Yes, I knew she was there, but that wasn’t why I went over. I had information for Tom, and he was still my friend, practically the only one left who’d known me since grade school. People sometimes forgot that salient fact. I only saw him once a year, but we spoke frequently. I called him for wine advice; he called to ask about rentals or fishing for his clients who were visiting.
I waited until well past dinner—eight thirty—when I figured everyone would be calm and a bit liquored up. I heard them all—loud and raucous like a party with no music—almost as soon as I turned down Willard. Sound travelled a little too well in parts of Nantucket. Lack of trees, hills, vegetation to soak it up. Hulbert Avenue was a straight shot along the harbor, houses close together, no room for mature trees. You could hear it all: Rollerblades, mattress springs, laughter, babies crying, dogs barking. It was like being in the world’s most expensive apartment building.
It was Caroline’s voice I noticed first, low and strong, a little raspy. Sexy without her ever intending it to be. And terrifying when she was angry at you, and she was clearly angry at someone, though I only picked up the frequency, not the precise words.
As I parked and walked toward the porch, words were volleyed, and I heard scuffling, rustling, like someone was wrestling with a tree. Had to be the backyard. I ran to the gate, lifted the latch. Tom and another man I didn’t recognize were struggling to hold on to Tripp Warner.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. A ridiculous thing to say, but I had no idea what I’d walked in on.
“Matt,” Tom said.
“Matt?” Caroline said.
“Matt, my boy!” Tripp bellowed.
“Hi, Warners,” I said. “And…friends of Warners,” I added, turning toward the man I didn’t know.
“I’m John Stark,” the stranger said.
“Caroline’s better half?” I asked. I usually kept a low profile when she was there, not wanting to intrude. So I’d run into Caroline over the years, and her daughter, but somehow, never her husband. Or maybe I’d been avoiding him.
“On a good day,” he said and smiled. It was not easy to smile while you were trying to keep a senior citizen in a grip lock.
“So where’s Mrs. Warner?” I asked. Although I wanted to say “What’s wrong?” or “Do you need handcuffs?”
“The Juice Bar,” Caroline replied. “With Sydney.”
“Sydney?”
“My daughter.”
“Right. I knew that. Sorry for forgetting her name. I guess, you’re…um, in the middle of something, but I needed to talk to Tom, and I heard you up the street—”
“We’re lucky the police haven’t arrived yet,” Tom said ruefully.
“Well, you know how it is. Voices carry.”
“Let go of me,” Tripp Warner said. “So I can offer our esteemed guest a drink.”
They finally relaxed their grip on him, but they didn’t relax. No one in that house was the slightest bit relaxed.
“If this is a bad time—”
“What on earth makes you think this is a bad time, Matt?” Caroline said. “The screaming, the tussling, the fact that we’re in the backyard with grass stains on our pants, tackling my father when he tried to climb the fence? Why, it’s a perfect time to entertain.”
I looked at her then, really allowed myself a look at her. The messy golden tips of her hair, making her appear carefree in a way I knew she wasn’t anymore. Her solemn hazel eyes hardened as she locked them with mine. The wind picked up suddenly, and that could have explained the gooseflesh on my arms, but I know that wasn’t it. It was because she was standing, squarely, in the same spot where their old tent had been. Did she feel it too? Every time she had to step back on that cold grass?
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said quietly.
“No,” Tom said firmly. “I asked you to come, and you’re not leaving.”
“You asked him to come?” Caroline said.
“Yes,” Tom replied. “Am I supposed to clear all my thoughts and behaviors with you, or can we just recognize that I am a separate adult human being and I have my own friends?”
“Now, now,” Tripp said.
“You know what?” Caroline said. “I’m hungry for ice cream suddenly. I think I’ll go see how Mom and Sydney are doing.”
“There’s pie in the kitchen,” John said unhelpfully.
“Pie requires ice cream,” she replied. “Everyone knows that.”
She left, but not before casting a venomous glare at her brother. The wooden door banged behind her, a sound I heard all summer long.
“Let’s go have some wine and pie, Matt,” Tom said.
“Sounds excellent!” Tripp said.
“You’ve already had pie,” Tom said.
“No, I haven’t,” Tripp replied.
And so we went to the front porch and ate blueberry pie and drank red wine. Red, white, and blue. This calmed him a bit, but overall, Tripp Warner was manic. That’s the word I would use. He’d always been a lighthearted, fun person. A hugger, a slap-on-the-backer, the first to tell a joke. But now he was amped up, gritting his teeth every time he spoke.
John kept looking off in the direction of town, pacing at that end of the porch.
“The line was really long when I drove past,” I said to him.
“Yeah,” he said and looked at his watch. “My daughter’s a slow eater,” he added. “I’m just a little rattled by the whole beach assault thing.”
“They probably won’t come back via the beach.”
“Right.”
“The waffle cone takes a long time to eat,” I said. “And maybe stopping to look at the boats decorated in the harbor.”
“Yes, you’re probably right,” he said with a smile.
I liked Caroline’s husband. Made me kind of sick to admit it, but I did.
We talked a little bit about fishing, where they were biting, what the tide situation was. Tripp seemed lost during this conversation. And John, well, John seemed to be standing guard in case Tripp decided to make a run for it. Tripp yawned finally, and Tom saw his opening.
“Dad,” Tom said declaratively, “it’s bedtime, don’t you think?”
“What time is it?” Tripp asked, though he had a watch on his wrist.
“Midnight,” Tom lied.
“Okay,” Tripp said finally and stood up.
“You need any help, Dad?”
“Hell no.”
John stood near the porch door for a few more minutes, listening. Teeth brushing, toilet flushing, the closing of the bedroom door. Finally, he came and joined us.
“You always said you wanted a second child,” Tom said to John, who laughed, then checked his phone.
“Oh, they decided to stay and listen to the Cobbletones, an a cappella group. Apparently Sydney was taken with the lead singer.”
I smiled. “Those guys are like the One Direction of Nantucket.”
“Who’s One Direction?” Tom asked.
“There’s no hope for you,” John said.
“So did you find anything out?” Tom said, clipping the end off his cigar.
“Yeah,” I said and sighed. “I wish I had better news.”
I explained that it was possible his neighbor was right—the widow’s walk could be out of code after all. There was no permit filed, no plans I could dig up. I’d tracked down the guy who’d built it, a drunk named Old Bobby who told me he never did permits for little jobs. It wasn’t worth the hassle and the cost, and no one ever checked back then. The historical society was after the bigger fish. I also mentioned I was pretty sure the homeowner was ultimately responsible for the permitting, not the contractor. Which didn’t seem fair, and maybe could be fought in court—not that Tripp Warner was the litigious type. Not that it mattered. All that mattered now was getting the thing measured and surveyed.
“Do you think it’s too high?” John asked.
Should I have told him the truth? That being up there had always felt wrong, not because it was someone else’s house but because it seemed impossibly beautiful and impossibly high?
“Nothing is ever too high until it’s in someone else’s way,” I said.
“That’s a pretty Zen fucking answer,” Tom said and laughed.
“It’s true. And if he trespassed to get the information, well.”
“Trespassed?”
I shrugged. “How else could he have determined how high it was unless someone measured?”
“I guess we should have installed surveillance cameras like some of our fancy new neighbors.”
“Well,” I said, “maybe some of your fancy neighbors have one of their cameras aimed at your house? Might show him trespassing.”
“Huh,” Tom said. “Could be useful.”
“Something to think about,” John said.
He stood and walked along the porch, eyes trained on the houses across the street. There were at least three cameras pointed this way. A few bike lights bobbed up the street from the left, and as the trio passed by, I saw that two of them were teenage girls still in their bathing suits, which seemed like madness. Tourists, I thought. Only tourists would leave home on an all-day bike ride without a sweatshirt.
Then, as they passed, a wolf whistle.
“What the fuck?” one of the girls said to the other.
“Nice rack!” a man yelled, and the girls slammed on their brakes and looked back at us.
“Pervert!”
Tom yelled back, “I’m sorry! It wasn’t us!”
“The fuck it wasn’t!” the other one called.
I exchanged a glance with John. I don’t know which of us had the thought first, but he took off inside, and I followed, bounding up the two flights of stairs. The ladder to the widow’s walk was already pulled down, and I could see the shadow of Tripp’s legs standing above me.
“Jesus, Dad!” John said. “Get down here! You can’t be doing this kind of shit!”
“I was sleepwalking!” Tripp replied.
“Well, were you sleep talking too? Acting like an old horndog to girls who are probably fifteen?”
“Oh, they had to be twenty,” he said. “I just wanted to see everything.”
“Okay, Dad. But you can’t go up there alone, okay? It’s not safe.”
They settled him back in his room and closed the door. I went down to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of beer cans out of recycling and a length of kitchen twine from the pantry, and strung them together. I dangled them in front of Tom, told him to go hang them on Tripp’s door.
“That should last for now, but you should consider a lock,” I said.
“Not a bodyguard?” Tom sighed.
“Well, I think in handyman’s terms,” I said and shrugged.
As we walked out to the porch, Tom said he saw no reason to worry his sister with this little incident, and John nodded his head. He turned to me, eyebrows raised, as if I had some skin in the game, and I assured him I, of all people, sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her.
Good God no, I would be the last one to tell Caroline Warner anything that could be used against me. I’d learned that lesson a long time ago.