Michael’s lawyer successfully fought Ann when she tried to contest the will. Finally, after months of legal wrangling, the judge issued a sharing agreement between Michael and Ann for the house on the Cape, if sharing was what you could call it. To Michael it felt more like two people “sharing” a rope in a tug-of-war. But he had to make the best of the situation, at least until Avery turned eighteen, and then who knew what would happen.
Every two weeks, occupancy changed hands between Michael and Ann. For someone who seemed so eager to sell, Ann rarely missed an opportunity to drive down from Boston to take advantage of her allotted time in the house, even in the heart of winter.
Things were just as strained between Michael and Ann as they were between himself and Poppy. Shortly after that awful night, Poppy showed up at his office again. It was a bad time. He was on the phone with Sharon Gold, who was upset about the bluestone patio he’d installed earlier that week, because one of the bigger pieces was already cracked. Sometimes that just happens, he explained, and he was happy to replace it. Jason stormed into his office and dropped a seed catalog on his desk. “They raised their prices again.” Jason left, Mrs. Gold kept screaming, and there was Poppy.
He smiled, happy to see her, anxious to debrief after that fight with Ann, but she didn’t smile back. “I just have one question,” she said. “Did you really…?”
He raised his finger—just a minute.
It was finally warm out. She wore a tank and shorts that showed off her muscles. She still had the build of the sixteen-year-old he remembered.
“Hang on,” he said to Mrs. Gold.
“Don’t tell me to hang on!” Mrs. Gold was one of his biggest customers, and usually she was OK to deal with.
“Did you or did you not take money from Anthony Shaw?”
“I can explain,” he said.
“Yes or no?” Poppy’s voice was unexpectedly shrill.
Mrs. Gold said she wasn’t sure she even liked the bluestone to begin with. “Are you sure it’s real?” she said. “Not some stone made in China that’s supposed to look like it’s real?”
“It’s real.”
“Answer me,” Poppy said. “It’s a simple question.”
Michael put his palm over the mouthpiece of his phone and said, “Yes, but—”
“You planned to force the sale of the house without telling me?”
“No, all I’d done was try to remove Ann as executor. I hadn’t even—”
And then Poppy was gone. Really gone—later, he’d learn from Carol that Poppy took off for Portugal the next day. She was an ocean away. He couldn’t stand to think of Poppy feeling badly about him. He wished he’d just hung up on stupid Mrs. Gold that afternoon. She’d ended up having the whole damn patio torn up and replaced with brick.
He never saw Ann, but she made sure he knew she’d been there. He found evidence of her stay every time he returned, which was at five o’clock on the dot every other Sunday, when the court-ordered changeover took place.
Michael made his presence known, too. He took it upon himself to sand, paint, and rehang the battered shutters against the windows. He pruned the trees, treated the pitch pines for bark beetles, cleared the brush, and cut down the leggy yews that had grown too close to the foundation.
Even in their silence, they’d somehow found a way to divide and conquer, with Michael and Ann addressing separate but balanced kinds of work. While he tended to the nuts and bolts of the house, Ann purged the junk drawers of crumbs, expired coupons, brittle rubber bands, and acid-burned batteries. The plastic Tupperware containers and rusted baking sheets were quietly decommissioned. New hand towels hung from the hooks in the bathroom.
Michael filled the cracks in the walls with Spackle, while Ann transformed the space with paint. He had to admit that he liked the bold colors Ann picked out, especially in contrast to the fresh coat of white he’d painted on the trim and windows. Avery thought the colors were fantastic. She gasped with delight when she saw the eggplant purple in the birthing room, and she was taken with the vibrant periwinkle in Connie and Ed’s old room, where Michael now slept—he wasn’t about to go back to the attic. This was where Ann slept, too.
Ann also rearranged the furniture and bought bright rugs and throw pillows to brighten up the space. The décor was tasteful, not showy, and complemented the rustic antiques, adding visual interest and warmth to every room. She’d somehow managed to skirt the line between classic and contemporary, lived-in and new, beach house and family home. The Gordons were never into decorating. He wondered how Ann had developed such a refined design aesthetic.
Like Michael, Ann was a neatnik. If he had to share a home in a less than ideal arrangement, it might as well be with someone who labeled her storage bins, returned things to their rightful places, and left every corner free of dust bunnies. Upon arrival, he found the dishwasher empty, the bed stripped, the counters gleaming.
Everywhere he looked he saw evidence of a human being who ate, slept, flossed her teeth, and clipped her toenails just like anyone else. It was strange after all these years to stand in the same spot where she showered, sink into the same comfortable chairs she sank into, to eat his cereal out of the same bowl she’d used. He could smell her shampoo in the pillows. He stumbled across her box of tampons in the medicine cabinet. The nightstand drawer next to the bed was filled with lip gloss and ponytail holders.
Once, he found one of her earrings on the floor, and left it for her in a small bowl on the kitchen table. It was gone the next time he stayed there. That was their first real act of communication.
The Post-its marked ANN’S that Ann had affixed to half the cabinets and drawers were starting to fade and lose their adhesive. It was hard for Michael to avoid these forbidden spaces. Late at night, he couldn’t help himself. He’d open her closet and see her sweaters, T-shirts, and running clothes stacked neatly on the back shelves. He opened a drawer in Ann’s dresser and pulled out her bra. He ran his fingers over the soft satin cups and fingered the discreet lace on the straps. It was the kind of bra a woman wore not for herself, but for someone else. Who saw it on her? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she bring him here? Did they make love in the same bed he slept in?
He held the bra up to his nose and inhaled her still-familiar scent. He knew she hated him, and he resented her, so why was he smelling her damn bra? He stuffed it back in the drawer where he found it, feeling like a seventeen-year-old kid again. He told himself for the hundredth time that he ought to start dating again even if the inventory on the Cape was severely limited.
But Ann, still tempting and illicit, was everywhere he looked, like an invasive species. She took root in every drawer, cabinet, towel, pillow, and book. It made him mad, horny, frustrated. He couldn’t stand it. It didn’t help that Avery couldn’t stop asking about the mystery woman, this strange poltergeist who changed things around when they were gone. Is she pretty? she asked. How old is she? Is she nice? Why do you share the house with her? How come we don’t ever see her? Who is she?
How could he even begin to explain Ann to his daughter? If he started to answer one question, he knew it would provoke a landslide of more totally understandable questions, so he didn’t say much at all. Ann was just some “lady” who shared the place, someone he’d known when he was younger. He said the house was a place they’d “invested” in. He brought Avery with him whenever he could because he wanted her to love the house, even though she had no idea that she had a stake in it.
Michael tried to pass the situation off to her like it was the most normal scenario in the world, the way it was normal for him to live with his ex-wife and her partner. This was just another odd arrangement that worked out for them, he said, and that was all there was to it.
THE SILENCE BETWEEN MICHAEL and Ann started to feel suffocating and intense. Connie and Ed’s ashes sat atop the bedroom dresser, untouched, while the rest of the house was subject to almost relentless progress. There was something Michael found disturbing about the emerging aesthetic. It was starting to feel too perfect, like a rental that would appeal to anyone instead of the people who lived there.
He tried to get under Ann’s skin. He put fresh flowers in the vase on the kitchen table shortly before the end of his stays there, because he figured a nice gesture would annoy her. But then she tricked him and did the same thing.
He began to fix Avery’s school portraits and some of her drawings to the refrigerator with magnets. Avery was an amazing artist like her mother, mostly because she had inherited Shelby’s incredible attention span and could focus on a single drawing for hours, and because so many artists stayed at their inn. They all seemed willing to nurture and develop his daughter’s talents. She carried her drawing pad with her everywhere she went. Provincetown was an ideal place for a budding artist, with interesting landscapes like busy Commercial Street, the harbor, the dramatic bluffs at Herring Cove Beach, Race Point Lighthouse, and the iconic Days’ Cottages, little houses that sat like beads on a necklace along the shore of Cape Cod Bay. Avery frequently raided the inn’s lost and found for odd trinkets the tenants had left behind and arranged them in configurations for still-life paintings. She did the same thing at the Wellfleet house. Avery had an eerie knack for finding objects that carried psychic weight, like Connie’s old wind chimes and chipped mugs she’d bought at one of the many pottery places in Wellfleet, or the ship in a bottle that Ed said his grandfather had given him.
It felt good to brag about Avery through her artwork this way, because Michael wanted Ann to know that his daughter was beautiful and bright, and that she wasn’t the red-haired stepchild or pushy outsider Ann likely thought her to be.
It took a while, but Ann began to return in kind, and the refrigerator slowly became a metallic Switzerland. Michael saw that Ann had posted a photo of Noah eating an ice cream at Emack & Bolio’s, and a clipping from the Cape Cod Times of Noah leading a kayak expedition as part of a youth group at sea camp. Michael couldn’t get over how much the kid looked like Anthony, but still different. Anthony’s hair had been straight, while Noah’s had some wave to it. They were both stocky, but Anthony’s build had been more solid. Noah wasn’t chubby, not exactly, but he looked like he still had some baby fat he hadn’t grown out of yet. Anthony was intimidating, while Noah seemed approachable. Noah looked like someone who wanted to make friends, while Anthony was on his guard. Michael wanted to meet this kid, and he was grateful Noah hadn’t grown up with Anthony in his life, because he was the kind of kid Anthony wouldn’t have wanted to deal with.
MICHAEL KNEW HE’D HAVE TO TALK to Ann eventually. So far, thanks to their lawyers, he hadn’t had to say a single word to her. But that couldn’t last. They weren’t permitted to do any major remodeling or repairs unless they were in agreement. Fortunately, nothing major had come up so far, although the old oil furnace probably wouldn’t make it through another winter, and Michael was starting to think about a kitchen remodel. He had a feeling Ann was, too. With that awful mushroom-print wallpaper, how could she not? The drawers swelled shut in the summer and hung loose in the winter. The Formica countertops curled up at the edges, revealing moldy particleboard underneath. The old faucets leaked, and the linoleum floors were pocked and chipped.
He could subcontract the job himself, but he knew Ann would have good ideas about the layout and a strong opinion about the details. It was a big project, one they’d need to sit down and discuss, and they’d need to agree on a budget.
He thought he’d show up early for his two weeks on the off-chance that Ann might still be there. It was a sultry mid-July day, over a year since their confrontation, and he was a nervous mess. Thank God he had Avery with him, at least for part of the ride. He was going to drop her off at her friend Jess’s house in Truro. She kept him occupied with her chatter about school and her friends, and the odd facts she accumulated in the Velcro of her young brain. “Did you know a whale’s heart only beats once a minute?”
“That can’t be true.” He thought of his own heart racing in his chest.
“It is. My science teacher told me.”
“One beat a minute, huh? That’s like ringing a big bell.”
“Whales are cool.”
“They sure are.” Michael and Avery went to see the stranded pilot whales whenever they heard news of beachings in Wellfleet Harbor, a disorienting place for the animals. They swam in at high tide, and because of the distance between the shores and the shallow slope, they frequently got confused and couldn’t find their way out.
“Almost all animal hearts will beat about a billion times,” she said. “No matter how big or small.”
“That so?”
Avery nodded. She watched the blur of pitch pine, white pine, and oak that lined Route 6. She wore a T-shirt from the Kidz Dash triathlon she’d competed in last year, and already it was getting small on her—uncomfortably small for Michael, who noted that she needed to start wearing a training bra. He wished Shelby or Deedee would bring it up with her, but they refused. They thought bras were a choice, and Avery should make the decision about wearing one when she was ready, but he didn’t want the boys at school to notice anything about Avery but her brains. Whenever Michael thought of boys who might be interested in Avery, he thought of Anthony preying on Ann. Look how that had turned out.
“I wish I could go with you to the old house,” Avery said. That was what she called it: “the old house.”
He couldn’t talk to Ann with Avery there. “I’m just going to spend the whole time working.”
“On the house, or Anibitz?”
“Anibitz,” he said. The company was big now, so big he’d finally sold his interest in the landscaping business to Jason, so big he was considering buyout offers from larger toy companies. Sandi called him with talk of offers. He didn’t want to let go, but couldn’t keep it going on his own. He worked night and day, doing everything he could to avoid trips to New York to meet with the sales reps and marketers. He’d have to travel to China to meet with the fabricator soon. He didn’t want to go to China. He didn’t even want to go to Boston.
“Jess is boring,” Avery said.
“She’s been your friend for a long time now. You should be loyal to friends.”
“She only cares about boys. She’s always taking pictures of herself with them so people will think she’s hot.”
“That’s probably not a bad strategy. Guys are dumb.”
“Not Noah.”
Michael wanted to slam on the brakes. Noah? “Is that a kid at your school?”
“No, Noah Noah. The boy who shares the house with us.”
“You know him?”
“We’re friends, actually.”
Friends? What was going on? “But you’ve never met him. How could you be friends? Isn’t he older than you?”
“We leave notes for each other in the secret space next to the fireplace. We call it the portal. He started it. He was, like, hey, who are you? And I was, like, hey, I’m Avery, who are you? And then we started leaving entire notebooks for each other, and writing back and forth. You know him, right?”
“Not really. I’ve seen his photo on the fridge, same as you. He’s not telling you things he shouldn’t, or asking the wrong kinds of questions?”
Avery rolled her eyes. “You’re so gross. Nothing like that. You and Deeds watch too much Law & Order: SVU.”
“I’m your dad. It’s OK for me to ask questions.”
“Don’t worry. He’s not like that.”
Michael was worried, but not in the way Avery thought. “What else does he tell you?”
“Nothing really. He’s a junior. He’s into Game of Thrones. He likes to do old-people stuff like collect rocks and do crossword puzzles. We make puzzles for each other. He’s writing a book about us, actually.”
“You haven’t even met and he’s writing a book about you?”
“A graphic novel. I’m helping. It’s about these two kids who find out they live in the same old house, like us, but then they discover that they are actually trapped in two different times. His character is from the fifties. Mine is from the Civil War. My parents free the slaves that come in through the cove. Noah said they snuck in on banana boats. He knows everything about the house and all this stuff that happened there. It’s his family house.”
This got under Michael’s skin. “It’s your family house, too.”
“Not like his. Noah says his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents used to live there.”
“That many ‘great’s, huh?” Avery would have loved Connie and Ed, her own grandparents. How sad it was that they weren’t around to meet her.
“Well, we’re there now, so the house is your family house, got it?”
“Whatever. Noah was supposed to leave a new chapter for me but now I have to go to Jess’s dumb sleepover, and she’ll make me smell Jasper McNally’s T-shirt that he left on the bench after gym.”
“That’s gross.”
“Jasper McNally smells like a sunfish. I left an anibitz for Noah in the portal.”
“You did?” Now Michael felt like Avery had shared one of his own secrets. “What’d you pick?”
“A bee for staying busy on our project, and an owl, because Noah is wise.”
“Sounds like ‘bowel.’”
“And a lion for strength. A ‘beeowlion.’”
“That sounds like a winner.”
“I think he’ll love it.”
THE TOURISTS HAD INVADED THE CAPE. His dread over the encounter with Ann was exacerbated by his annual displeasure, a vacation frenzy as unavoidable as a high tide: two long months of Volvos with kayaks strapped to the roofs and bikes of all sizes hanging off the racks, long lines of cyclists in Lycra stretching outside the French bakery, jammed-up parking lots at the beaches, and impossible throngs of tourists clogging the streets and roads. Couldn’t The New York Times stop writing stories extolling the virtues of this place? Couldn’t they help him keep it a secret?
When he turned onto the dirt drive, he felt nervous again, the way he used to feel when he snuck into the Gordons’ place. After all the years as an intruder it seemed incredibly strange to him that he had a legitimate stake in the home. He wasn’t trespassing—well, not exactly. He was trespassing now, arriving an hour earlier than he was supposed to.
The water in the cove gleamed in the sun: high tide. The driveway was empty. If Ann had been there, she was gone now. He wasn’t sure if he should feel relief, because her absence just pushed off the inevitable. He parked and unloaded the bleach he’d bought to clean off the cellar walls and set the jugs next to the outside doors. He returned to his truck and pulled out his familiar overnight bag and a sack of groceries. Shelby and Deeds were coming for dinner later that night. They loved the house the way he did, and laughed at Ann’s Post-its marking her space: ANN’S, ANN’S, ANN’S. Deedee made Post-its that said BEYONCÉ’S!, TOM BRADY’S!, MELANIA’S!, and attached them to Michael’s drawers. They made Ann seem ridiculous, and she was, so why did Michael feel like he needed to defend her?
He walked quietly toward the bedroom with his bag, stopping in the living room to watch a gentle wind ruffle the old yellow lace curtains that reminded him of Connie. Thank goodness Ann still hadn’t replaced the curtains. He stood in a patch of golden light from the low afternoon sun and watched the dust motes swirl around in the sacred air. He inhaled. That smell, that smell.
He shook off his moment of self-indulgence and walked to the bedroom. Even before he got to the door he could feel another presence, the way you can smell rain before it falls. Quietly, he pushed the door open and saw Ann curled up on the bed. Her hair was longer now, the way it was when they were kids, and it fanned out on the quilt. The curtains fluttered in this room, too, the only movement aside from the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She slept with her head resting over one raised arm. She was sweating, and the hair close to her face and along her neck was dark from moisture. Her cheeks were flushed. She wore a pair of shorts and a tank, more casual than the clothes he pictured her wearing. Her skin glowed. She might have been seventeen.
Michael was caught off guard. Here she was, Ann, and she wasn’t intimidating or full of bluster—she was human, vulnerable, beautiful in this light, a natural fixture in this house she was part of.
Michael began to close the door but the squeak of the old rusty hinges woke her. “Noah?”
What should he do? He had half a mind to run out of the house, get in his car, and leave, but he’d brought in too much stuff to make a quick, quiet exit.
Her eyes fluttered open. She looked at him. “Oh.”
Oh. Why hadn’t she attacked him? Instead she said oh, like she already knew the answer to a question.
She sat up, wiped the drool from her cheek with the back of her hand. “What are you doing here? Is it after five?”
Michael looked at his watch. “Close. I got here a little early. I wanted to, I thought—I had some questions about the house. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were home. No car.”
Her hair was matted on one side. “Noah took it to Lieutenant Island. I’ll bet the tide covered the bridge and he got stuck. I just wanted to close my eyes for a few minutes. I dozed off.”
“Sorry I woke you.”
Ann looked around the room like she was just beginning to realize where she was. “I had a dream about my parents. I only dream about them when I’m here. It’s so strange, like they come to visit me.” She looked at her hands and paused. “I dreamt my mom sat right here on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. She didn’t say anything. She was just here, present. It was beautiful. Nice. Then I asked her if I could hug her. She said, ‘Sure, you can try. Let’s see what happens.’ I reached for her, and she was gone.”
Michael said, “I dream about them when I’m here, too. I can’t really remember my dreams, just that they were in them. When I wake up I feel like they tapped me on the shoulder or something.” Michael cleared his throat. “We’re talking. Weird.”
Ann grinned; she knew something. It made him uncomfortable. “When I opened my eyes and I saw you standing there in the doorway, I don’t know. You looked just like the Michael I used to know. The old Michael.”
“I am the old Michael.” He smiled.
“You don’t look much older.”
“Neither do you.” Michael cleared his throat.
“Thanks.” She sat up and adjusted her long legs so that she could sit cross-legged on the bed. The anibitz that Avery had left for Noah sat next to her: lion, owl, bee. Until that moment, his project hadn’t felt real. But there it was, in Ann’s hand, as if he’d made it not for Avery and all the kids in the world, but for Ann. He knew at that moment that he wasn’t ready to sell the company. “Anibitz, huh?”
“You remember.”
“Remember? I was the one who made that game up, Michael. Now it’s yours, I guess.”
Michael worried that Ann was about to go after him for stealing her idea. “It started out as a toy, something fun, and then people started telling me I should make more. I thought—”
“Relax. I didn’t get a trademark. You did. The toys are great. They are. I’m impressed. I wish I’d thought of it myself. I’ve always wanted to start my own business.”
“Did you know they write notes to each other?” Michael said. “Avery and Noah?”
“Yes,” she said. “I saw Noah’s notebooks. His drawings. They’re pretty good. And Avery’s got quite an imagination.”
“She told me they leave stuff for each other in the secret compartment by the fireplace.”
“Yes, I heard.”
What was it about Ann? Now that he could finally look at her again he found himself stumbling over every little detail: the freckle in the iris of her eye, the tuft of hair in her eyebrow that bent a different way from the rest. It was as if he’d been born preprogrammed to find her exact form of beauty his singular ideal. Her image was burned into his brain like acid on metal. He’d loved other women, but it was always Ann he measured everyone against, and here she was, in the flesh.
Ann’s phone rang. “Hang on.” She started talking in her mom voice. Noah. She said something about the tide, the bridge, the island, about getting back soon. Her eyes were on Michael the whole time she spoke. She hung up and looked at him. “He’s stuck until the tide goes down. Is it OK if I’m here beyond my time?”
“Well, I got here early for mine, so we’re even.”
“Great,” she said. She stood up and threw a daffodil-yellow cardigan over her shoulders. “Because we should talk.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Michael scratched his head. “I don’t even know what’s going on. Why are you being nice to me?”
Ann smiled and pointed at the periwinkle wall. “Do you like the paint colors?”
“Yeah. I do, actually.”
“I thought they might be too bold. Maureen picked them.”
“Maureen? Maureen Shaw?”
“Mo. We’re friends now. She’s practically a godmother to Noah.”
Michael looked at Ann in disbelief. “Shut up. You two are friends? After everything? That’s like, I don’t know. Super adult.”
“We grew close after Anthony’s suicide.”
Michael winced. “That’s good, I guess. Not about Anthony, but—”
“I know what you mean.” Ann smoothed the wrinkles out of the sheet with the flat of her hand. “Did you know the Shaws’ house out here was torn down? The pipes burst last winter and the place filled with black mold.”
Michael coughed. “I think I heard something about that.”
“You did, huh?” He still knew her well enough to recognize that she was teasing him. Had she really figured out that it was Michael who’d cut the heat? “Maureen sure was grateful for the insurance money.”
“That’s good. I always thought she was a nice lady.”
Ann said, “She never liked that house anyway.”
“Speaking of heat,” Michael said, anxious to change the subject. “About the boiler…”
“What’s wrong with the boiler?”
“It burns oil instead of gas. The thing is a beast. Wastes energy. I think we should replace it now, before all the pipes burst if it stops working. I had someone look at it last year. He said the gasket is rusted—”
“That’s fine. Call him. Let’s have it replaced.”
Fine? What was going on? He thought this would be difficult. Everything that had to do with Ann was difficult. Now she was doing a one-eighty on him.
“But,” Ann said—he knew there would be a “but.” “You should get a second opinion.”
“Not a lot of people to give second opinions around here.”
“True.” Ann stood up and walked over to the window that looked out to the cove. The afternoon light lit up her hair so it looked like a golden halo. “Noah knows better than to get caught on Lieutenant Island at high tide. I swear he stalls so we can spend more time here. He never wants to leave.”
“Same with Avery. She loves this house as much as I do.”
Michael smiled, almost drunk with surprise. He felt like he’d slipped through a net and found himself in a parallel universe that seemed just like the one he knew, only Ann didn’t hate him, or at least she didn’t act like it. “Look,” he said. “While I’ve got you in a good mood, I may as well give this a shot: I was thinking we should fix up the kitchen.”
“The kitchen is OK the way it is.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on.” He walked out of the room and gestured for Ann to follow him, and she did, her bare feet almost silent, padding across the wood floors. He walked into the kitchen and tried to pull out a drawer. “Stuck,” he said.
“It’ll come loose in winter.”
“It’s tighter than a clamshell.” He jiggled it again before it finally flew loose, rattling the cooking utensils. “We could get drawers on glides.” He pointed at the ground. “And look at this linoleum. It’s all beat-up. There’s asbestos under it. I don’t want Avery breathing that in, or you and Noah.”
Ann crossed her arms across her chest. “We breathed it in our whole lives. We’re fine.” This he could handle; he’d come prepared to disagree.
“The stove,” Michael said. “Come on, Ann. You’ve got to agree it needs to go.”
Ann looked at the avocado-green stove with the tilted electric coil burners and started to laugh, a sound that was as beautiful and unexpected as hearing a call from a rare bird. “I’m messing with you. The stove is a complete piece of shit,” she said. “It took Noah two hours to cook a frozen pizza.”
“Want me to pick one out?”
“It’s fine. I’ll do it.”
“Look, I think we should do the whole kitchen.”
“I think so, too.”
“I know it’s expensive. I can pay for it if money is the problem.”
Ann drew in a breath, and with it, the relaxed atmosphere in the room. “Because you’ve got money.” There it was, that edge he’d expected.
“I’ve got some.” He stuffed his hands in his pocket and waited for Ann to lay into him. “The business. The Anibitz thing? It’s starting to do well.”
“We need to talk about your money, Michael,” she said, although the iciness he’d thought he’d heard in her voice was gone. “Can I show you something?” She walked past him into the living room and pulled a manila envelope out of the desk. “Let’s sit on the porch. The light is better.”
What was this all about? Michael followed her out to the three-season porch that looked out into the woods. The room was the last to be fully updated. The white paint on the clapboard wall was chipped, and the rusty screens pulled away from the edges of their frames. Ann had replaced the old couch with a small loveseat that Michael had to admit was a lot nicer, with upholstered cushions that were, well, cushiony. Ann gestured for him to sit right next to her. He must have looked like he didn’t believe her. “Sit,” she said, patting the cushion harder.
He sank down, careful to keep some distance between them.
She set the envelope on her lap.
“What is it?”
Ann tilted the envelope so that Michael could see what was written on it: Please give this to your mom.
“That’s not Avery’s handwriting,” he said. Then he looked again. Shelby? His stomach knotted up. That was her writing. What was she up to?
Ann smiled and opened the envelope, pulling out a pile of papers held together with a binder clip. “There’s a little note.” She pulled off a sticky note that said FAILED NUN—he’d given those notes to Deeds as a stocking stuffer last year—and held it close so he could read it. Michael is a good man!
“I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t put Shelby up to whatever this is, I swear.”
“It’s OK, really. She’s great. We met for coffee this morning. She’s shared lots of helpful information.” She tossed the papers so that they landed on Michael’s lap. The one on top was a statement. He immediately recognized the bank logo. “The account,” he said. He felt like he’d swallowed a stone.
She ran her finger down a column. “Here’s where it started, with fifty grand, the same amount Anthony told me you’d extracted from him.”
“I didn’t extract—”
“And here are the monthly payments to me—here, here, here, here. Anthony said you’d set this up. He said it was your idea. But it was his, wasn’t it?” Ann pointed at Anthony’s name on one of the pieces of paper. “Anthony was on the account, too. It was all set up to look like the money was coming from just you.”
When Michael had discovered that a chunk of the money was missing, he’d asked the bank to send photocopies of the statements. There they were, straight out of his file, including the withdrawal slip with Anthony’s signature, signed so hard the pen almost broke through. It was painful for Michael to see Anthony’s handwriting. The thought of Anthony still bothered Michael in that primitive, raw way, only now it was harder for Michael to summon the anger and revulsion he’d once felt. He’d pulled up the news stories after Jason told him he’d died—news Jason had received when he called Maureen to tell her about the house. He saw the photo of police tape on the porch steps, another of Maureen with her hand over her face, trying to avoid reporters. He hated to see her so upset.
“Anthony took that money, not you.” Ann turned her head to get a good look at him.
Michael stared at his feet. He still wore his battered Red Wing boots even though he wasn’t landscaping anymore. He liked the way they made him feel like he was really working. He let out a deep breath. Here was something he’d wondered again and again: How could one man sneak into their lives the way Anthony had, and mess everything up? He’d been a crowbar of a man, wedging open every seam he could pry loose.
“Thirsty?” Ann asked.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I guess I am.”
When she left the room Michael wondered if she’d ever really even been there in the first place, or was it just a dream? She returned holding two glasses of lemonade, poured into the old Welch’s jelly jars decorated with Muppets from Space characters. One with Kermit in an astronaut suit holding his helmet like John Glenn, the other with Gonzo just before blastoff.
“Lemonade, spiked with vodka. I think we both need it.” She took a long drink and reached for the papers, which had fallen to the floor. “So, here’s what I thought was fishy.” Her bangs fell forward, and she gently tucked them behind her small ear the same way she’d tucked her hair behind her ears when she was young. When a thick strand slipped out, it was all Michael could do to resist fixing it for her. “The account was drained to almost nothing. But then look, suddenly there’s a deposit, and a check issued to me for seventy-eight bucks. Such a random amount. Two months later? A hundred and twelve. And here, nineteen dollars. November was a good month: six hundred and eleven.” She looked up at him, waiting for Michael to say something.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
“You made those deposits. That was your money.”
Michael looked out beyond Ann, out into the yard, the cluster of oak trees, the barn that needed to be painted. He felt like he was getting busted. Why was he so embarrassed? “I did what I could. Just a little here and there.”
“That’s not the point,” Ann said. “You helped. You used your own money to help me, and it came at a time when I really needed it.” Ann’s voice broke.
“Yeah,” he said; then he lowered his voice so he almost couldn’t be heard. “I’ve always cared about you, Ann.” It was as close as he’d ever come to telling Ann he loved her. He could tell that Ann was moved by what he said. If things had been different between them, if they had an easier rapport, he swore she might have hugged him. Instead, she kept her distance. What was that definition of hell that Connie had taught him from Dante? Something like proximity without intimacy, the kind of hell he’d known with Ann when he’d lived with her as a teenager. Later, he would suffer the opposite: intimacy without proximity, feeling so close to Ann and the whole family, even though they were far away.
Ann said, “You convinced Anthony to give you money in exchange for saying Noah was yours, so why?” He felt like he could melt under the heat of Ann’s intense gaze. “Why, all those years later, did you care?”
“Wait, what? You think I convinced Anthony? He blackmailed me, Ann, not the other way around. He said if I didn’t take the money and sign the forms to open the account, he wouldn’t support you.”
“He said that?” Ann set her glass down so hard that the lemonade spilled over the top. “Anthony bribed you? Not the other way around?”
“He said you’d get nothing if I didn’t lie and get lost. And he’d try to take your kid away from you. He said the account was your idea.”
“Stop!” She walked closer to where Michael stood, her eyes wild. “You thought I came up with that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re Ann with a Plan, after all.”
Ann hit him on the arm. “You idiot!”
He jumped, not because she’d hit him hard—it was more of a playful tap—but because he was unprepared for physical contact with her. It was disconcerting after so much time apart. She was flesh and blood. He could even smell her.
“He told me you two were in love.” There it was: the real reason he’d let Anthony get to him; the real reason he’d believed all those lies. Michael could see it so clearly now, so clearly it made him feel ashamed. He’d been jealous.
“Love?” Ann looked like she was about to throw up. “No. No, no, no. There was no love. Why would you believe him?”
Why had Michael believed him? Because Ann was right: he was an idiot. “That guy was the absolute worst,” Michael said. “Nobody’s ever made me feel like such a worthless piece of shit, and believe me, a lot of people have tried.”
“You know he’d say anything to get what he wanted,” Ann said. “Do anything.”
“And we let him, that’s the worst part. We just let that dude plow us down, drive right over us. We should have figured this out. Should have assumed the best about each other, not the worst.”
Michael stood up and walked over to the edge of the room, so frustrated that he wasn’t sure how to handle the rage building up inside him. Before he knew it, his fist went straight through the screen. Ann gasped.
“I’ll fix that,” Michael said, worried that he’d scared her. “A busted screen is no big deal, really. I can fix it in ten minutes.”
“I know you can,” she said.
They stared at the fist-shaped hole in the screen for a long while, long enough for a fly to find its way through. “You know what?” Ann said. “I’m done being mad at him. He’s dead. I need to move on. Poppy tells me I need to practice ho’oponopono—something like that, some kind of healing practice that she says will clear a path for the divine. She learned it in Hawaii. I have no idea what it means.”
“Sounds like Poppy.”
Ann excused herself and walked out of the room. Michael figured she wouldn’t come back. He’d blown it. He waited to hear the door slam. Instead, her soft footsteps padded across the living room. Then he heard a door open and close.
When she returned, she held another envelope in her hand, this one smaller. She handed it to him. “I found something else for you.”
“What is it?”
He answered his own question: a letter addressed to Anthony, from Ed.
“You’ll see. I think you should read it later, when you’re alone. Maureen found it when she was going through Anthony’s things.”
The letter burned in his hands, competing with his view of Ann leaning against the doorframe, one leg bent, her toes curled like a dancer’s. The sun was beginning to set. The light entering the home was low and rose-colored. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. A gull squealed out in the cove. On the other side of the house the traffic rumbled, a low, steady din. “I need to tell you something else. About what really happened between me and Anthony. It wasn’t consensual.”
Michael winced. He waited a long time for Ann to say more. Maybe she’d tell him the whole story someday, but she was quiet now. “I’m so sorry. I should have figured it out. That was a really shitty thing he did, and a lot for you to go through.” He stood up and reached for her hands. Her fingers were long and delicate, her palms warm. She didn’t pull away.
“I couldn’t tell anyone. I don’t know why. Instead, I pulled away. I let Anthony lie to me about you. I lashed out at all the people closest to me. I swear I chased Poppy off to the other side of the world. And look at you. You ended up all the way here.”
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I wouldn’t have ever known about this place if it weren’t for you. Now I never want to leave.”
Michael looked through the doorway into the house. He could see the wide fireplace, the transom windows above the skinny doors, the iron hardware, the wide planks in the old wood floors.
Ann said, “Don’t you think it’s time you return the fourth ace?”
Michael smiled, embarrassed. He reached for his wallet and pulled out the old playing card with the hole in the middle. Ann snapped it from his fingers with a playful smile. She squeezed Michael’s hands and leaned closer to him, resting her forehead on his sternum. He would have been happy if they could have stood like that for the rest of time. On the wall behind Ann, Michael noticed, the red arrow on Ed’s tide clock was pointing toward the words HALF TIDE FALLING. Noah would be back soon, and they’d leave for Boston. Who knew what would happen next? He’d worry about that later, just like, later, he’d worry about the content of that letter Ann gave him.
He could smell the sulfuric smell of the peat in the cove, a scent that mingled with the sweet aroma of Ann’s shampoo and the musky smell of the old house.
It wasn’t the house he wanted; it was Ann. It had always been Ann.
August 12, 2015
De—
I thought of beginning this letter Dear Mr. Shaw, but hell, you aren’t dear to me. And Mr. Shaw is the name my daughter called you because you were in a position of authority and she was your employee. A position you exploited. I have names for you, bub. I sure do, but that’s not why I’m writing.
I wish I could forget what Ann told me a few weeks ago. It was you, huh? I knew in my gut it wasn’t Michael, but you? You weren’t even a fly on my radar.
You probably think I’m writing to chew you out for what you did, and believe me, there are things I’d like to do to you, but after all these years I guess what you did is between you and your creator. I got a damn fine grandchild out of the deal, and you? You’ve got nothing, and I’m sorry for you. I won’t waste my energy on hate or pity. I’m old now. I feel older than I am. And I’m watching my wife forget everything that has ever happened to her.
I don’t understand how exactly you puppet-mastered the deal. I’m trying to put together the pieces. Ann says Michael was paid off. That he blackmailed you. I know that’s bullshit. You were behind everything.
They were just kids. The damage you did. Man, there was damage.
Still with me? I’ll get to my point. I’m writing because I want to find Michael. He’s my son. He has always been my son. I don’t know where he is. All my leads are dead ends. Perhaps you know where he’s gone off to. Tell me. How can I find him? Please help. Earn back some goodwill. I want to see Michael, but don’t do it for me, do it for my wife. She’s missed him so. I want Connie to look into Michael’s eyes and recognize who he is before she can’t anymore.
Please, will you help?
Sincerely, and I am sincere,
Ed Gordon