BLAIR’S BOOK PROPOSAL: SOME MINOR HOME INVASION AND A HOT DATE WITH LUKE BROSILLARD
Dear Meredith Payne-Whiteley,
The third time’s the charm; for once, I didn’t have any trouble finding the Brosillards’. Luke answered the door, coming out onto the porch and starting to shut it behind him, but I was prepared for that.
“Can I use your bathroom before we go?” I asked.
I don’t think he wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t really say no. He opened the front door again, and I followed him into the huge entryway. He pointed me to a guest bathroom, stocked with hand towels folded into perfect triangles and enough scented bath soaps to open a booth at the farmers’ market.
I checked the cabinet behind the heavy mirror. A half-empty sleeve of cotton makeup pads, a tube of Neosporin, and a fancy tin of lavender-scented French throat lozenges that looked like something somebody had brought back from a trip and not known what to do with.
What did I think I was going to find in a guest bathroom’s medicine cabinet? Lola’s prescription drug stash? A bloody knife? I closed the door, flushed the toilet, ran the taps for a moment. Looked in the cabinet under the sink. Nothing but Costco toilet paper.
Oh look, the rich are just like us, I thought.
Luke was waiting for me right outside the bathroom door. I jumped.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No worries,” I said. “Is Mattie home?”
“They’re out with Lola,” he said.
I knew this, but he didn’t know I knew it. “Things are going better with Mattie and Lola?” I asked. He was beelining for the front door, but I was determined to weasel my way into a look around the rest of the house.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “It was a shock for Mattie when Lola came back, is all.”
“I didn’t really get to see this place at Lola’s party,” I said as he led me down the hall.
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” he said, embarrassed. “I should move out, but I don’t want to leave Mattie here alone.”
“It’s so clean.”
“The cleaning lady comes twice a week, but Ruth always cleans before she gets here.”
“Why?”
“So the cleaning lady doesn’t think we’re dirty,” he said.
And then he finally smiled at me, a wry, self-deprecating grin that brought a light to his eyes and made my stomach flip like a hooked fish.
“Ruth always does what?”
Ruth’s voice boomed in the empty house. Luke and I both jumped; we hadn’t heard her coming.
Ruth was dressed more casually than she’d been at Lola’s party: pale pink button-down blouse, untucked; tailored jeans; incongruous fluffy slippers on her stockinged feet. But her makeup was as immaculate as it had been on Sunday, her hair a smooth, polished mass.
I’d never known before I encountered Ruth Brosillard that a person could be dressed in perfectly ordinary-looking clothes and somehow I’d still know their outfit cost more than some people make in a month.
Maybe not more than my dad makes, but definitely more than Irene.
“Cleans,” Luke said, flushing. He looked between me and his mother.
Trapped, I thought with triumph. Try getting me out of here now, Luke Brosillard.
I put on my best Girl Scout act. “Ms. Brosillard,” I said warmly, extending my hand. “It’s so nice to see you again. I was just saying what a lovely home you have.”
Ruth eyed me top to toe, her laser gaze snagging on my own jeans, which looked as cheap as they were next to hers. But the “lovely home” had penetrated her defenses.
“Thank you, dear,” she murmured, grasping my fingers as one might a wet dishrag and giving them an unconvincing shake. She knew she’d seen me before, but she didn’t remember where, and she was unwilling to let go of the upper hand by asking. I pressed my advantage.
“I would love a tour,” I said, turning to Luke.
Ruth glanced at my feet. “We don’t wear shoes in the house.”
“Of course,” I said. “The new carpets.” I slipped out of my shoes and tucked them next to the front door.
“We should really get going,” Luke said. “The movie.”
“Just a peek,” I said, gazing at Ruth with big doe eyes. “I am in awe of your sense of style, Ms. Brosillard.”
“It’s a lifelong process,” Ruth said, warming to me visibly. “Luke, show her the salon, at least.”
I made a show of checking my phone. “We have lots of time,” I said. “The movie doesn’t start for another forty minutes.”
Luke clearly did not want to show me anything, but he knew when he was defeated.
“You must be so happy to have Lola back,” I said.
They both froze. Ruth turned her head to look at me, the immovable plane of her face frozen into a rigid smile.
“We’ve been very lucky,” she said mechanically.
“I actually write for the Oreville High School Star,” I said, which was not technically untrue. “I would love to interview you for the paper. I can’t imagine what your family has been through. I think you would be a wonderful example of courage and resilience for our readers.”
“Uh, I don’t—” Luke began next to me. Ruth cut him off without even looking at him.
“That’s sweet of you,” she said in a voice that suggested she had checked her new carpets and realized I’d tracked dog shit all over them. “But we are a private family, and we value our privacy.”
“Maybe I could talk to Lola?” I tried.
“I’m on my way out,” Ruth said to Luke, ignoring that completely. She gave me a tight little smile, which was probably the best she could do with all that Botox. “You two have a wonderful time.”
She turned her back on us and trotted away in her silly slippers. A moment later I heard a door slam, and then the sound of an electric garage door opening.
“Oreville doesn’t have a school paper,” Luke said.
“It does now!” I said brightly. I cocked my head at him, a study in dim-bulb innocence. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be nosy. It’s so hard not to be, like, totally fascinated by your sister! What an amazing story, right?”
“Right,” Luke said. “You ready to go?”
“Tour!” I said with manic cheer. I put one hand on his arm, leaned in slightly, widened my eyes. That always used to work on James when I was trying to get him to do something he didn’t want to do, like pay attention to me. It worked on Luke like a charm.
“Of course,” he said, smiling down at me. “The speedy version.”
He towed me at a rapid clip through the parts of the house I’d already seen: the kitchen, the living room, the long art hallway. “Are those your relatives?” I asked breathily, gazing up at the oil portraits. “That’s so cool. Your family must have so much history.”
Luke smiled again. “Ruth took a bunch of old pictures she bought at an antique store to this guy who had a booth at the mall,” he said.
I dropped the dipshit act. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “I think he charged her by the yard. He must’ve been over the moon.”
“No way,” I said, laughing too. “That’s amazing.”
“That’s Ruth,” Luke said. “Want to see the library? She bought all the books by the yard too. You can order them by color depending on your decor scheme.”
I gave him doe eyes again. “Can I see your room?”
“Uh,” he said, blushing violently. “Okay.”
Cute. Not a Casanova, our Luke, whatever Mattie says. I had no idea shyness could be so appealing.
Unlike the rest of the house, carefully curated as a magazine set, Luke’s room felt like a person lived in it. It was big and bright, with a ten-million-dollar view of the water beyond a line of trees, but the furniture was old and cozy-looking, the bookshelves stuffed with books whose spines were so cracked he’d obviously actually read them. A big model of a three-masted sailing ship stood on a battered oak desk. I leaned over to look at it, careful not to touch it.
“I did that with my dad when I was a kid,” he said.
“You put this together? The detail is incredible.” Cloth sails billowed in an imaginary wind. Dozens of lines of string ran from each mast to matching wooden pins along the rails. Each board on the deck was hammered down with tiny nails. There was even a little wooden lifeboat.
“It’s a beginner’s kit,” he said. “Everybody starts with the Terror, but I never put together another one after this. My dad had to do all the knots in the rigging. I was about seven.”
“You were a terror?”
He smiled, his eyes on the model. “Terror’s the name of the ship. She was a warship first, and then converted for polar exploration. You know about the Franklin expedition?”
“No,” I said. “But I assume they all died?”
“Good guess,” he said, laughing. “That was usually how it went. A bunch of unprepared white men go somewhere cold, get stuck, eat the dogs, get scurvy, die horribly. The Franklin expedition didn’t have dogs, so they ate each other before they died horribly. Polar exploration was my dad’s thing. He was obsessed with all those guys.”
“Why?”
“Their dauntless bravery,” Luke said dryly. “They weren’t all white, actually. Matthew Henson was a Black man who dragged Robert Peary’s sorry ass all the way to the North Pole. He did all of the work—learned dogsledding, learned Inuktitut, made friends with the Inuit and learned how to survive from them. When they came back to the United States, Peary got all the credit. He said Henson was nothing more than his valet.”
“Nice guy,” I said.
“They were all assholes,” Luke said. “Even the ones who survived. Ruined their families’ lives. Just to plant a flag in some snow nobody had ever touched before.”
I don’t think we’re talking about polar explorers anymore, I thought.
“How old were you when your dad left?” I asked.
He reached out, touched the loose edge of one sail. “Eight. He never finished the rigging,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“He’s not,” Luke said. He touched the sail again, and now I saw that the corner was discolored and grubby.
As if a child had worried at the unfinished place over and over again.
Mattie’s room was next to Luke’s. They had the same view, the same old sturdy furniture. From before their dad left, I guessed. From their life before Ruth collected her cash winnings and reinvented herself as a multimillionaire. Mattie’s walls were covered with posters from old black-and-white mystery movies: The Thin Man, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon.
“Mattie didn’t tell us they were into all this stuff,” I said.
“They got obsessed with detective movies after Lola—went away,” Luke said.
“I guess you don’t have to be a shrink to figure that one out.” I took another step into Mattie’s room, scanning the titles on their shelves. All classic crime: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith. Some names I didn’t recognize: Dorothy B. Hughes, Margaret Millar, Eleanor Taylor Bland.
“You’re both big readers,” I said. “Lola too?”
“She was when she was younger. Lola always said—” Luke bit down on the words. I turned to look at him.
“Lola always said what?”
“She always said Mattie was smart enough to do anything they wanted. They never forget anything. And they notice everything,” Luke said.
“I believe it,” I said, casual. And then: “What do you think happened to your sister?”
Luke started. “What do you mean?”
“Do you buy this kidnapping story?”
“Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know her at all.” I weighed my options. “Has she talked to you about what happened?”
“Ruth sent her to a psychiatrist. It’s normal for traumatized people to forget things.”
“Yeah, but have you talked to her?”
“My family doesn’t really do talking,” Luke said.
“Mine either,” I said. “But you know Mattie doesn’t think it’s her, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said tiredly. “Mattie’s made that clear.”
“And you?”
“What do you think?” He looked at me. “That’s insane. Of course it’s her.”
“Right,” I said. “You and Lola must be close.”
“We were,” Luke said.
“I never knew anybody who had a twin. Is it true you feel it when the other person gets hurt?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“I heard sometimes twins make up their own language.”
“Lola wanted—wants—to be a writer,” he said. “But I’ve never been good at languages.”
“What about Darren?”
“What about him?” Luke’s face was blank.
“Did you keep in touch with him afterward?”
“No,” Luke said.
I tried again. “Where do you think she went?”
“To tell you the truth,” Luke said, “I’m trying not to think about it too much.”
“Mattie’s having a hard time with it,” I said.
“I know,” Luke said, relenting. “Lola’s changed a lot.”
“You don’t think she was kidnapped,” I said, watching him.
“I don’t think it matters,” he said. “If she doesn’t want to talk about what happened, that’s up to her. The important thing is that she’s back.” He forced a smile and changed the subject pointedly. “You know, it’s cool what you guys are doing. You and your friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mentoring Mattie. They need it. I’m not much help,” he said. “It’s why I’m still here, living in this loony bin. The second Mats graduates, I’m out.”
“What about now?” I asked. “Lola’s back. You could move out.”
He looked at Mattie’s posters. “Yeah,” he said dully. “Sure. I love Mats, I’d do anything for them, but—you know, our family is messed up. Lola was the one they were closest to, and the way Mattie sees it, Lola abandoned them like our dad. And now she’s back like nothing ever happened. I don’t blame Mattie for being pissed at her.”
“And you?” I asked. “Are you pissed at her?”
He looked at me, his face blank again. “I stopped expecting anything from my family a long time ago,” he said. “We’re going to be late for the movie if we don’t leave now.”
I drove Luke to the movie.
It turns out that before Deep Water was a movie about Ben Affleck killing his wife’s boyfriends it was a documentary about a man who entered a solo sailboat race around the world in 1968. But he wasn’t prepared to sail across the open ocean, and his boat wasn’t good enough. Rather than drop out of the race, which he knew he wouldn’t survive, he faked elaborate entries in his ship’s log that said he’d gotten much farther than he had. He kept another logbook, full of his theories about the cosmic beings who controlled human destinies.
And then he disappeared.
His empty boat was found adrift nine days after the date of his last log entry.
Maybe you knew all that already.
I didn’t.
Luke took my hand at the end of the movie when I cried and let it go when the lights came up. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. What if you already know you’ll fail, but you’ve told too many people to back out? What if you’re just crazy? What if you’re so good at fooling people, at making them think you have everything under control, that nobody notices you’re drowning until it’s too late?
In the bathroom mirror, my eyes were still red.
When I came out, Luke was on his phone in the theater lobby. He was hunched over, as if he was trying to hide from someone. His voice was low, but I could hear him. “I can’t talk right now,” he said. “You shouldn’t even be calling me.”
I should’ve said something. I shouldn’t have slowed my walk toward him, to give myself more time to eavesdrop. Should, should, should. What would you have done, Meredith? You would’ve listened too.
Luke was silent for a long moment. Whoever he was talking to must’ve had a lot to say. I couldn’t see his face.
“Of course I don’t fucking know what she wants!” he shouted into the phone. I jumped. And then he saw me. “I have to go,” he said, and hung up. “Sorry,” he said to me.
“Who was that?”
“My aunt Maisie. She wants to know what Ruth wants for Christmas.” He smiled wryly. “Like anyone knows what Ruth wants. You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You don’t look okay,” Luke said.
“I’m fine.”
I drove him home. We didn’t talk.
I turned my engine off in his driveway, and neither one of us said anything or moved for a moment.
“That was heavy,” I said. “But really beautiful. Thank you.”
“I think about doing that sometimes,” he said. “Just taking the boat out one day and…” He trailed off.
The sailor in the movie had wanted to die, that was the thing. It hadn’t just been the pressure. He could’ve called it off, his whole charade, but he didn’t. At some point he’d gone into the water of his own volition.
Did Luke want to die? I didn’t know if that’s what he was telling me, or if he was trying to say something else. His face was impossible to read, turned away from me in the dark.
Mattie had plenty of reasons to be mad at Lola.
Did Luke?
If Lola faked her own kidnapping, did Luke know? Did he guess? Why hadn’t he said anything, if he did? Did he help her? If they were so close, why didn’t he run away too?
I am in way over my head, I thought for the first time.
“I’ve never been sailing,” I said.
“Really?” The weight in the air lifted, carried away by the sudden warmth in his voice. “You’ve lived here your whole life, and you’ve never been sailing?”
Sailing is for rich people, I thought but didn’t say. “Does the ferry count?”
“No,” he said. He was smiling now. “The ferry definitely doesn’t count. What are you doing on Sunday?”
“Wait, do you seriously have a sailboat?”
“Sure,” he said. “One more thing my dad left behind.” He said it easily, but I could still hear the pain buried deep beneath the lightness.
“You know how to sail?”
“Of course,” he said. “You know who’s a great sailor, actually, is Mattie. We used to go out on the water together all the time. I think they were an old sea captain in a past life.”
“I can see that,” I said. “You know, it’s funny that your sister—Lola—wants—to be a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer too.”
I don’t know where that came from. I mean, I know where it came from. I don’t know why I said it. I guess I wanted him to think of me as someone who could do something special. Someone larger and more interesting than the person I actually am.
He reached out, touching my jaw gently and tilting my face toward his. I thought my heart was going to stop. His eyes were huge, the irises clear even in the dark. “I bet you tell a good story,” he said, and then he leaned in and kissed me softly on the cheek. “Sunday?”
“I’ll pick you up again,” I said. My voice was steady, but my hands were shaking.
“See you,” he said. He opened the car door, ducked out easily, loped toward his mother’s dream palace.
I heard the front door shut, but it was a long time before I started the engine again and drove away.
Of course I don’t fucking know what she wants.
Meredith, I think I’m in trouble.
Sincerely,
Blair Johnson
IRENE HAS A DINNER GUEST
In the early weeks of Irene and Brad’s relationship, Irene had sat Cam down for a Family Conversation about Boundaries and how Brad was of course not a Replacement for Cam’s dad and Cam should always feel Safe and Comfortable in her own home and if Cam had any problems with Irene Seeing Someone then Cam should always feel welcome to—
“Are you serious?” Cam interrupted Irene’s anxious monologue. “I’ve been wishing you would get laid for a decade! I don’t care if he moves in with us!”
“I have gotten laid occasionally in the last decade,” Irene said with great dignity.
“It didn’t make you any less insufferable,” Cam said. “Brad must have some incredible D for you to be this relaxed.”
Irene laughed so hard she almost fell off the couch, Kitten fled the chaos grumbling, and that was the end of that palaver.
Irene works too much to have Brad over more than once or twice a week. But Irene is also a prickly person who values her time alone, and Cam does appreciate the pleasingly womb-like nature of their shared apartment, repellent to all outside forces, so this works out for them both.
Maybe not so much for Brad, who, even Cam can tell, is absolutely smitten, but who cares what Brad needs.
And, Cam has to admit, Brad is an eminently suitable boyfriend.
Sure, he never left Oreville. He doesn’t have exciting stories of battling cops in the streets at massive protests, or squatting in derelict Brooklyn warehouses, or playing legendary punk shows in the East Village the way Irene does. He doesn’t have fancy clothes or fast cars or any of the other things boyfriends have on television.
But he does have a Northwest Man vibe going—five o’clock shadow, chiseled cheekbones, massive biceps, flannel shirts—that Irene seems to enjoy, though Cam is not the best person to assess the appeal of such a masculinity. He is smart and thoughtful. He is good at fixing things. He lets Blair drive out to his gun range and practice her aim for free anytime she wants. He has placidly allowed Irene to steer his politics so far to the left of communism they have fallen off the map altogether. And he is an incredible cook.
Cam asked him once where he learned.
“YouTube,” he said bashfully.
“See?” Cam said, turning to Irene. “There’s no reason you can’t watch videos.”
“Don’t bother your mother,” Irene said to Cam, and to Brad, “Don’t undermine my parenting, and get back in the kitchen.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and did.
Tonight he is roasting a sheet pan (his gift to the Muñoz home; pre-Brad, Irene did not own so much as a saucepan) of vegetables and salmon, with a salad of winter kale from his old friend Jenny’s garden. Poor Brad; whenever he comes over, he has to bring all the groceries too. Irene is on the couch, drinking red wine out of her WORLD’S #1 DAD mug and watching what she refers to as her “stories.”
Cam has been enlisted to chop apples and red onion for the salad while Brad keeps an eye on the oven (Cam, while well-intentioned and eager to learn, has a tendency to burn things).
“First the vegetables, see,” Brad explains. “Then, at the last minute, you add the salmon—it barely needs any time at all, not even ten minutes at this temperature, if you want it to—”
“Mm-hmm,” Cam says dreamily.
Brad laughs. “You’re not paying attention. You should be. Chicks dig good cooks.”
“What?”
“Never mind. What are you thinking about?”
“College,” Cam says. “I got in.”
“Not bad,” Brad says, opening the oven a crack and releasing a hot blast of wonderful smells.
“Wow,” Cam says. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
“Very simple,” Brad says modestly. “Anyone can roast vegetables.”
“Irene can’t.”
“She can now that she has a sheet pan,” Brad says.
“She doesn’t know how to turn on the oven,” Cam says. “Or where to purchase actual food.”
“Stop talking shit about your mother, Cameron!” Irene yells from the living room.
“Stop talking shit about your mother, Cameron,” Brad says.
“Leave me alone, or I’ll put you in another podcast,” Cam says contentedly.
This whole feeling—the warm good-smelling kitchen; winter rain battering against the snug steam-fogged windows; the nonsensical background chatter of Irene’s inane TV show; the banter; their small, shabby, dear apartment—
This, she thinks, is a special kind of happiness. Special and new.
“My heart is big,” Cam says.
Brad reaches over and grabs her in a one-armed hug. Cam leans in to his side.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Brad says, “but I’m glad you did put me in a podcast.”
“Irene is too,” Cam says. “Since, you know. Now she gets to bang you after all these years.”
“Not big on having feelings, the Muñoz women,” Brad says with a small, private smile. “But not very good at hiding them either.”
“Asshole,” Cam says affectionately, ducking his hug. “Go back to your arsenal in the woods.”
“Who’ll feed you then?”
“That’s enough!” Irene yells.
“No eavesdropping!” Cam and Brad yell together.
Cam briefly considers telling Brad she is having problems with Blair. He is a solid sort who has survived many difficulties, including dating her mother; he would be likely to have good advice.
But if she tells Brad about Blair, she will have to tell Brad about Lola. Cam knows Brad cares about her, but he is also loyal to Irene. He would never let something so serious stay secret, not after what happened last year.
Which is an excellent argument, Cam thinks ruefully, for not letting something so serious stay secret herself.
What happened last year was bad.
But it also brought her mom and Brad together, which is good.
Cam still wakes up screaming in the night: bad. Panic attacks: bad. Clarissa is dead, and nothing will bring her back: bad.
Cam and Blair pulled a lot of ugly secrets out into the light of day: Good? Bad? Who knows. The fallout is still ongoing. The legal proceedings, she’s been told, may take years. Not everyone who should be punished will be, and a lot of people who did nothing wrong, who were hurt themselves, will have to live with the consequences of harm they did not cause.
That’s bad.
But here is Brad, humming to himself as he pulls out the sheet pan and turns sweet potatoes and beets and parsnips with a fork. The salmon gleams a rich, glorious rose-pink on the counter, waiting for its time in the oven. Irene will never admit it to Cam—or Brad, for that matter—but Irene is in love, and Cam is pretty sure Brad knows it.
That’s good.
“Things are so complicated,” Cam says out loud.
Brad closes the oven door.
“It’s just olive oil and garlic, really,” he says. “Nothing to it.”
Dear Mats,
Of all the places to have a revelation, the Oreville Swain’s General Store wouldn’t have been first on my list. But I guess they come when you least expect them. That’s why they’re called revelations, not scheduled events.
You’re fighting me the whole way. Everything nice I’m trying to do for you, every kindness I extend. I’m getting tired of it, Mattie Brosillard. Who else in that house is on your side? Ruth’s a monster. Luke’s a fool. Your friends can’t be around all the time, turning up rocks with you and looking under them for what crawls away from the light. It’s just you and me at the end of the day, Mats. Cut me a break.
I asked you in the flannel shirt aisle if you remembered the day Darren drove the two of us out to the hot springs. The long, twisting road made you carsick, so I let you sit up front. That time of year, the parking lot was empty. We were completely alone. Didn’t see a single other person for two days. The hike along the Elwha River, straining at its banks. How we rested at the overlook before the slow climb; how it felt to come to the springs at the end of it, steaming pools dotted throughout the forest like a scene in a fantasy novel. You’d never seen anything like it. You stayed in the water for hours, refused to come out until after we’d set up the tent, cooked dinner. After sunset the sky cleared as if by magic. No moon, a night wild with stars. You insisted on sleeping outside, but it started raining at four in the morning and you crept into the tent like a drowned rat, laughing. You were so happy that weekend. I’ve never seen you that happy.
I don’t remember that, you said. Your hand was on a red-checked flannel I knew you didn’t want. You wouldn’t look at me. I kept talking, and you still wouldn’t look at me.
You can’t meet my eyes when you lie. Interesting.
Of course you remember. It happened. You were there.
How did the first lie feel? Did it sit heavy in your mouth? I think it came easier than you’d like. You’re more like me than you’re willing to admit to yourself, but I can see you realizing it. Trying to push it away. But it’s settling in you, the knowledge. I’m not the girl who left you.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not your sister too.
Love,
Lo