten dime-store paperback of All Creatures Great and Small—Connie had loved that series about the British veterinarian. She’d forgotten how her father had used scraps of toilet paper as bookmarks. They floated to the floor, and Ann panicked: she’d never again know which pages he’d marked.
Noah set the water glasses down. Ann counted: one, two, three, four … five. “Why are you setting five places? Who else are you expecting?”
“A friend,” Poppy said. “He should be here soon.”
“What friend?”
“Just a friend. Someone I met out here.”
Ann wasn’t sure what to do next. The windowsills were rotting. So much to do, so much, and now Carol was out of the picture. Noah, always alert, sensed her tension. He stood behind Ann and rubbed her shoulders. “You should try some of Poppy’s lavender oil.”
“Her what?”
“She says if you rub it on your feet it’ll relax you.”
“The only thing oil on your feet does is make you slip and fall.”
“Your feet are incredibly receptive,” Poppy said. “If you stand on an onion for half an hour you’ll start to taste it.”
“Who has time to stand on an onion for half an hour?”
Brad laughed.
“God, you haven’t changed,” Poppy said.
“Dinner is a long way from being done,” Brad said. “I’m not sure the oven works the way it’s supposed to.”
“It worked in 1979,” Poppy said, and hit Brad’s ass with a dish towel. Poppy lit some candles and opened the game cabinet next to the fireplace where the family stored taped-up boxes holding ancient versions of Boggle, Parcheesi, Chinese checkers, and Pollyanna. There were at least a dozen decks of cards held together with crusty rubber bands, scattered dice and orphan game pieces. Poppy dug around. “Where’s Yahtzee?”
Ann knew the game cabinet would be the last—and the hardest—space to clean out. If a house had a heart, that’s where it was.
“I guess we’ll do a jigsaw puzzle.” Poppy held the box in front of Noah, smiled, and shifted into a graceful, well-practiced warrior three position while dumping the puzzle pieces into a dusty mound on the kitchen table where Ann had picked up the cards. Ann thought Poppy was showing off, forcing the world to acknowledge that yes, she taught yoga and yes, she was still in great shape. Yes, yes, yes—there was always an imperative to admire Poppy for her easy good looks, her sweetness, her athleticism, and her free spirit.
Poppy opened another bottle of wine and poured three glasses almost to the rims. “Here,” Poppy said, holding the glass in front of Ann like a peace offering. “You need this.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Brad, who lifted his glass to initiate a toast. “To this awesome place.”
“… that will soon be sold to strangers.” Noah made a face at Ann.
“OK,” said Poppy. “Here’s to being together again.”
The puzzle was so old that the cardboard rose like phyllo dough and the photograph was peeling off the pieces. Without discussion, the sisters began to divide up the land and sky and started with the edges, the way they always had. It was like muscle memory. Noah pulled up a chair and sat between Poppy and Brad. Ann felt outnumbered.
“You do the lighthouse,” Poppy said.
“Oh sure, give me the hard part.”
Poppy tousled Noah’s thick, brown hair, and Noah’s face lit with a smile of satisfaction that both pleased and angered Ann. She wanted to say to her son, “You hardly know her! Or Brad!” But she held herself back, because even if she was upset with Poppy, she wanted Noah to have a decent relationship with her. She was all the family she had left.
Ann looked at the clock on the wall. The battery was dead, and the hands had frozen in place at 2:34. “When is your guest coming?”
Brad and Poppy looked at each other, an inside look. “Wasn’t he supposed to be here ten minutes ago?”
“What’s going on?” Ann asked. The room was filled with energy.
“Nothing,” Poppy said. “I’ve got the corners.”
They got to work on the puzzle as if its completion really mattered. Noah snuck sips of Ann’s wine so he’d look cool for Poppy. Ann didn’t mind, not really. He was sixteen. Who knew? Maybe Poppy had gotten him drunk or high when they spent the last few weekends alone together. Now they had shared secrets and inside jokes.
Noah propped his chin on his cast. Ann noticed that Poppy still bit her lip when she concentrated. She had to admit that Poppy was kind of adorable. Ann found the familiarity of her gestures oddly endearing, and somehow reassuring. Brad was also staring at Poppy. Oh man, he had it bad, poor sucker. Didn’t he know Poppy would desert him, just like she had deserted everything—and everyone?
The wine and physical exhaustion set in. Ann allowed herself to relax. The soft rain on the windows and the flickering candlelight made the space feel intimate, like it was the only place in the world that mattered. She allowed herself to imagine that she and Poppy were kids again, and that it was Michael instead of Noah who sat at the kitchen table, and their parents were sitting next to each other in their respective spots on the couch in the next room, their reading glasses perched on the ends of their noses, her mother intent on a book, her father’s head tipped back, asleep, a gentle snore.
Ann put her hand over Noah’s. “You used to call her Puppy.” Ann gestured to her sister. “Do you remember that?”
“I did?”
Ann nodded. “Poppy would visit from college. When she went back to Madison, you’d would walk around saying ‘I want puppy, I want puppy.’ Everyone thought you wanted a dog.”
“That’s sweet,” Poppy said. “I didn’t know that.”
“No,” Ann said. “You didn’t.”
“But I did want a dog,” Noah said. “I mean I do. I’ve always wanted one.”
“You’ll be in college in a few years. I don’t want to be stuck with it.”
“God forbid you should be burdened with a dog or a house.” Noah looked at Poppy. “How about you get a dog? We can pick one out at the shelter. We could give it a real Wellfleet name, like Dune or Whydah.”
Poppy said, “It should have an oyster name, like Spat.” She put another piece in the puzzle. “Or Shucker.”
“Nobody’s getting a dog,” Ann said. She tried to force a spade-shaped piece into the corner. It didn’t fit, but it looked like it should. “Besides, Poppy, you won’t stick around.”
“How do you know what I will or won’t do?”
Ann began to feel some alarm; she never counted on Poppy really wanting to stay.
“I was thinking,” Poppy said. “We could rent out the house and live in the barn while people are here.”
“Nobody wants to rent this place,” Ann said. “It’s a disaster.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
“I’ll bet you have. Don’t worry about the house. You don’t want to be tied down. You know how many crossed-out entries I have for you in my address book?”
Poppy was quiet. She and Brad exchanged another knowing glance.
“I don’t know how you can live like this,” Ann said.
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?”
“You don’t even have any savings, do you? Not even an IRA?”
“So what?”
“You need some security.”
“You need to stop being so judgmental.” Poppy pushed her chair back and looked up at the ceiling.
“I’m being realistic. Tell me, what’s the longest you’ve spent in any one place? A year? Two?”
“Mom,” said Noah. “Don’t. Please just don’t. Poppy’s great the way she is.”
“I’ll stay,” Poppy said. “I’ve been working, you know.”
“Working?”
“I always work, Ann. Everywhere I go I have a job, sometimes two. My life isn’t totally free of responsibility. Sue me if I don’t want to waste my life in a cubicle in some corporate office.”
“I don’t just have myself to think of.”
“That’s a choice you made.”
It was all she could do not to say that it wasn’t a choice, it wasn’t a choice! Instead, she took a deep breath. “So, what kind of work did you find out here? Are you at that yoga place by the lumber store?” Ann tried hard, for Noah’s benefit, to strike a tone that was calmer, kinder, but instead she knew she sounded fake, falsely cheerful.
“Oysters,” Poppy said. “I’m oystering. I like it. And the pay is pretty great.”
“I’ll bet it comes with a terrific benefits package.”
She could hear Poppy’s breathing slow down, as if she were trying to calm herself. “Do you have to be a bitch?”
“Seriously, what if you get sick?”
“Sick?” Poppy said, her head tilted. “Like, if I get, say, Alzheimer’s?”
The word slipped out of Poppy’s mouth as unexpectedly as a dove from a magician’s hat.
“I had to hear it from Brad. He’s the one who told me Mom was sick.”
“So now you know,” Ann said. “And what difference does it make? Really, Poppy, is it my job to tell you everything?”
What Ann really wanted to say was: “I didn’t think you’d care.” She had to be careful, though. She needed to tread softly with her sister, at least until the house was worked out.
“You could have said something,” Noah said.
“Well,” Ann said, “I thought Dad told you.”
“He didn’t.”
“He probably didn’t want to upset you, or make you feel like you had to come back.” Ann tried to be clinical, matter-of-fact. She used her work voice. But she couldn’t stand to see the crushed look on her sister’s face. She could tell tears would come next, and Ann didn’t want to deal with Poppy’s tears, not after everything. It was all she could do to hold it together herself. “It set in fast,” Ann said, her voice softer. It was hard to think about the panicked phone calls from her dad. “Like really fast. They weren’t even sure it was Alzheimer’s. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I just wish I knew.”
“But why? You were an ocean away. I was the one who talked to them every day. They told me every little thing, like how warm their showers were.”
“You love making me feel guilty, don’t you?”
“I’m not making you feel anything.” But Poppy was right. It was horrible and petty, Ann knew, but she did want Poppy to feel guilty—or something, because, deep down, her extended absence felt like an extended rejection.
Poppy said, “This is our house. It belongs to us. All of us.”
“Amen!” said Noah.
Ann said, “Suddenly you’re nostalgic.”
“Well, suddenly Mom and Dad are fucking dead. Excuse me for having feelings about that.”
“They died over half a year ago and you’re just home now. Those are your feelings.”
“Wait a minute: you’re the one who told me not to bother coming home right away. There was nothing to be done until probate was over. Your words. Yours!”
Poppy was right. What could Ann say? She pushed her chair away from the table. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
That was a lie, but she needed to get away, be alone for a minute. She sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub and stared at the damp wood floor around the base of the sink. Another problem, a leak. All these problems with the house: How could she deal with them on her own? Houses like this, old family homes, aren’t meant to be owned by just one person.
Finally, she emerged to face her sister again. Only there, standing right next to her in the kitchen, was Michael. He wore jeans and running shoes. It was as if, when she’d imagined him there earlier, she’d invoked his presence, made him real.
“So, you’re the mystery guest,” Ann said. This was the voice she used at work when she was the only woman in a meeting full of men, or when she asked for the raise she didn’t want to seem desperate for, or when she turned down a request for a second date from a perfectly nice guy for no good reason. It was a practiced, cold voice that belied her raging emotions.
Poppy stood next to Ann. “We thought it was a good idea to talk.”
“No, this is a bad idea.” Ann could feel her jaw clench. Her hands balled up at her sides. Her body grew stiff. Liquid anger coursed through her. “You’re all in on this.”
“Isn’t it better to discuss the house face-to-face?”
“No. It’s not. This is sneaky and manipulative.”
Poppy said, “Sneaky and manipulative is leaving Michael off the estate. Now we’ve got a mess on our hands.”
Noah was standing up in front of the table where they’d been working on the puzzle; what must he think? Why did Poppy feel it was OK to say this in front of her son?
“This is a mess he created.” She refused to speak directly to Michael. “He doesn’t deserve a thing, not even my time.”
“Ann, please,” Brad said. “He’s got a claim—”
“Stay out of it!”
Poppy stood with her hands on her hips. “He’s just trying to help.”
“I don’t need help.” Ann went into her room, threw on her coat, and slipped into her shoes. She walked back into the living room, head down, and made her way to the door.
“Where you going?” Noah asked.
“I’ll come get you Sunday. I need to go back to Boston.” She took a deep breath and stepped outside.
Michael followed her. Even his footsteps sounded the same. “Please, Ann. Can we talk? This doesn’t need to go badly.”
“It’s already gone badly.”
The motion sensor flicked on above them on the back stoop. He grabbed her arm and she swung around. “Please?”
The light above Michael’s face made him appear so ghostly that she wondered if he was real. She had to admit he looked great; she’d always thought he looked great. His features seemed more distinct now—his cheekbones more defined, his nose more angular. In her mind, he’d been frozen at the age of eighteen. But here he was, and he was older, a real man now. Everything had changed, and yet—nothing. He still had that wildly misbehaving cowlick on the right side of his hairline, only now his thick, jet-black hair glimmered with a few silver strands—or was it the porch light and the rain?
Ann felt Michael watching her in his steady way. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have his eyes on her; he’d always watched her, hadn’t he?
“I need to go,” she said. It was too much, seeing him here after all these years. She had to fight this strange and unexpected impulse to collapse in his arms. He’d been not just part of her life, but her family’s life. She had to keep reminding herself of what he’d done, although now, with so much happening, it was hard to even remember what, exactly, that was.
“You just show up like this after all these years?”
“Hello to you, too.” He tried to force a crooked smile. He seemed embarrassed by his own gesture, or perhaps overcome? He fixed his eyes on the rotted porch board he nudged with the toe of his shoe. Ann almost wanted to feel sorry for him—but that was what had gotten her into all that trouble in the past, wasn’t it? She’d thought of herself as an object lesson in what happens when you go soft. And yet—what was it about him? It was like listening to a chord change in music that plucked on her most vulnerable emotions. A part of her wished that nothing had come between them, that they’d always been there for each other.
“So, you’re the reason the Realtor canceled the contract.”
“I’m a legitimate heir. Poppy knows it,” he said. “And come on, Ann. You know it, too. I don’t care about the house in Milwaukee or any of your parents’ other assets. All I want is my third of the house. This house. I’ll buy you and Poppy out of your shares. Or if Poppy wants to share it, we can work something out.”
Ann crossed her arms even more tightly across her chest. A straitjacket, arms that were doing their best to keep her from coming completely undone. “Two years you lived with us, and you call yourself an heir?”
The drizzle intensified. It felt good, actually, and she knew Michael thought so, too. They used to love running together in the drizzle and fog, both on the lakeshore path back home, and along Ocean View Drive here. Once, when it was raining really hard, Michael stopped running and stood on the Humboldt Bridge over the river, his hands in the air like Jesus, his head tipped back, drinking the rain as it fell from the sky.
“I’m not trying to take anything from you.” He looked at her, sincere, trying to draw her into his gaze, his argument—
No, no, no! Ann ripped her eyes away from him, staring into the fire pit where the family—including Michael—used to sit in their better days, her dad with his guitar on his lap, her mom using a pocketknife to sharpen sticks for s’mores.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t want you to buy us out with your dirty money, the money you took from Anthony. Did you tell Poppy about that, too, or did you conveniently leave that part out?” This anger was so familiar to Ann that it felt like it held her up, a second spine.
Michael cleared his throat. “I talked to my lawyer.” His voice was deeper than she’d remembered it, more gravelly and wise. He sounded like what he was: an adult now. They were adults.
“You’re a big man now, huh? Your lawyer? You love saying that, don’t you?”
She could tell she was hurting him. Good. She wanted him to hurt the way she’d hurt all these years. “I won’t let you buy this house.”
“My lawyer says I’m a cloud on the title.”
“You’re a cloud on my life.”
“God, Ann. Don’t say that.”
She’d hit a nerve, so why did it make her feel guilty instead of victorious?
“Listen to me: you have no right to this house. I don’t care what you and Poppy spoke about, and I don’t care what your fucking lawyer says. Just go away. Please. Just leave me and my family alone.”
“I am your family.”
She hadn’t expected that. “No. We all just felt sorry for you.”
He winced again. She was reminded of how she’d felt all those years ago when her father finally got out his pellet gun and shot the woodpecker that had been tormenting them for months. Relieved, yes, but the woodpecker was just doing what woodpeckers do. The silence that followed the bird’s death was more relentless than the noise it had once made.
Michael said, “You used me.”
“I used you? Pot, meet kettle.”
“Whatever.” Michael threw back his shoulders and took a deep, jagged breath. A hardness passed over his face, a hardness that took Ann by surprise because she’d never seen him look like that. He’d always been open with her; open to her. Now he was cold, firm. “I’ll force the sale. I can do that. And when I do, the house will go to the highest bidder. You can bid on it for what it’s worth to you, which might be more, or less, than you were asking. But I want you to know that the person you’ll bid against is me.” He reached into his pocket and took out his keys. Ann noticed that the key ring was silly—a picture of a cat and the words HAPPY CAT. She knew that wasn’t a key ring he’d picked out for himself. For the first time, she considered that he had other people in his life, people who gave him gifts. People who loved him.
“I’ll never let you buy it.”
“You might not have a choice.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’ve already filed a petition to have you removed as the administrator of the estate.” He crunched the keys in his hand so hard they had to have cut into the flesh of his palm. “You’ve acted in bad faith.”
“Just listen to you, talking about acting in bad faith. You would know.”
Ann began to walk toward her car. She couldn’t take it anymore. She had the wet door handle in her hand when Michael said something that stopped her.
“Does your kid know?” Your kid. The idea of Noah seemed so casual, so distant. Just some kid. “Say he needs a kidney or something.”
“He knows. I told him after Anthony died.” She knew she was dropping a bomb. She needed to destabilize Michael.
“I heard about that.” Michael stood with his arms at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
“Right. You two were thick as thieves.”
“No, I mean my business partner told me. He’d called—” Michael started to say something more, but Ann wouldn’t listen.
“I don’t want to talk about Anthony. Look, Michael. Do whatever you think you need to do. I don’t understand why you’re making this so difficult. You took his money.”
“I did, but can’t we just talk?”
“No!” Ann stomped her foot like she was shooing a raccoon from a garbage can.
“We have nothing to say to each other. I’m getting out of here.”
Ann stepped into her car, slammed the door, and threw it into reverse. It was a two-hour drive back to Boston, and she was still fuming with anger when she returned to her apartment, an anger made worse when she collected her mail and saw a letter from some attorney’s office in Provincetown. “Oh, no,” she muttered when she ripped the envelope open and saw the words “My client, Michael…”
It was such a relief to see Maureen waiting there for her. She was curled up on the couch under a fleece throw with a book in her hands. The women became friends after their shared ordeal, and Mo occasionally took up residence on Ann’s couch when she couldn’t stand to be alone. The three of them, and even Toby and Brooks, had become close, and a new sort of family had emerged from the tragedy of Anthony’s death. Maureen was like a mother, sister, and friend to Ann, and to Noah she was grandmother, stepmother, aunt, and a bridge to his real father. She was honest with Noah about Anthony’s faults, yet she also told stories about him that were funny and sometimes moving. He’d liked to dance. He was terrified of mice. He loved Bruce Springsteen.
“Oh, Mo. I’ve had the worst day.”
Maureen stood up, grabbed a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, and poured two glasses. The women sat down on the couch. Maureen nudged Ann with her foot. “What’s going on?”
Ann relayed the day’s events, from Poppy’s dismissiveness, to Brad, to Michael’s reappearance and their argument.
“Michael?” Maureen gasped. “In the flesh? He was on the Cape this whole time? That must have really been something.”
Ann nodded. She couldn’t talk about Michael without fighting tears, without seeing this new, sturdier, quieter, handsomer version of him standing on the stoop in the rain, with the slightest crow’s-feet etched into the skin next to his almond-shaped eyes.
“What can I do?” Ann asked. “At first, I didn’t think I even wanted the house. Even before the Realtor canceled the contract I’d thought of holding off, renting it to Poppy, turning it into an Airbnb or something. Noah was beating me down. And now I want it more than anything. It’s our house, it belongs to us. But now the one person in the universe I can’t stand to see it go to—the one person who really let me down—well, Michael’s got a lawyer and a claim, and he says he has money to buy me out. It looks like he’ll have his way, because I’ve been dishonest. I don’t want him to end up with the house. I really don’t.”
“Well,” Maureen said. She took a sip of her wine. “I think I might have a plan.”
There was nothing Maureen could do, Ann knew this. Yet the little glimmer of hope made Ann feel better. “Let’s hear it,” Ann said. She’d indulge her, even though Anthony’s debts had cleaned her out. Now Ann had more money than Maureen did.
Maureen tapped her glass against Ann’s. “You won’t believe it, my dear. The most wonderful thing happened recently. Terrible and wonderful, which is how wonderful comes to me these days, but this is such terribly wonderful good news. I think I can help you, Ann. Help both of us. If you’ll let me.”