The back door slammed and Charlie walked into the kitchen. He filled a glass of water at the sink and drank it down.
Chelsea, Ian, Spencer, Patty and John looked up from their sandwiches at the table.
“Hi, love. You want lunch?” Patty stood up to fix her son a sandwich, because apparently grown men aren’t responsible for sandwich assembly here. “Where’ve you been?”
He shrugged. “I went for a hike.”
Chelsea knew that he’d been smoking pot and seething in the woods. They’d argued that morning about her desire to leave. She’d said she needed to get out of here and figure out what she was going to do next. She needed to find a job and a place to live. Charlie asked her again to stay with him, to make her plans from here. It had gone back and forth for a while like that: not quite fighting, but more contentious than anything their relationship had ever known. He’d tried to take her clothes off. She said she wasn’t in the mood. That’s when he stalked off to the woods.
It was a dumb exchange. Neither was quite mad at the other. They were just annoyed, consenting hostages stuck together. It was becoming clear to Chelsea that maybe they didn’t have quite as much in common as she’d originally thought. In Haiti, with a shared professional challenge and zero vestiges of their origins, they’d been perfectly aligned. They worked and played and drank and had sex. They had everything in common because neither of them had anything else in Haiti. But Charlie looked different to her now. With his family, in this coddling place, he looked less like the fearless man she’d fallen for and more like a petulant and helpless child. It’s not that she thought she’d marry him or anything crazy like that. But now she didn’t even want to hang out with him.
Patty put a turkey-cheddar sandwich on a plate and set it on the table.
Charlie took a beer from the fridge and sat down before the sandwich without a word for his mother’s efforts. The rest of the Brights kept reading the paper.
John dropped his section of the Boston Globe and looked up. “Well, this story couldn’t have been better for us.”
The headline read: “‘Draft Bright’ Movement Picks Up Steam. Will He Run?”
Chelsea hadn’t read it and she wouldn’t read it, but she understood the moment. John Bright Senior and his sons were basking in the glow of the anticipatory gossip. Ever since their Good Morning America appearance, calls for John to run for office again were mounting in political circles. He’d been making coy statements to reporters for the past day, neither confirming nor denying the possibility of a run for governor. With each call, John Senior and his sons got a visible charge. They all did.
It was interesting, in a way, to see how these things worked. Chelsea had never known anyone in politics, and she’d never thought much about it. But seeing the early stages of this whisper campaign up close was fascinating because of how unnatural it all was. John Bright had performed well on Good Morning America, where he denied any interest in running, which inspired voters to ask him to run, which he would decline until his declines drove the public (some of them) to begging, after which he would dutifully accept the call to public service. It was diabolical and impressive. Chelsea was kind of sad to know it all.
Spencer cleared his throat to read a passage of the article to the table.
“‘Former senator John Bright insists that he is not planning another run for public office, but his supporters argue that he’s just the man for this moment—pragmatic, experienced and civilized at a time when his party seems intent on tearing itself apart over ideological differences.’”
John Senior smiled and bit into his sandwich.
“Amazing, honey.” Patty set her salad fork down. “So when do we announce?”
Spencer shook his head. “Not yet. Make them beg for it.”
A car pulled into the driveway. It was Mary-Beth and JJ.
“Great story!” JJ boomed as he came through the screen door. “Great story for us.”
The men began talking at once after that, all bursting with ideas and energy.
Chelsea stood up and put her plate in the sink. She had to get out of there.
As she was leaving, Cameron and Lucas ran in.
“Mom and Dad, we have an announcement to make.”
Everyone turned to them. “Yes?”
The boys waited until they had the full attention of the room.
Chelsea stopped and waited, too.
“We want a dog.”
Mary-Beth frowned. “Guys, we’ve talked about this. Now is not the time.”
“Your mom’s right,” JJ said.
Cameron folded his meaty arms. “Dad, you asked us what might help us heal after Madrid. This would pretty much do it.”
Chelsea watched from the sink while the little shits made their case. It had taken less than a day for her to recognize these boys for what they were: privileged progeny, genetically blessed, and starved for any opportunity to develop real integrity and perspective. Mary-Beth and JJ seemed like nice people, but their niceness was obviously not enough to counter the easy, rarified air these boys breathed in their everyday life.
Mary-Beth shook her head. “Guys, we said no.”
“Well, wait a second, son.” John Senior raised his hand. “A new dog for a healing family...a playful puppy in the wake of tragedy... It’s a good look, don’t you think?”
Spencer nodded. “Yeah, it’s the right optics.”
“No,” Mary-Beth said again. “Optics aren’t a good reason to adopt a living thing. The answer is no.”
JJ turned to his wife. “I don’t know, Mary. Maybe we should consider it. What if it was a shelter dog?”
“It has to be a shelter dog, if you’re worried about optics,” Patty added.
Lucas and Cameron stood expectantly, waiting for their mother to be overruled by the room. Chelsea wondered if perhaps the whole scene was premeditated, if they’d planned on ambushing her in this context all along.
Mary-Beth shook her head and exhaled. “Whatever,” she said finally. Then she walked loudly up the stairs and disappeared into a bedroom. Farah’s lens followed her up for a moment, then turned back to the rest of them.
JJ nodded at his sons with a stern look that said, You won; don’t rub it in.
“Yesss!” Cameron and Lucas high-fived each other and went back outside without so much as a thank-you.
JJ looked guilty for siding with his parents over his wife. And, although this moment had nothing at all to do with her, Chelsea felt surer suddenly that she needed to be rid of Charlie. No matter how much she liked him, she didn’t like all this. She didn’t like the look of marriage in this light, and she didn’t like their collective rationale.
When she’d first arrived at the lake house, Chelsea thought the Bright men were just chauvinists, old-fashioned woman-haters. But she’d been wrong about that. Maybe John Senior was a bit of a pig, but not his sons. No, the offensive mood in the room had nothing to do with gender, but with blood. These people stuck together at the expense of every other relationship. Theirs was an impenetrable club that left everyone else on the outside. Chelsea felt bad for Mary-Beth, but ultimately, it had been Mary-Beth’s foolish choice to try to compete with these people.
Two hours later, Chelsea was hunched down low at the dog shelter, looking in through a wire cage at a sheepdog mix. He was old, and, unlike all the other barking dogs around them, he was in no mood to perform for this audition. It was as if he had already resigned himself to an orphaned life. Chelsea loved him.
Charlie squatted down beside her to pet the dog through the wire cage. “Did you have dogs growing up?”
“One. A little terrier named Roxy. She wasn’t very nice, but I loved her. She died when I was ten, and my parents vowed to never get another dog after that.”
“You should get one now... I mean, as an adult.”
“I always thought I would. Not sure when.”
“I probably will, too, someday.”
They petted the old man’s nose through the cage and sat with the unwritten possibilities for their future, or futures.
From another room, JJ yelled, “I think we have a winner!”
They’d been at the Humane Society for over an hour already. JJ, Mary-Beth and the boys had stopped at the cage of every photogenic dog under the age of two. An accommodating young woman with a large ring of keys at her hip was walking them through the halls, taking each of the puppies out for the Brights to pet, take selfies with and discuss over. Farah captured it all on video from a few feet away.
Chelsea wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to come along for this task, but the idea of getting out of that house into the world had appealed to her. And she hadn’t been wrong; the dogs were a kind of temporary therapy for her ennui. Their noisy physicality—even the strong canine odors mixed with astringent cleaning solutions—it was a relief, a respite from the unmitigated perfection of the lake house.
“C’mon,” Charlie said gently, and they walked toward the sound of his nephews laughing. He was treading lightly with her now, afraid to push too hard.
“How awesome is this dog?” Lucas asked.
Chelsea walked up to the small, caramel puppy in the boy’s arms and began scratching under its chin. The pup rolled its head around and chomped its needle teeth on her fist.
“We believe she’s a Labrador-rottweiler mix,” the woman with the keys said. “Her disposition is all Lab, though. She tests well with children and other dogs. She’s four months old, give or take a week. And she’s going to keep growing. You folks sure you want a big dog?”
Cameron nodded emphatically. “Will she do Frisbee?”
“I can’t promise you that. But she’ll be an athletic dog. She’ll need a lot of outside time and a bit of space.”
Mary-Beth turned to JJ, and Farah’s camera turned to Mary-Beth. “I don’t know, hon. Is the backyard big enough for a dog like this? How will she get to run?”
JJ put a hand on her back. “If she needs more exercise, we’ll hire a dog walker. The Yangs love their walker. We’ll get his name.”
Mary-Beth pursed her lips and said nothing more.
“Can we, Mom?” Cameron took the puppy from his brother and let it lick his face.
“Please?”
Mary-Beth exhaled and nodded almost imperceptibly at her husband. Surrender.
“Yes!” the boys yelled.
And with that, it was settled. Mary-Beth and JJ followed the woman with the keys to a cluttered desk where they received information about vaccinations and neutering, Lyme disease and heartworm. They got a book of coupons to a local pet store and a purple collar with the dog’s name on it. “Minnie,” it said in glittery embroidery.
“Obviously, we’ll change the name,” Cameron announced when they were back in the car.
“Obviously.”
The puppy was in the middle row of seats with Lucas and Cameron, behind a silent Mary-Beth and JJ in the front. Charlie and Chelsea were in the farthest row of seats at the rear of the SUV.
“What about Athena?” Lucas said. “It’s like a Greek goddess.”
“No way, dude. No Greek goddesses. How about Rocky?”
“For a girl?”
The boys argued while Chelsea looked out the window.
Charlie pulled out his phone and distracted himself.
Behind them on the road, Farah followed in her Prius. Chelsea envied her, with a private sanctuary all her own, a place to escape from these people. She wished she were in the passenger seat of Farah’s car at that moment, and not beside a boyfriend whose presence was becoming more irritating than charming.
A phone rang from somewhere in the car. JJ pressed a button on the console and then a Bluetooth voice was speaking to them all. “Um, hello?”
“JJ Bright here.”
“Mr. Bright, this is Meghan at the Human Society. I’m so sorry to inconvenience you, but we need to run a different credit card. This one isn’t working. I’m sure it’s, um, just a technical glitch on our end.”
“Can I give you a number over the phone now?”
“No, sorry, we can’t do that. Can you come back? Again, I’m so sorry.”
“Fine,” JJ grumbled. He hung up on Meghan.
Mary-Beth looked at her husband as he turned the car around in a driveway. “What card did you give them?”
“The Amex. It should be fine. I don’t know what the problem is.”
“The Amex is the one we put the bathroom renovations on.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“It is.”
Neither of them said another word. The dog barked. Chelsea felt as if she were witnessing something exceedingly intimate.
When they pulled up in front of the cinderblock-shaped building, JJ jumped out and slammed the door hard behind him.
Mary-Beth exhaled in the front seat of the silent car.
The windows were open, and above the sound of yipping dogs, they could hear the conversation between two men just around the corner of the building. They were leaning against the exterior wall, smoking cigarettes and watching a pen full of energetic dogs. Chelsea could see one of their hands extend out now and then to flick the ash. No one in the car was listening exactly, until they heard their name.
“You know who that is, right? That’s Senator Bright’s son.”
“The Madrid bombing guy? No shit.”
“Yup. Looks like he’s gonna run for governor now, too.”
“The son?”
“No, the senator...well, former senator.”
“He any good?”
“I always thought he was a good enough guy. But did you see the Herald today?”
“Nah, I don’t read that right-wing stuff.”
“Well, apparently, he’s got baggage. Girls.”
“More than one?”
“At least one. Maybe more.”
“It’s always girls with these types, isn’t it?”
“Always.”
The front door swung open, and JJ jogged back to the car, apparently in a hurry to be done with this episode. They all were.
“All good,” he announced.
Mary-Beth forced a smile. She rolled up the windows and turned on the air-conditioning.
The boys were suddenly red-faced. They played with the puppy and avoided eye contact with their father.
Chelsea tried to look at Charlie, but he pretended to read something on the screen of his phone.
JJ pulled back onto the main road and they drove in silence for the twenty-five minutes back to the lake house.
The twins named the dog Messi and decided to make her an internet star.