The ceiling fan hummed, and outside the katydids rubbed their forewings together in song. Hannah stood by her open bedroom window as darkness filtered through the screen. The local forecast had promised temperatures in the low sixties once night fell, but the house continued to creak and groan through another evening of record-breaking dry heat.
If only she could lie awake listening for rain gushing through the downspout, not the sound of the Chubb lock snapping into place on the front door. Last night Galen had stayed over at the cottage for two hours. And she’d been awake for another hour after that, trying to reassure herself he was home to stay, that he hadn’t taken the truck and run away as Liam had done when he was sixteen. Or—she shuddered—that he hadn’t wandered into the forest with a stash of pills.
Tonight Galen had gone to see Will the moment she’d come back to her room. Her son was reaching out to someone, which was good, more than good. It was fantastic. Really, fantastic. But he hadn’t chosen her or Poppy; he’d chosen a stranger.
She was in uncharted territory with her eldest, stumbling through a desert and searching for a large neon signpost that flashed This Way to Being a Good Mother.
When the boys were little, she’d moved through motherhood with such confidence: play dough was homemade, not store-bought; her boys collected leaves and downed birds’ nests, not G.I. Joes; they constructed ride-in rocket ships out of cardboard boxes and caves out of ripped sheets. How she longed to return to simpler days of worrying about nutritious lunches, sharpening colored pencils and making sure letters to Santa were mailed up the chimney.
She moved away from the window, tugged off her T-shirt, unsnapped her bra, stepped out of her jeans and threw herself facedown on her white bed. Fan-circulated air tickled her spine.
She twisted her hair away from her neck, then let it spring free.
Why Will Shepard?
Galen picked friends with caution, and yet Will had made the grade.
If not for the playground bravado of his younger brother, Galen would have been bullied mercilessly throughout middle school. There was little room in a county school of jocks and science nerds for a published poet. The incidents, however, stopped during Liam’s first week. No need to ask why. Liam and his posse of hangers-on had, undoubtedly, taken revenge. Liam had been a pack leader since kindergarten; Galen was a loner, drawn to kids ostracized as freaks.
Hannah reached under her pillow, grabbed her camisole and wiggled it over her head. No sleeping naked when the boys visited.
She chewed on her bottom lip. What did Will and her son talk about for hours? Galen had always been a secret keeper. Interrogation was pointless. She had, however, extracted one fact on the drive back from A.A.: they discussed writer’s block. Then, at dinner, Galen had slipped up and made reference to Ally, someone Jacob had mentioned, too. If Hannah had known this Ally was the love of Will’s life, she would never have pressed for details. Galen had sworn her to secrecy, but it was too late. Will was earning her respect in pieces, and she hated him for it. Physical attraction could be dismissed, but love that stretched over two decades—or was it three?—could break her heart. If only Will would hurry up and leave. But she couldn’t let him, could she? Not if he’d become the only person Galen trusted.
Please, God, don’t let Will have figured out that she was infatuated.
* * *
The light beating on his eyelids was too bright, too damn serene. This was not the half-light of his Manhattan bedroom that never saw the sun. And the chirpy thrush was definitely not a New York cabbie riding his horn. The context may have changed, but the memory Will woke to never varied: Freddie waving over his shoulder, saying, Bye-bye, Daddy. See you next weekend.
But this morning there was a second memory hiding behind the first: the memory of touching a woman and being ambushed by the consciousness of belonging. Which was crazy enough to have stepped from one of his mom’s fairy stories. Everything about Hannah was unexpected—her age, her sons, the side of her Galen revealed—so why not the emotions that her touch evoked? But that didn’t mean he belonged here, with Hannah, in Nowhereville, North Carolina. Not that he belonged anywhere without Freddie.
Pushing up onto his elbows, Will let his head flop back. He opened one eye, then the other, and stared upside down through the window above his bed. A cheerful Carolina morning exploded, white-hot, around the edges of the pale blind. A sign that the Indian summer was set to continue for at least another day. If he checked online he would know for sure, but paying attention to the five-day forecast smacked of permanency.
He sat up and massaged his shoulders, working a tension knot. At the corner of his sight, clothes sprawled over the empty dresser and dirty laundry spewed from the open duffel.
Never a neat freak, he liked a minimal sense of order. Piles that made sense. This Will-made mess was more of a statement or possibly a pledge: I may sleep here—when I’m not up half the night with a suicidal grad student—but I’m not staying.
He leaned over the edge of the bed, picked up the new Dennis Lehane and placed it on the nightstand. Talking with Galen had encouraged him to start reading again—although trying to concentrate on anything except Freddie’s journey was like running across sheet ice.
Ten o’clock? He glanced at the alarm clock a second time. For real? He was slipping back into New York habits, behaving—once again—as if the world had to function around him and his schedule.
His dad would be up and waiting. Possibly even cooking his own breakfast again. It was hard to tell now that the old man had dismantled the smoke detector.
Had Hannah left already? He pulled up the corner of the blind and peered down into the yard. The truck was gone, but then she’d probably done several hours of work by now, as had most people. Everyone except him and Galen.
Throwing the blanket aside, Will swung his legs around, pausing to scrunch up his toes on sun-warmed carpet.
“Dad?”
He grabbed his jeans from where he’d abandoned them in the middle of the floor. Tugging them on, he hopped to the door.
“Dad?” he called into the hallway. “You down there, Dad?”
Will leaned over the banister and listened to an empty cottage. Nothing moved, except for the creeping dread in his gut.
“Dad?”
Will dashed through the main bedroom, past the bed made with perfect hospital corners and into the bathroom. The counter was wiped clean; a folded hand towel was laid out next to the sink; the toilet seat was down. Unlike the small bathroom he’d claimed, this space had the air of a hotel room waiting for its next guest.
Will turned and ran downstairs. Now he was officially freaking out.