And they did sometimes hate him. That loud laugh echoing off the stone walls of the great room, the way Penelope would wince when he came into the room and filled it up so completely. The way Flynn watched Jack move out of the corner of his eye—like a handler tracked a tiger. There was a subtle, fine thread of animosity connecting them all, tying it all together: love, lust, dependence, anger, even hate. All five of them baked together in that hothouse of a church, each turning into something completely new and unknown, from wholesome to damaged.
It seemed to her that the ways they seemed to damage each other were endless. Until Grace, anyway.
She didn’t see that kind of love between Penelope and Brett. She wondered if it would have gone away had Grace and Jack gotten married. Faded into the dry ash of a once fiery ember, dampened by years of Can you pick up milk at the store? and Did you forget to pay the cable bill? Was it inevitable that wild love turned to tolerance? Passion to obedience?
Penelope and Brett seemed barely tolerant. Oh, they put on a decent show most of the time. Penelope did a lot of talking through her teeth with a tight-lipped smile. But she saw his surprise when Pip called him sweetheart. No, that was a show.
She couldn’t see them being wildly in love.
Penelope’s car screeched out of the driveway, following the ambulance. The kids would be home soon. She’d been able to pick her way through Pip’s bedroom and a little bit of the office in the previous days, but Brett was always around—coming and going with no schedule. It had become impossible. Well, not anymore. A two-day hospital stay would do them all good.
She started with the downstairs bookcase—a wedding album.
Pip’s dress had been simple: a long ivory sheath dress, no veil. A courthouse marriage. Brett looked handsome in a dark-blue suit, no tux. An older couple stood behind Brett, a lone woman, about Penelope’s age, resting her hand on Pip’s shoulder.
In one picture, he cradled her hand as they danced and laughed into her shoulder. Her head was turned away, but even from the back, she looked to be smiling. So maybe love was a factor then.
The date: July 12, 2001. A little more than a year after the fire. Interesting. How had they met? She would have to remember to ask Pip later. Of course, after the medical crisis was over.
Brett wouldn’t die. Hemolytic anemia was rarely, if ever, fatal. The worst he would need is a blood transfusion and a few days at the hospital for monitoring. She thought it was interesting that Penelope didn’t know that. Some people could go their whole lives with G6PD and never go into hemolytic crisis. But still. You’d think she would know something about it. If she loved him.
Upstairs in the office, she started with the desk drawers. Bills, insurance paperwork, old tax filings. Semi-interesting. They used to make a lot of money—close to $500,000 a year. Now they were down to less than two fifty—all from Penelope, she figured. Quite a fall from grace. She wondered what they had to give up in losing over half their income. Lavish vacations? They were still able to make the mortgage payments, then. Where did the money they used to make go?
The bottom drawer, stuffed with papers, unorganized and overfilled. Receipts for auto repair, cell phone bills. A credit card bill. Owed close to $50,000. Ah, that made sense. She scanned the charges: health spas and therapy offices. Penelope was right, then—Brett was blowing through their money. At a quick glance, Penelope barely spent a dime.
The office had a small closet that contained wire shelving, held office supplies, a few plastic totes of keepsakes, labeled Brett and Penelope. She pulled out the tote labeled Penelope and sifted through the contents. More junk: school pictures, half-filled notebooks, an apology letter from Tara, a dried flower. At the bottom, buried, a small card, the front adorned with a simple black-and-white flower with a splash of red and green. A homemade watercolor, she realized. Unsigned. She turned it over. On the back, an artist’s mark. JBH2019.
If wanting what we can’t have is the ultimate human experience, I’ve never been more human. I have no idea if you feel the same way. I think you do. What is the upper limit on lifetime heartbreak? I’ve had one and didn’t think I’d make it. I don’t want to do it again, but the bitch of it is, it seems inevitable. I’m breathing. Are you?
Well, now. Things just got interesting.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Then: Locks on the Outside
Willa stumbled upstairs to the kitchen, her eyes bleary and mouth open in a pant. She plunked down heavily at the kitchen table, and Penelope poured coffee for her from the carafe that Penelope assumed was Flynn’s, because anything bougie, luxury, or unnecessary must have come from Flynn. The rest of them lived like savages most of the time.
“How was your first night?” Penelope inquired politely, and Willa gave her a withering look.
“Good, except I’m hungover as hell. Do we have any food?”
Penelope motioned to the refrigerator and shrugged. “I haven’t looked.”
Willa crossed the room and opened the door and gasped. The fridge was stocked with fruits and vegetables, cream and milk and butter and eggs. More than anything they’d seen in four years of college, where a chunk of sliming cheese might sit on a refrigerator shelf for a month alone.
“Where did all that come from?” Flynn stood perched on the steps. He’d run, showered, and changed into black cotton shorts and a pink golf shirt.
“It came from me,” Jack said from the winding staircase. “We aren’t college students anymore—let’s try to behave like responsible adults, what do you think?” He descended the rest of the way, whistling. Jack always whistled—usually something unknown, sometimes pop music from the radio; once she swore it was “How Will I Know,” by Whitney Houston, and Willa was merciless about it. “We’ve never all lived together before—should we make a plan? Everyone gets a dinner day? Five days, five of us. Saturday and Sunday are for takeout?”
Flynn, Willa, and Penelope gawped at him, but he kept talking, pouring coffee. Jack was unusually dressed up, almost like Flynn—clean, pressed shorts, a knife-edge crease down the front. His computer messenger bag slung across his chest and tucked behind him. His hair slicked back with gel. He looked like a model. Penelope felt her face flame, caught Willa’s eye above her mug, her sleepy countenance transforming momentarily into shock, then a flash of irritation.
“Where are you going?” Penelope asked dumbly. As far as she knew, none of them had jobs—at least not yet. She had googled the town of Deer Run and saw a used bookstore in town. She sniffed the air. “Is that . . . cologne?”
Jack turned quickly, gave her a level glare. “No.” A lie.
“I’ll take Tuesdays.” Willa yawned, her blonde hair wild around her face. Her cheeks puffed pink with amusement. “I can’t cook for shit, but I can make pasta about twenty different ways.”
Flynn looked from Willa to Jack to Penelope, and his face cracked with laughter. “That’s pathetic.”
“What, the cologne or the pasta?” Jack asked, his back still turned to them.
“What?” Willa protested. “Look, my money is on Flynn or Bree to be our resident chef. Penelope probably has two, maybe three dishes that she calls a specialty, and y’all know I spent undergrad eating bagged noodles and raw carrots. And Jack . . . who knows? I bet he’s a grill man. That’s like a testosterone-laden way of cooking.”
Jack turned to them, cradling a coffee mug he’d found in the cabinet, and grinned. “Cooking with testosterone? This is a thing?”
“So you never answered the question,” Penelope persisted. “Where are you going?”
“I”—Jack took a sip of coffee quietly—“am writing a book. At the coffee shop in the square.”
He paused for a group reaction. Flynn looked impressed, like he wanted to ask a question. Willa surreptitiously rolled her eyes. As the one closest to Jack, she was likely the one who was most familiar with his broad proclamations and infrequent follow-through.
Penelope kept her face neutral, not wanting to appear overea
ger. “You can take my car if you want; the keys are always in the center console.”
“No worries. I’ll walk—it’s beautiful out.” He gave her a bright smile. “Thanks, though.”
The Church House was situated down a fairly isolated street, at the end of a long dirt driveway, about a mile from the center of town. Penelope stood up quickly. “Actually . . . mind if I walk with you? I wanted to check out the bookstore in town. I’m thinking . . . of applying for a job there.”
Willa raised her eyebrows. “Since when?” she asked, and Penelope shrugged, trying to slide behind her chair. Willa reached out and pinched Penelope’s arm, the soft pad of skin behind her elbow.
“What the hell?” Penelope rubbed at the spot, softly cursing, and glared at Willa. She’d always hated when Jack and Penelope ended up doing something alone, without her. “Do you want to come with us?” Penelope asked, with exaggerated obligation. Willa snorted and buried her nose in her coffee, abjectly not pursuing any job leads on day number one. Penelope felt her irritation pitch and fall. Willa was always unpredictable—quick to anger but just as quick to laugh. It kept them all on their toes. Or on edge, depending on how you looked at it. She slipped past her and headed downstairs to change.
The bedrooms were small, just enough room for a double bed, a dresser, and a nightstand, more like dormitory living than many of the apartments they’d left behind. The carpets were old, gray blue, and thin—the same in every room. Jack had grand ambitions of pulling up the carpeting and refinishing the hardwood while they were there. He suggested once that they consider sweat equity—helping his cousin repair and finish the house in exchange for living rent-free. Penelope changed, quickly, from the tubs of her things that had been delivered by the moving guys the day before. She wondered briefly what had happened to Bree.
The sky cleared, and the sun beat down, hot and suffocating on the dusty driveway. They walked in comfortable silence, but Penelope felt heavy. Something about Willa’s face when she said she’d walk to town with Jack. And Bree was missing. The whole house felt off kilter. She took a deep shuddering breath, more dramatically than she’d intended.
“He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety,” Jack said, nudging her with his elbow.
Penelope couldn’t help but laugh. “What?”
“It’s an Emerson poem,” Jack said, rubbing the end of his nose, turning it red. “I’ll find you the whole thing. You would benefit from reading it.”
“Why?” Penelope didn’t know whether to be offended and jostled him back.
“Sometimes . . .” He stopped and started again. “It seems like you carry the weight of the world around, you know? You’re always so serious. Or worried? I don’t know. I think about that line a lot: He is rich who owns the day. I try not to analyze what happened yesterday or think about what might happen tomorrow; it’s all a tad bit pointless, right?”
“Well, maybe,” Penelope murmured noncommittally. It seemed to her that some good came out of self-reflection, even if it was just personal growth. Not that she expected much personal growth out of Jack either way. She didn’t have nearly enough liquor in her system to tackle existentialism and decided to change the subject. “Why don’t you tell me what your book is about?”
“I’m not telling anyone.” He shrugged. “It’s the beginning stages now. I’ve tried this before, you know. To write a novel.”
“And?”
“A bunch of manuscripts at various word counts ranging from eight thousand to fifteen thousand in a dusty folder on my thumb drive.” Jack ran a hand up through his thick black hair. If Penelope didn’t know better she’d think he was self-conscious.
“Okay, then what genre?” Penelope was never one to give up easily. People were usually surprised at her persistence. She always thought she looked like the kind of girl who would relent immediately.
“Ummm . . . maybe YA? But literary. It’s a coming of age.”
Penelope tried not to roll her eyes, but Jack caught her look anyway and laughed. “Look, I’m not a navel gazer by nature, but . . . well, it’s half a memoir.”
“So it’s about a boy growing up in Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, kind of. Growing up Hispanic.” He slid a glance at her.
Penelope studied him. She’d never thought about his ethnicity before; he never seemed to attach any heritage to his own identity. Not like Bree, who seemed to live and breathe Ireland: culture, music, food, posters hung on the wall of her apartment at UPenn.
“Avila?” Penelope asked. Jack’s last name.
“My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was five. I have one memory of her. My father—he’s Cuban. Kind of a dick, most of the time.” He shrugged. “Still, I wasn’t white. I’m not white. People don’t really know that, though. It’s just a weird space to be—knowing I could check a box and not checking it because it feels like a sham or something. I look white.”
“What’s the memory?” The humid air enveloped them like a bubble, and Penelope felt like she filled her lungs deep with water.
He pointed up to the building they stood in front of. Penelope hardly realized they’d walked all the way to the bookstore. She reached out and touched Jack’s sleeve. “What’s the memory, Jack?”
He gave her a thin-lipped, watery smile, the moment broken, and chucked her under the chin. “Ah, I’ll tell you another time. Go get your job, okay?”
Shaking off disappointment, Penelope asked, “Do you want me to come get you when I’m done?”
“Nah.” He was already turning around to walk to the coffee shop on the opposite corner. “I’ll be home around dinnertime.” His voice was kind, but distant. He gave a half wave and jogged across the street. Penelope pushed open the bookstore door.
When Penelope let herself back in the Church House a few hours later, the place was quiet and cool. Everyone had gone off on their own—to explore Deer Run, or maybe to venture out to the backyard. Maybe hiding in their own private spaces. Penelope ended up back in her little room, making her bed neatly, unpacking throw pillows, a knitted afghan that was a gift from her aunt when she’d left for college. Penelope had few possessions of her own, having only rented a small room in an apartment off campus for her senior year. She didn’t know her roommates well; she’d answered an ad at the end of her junior year. She had no couches, tables, chairs, end tables. Just a comforter set that she’d purchased years before at a chain store.
Her little basement windows were open to the balmy warmth—there was no central air-conditioning, but the shade of pines around the church cooled off the living space. The subterranean bedrooms were almost chilly.
She could hear Willa in the kitchen, singing. Willa always sang—her voice clear and strong. Mostly Joni Mitchell (She’s my range, exactly, Willa had said), sometimes Norah Jones. Deep, rich altos with a jazzy melody. Penelope leaned into the sound, trying to make out which song. “It’s coming on Christmas.” Ah, “River,” then. God, she loved that song.
She gave a small yelp when Bree appeared in her doorway, silent as a mouse. Her pale face even whiter than usual, her eyes narrowed.
“Where have you been all day?” Penelope asked. “Everyone’s been looking for you!”
“I’ve been exploring,” Bree hissed and beckoned to Penelope. Penelope followed her out to the hallway, and Bree continued in a quiet voice. “Look, the bedroom doors all lock from the outside.”
The locks were square, black, iron, the kind that used a skeleton key. Penelope swung open her own door and looked at the lock—the exact same from both sides. It was a double-keyed lock.
“They probably used to be storerooms, don’t you think?”
Penelope shrugged. The key that would have fit the lock was old, probably long gone. The inside had a secondary slide latch above the door handle. Installed recently, it was new, likely to be able to keep out tenants or guests. Nothing about it felt sinister or worthy of Bree’s suspicion.
“It’s weird,” Bree said, her voice cut with danger, but Penelope still didn’t really understand the urgency.
Bree always unsettled Penelope for reasons she could never pinpoint. She was sort of dreamy and flighty, but underneath, Penelope got the sense that she was always planning something. She had a manipulative edge about her. Always looking for an angle somehow. Although Penelope had once tried to say something similar to Willa, who had just laughed. Bree? Manipulative? She doesn’t even know which end is sky and which is ground.
“You can probably just take yours off,” Penelope offered, but Bree clenched her jaw.
“Not the point.” She started walking away, motioning again for Penelope to follow her. At the far end of the hall was a small door, about half the height of the bedroom doors, the doorway arched to a point. She pushed it open easily, and it swung inward. A storage closet. The one wall contained shelves with toilet paper, towels, presumably stocked by Parker or maybe even Jack. Penelope followed Bree all the way into the storage room, and Bree reached behind her, shut the door. The only light came from under the door, a thin lemon slice of fluorescence.
They stood in darkness for a second, Bree’s minty breath on Penelope’s cheek. Her hair smelled like fresh rain, her fingertips cool on Penelope’s arm and then her waist as she slipped past her, and Penelope felt her heart hitch. What was she doing? In the back of the closet, Bree pushed against the back wall. It swung in to reveal a dark dirt hallway.
Penelope gasped.
“I know, right?” Bree’s voice was thready in the dim light, and all Penelope could see was the bright sclera of her eyes. “It gets crazier—just wait.”
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