Anthony woke up with two small faces very close to his own face. They were so close that he couldn’t immediately identify them, but he could feel their warm breath on his face, smell their bubble-gum Crest.
Then he heard Lu’s voice. “Move back, boys.” And, “Hi, there, sunshine.” The faces receded, and he recognized them as belonging to Chase and Sebastian.
Anthony looked around. He was on a couch in Lu’s living room, and sunlight was streaming in through the windows. It took a minute for him to process everything from the night before. Max and Dorothy, missing? He, asleep on Lu’s couch? He had a distant memory of many IPAs, of some Irish sea chanteys, of Yeats . . .
Lu held out his phone to him. “I charged your phone,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you until I had to. When Cassie called last night I talked to her. She texted just a minute ago. And then she called. So I told the boys to wake you.” She hesitated and said, “Cassie should probably tell you this. But your mother left a note.”
“A note?” He must have looked as stricken as he felt. “What kind of a note?”
“No! Not that kind of note! Cassie’s going to call back any second. Here. Drink this.” She put a mug of coffee on the table in front of him. Steam rose from the mug, along with a wonderful aroma. The mug said I’m Kind of a Big Deal in Rhode Island in block letters. It looked like something one of Maggie’s shirts would say.
Anthony’s head was sore. His mouth felt like the inside of a sofa cushion. His stomach quivered. He took a cautious sip of the coffee. It was dark and rich and flavorful, with just a hint of . . .
“Coconut oil,” said Lu, watching him, nodding. “And just a little bit of grass-fed butter, all blended with the coffee. It’s supposed to make you bulletproof. It’s a whole thing.”
Just then Anthony’s phone rang, and Cassie’s name appeared on the screen. Anthony couldn’t hit the answer button fast enough. “Cassie!”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your time with your girlfriend,” Cassie said, brisk and businesslike. “But I thought you might be interested to know that your mother has taken our son and disappeared. In case you didn’t get my messages.”
Lu shooed Chase and Sebastian away into the kitchen, and followed. “My girlfriend?” Anthony whispered. “No, Cassie, she’s not—” He stopped; that wasn’t the line of conversation that was most pressing. “My mother left a note, though, right?” he asked. “Lu said she left a note. Lu said everything is okay.”
Cassie ignored his question. “Your mother has never liked me.”
If Cassie had the wherewithal to complain about Dorothy, she couldn’t have been too worried about Max. “What’d the note say, Cassie?”
“It said, Don’t worry, we went on a little trip.”
“Where was the note?” Anthony said.
“At her house. I went to pick up Max, and all that was there was a note. Which, by the way, it took me some time to find.”
He set that part aside for later. “Where’d they go?” he said. “On this little trip?”
Cassie sighed. “The note didn’t say. I’m not sure. I’m hoping she calls one of us. Your mother did this to spite me, you know. I know she did.”
Cassie was right about one thing. Dorothy had never liked Cassie; she’d never trusted her. She’d tolerated her as the mother of Dorothy’s grandchild, whom she loved to the moon and back, but she had gone no further than that. Dorothy didn’t understand Cassie’s art or her shopping habits or her disinclination toward sugar and wheat or her decorating tastes. (A white nursery?) She didn’t understand anything about her at all.
“She did,” prodded Cassie, when he didn’t immediately answer.
Anthony took another sip of the coffee. It tasted like somebody had blended in a little bit of heaven along with the coconut oil and grass-fed butter. He really did feel bulletproof. Thus emboldened, he asked, “Why was Max at my mom’s in the first place, to be taken?”
“Abducted,” said Cassie.
“Semantics,” said Anthony. “Where were you?”
He could imagine Cassie looking the way she always looked when hit with a question she didn’t want to answer. She’d tilt her head a little to the side, like she hadn’t quite heard the question, and she’d furrow her brow, which in fact preventative Botox treatments had made unfurrowable. “Your father is on a book tour, I thought it might be nice for Dorothy to have the company—”
Anthony believed that about as much as Democrats believed Trump had no ties to Putin. He couldn’t help unleashing a gentle snort. “You drove Max from Newton to Marblehead out of the goodness of your heart, because you thought it would be nice for my mother to have Max’s company?”
“Yes,” said Cassie staunchly.
“And you turned around right after dropping him off, and found him gone?”
“Not exactly,” said Cassie. “That’s not exactly how it happened.”
“How’d it happen?”
“On the second night, when I called your m—”
“Second?” Anthony said. Now they were getting somewhere.
“The plan was for Max to stay two nights. But I changed my mind, and I called your mother to say I was picking him up on the evening of the second day, which was yesterday, and that’s when she absconded with him.”
“Ah,” Anthony said. “And you yourself had no specific plans, nothing you wanted Max out of the way for?”
She paused. “No.”
“You just thought a two-night visit was called for?”
“Yes.” Her voice took on a strange timbre. “I thought two nights would be more fun for your mother.”
“Bullshit. Were you with Glen?”
Another pause, this one pregnant. “Maybe,” Cassie whispered.
“I knew it!” He was less bothered by this than he would have been two months ago.
“But it’s not what you think—we had a fight—we broke up. It’s over, Anthony. I promise it’s over between Glen and I.”
“It’s over between Glen and me,” said Anthony. He couldn’t help it. It was a reflex.
He had her on her back foot now, defensive. “There have been a lot of things I needed you to do, Anthony, but correcting my grammar was never one of them. How can you talk to me like this, after all I did for you?”
“All you did for me?” Anthony was incredulous. “All you did for me, Cassie, was rack up one hundred thousand dollars in credit card bills. For starters. All you did for me was kick me out of the house I paid for!”
“Some of that stuff was for you! For your image! Some of that money I spent on Shelly Salazar, to promote you!”
“Shelly Salazar,” he said, “is an opportunistic millennial nightmare.”
“She would have done wonders for you, if you hadn’t messed it all up.” Cassie sighed. “I don’t want to fight about this now. What do we do? Should we call the police? File a missing person’s report?”
“Of course we shouldn’t,” said Anthony. “They’re not in danger.”
“Your mother is probably feeding him ice cream for breakfast.”
“That’s nutritional danger. Not real danger. Anyway, she wouldn’t do that.”
“She’s done it before! She called it Upside-Down Day. They ate everything in reverse, and had pancakes for dinner. Max threw up twice before bed.”
“Cassie, I know my mom wouldn’t let Max get hurt. I’m sure Max is fine. I’m sure they’ll resurface soon.”
He thought he heard sirens in the background. “Cassie?” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, this is all I need,” she said. “This is all I fucking need. I have to go. I’m driving. I just got pulled over. I’ll call you back.”
After the call ended Anthony drained the last of the bulletproof coffee. He needed to get back to his own cottage. He needed to take a hot shower, clear his head, brush the disastrous night from his molars. He called goodbye and thank you to Lu and the boys and slunk out of the front door of the house.
And there, outside Fitzy’s uncle’s front door, stood a sight for his sore eyes, his sore head, his devastated, fractured soul: Dorothy Puckett, and, next to her, the biggest missing piece of Anthony’s heart. Max.
Anthony couldn’t believe that after such a long time Max was here, in front of him, in the flesh. Anthony crouched down and opened his arms and Max went straight into them. Anthony hugged him so hard and so long that after a certain amount of time had passed Max whispered, “Daddy, I can’t breathe!” and so Anthony released him. He held him at arm’s length, smiling so hard his face hurt.
Max had grown. He was sturdier. He had had a recent haircut, which made him look a little older and more serious, but his cowlick still stood proudly. He smelled like fresh-cut grass and suntan lotion and clean childhood sweat; he smelled like a little boy’s summertime. He was perfect.
Dorothy looked well rested and confident. She wore a tasteful taupe dress; a pair of sunglasses pushed back her silver bob.
“Mom,” Anthony said. “I couldn’t be happier to see you both, but what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it was time to come for a visit,” Dorothy said unapologetically. “All summer I’ve been asking you! We really need to talk, Anthony. And you yourself told me Cassie was keeping Max from you. I thought it was time to rectify the situation.”
“But why didn’t you ask Cassie first? She was frantic.”
Dorothy chortled. “Cassie would never have said yes to this! So I used one of my old favorite rules: Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Anyway, I left a note. No reason for her to be frantic. May we come in? I brought you a coffee.” She bent down and retrieved from the ground a cardboard tray holding two cups that said Joy Bombs across them in the bakery’s signature font. Of course. Where else would Dorothy have stopped for coffee?
Anthony opened the door for his mother and his son (his son! in the flesh!) to enter. Dorothy put the coffees on the coffee table and looked around, delighted.
“Go explore, buddy,” Anthony told Max. To his mother, he said, “How’d you even know where to find me, specifically?”
Dorothy beamed and held up her phone. “I’ve known where you were all along. I use the Find My Friends app. I use it for your father too, so I can keep his schedule straight. He hasn’t been home in twenty-one days. This is the book tour to end all book tours. He did Books Inc. last night.”
“I love that store,” said Anthony. (He couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of his voice.) “Which location?”
“Alameda, I think. No, Laurel Village. Oh, who can remember? But, Anthony, that’s also why I brought Max here: your father’s coming to Block Island next week.”
“I know.”
“I thought we could have a bit of a vacation—a family reunion of sorts.”
It took some negotiating, but Cassie agreed to let Max stay. She had commitments at the gallery the next several days, and then she’d come to Block Island on the sixth. She would stay one night, in a hotel if she could find a room, leaving with Max on the afternoon high-speed ferry on the seventh.
“Ground rules,” said Cassie.
“Anything,” said Anthony. Max had finished his exploration of the house and had come to sit next to Anthony, pressing his shoulder into Anthony’s chest.
“Watch him near the water. He can’t swim without a bubble. And don’t give him sugar after three p.m. If he gets water in his ears you have to use these drops to dry them out or he could get swimmer’s ear. He really needs to be asleep by eight-thirty. And sunscreen! Lots and lots of sunscreen. And a hat.”
“Sunscreen,” said Anthony. “Roger that.” He was so happy to have Max for a few days that he would have gamely applied sunscreen to an entire rhinoceros, even getting in the wrinkly nooks and crannies. In the shower, all he could think about was showing Max around Block Island. He wanted to take him to see the alpacas at Manisses Animal Farm and Mohegan Bluffs and the colorful stones at Pebbly Beach. He wanted to buy him ice cream at Mia’s and fried clams at Finn’s.
When he returned to the living room, refreshed, Max was pointing the remote at the television. Dorothy was standing in the kitchen looking at the slice of ocean just visible from the window. “It’s such an adorable little cottage!” she exclaimed. “So old-fashioned.” She returned to the living room and settled herself on the couch. Then she rested her eyes on Anthony and said, “You look better than you’ve looked in some time! A suntan, a new haircut, you’re looking very fit and dapper.”
“Dapper?” asked Anthony.
“Oh, very dapper. Your belly is gone too.”
It was true, Anthony knew. He hadn’t stepped on a scale since he’d arrived—Fitzy’s uncle didn’t have one—but he knew he was slimmer and fitter from all of the hiking he’d done with Joy, and the swimming, and the bike rides. In the sea air, the salt air, abstaining from alcohol (the previous evening violently excepted), his body had tightened and grown stronger, more like it used to be. “It really is beautiful here,” continued Dorothy. “I can’t believe I haven’t been to Block Island before. The water is so blue! It looks like . . .”
The Caribbean, anticipated Anthony.
“The Caribbean!” finished Dorothy. “And, Anthony, when I stopped in for our coffees there was the sweetest young girl working behind the counter, she must have been twelve or so.”
“Thirteen,” said Anthony softly.
“She had the funniest T-shirt, Anthony, you would have loved it. You always did love a pun. It said— Now, let me see, let me get it exactly right. It had a picture of a bear, and then a picture of a deer, and the bear was saying, ‘Oh dear.’ No, wait, that can’t be right. That’s not funny at all!”
Maggie was wearing the shirt he’d bought her! The knowledge made him immeasurably happy and enormously sad at the very same time. He felt the weight of his fight with Joy, of all of their almosts, anew.
“‘I’ll fight you with my bear hands,’” said Anthony morosely. “And the deer says, ‘Oh deer!’”
“That’s it!” said Dorothy. “How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
His regrets about deceiving Joy, and about the fight, were fierce, palpable. He wanted them to meet Max, and he wanted to show Max the island with Joy and Maggie. But Joy’s final words sat there, like a boulder he couldn’t move. No more. We’re all done here. Forever.