Myra wakes early the next morning, drenched in sweat. She is swept under, choking on saltwater; her nose stings, her throat closes. With the next frothy wave, she is tossed onto the dark shore. Each strand of her hair is coated in a layer of sand. Her body is scraped and bruised. She screams and screams because her arms are empty; Charlotte is gone.
The dream is always the same: she paces the shore, searching, as if a piece of her own body has gone missing. Except now, she wakes up, takes a breath, and reminds herself that the nightmare is over.
She swings her legs over the side of the bed and grounds her feet on the carpet, shaking. Water, she thinks. Myra steps into the bathroom and turns on the faucet. She splashes her face and fills a glass of water. Her sleep hygiene has suffered. Go to bed earlier, she tells herself. Read a little before bed, then turn out the light. She’s got to get it together.
Myra can’t get the stranger out of her mind. She replays the scenario again and again: trapped in that shed, the sound of his voice crackling through her own alarm system, his footsteps in the dark. The house is guarded by police and FBI. Still, she envisions him peeking at her through the window.
You are safe, they are safe, she is safe.
She sits on the edge of the bathtub, the familiar panic intense and unyielding. The racing thoughts are more focused than they used to be. She opens her emergency meds and gulps one down.
Check if he’s in the shed. Check. Check. Check.
She steadies her breathing and climbs back into bed. Drowsily, she shoves her hand under the mattress, searching for the cold steel knife.
Myra feels like death, but Kenneth saunters out to breakfast with his usual flair. Myra suspects he is hiding something. He’s been at the inn for days, showing no sign of leaving. She is also surprised he hasn’t pulled her aside and pratted about Adele. Myra’s known Kenneth since they were teenagers. Her stock answer is, “Kenneth, I’m not your damn therapist.”
The man plods down the pier in expensive shoes one would not want lacquered in salt, allegedly mourning some problem he’s having with Adele. Myra cannot, for the life of her, understand why he values her marital advice so much. Sure, plenty of the guests drop their secrets off with Myra and Herb, unburdening themselves as they travel through some grand epiphany. Their own little version of Eat, Pray, Love.
But Kenneth Callahan is nothing like the Barkleys. He spent his college days grooming himself for the corporate ladder. Myra knew they’d take this inn and make it a rustic, romantic sort of place that tourists loved. She had a vision for the Barkley Inn—to sculpt what her mother had started into something unforgettable. They’d stay right across the street from the bay, like always, because they slept best with the company of water. The dark, brooding sky is their home. Myra wanted to share it with others.
Kenneth knows the difference between working smart and working hard, but both have their merits, and Kenneth believes in hedging his bets toward the biggest chance of winning, so he does both. He believes in dressing for success—in higher education, in blood, sweat, and tears. Kenneth runs on all six cylinders all of the time. He avoids distractions like love and keeps hobbies to impress his colleagues. Having legitimate friends is less important to Kenneth than ensuring that people believe he does. His wife comes from money. His father-in-law got him his job, for Christ’s sake. He wanted to start his own company selling aftermarket auto accessories. German cars are his love, after all. But there’s never been time, especially since he has had to take over his father-in-law’s various business ventures. There’s nothing more boring in the world to Kenneth. He’d have taken his chances on a hotel in Vegas. He knows the law of large numbers and would make a fortune. Or maybe he’d open a strip mall. They’re very lucrative. Adele is beautiful, classically so. Polished. He likes to have her on his arm. Ultimately, she goes with his reputation.
Kenneth Callahan chases money and women. That’s all there is to know about him. Myra wonders how Adele can stand it.
Plenty of regulars burden her with their issues. Lots of people think Myra has a kind of wisdom, maybe because the Barkley place is almost as old as Rocky Shores. When Myra thinks back thirty years, to when she met Herb, it’s hard to imagine being so young and naïve. Still, the memory makes her smile.
One evening, while serving another beer to a customer, a boy had caught her attention. Or rather, his voice did. He crooned a song with the richest, most melodious voice she had ever heard. When combined with the plucking of his fingers on his guitar, and the smell of incense and saltwater wafting through the room, it was exquisite. He packed up his guitar as the patrons trailed out, the restaurant suddenly empty. A shock of light hit the bar, and he stood in the smoky haze. He wiped the sweat from his face with a towel and looked up.
“Hey there.” He smiled.
She felt her cheeks burn. “Hey.” Her throat was suddenly very dry.
“I’m parched,” he said. “Just dying after playing so long.”
“Wanna lemonade?” she asked.
He slid into a chair, hands folded, with that wry grin she would come to know so well. “Only if you have one too.”
She returned a moment later with their drinks and set the frosty glass in front of him. Herb Barkley. She knew who he was. Her parents had him on the performance roster.
“Your ma sure is nice to let me come and play,” he said.
“She’s a good mother,” she replied. “A bit different.”
“Different is good.”
She shrugged, figuring that Herb would have little interaction with the patrons and staff, like most of the musicians who performed.
Except he made it clear he only had eyes for her. Crazy, she thinks, how long ago that was, where we ended up.
Because now, Herb thinks Myra is damaged and tender. Maybe he likes this, at least when it suits him. He is her protector; this is how he has coped with their loss. The boy with the guitar and the husky voice is gone, replaced with a placid old man. He was stripped of any dreams he had after Charlotte disappeared, maybe before. Marrying a woman with mental illness is taxing. His job as a musician ended after her first manic episode. Herb figures out hard things the way some men toil about changing lightbulbs and fixing broken fuses. He doesn’t need to be important, to inflate his ego. No, it is all about security. Herb is Safety Man.
Maybe they’re both just trying to get by in any way they can. Maybe life will finally get easier.
Charlotte saved them.
After Gwen’s birth, Myra just felt numb. She couldn’t believe how blank her mind was. The baby elicited no emotion in her whatsoever. She was not angry; she wasn’t sad. This all-encompassing fatigue settled deep in her bones, so heavy her body felt pinned to the bed.
She starved this hunger and the emptiness satiated her. And in these black and lonely nights, she needed nothing because she felt nothing. Gwen’s cries were subdued and distant. Herb’s presence was like that of a wispy specter, vague and translucent.
She had wanted Gwen desperately, and now she did not. In this dichotomy, she could not make out anything but static. She felt fortunate to be so fertile; many of her friends had trouble getting pregnant. Except Gwen sapped Myra’s energy. She was nonplussed by the experience of motherhood.
Herb said he no longer knew the woman he married. He changed diapers, soothed Gwen when she cried, bonded with his daughter. And he told Myra how very much she was missing.
Words, she thinks now, are so powerful. And Myra cut him too.
But when Gwen hit a year old, Myra snapped out of the depression. Herb only knew that his wife had returned. She bustled about, coming up with new ideas to market the hotel. People stopped by on their vacations because the Barkleys developed a reputation as the quaint, small-town place to stay. And she put money into it. She bought expensive art and furniture that had to be returned when the checks bounced. Herb was confounded by her behavior. She found him downright irritating.
“Your mother is a ridiculous hippie who hates me,” he’d said.
“You’re the reason we can’t afford to take the hotel to the next level,” she’d said. He wasn’t making any money at his little coffee shop gigs. She’d made sure to remind him of it too.
Rage built inside her for no discernable reason; she’d go days without sleeping. Her thoughts raced, so much so that she would speak out loud, in long, jumbled sentences. People would ask, “What did you say? What are you talking about?”
Herb, too, would ask, “What are you talking about?”
Gwen was two when Herb left. The image of him, rolling his suitcases to the car, is stamped in her mind. She tried to capture the dust as it swirled up from his tires and suspended in the sunshine. She sneezed and sneezed, inhaling the particles of dirt that were left of her life.
Myra had just one friend in the world. Her name was Rosie.
Rosie didn’t speak to her with raised eyebrows. She helped with Gwen.
And her presence at the inn exuded sanity.
Generally, folks avoid dark and creepy hotels in remote areas. They most definitely do not like innkeepers who speak incessantly, whose garish red lipstick is smeared on their teeth. Myra has movies like Psycho to thank for this prejudice.
Rosie said, “We need to get you psychiatric help. I have an uncle with this disease. He started a medication called lithium and he is doing so well now.”
Rosie drove her to her primary care physician. And then to the psychiatrist. Rosie camped out beside Gwen’s toddler bed while Myra was in the hospital. Myra was infuriated—with herself, with those who raised an eyebrow at her words. She has explained this to Gwen, to Herb, to the doctors—people say they understand, and maybe they’re trying. But the pity in their eyes, the way they treated her, like both a child and a crazy woman to be feared, showed otherwise. This was worse when she was unstable—a brittle bipolar, the doctor had said with a shrug. No real hope of returning to normalcy. And she fought and she fought, through gnashed teeth, to prove the doctor wrong.
Rosie stayed when everyone left. She stayed when Herb left. Some people can handle so much, carry so much weight. It’s a strength Myra didn’t know she had until years later.
There were also those few embarrassing nights Myra spent with Kenneth Callahan.
Herb never found out about Kenneth. But Herb left his family for an entire year. He traveled across the Pacific Northwest to California, from bars to cheap venues, playing his stupid guitar. He wasn’t secure in his own skin yet. He wanted to show her that he had talent. And if she didn’t appreciate it, other people would.
When he came home, they both knew they had made mistakes. They loved each other. They had a daughter who didn’t deserve this. He picked her up and folded Gwen into his arms, tears tumbling down his face. “I never thought I was this … man,” he said. Ever so slowly, they rebuilt their relationship. He learned about bipolar disorder. Not entirely, but he understood there were reasons. She’d never intended to hurt him with her words, or the affair he still doesn’t know about. Even as she thinks of that time now, she realizes that his anger toward her, the reason he left—she’d thought it was purposeful, when it hadn’t been.
Besides, he was always her Herb. She had known this since she was seventeen years old.
Myra loves Herb more than ever. That’s the thing about marriage, she thinks. It’s a rollercoaster in its youth. It slides up and down and sideways and knocks you breathless and nauseous. But when the ride slows, you gather your bearings and realize that much of what was once so important just isn’t.
Kenneth strolls on in about once every two years, but he is good at keeping the secret. He’s probably sleeping with some woman he met on the road. That’s why he’s staying here, away from Adele. That’s the irony of his little visits.
And so she listens to the details of the shallow life he has curated for himself, all the while wondering what he could have been if he’d followed his heart rather than his ego. Maybe all that plastic surgery sucked the gray matter from his brain.
She has enough issues. For shit’s sake. Myra wishes he’d figure his shit out and go on home. As he saunters toward the pile of Danishes on the Formica counter, she concentrates on her to-do list. She taps the pen on her pad of paper, hoping the thwack thwack thwack annoys him enough that he’ll grab his breakfast and meander back to his room.
“Myra?” He says this with a tinge of expectation.
“Yes, Kenneth?” She glances up at him and speaks cordially. “If you’re ready to check out, I’ll have Herb help you with your bags—”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Why would you think I’m not?”
“Well, the other night in the shed must have scared you. Anyone would be freaking out. It’s only natural.”
“I’m fine,” she says in a more acerbic tone than she intended. “But thank you for your concern, Kenneth.” She takes a breath. “Ready to check out, then?”
“Nope, I’m going to be here for a few days, I’m afraid.”
Myra sighs. “Well, you’re free to stay, of course. How long are we talking? It isn’t as if the place is swamped. Other than busybodies poking into my personal life—”
“I’m thinking a week or two. Adele is not happy—”
“Kenneth, what the hell is going on? I’m serious. You know how it is, between Herb and you. I’ve got so much going on.”
“Why doesn’t Herb like me? I don’t get it.” He scrunches his eyes, incredulous, as if he’s waiting for an answer to a deep mystery.
“You’re very different people, that’s all. And he never got over high school bullshit.” She wrings her hands and chews the end of the pen, astounded at his stupidity.
“Does he know, Myra?” he whispers, wide-eyed.
“What?” Her eyebrows shoot up. “That was a million years ago. Quit bringing up old crap or you’re gonna have to go, Kenneth. My daughter is home. Our family is healing.”
“Okay.” He waves his hand as if the question could dissipate at his will. “But, Myra.”
“Kenneth, don’t. Please don’t. I told you Herb took her driving, didn’t I? That we bought her a car? Things are going so well for us …” Her voice trails off.
He leans close to her. “I told her.”
“Told her? Are you serious?” Myra’s stomach aches. She twists her braid.
His eyes shine, lips curve into a frown. “I know you don’t believe it. But I’ve changed. I needed to be honest with my wife. It was selfish of me to keep this from her.”
“Oh god.” Myra rubs her temples. “I guess she didn’t take it well. Please don’t tell me she’s going to be over here contributing to the drama and taking my marriage under with yours. I can’t handle one more thing, Kenneth.”
She knows why he’s here. And he’s the selfish one. White-hot anger sears her ribs. Elizabeth and Herb will be home soon; her precious grandson is sleeping, his cheeks pink from the warm pillow. Here she is, with her adult daughter.
They are a family again. Kenneth needs to deal with his own problems.
“Myra, I’m not here to ruin things for you. I just thought you’d want to know.”
Bullshit.
“Really?” She softens her tone. Myra will play along. Anything to get him to make up with his beautiful wife. “I think you should go home. You’ll work it out.”
Kenneth stands and faces the Danishes. “This has been a good talk.”
Theo scuffles into the lobby, breaking her thoughts. The siren of his toy fire truck wails through the room, followed by a crash. “Let’s discuss this later.”
Kenneth sighs and looks at the ground. “All right.” He takes his pastry and coffee mug, and heads to his room, moping.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. She wants to scream. Maybe Adele really left this time. Maybe he’s had a revelation of sorts. It’s hard to tell with Kenneth. He has a tendency toward melodrama. Whatever it is, she needs him to get the hell out of this inn. And she has to make him think it’s his idea.
She won’t let Kenneth Callahan destroy her life. Not this time.