“Stop!” She walked closer to where Michael stood, her eyes wild. “You thought I came up with that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re Ann with a Plan, after all.”
Ann hit him on the arm. “You idiot!”
He jumped, not because she’d hit him hard—it was more of a playful tap—but because he was unprepared for physical contact with her. It was disconcerting after so much time apart. She was flesh and blood. He could even smell her.
“He told me you two were in love.” There it was: the real reason he’d let Anthony get to him; the real reason he’d believed all those lies. Michael could see it so clearly now, so clearly it made him feel ashamed. He’d been jealous.
“Love?” Ann looked like she was about to throw up. “No. No, no, no. There was no love. Why would you believe him?”
Why had Michael believed him? Because Ann was right: he was an idiot. “That guy was the absolute worst,” Michael said. “Nobody’s ever made me feel like such a worthless piece of shit, and believe me, a lot of people have tried.”
“You know he’d say anything to get what he wanted,” Ann said. “Do anything.”
“And we let him, that’s the worst part. We just let that dude plow us down, drive right over us. We should have figured this out. Should have assumed the best about each other, not the worst.”
Michael stood up and walked over to the edge of the room, so frustrated that he wasn’t sure how to handle the rage building up inside him. Before he knew it, his fist went straight through the screen. Ann gasped.
“I’ll fix that,” Michael said, worried that he’d scared her. “A busted screen is no big deal, really. I can fix it in ten minutes.”
“I know you can,” she said.
They stared at the fist-shaped hole in the screen for a long while, long enough for a fly to find its way through. “You know what?” Ann said. “I’m done being mad at him. He’s dead. I need to move on. Poppy tells me I need to practice ho’oponopono—something like that, some kind of healing practice that she says will clear a path for the divine. She learned it in Hawaii. I have no idea what it means.”
“Sounds like Poppy.”
Ann excused herself and walked out of the room. Michael figured she wouldn’t come back. He’d blown it. He waited to hear the door slam. Instead, her soft footsteps padded across the living room. Then he heard a door open and close.
When she returned, she held another envelope in her hand, this one smaller. She handed it to him. “I found something else for you.”
“What is it?”
He answered his own question: a letter addressed to Anthony, from Ed.
“You’ll see. I think you should read it later, when you’re alone. Maureen found it when she was going through Anthony’s things.”
The letter burned in his hands, competing with his view of Ann leaning against the doorframe, one leg bent, her toes curled like a dancer’s. The sun was beginning to set. The light entering the home was low and rose-colored. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. A gull squealed out in the cove. On the other side of the house the traffic rumbled, a low, steady din. “I need to tell you something else. About what really happened between me and Anthony. It wasn’t consensual.”
Michael winced. He waited a long time for Ann to say more. Maybe she’d tell him the whole story someday, but she was quiet now. “I’m so sorry. I should have figured it out. That was a really shitty thing he did, and a lot for you to go through.” He stood up and reached for her hands. Her fingers were long and delicate, her palms warm. She didn’t pull away.
“I couldn’t tell anyone. I don’t know why. Instead, I pulled away. I let Anthony lie to me about you. I lashed out at all the people closest to me. I swear I chased Poppy off to the other side of the world. And look at you. You ended up all the way here.”
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I wouldn’t have ever known about this place if it weren’t for you. Now I never want to leave.”
Michael looked through the doorway into the house. He could see the wide fireplace, the transom windows above the skinny doors, the iron hardware, the wide planks in the old wood floors.
Ann said, “Don’t you think it’s time you return the fourth ace?”
Michael smiled, embarrassed. He reached for his wallet and pulled out the old playing card with the hole in the middle. Ann snapped it from his fingers with a playful smile. She squeezed Michael’s hands and leaned closer to him, resting her forehead on his sternum. He would have been happy if they could have stood like that for the rest of time. On the wall behind Ann, Michael noticed, the red arrow on Ed’s tide clock was pointing toward the words HALF TIDE FALLING. Noah would be back soon, and they’d leave for Boston. Who knew what would happen next? He’d worry about that later, just like, later, he’d worry about the content of that letter Ann gave him.
He could smell the sulfuric smell of the peat in the cove, a scent that mingled with the sweet aroma of Ann’s shampoo and the musky smell of the old house.
It wasn’t the house he wanted; it was Ann. It had always been Ann.
August 12, 2015
De—
I thought of beginning this letter Dear Mr. Shaw, but hell, you aren’t dear to me. And Mr. Shaw is the name my daughter called you because you were in a position of authority and she was your employee. A position you exploited. I have names for you, bub. I sure do, but that’s not why I’m writing.
I wish I could forget what Ann told me a few weeks ago. It was you, huh? I knew in my gut it wasn’t Michael, but you? You weren’t even a fly on my radar.
You probably think I’m writing to chew you out for what you did, and believe me, there are things I’d like to do to you, but after all these years I guess what you did is between you and your creator. I got a damn fine grandchild out of the deal, and you? You’ve got nothing, and I’m sorry for you. I won’t waste my energy on hate or pity. I’m old now. I feel older than I am. And I’m watching my wife forget everything that has ever happened to her.
I don’t understand how exactly you puppet-mastered the deal. I’m trying to put together the pieces. Ann says Michael was paid off. That he blackmailed you. I know that’s bullshit. You were behind everything.
They were just kids. The damage you did. Man, there was damage.
Still with me? I’ll get to my point. I’m writing because I want to find Michael. He’s my son. He has always been my son. I don’t know where he is. All my leads are dead ends. Perhaps you know where he’s gone off to. Tell me. How can I find him? Please help. Earn back some goodwill. I want to see Michael, but don’t do it for me, do it for my wife. She’s missed him so. I want Connie to look into Michael’s eyes and recognize who he is before she can’t anymore.
Please, will you help?
Sincerely, and I am sincere,
Ed Gordon
THIRTY-SEVEN
Poppy
2017
Poppy loved the town of Nazaré in Portugal. It was fun to watch the surfers of Praia do Norte, the beach where the largest wave ever had been surfed. And it was still cheap. She could eat a huge piece of turbot and some vegetables for under ten euros.
The reason she’d chosen Nazaré was because it was on the westernmost point in Europe, almost directly across the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Cod. It was her way of staying connected to Wellfleet without actually being there, providing her with the global traveler’s illusion of proximity.
She savored her time here in a way she hadn’t savored the other places she’d been. She loved watching the fishing women in their colorful skirts sit by the beach sewing their nets while the seagulls picked at the junk the beachgoers had left behind. She wished she could talk to the women, and learn from them. But, hard as she’d tried, she couldn’t learn Portuguese, a language that sounded especially foreign to her ear. When they spoke, it sounded like someone had filled a blender with words and turned it on.
Poppy didn’t need to know the language when she taught yoga, a practice she’d begun to e
njoy again. She’d nod, give hand signals, and make gentle adjustments. Her tourist yogis were mostly tall, sunburned Germans who smiled a lot at her growing belly.
The house in Milwaukee belonged to Brad now, and the money she’d made on the sale had ironically set her free, whatever “free” meant. Brad said he wouldn’t follow Poppy around the world by putting pushpins in a map the way her father had. He didn’t need to follow her. Soon she’d go back. She wanted to deliver their baby in the same hospital where she and Ann and Noah had been born, and return the baby to the same wonderful home and city she’d grown up in. Brad couldn’t wait. He’d sent her photos of the crib he’d put together and the mobile he’d made in the welding shop out of odd pieces of metal. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. Not long ago, she realized he was the man who’d clutched her arms in that vision she’d had during that long-ago ayahuasca ceremony, telling her she was a healer. Funny that that image had sent her searching all over the world for a man in Milwaukee; funny they’d healed each other.
Maybe this would be her last long trip abroad. Maybe she’d stay in Wisconsin, and they’d spend their summers on the Cape in the house her child would someday become part owner of. Brad had plans to renovate the barn so they’d have their own space.
So many maybes.
The only certainty was the kick she felt against her ribs, the pressure on her bladder, the heartburn that kept her up at night.
She stepped into the ocean and imagined her parents’ ashes swirling in the surf. Not wanting to miss out on another family event, Poppy had returned home to the Cape for a week to attend what Noah jokingly called a “DIY funeral.” They’d walked down to Drummer Cove at high tide and stood in a semicircle. Brad played “I’ll Fly Away” on Ed’s mandolin. Noah read lines of poetry in Connie’s poetry-reading voice. It was funny at first, until he stumbled on some lines by Edna St. Vincent Millay: “‘Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; / Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. / I know.’” He hesitated. “‘But I do not approve. I am not resigned.’”
Poppy admired Noah’s comfort with himself. He reminded her of her father, weeping openly while everyone else tried to hold it together. Avery, soulful and wise, had become Noah’s sidekick. She held his large hand in her small one. And Michael was sensitive to Noah the way a father might have been.
Poppy said, “They’ve always been and still are part of this universe. They’re on a new journey now, a progression of their souls, taking the growth from this life into the next one.”
Ann had tried hard not to laugh out loud—so hard that she snorted. Her relationship with Poppy was still tender, though—tender enough that Poppy saw a brief look of concern cross her sister’s face. How far was too far? What was appropriate anymore? Where were their borders? “Do you really believe that, Pops?”
“Sure. I mean, I like the idea of living forever, and of reincarnation,” Poppy said. “What’s the point of learning all this stuff and then just, you know, having it all end?”
Brad leaned against her. “I can feel them here with us. I see them in all of your faces. They’re here, they are.” The wind picked up as he said this, a warm breeze that felt like an embrace.
Michael wiped his eye with the back of his sleeve. “I feel them too. I’ve missed them for such a long time. Now I’ll miss them forever.”
When it came time to toss the ashes in the ocean, they realized nobody had thought to bring anything to put the ashes in, so Noah found the empty shell of a horseshoe crab and they took turns sprinkling them into the cove, one by one, careful not to allow the ashes to blow back in their faces.
“I wish we could always be like this,” Avery said. “I wish we could, like, sew our arms together.”
“I think that’s sweet?” Ann said. “Or creepy?”
They made their way up the bluff. Just as they got to the top, Ann stopped and set her hands on her hips. There the house stood as familiar to them as their own bodies in the mirror: the old red-brick chimney, the weathered shingles, the narrow, multipaned windows. “Isn’t it funny?” Ann said. “I used to blame this house for blowing up our family. I thought everything would have been different if we could have just stayed in one place. But now … I don’t know. Without it, what would have happened to all of us?”
That very night, Poppy hid a small, wooden fertility doll between the mattress and the box spring of the twin bed she’d slept in her whole life, pulled up the covers, and invited Brad to squeeze in with her. She knew the doll worked, a secret that made her smile while she packed to take off the next day. Brad begged her to stay, but she knew she had to leave (and return) on her own terms.
Nobody in her family had ever been good at leaving.
At night, the Portuguese women spilled olive oil into the water and said prayers for the fishermen to come back to them alive and well. Poppy watched them at the shore in the moonlight, thinking of how much had changed in the past year. Michael, Ann, Avery, and Noah now lived in the old house on the other shore. It was hard to believe that Michael was part of the family again, and Ann was now working with him on his toy business. Noah and Avery, she’d said, were practically siblings, while Ann and Michael were far more than that. At the funeral, Poppy had spied, peeking out from under the collar on the back of Ann’s shirt, a tattoo of the British farthing her father had found under the support beam of the house when they were kids. The original builder of the house must have placed it there for good luck. Poppy almost said something to Ann—“You got inked? Really?” Ann was the last person she’d imagine with a tattoo. But she didn’t say a word, because she’d spied the same tattoo on the back of Michael’s bicep.
Her family had been stressed and reconfigured, but it still held, just like the house across the ocean. It was still theirs, still in the family, still vulnerable to the elements, still requiring upkeep. It was an anchor, yes, but one that held her in place.
Acknowledgments
They say you should write what you know, and I couldn’t write about the importance of family without knowing the deep and sustaining love of family myself.
Thanks to my late grandparents, Warren and Lee Seyfert, for introducing us to South Wellfleet and my original “second home;” and to my amazing mom, Pat Geiger, for making sure we stayed connected to it and for knitting so many beautiful sweaters for me over the years, especially one to match the novel’s cover.
To the best sisters and friends ever, Sheila Cardenas and Karen Geiger-Niedfeldt, with whom I’ll never have to argue over the fate of a second home. Big, proud love to my amazing kids, Olivia and Tim (don’t worry Tim, Olivia says you can have the cottage). To my aunt Mel and uncle Bo Van Peenan for being early readers and cheerleaders, and for keeping our special Wellfleet house in the family. Love also to my aunt Val Piper and my cousins Wendy (Cutie) Van Peenan, Kristen (Scuz) Wild, Laura Van Peenan, and especially Bob Piper, who read the book many times and answered all my landscaping and year-round Cape Cod questions. Thanks also to all my nieces and nephews and to the extended Clancy family, who have embraced me as their own even though I’m short. And a tremendously heartfelt thanks to my husband, John Clancy. I couldn’t ask for a more loving, thoughtful, and patient friend and partner.
I wish to shower my steadfast agent Marcy Posner with eternal sunshine and warmth. Thank you for believing in this book, and for connecting me to Sarah Cantin at St. Martin’s Press. I knew from our first phone call, when we talked about the Gordon family as if they were our mutual friends, that Sarah was the perfect editor for this novel, and that the Gordons were in good hands. She even wears an original Dennis bracelet! I’m so grateful for Sarah’s enthusiasm and smarts, and for the assistance of Rachel Diebel and Sallie Lotz.
The publishing pros at St. Martin’s Press have welcomed me into the family, and I’m grateful to Jennifer Enderlin, Sally Richardson, Andrew Martin, Lisa Senz, publicist extraordinaires Katie Bassel and Dori Weintraub, and marketing dream team Erica Martirano, Brant Janew
ay, and Alexis Neuville. For their creative talents, I’m thankful to Kim Ludlam, Tom Thompson, and Olga Grlic, who gave me my dream cover. I loved talking to the audio experts, Mary Beth Roche, Robert Allen, and Dakota Cohen.
Thanks also to Don Laventhall, Hannah Brattesani, and Melissa White at Folio Literary Management for help with film and foreign rights.
Independent booksellers have been so supportive early in this journey, including Kayleen Rohrer at InkLink Books in East Troy, Daniel Golden at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, Joanne Berg at Mystery to Me in Madison, Pamela Klinger-Horn at Excelsior Bay Books in Excelsior, and Mary Webber O’Malley at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville. Jason Gobble and Stacie Michelle Williams have been so generous with their time and advice. I am awed by the care and effort booksellers put into finding the right books for the right readers.
For help with my research, thanks to Lynn Southey, for keeping me connected to her lovely, memory-filled Wellfleet home; Kate Paddon, for her Cape Cod real estate knowledge; and Jen Hannon at Godfrey & Kahn, for trust and estate help at far below her hourly rate. Thanks also to Molly Snyder, Monica Rausch, Marilyn Duarte, Sigrid Ohnesorge, Airin Aquarius, and Katy Weeks from Sugar Surf; Bonnie McIlvene from the Wicked Oyster; and Julie Prochnow and Margie Freeman for the yoga assists.
Special gratitude to the best writing group in the universe: Lauren Fox, Liam Callanan, Aims McGinnis, Anuradha Deshmukh, and Jon Olson. My writing friends and partners have been so generous with their time and expertise: Sarah Eisner, Janelle Lindsay, Judy Bridges, Phong Nguyen, Chris Fink, Jean Thompson, and Christine Sneed. Thanks also to the Ragdale Foundation, for offering me the time and space to write; LitCamp, for connecting me to an amazing writing community; and UW-Milwaukee’s English department for nurturing my craft.
Love to my early readers, who absolutely helped make this a better novel: Lisa Blue, Betty Porter, Joan Kappas, Karen Jarrard, Stephanie Lyons, Sheila Cardenas, Bob Piper, Olivia Clancy, Diana Goldberg, Tim Kiefer, Francine Inbinder, Joan Wickersham, and Kristen Park.
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