It had started snowing when Reyland left the house at 10:00 a.m. that morning, and by the time he made it to Annapolis and finally pulled to a stop before Griffin Island’s one-car bridge, a square of snow fell in one piece from the gatehouse’s sliding window.
He gave his name to the guard. Then he looked over the water at the snow falling gently onto the misty trees.
He had grown up a navy brat in Annapolis nearby and always thought Griffin was more like a resort or a private country club with its own zip code than an actual town. Most of its small body of land was taken up by its world-renowned golf course, for one thing, and there were exactly zero businesses or stores. Even the island’s narrow roads were like golf cart paths, and in the summer, there were more golf carts in the circular driveways of the mansions than cars.
When the booth’s stick went up, he drove to the other side of the causeway and made a left into a zillion-dollar neighborhood they called Cherry Hill Forest. Down on the other side of it was the island’s East Shoreline Road, and he sat for a moment at the stop sign.
Across the road was the island’s famous country-club boathouse and there was a huge peace sign lit up with Christmas lights hanging upon its clapboard side. In the pale yellow glow beneath it was a Crayola box–colored row of flipped-over canoes peeking out of the snow.
Reyland often fantasized about buying a Griffin Island bayside vacation villa one day, and as he sat there, he closed his eyes, imagining it was summer. Breathing deeply, he thought of him and Danielle and the kids walking a canoe across the boathouse dock in life jackets as their goofball hound dog, Charlie, barked excitedly, trying to catch up.
He thought of three hundred–yard drives pin straight down the fairway, martinis at sunset, cookouts with fireworks. Towheaded toddlers collecting fireflies in mason jars. In his mind, he saw himself at exclusive parties where all the wives were blonde and thin and pretty, and all the men were lean and tan and wore dinner jackets with Bermuda shorts.
After a few more deep breaths, he opened his eyes and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.
“Now go and get your future back, you son of a bitch,” he said as he put the Audi back in Drive.
The driveway that Reyland pulled into two minutes later was the only one on the shore road with wrought iron perimeter fencing and a solid gate. There must have been a hidden camera somewhere because the gate opened inward as he slowed for the call box.
The gatehouse he’d been told to park at was a whimsical fieldstone-and-glass castle-like building with a pointy Romanesque roof. Up the stairs on the cold, windy porch stood two large hard-faced security men in black overcoats who asked for his cell phone. There was another security team inside on the first floor who wanded him before he was guided to the stairs.
Up on the dimly lit second floor, it looked like an arcade at an amusement park. There were pool tables and poker tables and a foosball machine and a pop-a-shot basketball court. There was even one of those dance machine games with the floor squares that lit up.
Beyond it were the men he was there to explain himself to.
They didn’t seem like they were in the mood for any boogying, Reyland thought, taking a deep breath as he stepped over.