Cassie had asked if she could take Max to a late breakfast alone, and Anthony had agreed. Now that he’d left Lu with her tyrant of a mother-in-law (he hadn’t wanted to, but Lu and Nancy had each, in their own way, suggested that he leave), he was trying hard not to think about the fact that his father had a reading scheduled that afternoon at Island Bound Books. Even so, he knew his mind would keep going there all day: Now my father is getting off the plane. Now he’s on his way to his hotel. Now he’s eating lunch.
“What do you want to do now, Mom?” he asked, to distract himself. Dorothy was sitting on the small deck, frowning at her iPad. There was a mug of coffee in front of her. “What is it? Mom? What are you looking at?”
“Just reading the weather,” she said. “It looks like we’re getting some really heavy rain.”
“When?”
“Today. Later this afternoon.” She peered at the screen. “Goodness, this looks serious.”
“What kind of serious?”
“Very heavy winds. Lots of rain.”
He remembered what Cassie had said the day before about the weather at home.
“I hope your father gets in safely. I’ll just send him a text to let us know when he’s arrived.” She tapped at the screen and then looked up at Anthony. “Anthony? I was thinking we could talk. Maybe inside?” She carried her coffee into the living room and took a seat on the couch.
Anthony followed her, confused. His mother had been in his cottage for nearly a week now. They had exhausted nearly every one of Block Island’s sights, and most of their topics of conversation, to boot.
“Talk?” he said.
“About your father,” she added. “We haven’t really talked about your father.”
What was there to say? He took a comb to his mind. His father hadn’t spoken to him since the Times article. His father was so disappointed in Anthony that he couldn’t even stomach a short conversation with his only son. Then he thought of one thing he hadn’t told his mother. He said, “Shelly Salazar thinks I could get my career back on track if I did a photo shoot with Dad.”
Dorothy picked at a thread in the worn-out sofa. “Who on earth is Shelly Salazar?”
“That publicist Cassie hired. Before—before all of the rest of it. She wants me to do a photo shoot with Dad, something big and splashy. She’s talking about getting Annie Leibovitz to do it!” For the first time since Shelly Salazar had mentioned Annie Leibovitz, Anthony added an exclamation point to the thought.
“Heavens.” Dorothy bit her lip. “Don’t you think we should ask your father if he’s interested? Do you think it would help you?”
“Probably. But he won’t be interested, Mom. He wants nothing to do with me. I think he might hate me.”
“Nonsense! Of course he doesn’t hate you.”
“Then why hasn’t he talked to me since February? Why hasn’t he tried to get in touch at all? You called me. You checked up on me. You answered if I called. But he never did.”
Dorothy waited a long time before answering. When she spoke, her voice was clear and steady, authoritative, as though she were speaking to a roomful of Anthonys and not just one.
“It was more complicated for your father than it was for me.”
“Why?”
“He was envious of you, Anthony. He has been, ever since he first read your writing. I don’t think he liked that part of him, the part that could envy his own flesh and blood, but it was there, and it was tenacious.”
“No—”
“Yes, Anthony. Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Well, I think it started when you brought that story home from Dartmouth.” She nodded. “Yes, it started there for certain. He was really taken aback by how good that story was.”
“But he encouraged me . . .”
“He did. Of course he did. But he was always conflicted about your career. Always.”
Anthony sat for a long time with that knowledge. Lu had been right. Anthony had been Katherine Mansfield to Leonard Puckett’s Virginia Woolf.
“Did you talk about . . . what happened?” He lowered his voice like he was about to utter a curse in front of a child. “The plagiarism?”
“Only once. We had a big fight.” Dorothy paused, and in that pause Anthony thought he felt the very earth reverse its rotation. “We’re none of us exactly who we say we are,” Dorothy said finally.
That seemed like a non sequitur. Anthony considered his mother: his dear, familiar mother, with her stylish bob, and her lipstick, and her beautiful posture. Look at her even now, her legs crossed at the ankles. “You are,” he said. “You’re just exactly who you say you are.”
Dorothy sipped her coffee. There was something almost aggressive about her sipping, something combative. “There’s something I want to tell you,” she said. “I’ve been trying to tell you this all summer.” She stood and crossed the living room. She examined the crystal decanter, ran her finger along the rim of one of the glasses. “Really, in some ways, I’ve been trying to tell you your whole adult life. But I never could quite get up the nerve.” She turned back to Anthony, and there was something about the way she was looking at him—there was a shrewdness in her gaze, a clarity that made him take notice.
“What?”
“I always thought you’d figure it out on your own,” she said. She sat back down. She sat with her hands folded together, very politely, like a theatergoer waiting for the curtain to go up. Softly she said, “Think about it, Anthony. I know you’re not a thriller writer, but there’ve been clues all around you, all of the time, about your father, and about me.”
Anthony gasped. “Am I adopted?” It didn’t seem likely. He had his mother’s small ears, and his father’s nose.
“No,” she said. “But keep thinking.” She nodded encouragingly. It was the same way he’d seen her nod at Max when she was helping him sound out a word in one of his picture books. (They both particularly liked the one about the bear and the mouse who visited the library together.) “Where was your father, when he was writing?”
“In his study.”
“And where was I?”
Kitchen. Garden. Car. “A lot of different places.”
“Where was I when I wasn’t a lot of different places?”
Dorothy brought Leonard Puckett a scotch every day at five o’clock. Sometimes she put it on the desk and went back to the kitchen to make dinner, but sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she brought a glass of white wine in and closed the door. There was that stretch when he was in high school and she’d taken up knitting. She’d knit fifteen different blankets to donate to a homeless shelter; she’d knit baby hats to give to the hospital; she’d knit a sweater for Anthony that he’d never worn (he’d been in high school! Who wore a hand-knit sweater in high school?) and one for Leonard, which he did wear, though not in public. Where did she do the knitting? Not in the living room or in the easy chair in her bedroom or on the cushioned bench in the breakfast nook in the kitchen. No, she sat on the leather sofa in his father’s study.
“You were in the study,” he said.
Vacations, which they always took to locales where Leonard was setting a book. A Wolf’s Cry (Manitoba). We Are Berlin (Germany). Rats in the Cellar (Nassau). The Bearded Lady (Romania).
When Anthony was old enough he went off on his own to roam the hotel, to swim in the pool, to peruse the shops. His mother stayed with his father more often than not. Doing . . . what?
“You’re getting warmer,” she said. “I can tell.”
“You—” he breathed.
“Yes,” she said.
The sound was almost audible, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. “You wrote the books,” he said. “You’re Leonard Puckett. That’s it, isn’t it?”
She tipped her head forward just a fraction of an inch. A concession. “Not all of them,” she said. “But it’s been a partnership for a long time. That’s why we fought, Anthony. Your father was so upset about what you did. Beyond upset. And I told him he was making too much of it. I told him that in the end it wasn’t so different from what he was doing, putting his name on our work. My work.”
“I can’t believe this,” said Anthony. “I just can’t believe it.”
“There’s one more thing, Anthony—”
“Just a second,” Anthony said. “I need some air.” He went through the kitchen and opened the back door and stood on the cottage’s small deck, then he followed the path to the beach.
There was a figure walking along the sand, a figure in blue scrubs.
Jeremy. He looked out of place, walking on the beach in his scrubs; he looked like a jungle animal wandering a glacier.
“Jeremy,” Anthony called. He walked down the steps of the deck and toward the beach. He couldn’t believe his voice could sound normal. Nothing was normal.
Had Nancy already gotten to Jeremy? He had the idea that he could save Lu if he could get to Jeremy first.
“Hey!” said Jeremy, waving. The wave was innocent, neighborly—Nancy couldn’t have gotten to him already.
“Where you headed?” He tried to make his voice sound normal, even though his mind was spinning.
“On my way home,” said Jeremy. “Didn’t you hear? Ferries stopped running. There’s a storm coming.” His mother’s storm, thought Anthony. From her iPad. And the storm Cassie had mentioned, the one that was supposed to hit Massachusetts. “The purple flag is up!” said Jeremy.
The purple flag was up? Anthony had thought the purple flag was mythical, like a unicorn. He’d never heard of it actually going up. He’d never seen the purple flag. The water was so flat. Then again, storms could be like that. They could sneak up on you. That’s why there were so many metaphors surrounding them. The eye of the storm. The calm before the storm. Maybe only two metaphors: he couldn’t think of any more. Maybe Dorothy Puckett could think of more. Dorothy Puckett the writer.
“How can there be a storm big enough to stop the ferries?”
“I listened to some guy on the ferry explain it,” said Jeremy. “It has to do with the offshore winds, and what the pattern is in the Caribbean, and then the angle of the winds as they head toward the island. I don’t remember all of it exactly. But basically it can be really calm here, and a mess out there, and then—bam, everything can change direction. And it hits. A hurricane.”
“A hurricane?”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“Geez,” said Anthony. He’d have to track down Cassie, make sure she and Max were safe. Were they back at their hotel? Had anyone told them a storm was coming here?
Then Jeremy’s phone must have vibrated, because he held up a finger to Anthony, indicating he should wait, and put his phone to his ear. He walked toward the ocean and when he turned back the set of his jaw had changed, and his posture had changed. Nancy.
Lu had been a good friend to Anthony this summer—a calming, next-door presence, just like Amanda Loring had been in fourth grade. He remembered how much trouble he’d had with place values and rounding that year, and how much Amanda had helped him. He remembered the crook of her neck as she bent over the paper, chewing the eraser on her pencil. Everything had been so uncomplicated in fourth grade, so clear and right.
Anthony steeled himself and called, “Your mother has it all wrong, you know.”
“Sorry?”
“Your mother. Your mother has it all wrong. Whatever she told you about Lu, it’s not right. It’s not what’s going on.”
“I’m not really sure what’s going on,” said Jeremy. “But I’m about to go figure it out.”
Plot twist, thought Anthony grimly. He turned to go inside.
His mother was still on the couch, with her hands folded and her gaze pointed straight ahead, steady, staring at nothing.
“I don’t understand,” said Anthony. “What do you mean, specifically, about the writing? What was your involvement in the work? Are you talking about a few suggestions here or there . . . the untangling of a knotty plot point? That’s not really writing, with all due respect, Mom. That’s simply editing. Helping. Pick whichever words you like best. But lots of writers need to bounce ideas off somebody else sometimes . . . you know, just to see if things make sense.”
“I did pick the word I like best,” said Dorothy. “The word is writing.”
“You wrote the books for him? Mom, are you telling me you wrote Dad’s books for him?”
Dorothy nodded crisply. “It differed somewhat, here and there. Sometimes we would work together—he with his legal pad, I with mine. We’d each take a chapter or a scene. Maybe they were different viewpoints. For example . . .” She tapped her forehead. “Ah, yes! For example, the Drug Me Tender books. I’m sure you remember that those were written in alternating points of view, the detective and the killer.”
“Yes.” It had been a trilogy to start with, but the Drug Me Tender books sold like crazy. The publisher wanted more, and it became a series of seven, released every six months for three and a half years. A gold mine. That series had sent Anthony to college with plenty left over.
“Well, your father was the detective. And I”—she brandished an imaginary knife—“was the killer.”
“Holy cow,” whispered Anthony. The killer points of view in the Drug Me Tender series were all written in second person—a nearly impossible voice to sustain over one book, never mind seven. He’d always been impressed that his father had pulled it off. But his father hadn’t pulled it off. His mother had pulled it off.
“There are many more examples,” Dorothy said. “The Beauty’s Beast. Red as Rubies. Jury of Peers. I’d have to look at a bibliography of all of his work to sort it all out.”
“Not his work,” said Anthony. “Your work too. Your collective work. Mom, I still don’t get it. Can you explain it to me further, so I can understand, how you could be doing this all this time, how you were okay with it, and how he was okay with it?”
“I’m not sure I can completely explain it, Anthony. Marriages are complicated.” She paused, and looked up to the ceiling for several seconds. When she met Anthony’s eyes again she said, “I’ve loved your father forever, Anthony. Forever. Since before leggings counted as pants. Since before the Beatles broke up, and the wall came down.”
The Beatles broke up, and the wall came down. That was beautiful. Poetry. His mother did have a way with words.
“And you didn’t mind,” said Anthony. “You never minded.”
“Who said I never minded?” There was something in her gaze he’d never seen before. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m here right now, Anthony, why I took Max and fled. Maybe it’s because all of a sudden I minded.”
Plot twist, Anthony thought.
“Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Maybe it’s because I want to finish our current contract, and be done.”
“You do?”
“I want to stop.”
“You should stop, then, Mom.”
“I’m ready. I’m ready for our current contract to be our last. But he’s not.” Major plot twist. There was so much to absorb. Anthony’s head was spinning.
“And also, Anthony?”
The purple flag was up. A storm was coming. His father might be on the island. He needed to make sure Cassie and Max were safe. And there was only one person he wanted to talk to about all of this.
“Anthony?” his mother said again. “There’s something else, something really important. There’s one more thing—”
Anthony’s thoughts were flying; there was a surge of adrenaline flooding him. The flag. The storm. The father. Joy.
“Mom—let’s talk later, okay? I have to do something. I’ll be back, as soon as I can be.”