But it came back. Dead zone or not, it had fish. Beaches. Clean water.
A rock-bottom survivor. No wonder Lindy felt a kinship.
Lindy had planned to call her sister at some point on the drive, but somehow the phone stayed in her purse.
I’m not scared. I’m not. She screwed up this time. I’m owed an explanation and an apology, she’d told herself while getting into her car back in Cleveland.
But three hours later she still hadn’t picked up that phone.
Highway 90 was in her rearview mirror, and she could smell the blue-green water on the edges of the breeze through her open window.
One thing she was sure of, she wasn’t going to let Delia force her out this time.
Garrett said he found Mom walking. That was good. It meant she was still moving. Still mobile. Did she have a cane? A walker? Were there machines involved? That Mom had been disoriented was concerning—Meredith McAvoy was a lot of things but she wasn’t disoriented.
And the flare gun? That was really concerning.
The road twisted past old filling stations and farm stands selling the first of the season’s tomatoes and peaches, sweet corn stacked in giant wheelbarrows. Gladiolas sat in buckets next to handwritten signs: a buck a stem.
The road got hilly as she neared Port, and as she came over the second-to-last hill, the glimmering blue of the harbor became visible. And in it—the old Fulbright house. The first thing anyone saw when they drove in from the highway. Port Lorraine’s only landmark.
Something turned over in Lindy’s belly, a prehistoric fish from the coldest part of her subconscious.
She couldn’t look away, as much as she wanted to.
Everyone called it the Fulbright Island because it looked like it was floating in the lake, to the left of the harbor, just inside the breakers. But it really sat out on a thin spit. When storms blew in, the spit was submerged and you couldn’t get out to the house.
And you couldn’t leave it either. No matter how bad you wanted to.
In the day, the house was stunning, a three-story century house made of Erie slate and stone, ivy dripping down its turrets. The pure white gingerbread and elaborate widow’s walk freshly painted every year. Its gardens fiercely manicured.
But now, that fabulous mansion, that floating castle, was a ruin. Half the house was overtaken by vines and weeds. The gingerbread, on the half Lindy could see from the highway, was dingy and peeling. The peaked windows were all boarded up, and the bright red door hung lopsided in its casing.
Behind her, a car honked. Lindy lifted her hand in apology and hit the gas down the hill into town, the now-decrepit Fulbright House lost behind the hills and trees.
She turned left at the stop sign, right at the next one, her Toyota’s engine coughing into another gear as she headed up the steepest hill in town. It was all the same. Painfully so.
The Fosters’ house, where she’d attempted her first sleepover but her dad had to come get her at midnight because she missed Delia so much. The Jackmans’ lilac tree, where she and Jodi and Delia used to play dolls. May School on the corner. Nirosha’s house next door. The bright purple door Lindy had gone in and out of as if it were her own.
As she got closer to Mom’s, the changes came fast and furious. The old postwar bungalows had been torn down and replaced with giant three-story homes. All modern things with right angles and long narrow windows. One looked like it was made of stacked shipping containers.
Lindy wasn’t sure why she was surprised at the changes. All the cities she’d lived in along the rust belt had seen some kind of boom lately. The people and industries that polluted the lake had all but died, and grandchildren were moving back to the beautiful beaches and clean water, bringing all their money with them.
Port Lorraine used to be a fishing town, one of the few commercial harbors left on the lake, but now it looked like a vacation town.
Every single house along the ridge was new and beautiful. The lawns as green as golf courses, cared for by hired locals and timed watering systems. They probably sat empty most of the year except for one week in the summer when the owners in Cleveland and Pittsburgh managed to take their vacations. The very same people Lindy had been serving at hipster bars in the cities for the last seventeen years. She’d muddled their oranges and sugared their rims and now they were here. In her town.
Mom’s house, once blue, now gray, stood out at the end of the street. It was so out of place Lindy couldn’t help but laugh. One story, sloping roof, the front garden wild with blooms. It leaned into the wind like it was looking for a fight.
The neighbors must hate it. She smiled at the thought.
Lindy parked her car in the drive. After the engine rattled its familiar sign-off, the quiet of the street she grew up on was absolute. There was only the wind and the gulls and a faraway wind chime.
Home.
On shaky legs she got out of her car and walked toward the back of the house.
The steps and wraparound deck was new, the wood blond. Crystal Gayle’s voice filtered out through the bent and warped screens of the windows.
The stubborn bird still resisted air-conditioning.
At the back, the cats lolled in the sunshine, barely lifting their heads at Lindy’s arrival.
She opened the squeaky screen door and took a step into the kitchen, with its familiar smells of coffee and toast. A bowl of blood-red tomatoes practically glowed on the tidy counter top.
“Mom?”
Through the kitchen was the living room with its shelves of books and crazy quilts thrown over the backs of comfortable chairs.
And there was Mom in hers. Eyes closed, head rolled to the side. Her white hair was a wild frizzy halo around her small face. She sighed and shifted the book she was holding open.
Meredith was wearing the shirt Lindy sent her for Christmas: What Would The Fonz Do? Printed over a smiling picture of Henry Winkler, thumbs up. The shirt was paired with beat-up chambray shorts and white athletic socks tucked into bright white New Balance tennis shoes.
Meredith used to visit Lindy, wherever she was living, at least once a month. Lindy would reserve the best seat in the house at whichever restaurant she was working in at the time, and the wait staff would spoil Meredith. Special desserts from the chef. A glass of wine on the house. Those monthly visits had slowed down over the years. It had probably been a year since she’d seen her mom. A year.
Lindy was relieved that Meredith looked the same as always—her amazing mother. And her unchangedness, after something like a brain event, was a gift Lindy wasn’t expecting.
“Mom,” Lindy said, now on her knees in front of the chair. Her hand was warm and dry, the skin papery and soft at the same time. Lindy never met a woman who worked as hard as her mother and still managed to have hands so soft.
A life goal, for sure, though Lindy’s were already shot to hell. Her hands and her life goals.
“Mom,” she repeated, more loudly this time.
Meredith McAvoy snuffled awake, blue eyes wide and unfocused.
“Was I snoring?” she asked.
“No.”
“Drooling?” She wiped her chin.
“No.” Lindy laughed, her eyes watering.
Meredith took in Lindy in pieces. Over and over. Faster each time. Lindy wasn’t sure she wanted to know what her mother saw.
Suddenly Meredith pulled Lindy against her. Her mother’s body felt frail under that Fonzi T-shirt, but her arms were steel bands.
“You’re here,” she said. “You’re back.”
For better or worse the wild McAvoy sister was home.
Chapter 3
DELIA
“How’s the bass?” asked Mrs. Muñoz, Brin’s high school Spanish teacher. It was Friday just before five. Mrs. Muñoz always came in Friday just before five. Until the weekly fish fries started next week.
“No bass today. But the perch is fresh,” Delia said. “So is the walleye.”
“The perch looks great.�
�� Mrs. Muñoz’s smile didn’t quite get to her eyes. “I’ll take a pound.”
I’m sorry, Delia almost said. I’m sorry about Brin. This year was hard. She’s not a bad kid, she’s just…acting that way.
But Ms. Muñoz wasn’t here for apologies, she was here for the fish Dan caught at dawn. Delia wrapped up the slick, firm filet, with its white flesh and silvery skin, in butcher paper and handed it over just as Ephie let out a little cry from the back room.
“Your daughter?” Mrs. Muñoz asked. This time her smile was real. Further proof everyone loved a baby but not so much a sullen teenager.
“Yes.” Delia glanced at her watch, though she hardly needed confirmation of the time. Her breasts ached. “Up from her nap. Five p.m., like clockwork.”
Please, she prayed to her boobs, please don’t leak in front of Mrs. Muñoz, leave me some dignity.
“She’s here with you all day?” Mrs. Muñoz shook her head, and Delia wasn’t sure if it was because she thought Delia was a modern marvel of motherhood, or an idiot.
Frankly, Delia wasn’t sure either.
But she didn’t have the luxury of choice.
“Most days,” she said. “No mat leave for me.” Delia tried to make it sound like a joke, but it came off bitter.
The bell over the door rang as Mrs. Muñoz left, and Delia darted past the fish counter and cash register to lock the door and flip the sign before anyone else could come in.
The McAvoy Bait, Fish and Lunch Counter was officially closed for the day.
In the back room, surrounded by boxes of paper towels and rolls of clear plastic bags, Ephie cried up at the mermaid mobile above the pack-n-play.
“Hey, hey,” Delia crooned as she picked up her baby. Ephie was wet and hungry, but as soon as she was in Delia’s arms she stopped crying.
And Delia’s bitterness vanished.
After taking care of the diaper and sanitizing her hands, Delia dropped down in the rocking chair and put Ephie to her breast, wincing at the initial pins-and-needles rush. Delia rocked and stroked her baby’s hair, and Ephie drained Delia dry.
The most straightforward relationship in Delia’s life. And she quite loved it.
Delia wasn’t going to say Ephie was a miracle, but she and Dan had stopped thinking it was possible. Ten years, after all, was a really long time to try. They’d given up. Dr. Alvarez said it was the hormonal change from perimenopause. Which wasn’t a joke, but it sure felt like one.
It was a little over a year ago that Delia and Dan got pregnant, but it seemed like a decade. Actually, that wasn’t true. It felt more like the happiness they once honestly shared was a decade old, a story someone told her.
About a couple who had been happy.
Because that wasn’t them anymore. Not for the last year, really. They’d been together a long time and every couple went through rough spots—the late-night internet searches told her so. But that didn’t always make her feel better.
She needed to apologize for the other night. That fight with Brin. Even though Delia was sure she was right, she shouldn’t have yelled at everyone like that. She could admit to losing her cool. She would apologize and make everyone’s favorite meatballs.
Wait, is Brin eating meat this week? Last time Delia had made meatballs Brin had gone on a rant about how cruel it was to eat things that had faces.
She could make that cold noodle salad thing Brin liked. Do I have soy sauce? Or noodles? God, she hadn’t even made dinner and she was already exhausted.
Okay, she’d apologize and they’d order pizza. That was as good as things were going to get.
Ephie whimpered because Delia was holding her too tight.
“Sorry, baby.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, pushing out all the air from her body. Delia had taken a prenatal yoga class at the new rec center and she wouldn’t say she loved it—she spent half the time thinking of her to-do list and trying not to fart—but the breathing stuff she learned was pretty good. She was supposed to be finding inner peace, which honestly was never gonna happen. But this, right now, these moments. This was pretty damn close.
The sound of the back door unlocking made her quickly snap up her nursing bra and arrange her shirt over her pouchy stomach, shifting Ephie so she could continue to eat but so that Delia wouldn’t be sitting there half naked.
“Babe?”
“Back here.”
Dan stepped in the doorway to the office, wearing his work boots and smelling like the lake.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey.”
“How was your day?”
He leaned down and stroked Ephie’s head, making her squirm. Her little fist knocked against Dan’s and a smile ghosted over his face. He stepped back to the old desk, crowded with receipts and old pictures of long-ago fishing charters, turning yellow at the corners. Some Delia’s father’s, some her mother’s, some Dan’s.
Every day she meant to clean that stuff up. Every day she didn’t.
“We sold out of perch. Walleye’s got another day.”
He nodded as if this was satisfactory.
“How were the charters?” she asked.
“Good.” He looked tired. He probably was tired. They were both tired. He was on the boats every day at 5 a.m. And he woke up with the baby most nights. They were in this together. She tried hard to remember that. “One of the guys here from Cleveland booked another one for next week.”
“That’s great.”
“Next week is full.”
Dan hated turning away business. He lived with the lean years like a physical memory in his body.
“Friday fish fry starts next week.” Friday fish fry was a blessing and a curse. They did it once a month through the winter, but in the summer they did it every week. It was a good moneymaker for them. But more important, it was tradition. For them and the town.
“Already?”
“Already.”
He watched her through the flop of long blond hair in his eyes.
“You need a haircut,” she said. He usually never let it go so long.
“It’s pretty shaggy.” He pushed his hands through his hair, making it all stand up. Delia used to cut it for him in their kitchen in their first apartment above the shop. He’d sit shirtless, a towel over his shoulders. She’d touch him more than was particularly necessary.
For a second the memory of his hands on the back of her thighs as she stood between his was so sharp she was lost in it.
Dan had been a handsome boy and now he was a handsome man. Blond and square. Sturdy. Tan, the lines around his eyes growing whiter every summer. He was strong from his work pulling nets over the shallow sides of the boat, fit when other men his age were growing beer bellies.
On a good day, when she’d had four hours of sleep in a row and managed to put on clean clothes that sort of fit, Delia looked five years older than her age.
“We need to talk,” he said, and the way he said it, looking right at her… He was nervous.
She hated that he was nervous and she hated that she’d made him feel that way. But she didn’t know how to stop. How to recalibrate her reactions.
“Shoot,” she said with a smile.
“I ran into Garrett down at the harbor.”
“Yeah? How he’s doing?”
“Fine. He’s fine. But he caught Meredith walking down the spit and said she was all confused.”
“My mom?” She sat up, not caring so much about her rolly stomach anymore. “What? Where was Tiffany?”
“She got past Tiffany, I guess. Garrett said she had a flare gun with her.”
“Is she okay?”
“Fine.”
Anger swept up the sides of her face. “Tiffany is in so much—”
“There’s more.” He flattened the curled-up edge of an old receipt. “Your mom wanted him to call Lindy.”
“Well, of course she did but—”
“He did.”
“He did what?”
“Called Lindy. Your mom asked her to come home.”
“Home? Here? Is she in Port?”
“I don’t know. I just talked to Garrett like five minutes ago.”
None of this made any sense to Delia. Lindy. The Fulbright House. It was word salad. She closed her eyes, and in the dark she reached out for her sister. Like they were girls again, sharing a room. A hand stretched over the narrow chasm between their twin beds.
Lindy. Home.
She took a deep breath, and the relief was a surprise in and of itself.
I don’t have to do this by myself anymore.
“Delia?”
She opened her eyes and did her best to shelve the relief so Dan couldn’t see it. Admitting she was relieved was too much like admitting she needed help. “I’ll…I’ll go up there.”
“Do you want me to go with?”
She did. She didn’t. How was she supposed to answer that question?
“You need to take Brin to work. Make sure she doesn’t run off with Jenny again.”
“Dee,” he said, implored really, as if begging her to see reason. “It’s Lindy.”
Dan and Lindy had been friends years ago and they’d been…something…for a split second that summer, before everything went wrong. Before Lindy left. But Delia couldn’t have him there the first time she saw her sister.
So she said nothing and her silence, sharp and hooked, did all the work.
He sighed and left without another word. That was their marriage these days: silences and sighs. Delia heard the truck start up, the familiar loud rumble.
Ephie pushed against her, full, and Delia glanced down into her smiling face. She had Dan’s eyes, blue as the sky.
Delia did not skip over this feeling, she sank into love for her baby. Into gratitude.
Ephie was a miracle.
And for the moment, Delia felt prepared to deal with anything.
LINDY
She expected coming home to feel clumsy. But she slipped right back into the house like she’d never left. She met Tiffany, the nurse, who continuously apologized for letting Mom escape. That was the word she used—escape. Lindy quickly forgave her. She knew how hard it was to keep a McAvoy from sneaking out. Tiffany filled her in on meds and fluid intake, and Lindy nodded, trying to absorb all the information.
And Then There Was You (Serenity House Book 2) Page 23