The Husband Hour

by Jamie Brenner

  “The quinoa French toast is very popular,” she said.

  “Sounds great.”

  She took his menu, relieved to be able to turn her back to him, and brushed past Nora on her way to the kitchen.

  “Looks like he wanted something not on the menu,” Nora said with a wink.

  “You’re right,” Lauren said. “It’s not on the menu.”

  Et tu, Nora? she thought, retrieving an order. Then she told herself to stop being cranky. But she couldn’t help it; she’d been woken up in the middle of the night when Stephanie finally came home, banging around drunk in the bathroom.

  She delivered the French toast to the guy at the window table.

  “I’m Matt, by the way.” He extended his hand.

  “And I’m working,” she said.

  “I know. Actually, so am I.” He handed her a business card. “I’m a documentary filmmaker. I directed the film The Disappearing Sea, about the recovery of Phang Nga after the 2004 tsunami.”

  “Didn’t see it.” She put the card down on the table.

  “It was nominated for an Academy Award.”

  “Congratulations,” she said woodenly before turning away.

  “Lauren, wait.” She froze. She hadn’t given him her name. Don’t freak out, she told herself. There’s probably an explanation. Across the room, she spotted Nora chatting with a regular. She tried to catch her eye but Nora was laughing, distracted.

  Her breath came fast and shallow, and she rushed to the safety of the bathroom. She closed herself inside, telling herself not to jump to conclusions, that one and one did not necessarily equal two. He might know her name because he’d heard a regular call out to her. And he was a filmmaker, but so what? That didn’t mean he was interested in Rory.

  That first year, she’d turned down Diane Sawyer and the New York Times and BuzzFeed and a Wall Street Journal reporter writing a book. Rory would have hated people selling a paper or a TV broadcast on his name. A book? Forget it. And why should they get to do that? Hadn’t Rory given enough?

  Hadn’t she?

  Around the same time, she got a letter from Rory’s brother warning her someone was trying to make a documentary film about Rory. Don’t talk to him, he’d written. As if she needed him to tell her that.

  But after a while, it all seemed to die down. The world had moved on. Or so she thought.

  She couldn’t hide in the bathroom all day. She came out and found Nora by the coffee station. “Can you take table two for me?”

  Nora glanced over, smiled, and was about to say something cute, but Lauren shut her down with “He’s a filmmaker. He knows my name.”

  Nora’s face fell. “I’ll take the table. Why don’t you just manage the front counter until he leaves.”

  Lauren felt safer, more in control, behind the counter. Busyness, motion, was her friend. She filled the Plexiglas display case with the muffins delivered that morning. A woman walked in to buy a mug and a baseball hat. Two regulars showed up for takeout. Falling into her usual rhythm, she tried to forget about the man in the seat by the window.

  He stopped at the counter on his way out the door.

  “You were right; the French toast was amazing. Those mugs for sale?” he said.

  She turned her back to him.

  “Lauren, I don’t mean to upset you. But I am working on a film about your late husband, and I would really like the chance to talk to you about it.”

  She whirled around.

  “Forget it. Not happening. Understand?”

  “I think your husband’s story is important. I think it’s worth telling.”

  She glared at him.

  He held up another business card and made a show of placing it on the countertop. “I hope you’ll reconsider.”

  She watched him leave, then, hands shaking, tossed the card in the garbage.

  Matt pulled his car onto a side street and parked. He wouldn’t let the bumpy first encounter discourage him. This was what progress looked like.

  He opened the browser on his phone and checked the listing for a room rental he’d found earlier that morning. When—not if, but when—Lauren Kincaid agreed to talk to him, he needed a work space and a small crew. With his very limited funds, he was maybe putting the cart before the horse. But the room for rent looked perfect; it was on the bay side of town and had its own entrance separate from the rest of the house. And the nightly rate was better than he had hoped to find. He didn’t want to lose it.

  He opened the car window and let in the smell of salt air and the squawk of seagulls. With a deep breath, he dialed Craig.

  Straight to voice mail.

  “Craig, it’s Matt Brio. I’ve had a breakthrough on the Rory Kincaid film. Things are moving quickly, so please give me a call when you can.”

  His next call was to the number listed for the room rental. Another voice mail. And then he remembered that it was a holiday weekend and that normal people would be with their families. He had to be patient.

  This is what progress looks like.

  Chapter Nine

  Family dinner two nights in a row was probably too much to hope for. But since it was Memorial Day weekend, Beth thought a nice barbecue wasn’t a lot to ask. Apparently, she was wrong. Stephanie was out—heavens knew where. Ethan was home, of course. Lauren was holed up in her room, and Howard was on the grill with enough hot dogs and hamburgers for a dozen people.

  Beth stepped onto the deck, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “Why did you get so much food?”

  “I invited the Kleins and the Carters.”

  There was no point asking why he hadn’t told her. They’d barely spoken all day. They couldn’t agree on a plan for the summer. They couldn’t talk about the house. They couldn’t talk about money. Thirty years into their marriage, everything was suddenly a conversational landmine. And she didn’t know how to fix it. There she was, in the middle of her life, and she had never felt less capable.

  With company coming, she had to change out of her yoga pants. Her mother would have been appalled by the “athleisure” state of dressing these days. Even at the beach, her mother had greeted every day with full makeup and her hair done, wearing linen pants and a matching top.

  And, really, it was the gradual but absolute slide into everyday casual that had been the undoing of their family business. Beth should have put up more personal resistance, but it was just so damn easy to be comfortable.

  Beth stood on the bedroom deck and looked down at the pool. Today, Howard, happily grilling, seemed more like the man she loved and the father the girls adored and less like the adversary she’d been living with the past few months. She knew it had been difficult for him to lose the store, and not just because of the financial implications. It was his family business. He’d never considered another career because the store was his duty. It wasn’t easy; it wasn’t glamorous. But he’d shown up, day in and day out, for three decades.

  If only he hadn’t gone behind her back with a second mortgage on their home!

  Beth headed up the stairs to warn Lauren they were having company. As expected, Lauren was less than thrilled.

  “Mom, I just feel the walls closing in on me here. Stephanie wants to stay a few weeks, and I know it’s not technically my house, but it is my home and I just can’t deal with her twenty-four/seven.”

  Beth sat on the bed. This was what happened when you waited for the right time to talk: you got backed into a corner.

  “Well, sweetheart, I have some good news and some bad news.”

  Lauren looked at her sharply. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to stay here for the summer too. I can be a buffer between you and Stephanie.”

  “You and Dad are staying all summer?”

  Beth hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Why? You never spend the summer here. I mean, I don’t want to be a brat. It’s your house. It’s just…” She looked out the window hopelessly. “I’m used to being here alone. I need to be alon
e.”

  Just rip the Band-Aid off, Beth told herself. “I want to spend the summer here with you because…” She paused, probably more dramatically than she should have. But really, she needed a moment. Once she said it aloud to Lauren, it would become real. “It’s our last summer with the Green Gable. We have to sell this house.”

  By four in the afternoon Matt still hadn’t heard back from Craig. But the woman renting out the room told him he could stop by and see it before six.

  “You’re late for a rental this season,” she said over the phone. “But lucky for you, I’m late to the game myself.”

  Matt parked in her driveway and noted a wooden stairway on the side of the house leading to the upper floor. He hoped the room was decent because he liked the location.

  He rang the front doorbell. No response. He rang again. When there was still no answer, he wondered if the bell was broken and knocked. Still nothing.

  Fighting annoyance, he walked around to the back of the house, passing the wooden stairs and a deck overlooking the bay. He could hear music playing. Nina Simone?

  A woman was bent over a table painting a plank of wood with a wide brush. She seemed to be in her sixties and had cocoa-colored skin and a short salt-and-pepper Afro. She wore a blue smock and lots of beaded necklaces in reds and corals.

  “Um, Ms. Boutine?”

  Startled, she dropped her brush. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Matt. We just spoke on the phone about the room?”

  “Oh, heavens. I lost track of time. And I have a party to get to!” She wiped her hands on the smock and held one out to shake. “Henriette Boutine. You can call me Henny. Follow me.”

  She took him back to the side of the house.

  “Are you an artist?” he said.

  “It’s more of a craft,” she said, leading the way up the steps to a door on the second floor. “This stairway is an add-on. When my son finished college, he ended up back here for a year, and my late husband built this entrance for his privacy—and our sanity. But my son’s on the West Coast now and my husband passed, and here I’ve been, stuck with this eyesore staircase. But now it’s coming in handy. The Lord works in mysterious ways, right?”

  “True,” Matt said. She opened the door to a large bedroom with a view of the bay. The space was decorated with eclectic bric-a-brac—a mason jar on the nightstand filled with shells, framed sand dollars on the wall, a smattering of wicker baskets. The sleigh bed was full-size and topped with a navy-blue comforter. Up above, a gently whirling ceiling fan. Behind the bed, a wooden sign in multiple hues of blue that read COTTAGE RULES: SAND. SUN. FUN.

  He looked around for space to work and was pleased to see a small wooden desk in the corner.

  “What do you think?” said Henny.

  “The nightly rate is as listed?” he said.

  “Yes. But I have to tell you, a couple is coming over tomorrow to see the room. So if you want it, I’m just letting you know it might not be available after tomorrow for about a week.”

  “I would need it for about a week too.”

  He glanced at his phone, willing Craig to call. If Craig came on board, his expenses would be covered. He didn’t want to front the cash so early, but he also didn’t want to lose the place. As was his habit, he took the gamble.

  “I’d like it.”

  “Really? You’re my first renter. I didn’t think this whole thing would work. My friends think I’m crazy to be doing this.”

  Matt smiled politely.

  “Here are the keys. The door will lock behind you automatically so be sure to take them with you. I need the first night paid as a deposit.”

  He handed over his debit card and she plugged an adapter into her phone to swipe it. “Isn’t technology amazing?” she said.

  “Okay, well, I’m just going to settle in for now. Thanks, Ms. Boutine. It’s a really nice place you’ve got here.”

  “Please, call me Henny. And yes, it is a nice place. So give it a good rating or whatever it’s called on the web. That’s the way to build business. Or so I’ve read. Enjoy your stay.” She closed the door behind her.

  Matt unpacked his Canon C100 and set it on the desk but left his backup sound pack in his bag. Hopefully, he’d get funding to pay a local crew and he wouldn’t need it.

  He pulled out his laptop and booted up his Rory Kincaid folder. He opened the interview he’d done with one of Kincaid’s high-school coaches, Roger McKenna.

  “And that was the thing about Rory,” the coach said, folding his arms behind his head and sitting back in his office chair. Above him was a framed photograph of Rory’s team the year they’d won the state championship. “It wasn’t just his reflexes or his speed. It was his absolute calm under pressure.”

  Matt nodded. He’d heard the same thing from the coach at Harvard and from members of Rory’s battalion.

  He fast-forwarded to the footage of the gym. Lower Merion High School had just under fourteen hundred students in any given year and every kind of team and extracurricular club you could imagine. From what he understood, LM, as it was commonly called, offered the quintessential all-American high-school experience.

  Rory’s retired jersey, number 89, hung framed next to a maroon-and-white banner that read RORY KINCAID. PA STATE CHAMPIONSHIP 2005. MCDONALD’S ALL-AMERICAN. GATORADE PLAYER OF THE YEAR.

  While Matt’s camera guy got B-roll of the gym, Coach McKenna had gotten choked up.

  “I still can’t believe it. What a waste,” the coach said. “What a goddamn waste.”

  The simple statement hit Matt in the gut. It was exactly how he felt about his older brother. After 9/11, Ben had dropped out of Syracuse University to enlist. Three years later, they’d lost him.

  What a goddamn waste.

  Maybe, if Matt managed to pull off the film, Rory’s death—and his brother’s—wouldn’t be a total waste.

  His phone rang, startling him. He looked at the screen.

  Craig Mason.

  Chapter Ten

  We have to sell this house.

  The beat of her sneakers on asphalt steadied Lauren’s nerves. Still, the run over to Nora’s wasn’t something Lauren had thought through very well. It was, after all, Memorial Day weekend. And sure enough, when she arrived, sweaty and anxious, on the doorstep, she found a house overflowing with guests.

  Nora clapped in delight to see her. “You came after all!”

  Her party. Lauren had completely forgotten.

  Taking in Lauren’s running clothes and less-than-festive expression, Nora said, “What’s the matter? Come get a drink. Or, better yet, eat your drink. April made her famous watermelon balls.” Every summer party, Nora’s friend April showed up with vodka-infused fruit.

  “I’m good. Thanks. I just need some quiet, so this was probably not the best place—”

  “Come on upstairs.”

  Across the hall, her friend Henny Boutine waved at her. Lauren raised her hand in response, trying to muster some enthusiasm, then followed Nora to the second floor.

  Nora’s room overlooked the bay. Two of her three cats—Nadia, the Russian blue, and Benson, the tabby—had taken up residence on the bed. Both were sprawled out, reveling in the late-day sun streaming through the window. The felines were so large, she had no room to sit without encountering a paw or a sleepy cat’s head.

  Above the bed, a wooden sign read CATS WELCOME; PEOPLE TOLERATED.

  It was one of Henny’s handmade signs; she displayed them on the walls of Nora’s restaurant and sold them for twenty-five dollars each. It was apparently not much of a moneymaker; she’d decided to list her house on Airbnb for the first time. Henny was nervous about it. All of her friends except Lauren were nervous about it. She figured it was a generational thing. At the book club last month, April said to Henny, “I hope you’re careful. I don’t know how y’all let strangers in your houses.”

  April, a widow, was living off the estate of her fifth and final husband. Her hair was silvery blond, her m
outh never without matte red lipstick, and her cheeks always powdered. She was a throwback to a time Lauren could scarcely imagine and never would have survived.

  “Some of us have to work for a living, Miss America,” Henny had replied. Indeed, April had been a Miss America pageant contestant circa 1964.

  Lauren looked out the window. The back deck was packed with people.

  “I feel bad keeping you from the party. Go on—I’m fine.”

  “The party is fine. You still upset about that guy at the restaurant? I’ll make sure he doesn’t get a table ever again, I’ll tell you that.”

  “No. I mean, yeah, I’m freaked out about that.” It unnerved Lauren that he had tracked her down at Nora’s. She felt her privacy had been invaded, the security of her protected island breached. As for the film itself, well, what could the guy possibly have except what the world already knew? She wouldn’t speak to him. Rory’s mother was gone. Who was the guy talking to? Former teammates? Someone from his battalion? She’d been going over and over it in her mind. Would probably still have been obsessing about it if it weren’t for the bombshell her mom had dropped. “But that’s not it. My mother’s selling the house.”

  “The Green Gable?”

  Lauren nodded, tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe it. I never thought this day would come. Never. My grandparents bought that house in 1965. It’s like, the one thing I have, the one thing I can count on.”

  “Hon, you’ve got your parents here. Your sister. You’re surrounded by people who love you. You can count on that.”

  It was such a simple sentiment. And she wanted so much to believe it.

  Matt told himself he hadn’t lied to Craig when he’d implied that Lauren Kincaid had agreed to be interviewed. In just a day or two, Matt was sure he would be able to turn that into reality.

  The important thing was that Craig was excited about the project.

  When he returned Matt’s call, he’d said he had just been thinking about him.