by Mia March
She hadn’t seen Lolly or June or Kat since last Christmas, she realized. It was now August. Twice a year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, seemed to be as much of one another as the four of them could stand.
Stay the weekend… longer, even… Did he remember their ten-year anniversary was Tuesday?
“What’s Lolly’s big announcement again?” he’d asked without looking at her, thumbs on the QWERTY keyboard of his iPhone.
He didn’t listen to her anymore. She’d been fretting ever since she’d gotten the call from her aunt. Summoning the three—the two, since her cousin Kat lived at the inn—was unusual. Isabel figured her aunt was selling the Three Captains’ Inn, and since the three girls had grown up there—well, for Isabel since age sixteen—perhaps Lolly, the least sentimental person on earth, felt the announcement needed to be made in person. Lolly would make her announcement with the same emotion she’d use to note that the lilacs had been particularly fragrant that summer. Then the four would each go about her business, Lolly disappearing in the parlor for Movie Night with her guests, June building LEGO towers in the backyard for hours with her son, Charlie, to avoid running into anyone she knew in town. And Kat avoiding… Isabel.
Isabel hoped her aunt was selling the place. It wasn’t as if it held happy memories for any of them.
Hear me. Care again. Look at me, she’d sent telepathically to Edward. But her husband’s attention had remained on his iPhone. “Lolly wouldn’t say,” she’d told him. “But I’ll bet she’s going to tell us she’s selling the inn.”
He’d nodded absently and glanced at his watch, then grabbed his briefcase and stood up.
That was it? No comment? No nostalgia for the place they’d spent so many nights lying together in the acres of backyard, between those century-old oaks, staring up at the stars? Making plans about much more than the children they wouldn’t have.
No comment. No nothing.
Now Isabel stared at the anonymous note sticking out of her bag. She read it again. Then slipped it back into the envelope.
Your husband is having an affair…
Did she want to know? Some wives looked the other way, for complicated and uncomplicated reasons. But it could be a mistake. Last year’s model Mercedes. Someone who looked like Edward, darting through a back door. Or she’d find out for sure that Edward was cheating on her, and then what? He’d beg forgiveness? They’d work through it? He’d swear it was a onetime thing, that he loved her?
Except he didn’t seem to love her lately. A long lately. And maybe he wouldn’t even lie about it.
She could crumple the note and pretend she never got it. That it was meant for someone else. Isabel closed her eyes and let herself drop down on a chair just as her legs started shaking. No matter what she’d do, she had to know.
And it was just past 6:25.
Isabel took one last look at the pasta dough on the wooden board, shoved the letter back into her purse, and drove the three minutes to Hemingway Street. Number 56 was the last house, a Greek Revival with stately pillars, and she realized she’d been here before, for a meeting a couple of years ago to discuss some town referendum that was up for vote.
Who lives here? she asked herself, trying to remember as she parked several houses away and then hurried alongside the house to the back, her heart thumping, her breath coming in ragged bursts. There was a carport, impossible to see from the street. Please don’t let his black Mercedes be back here.
But there it was.
The breath went out of her.
Oh, Edward. You bastard.
Anger, so sharp she felt it piercing her stomach, was moments later replaced by a sadness she couldn’t remember feeling since the morning she woke up to learn her parents were dead. She leaned against the side of the house for support, glad for the majestic evergreens that shielded her. Shielded Edward and his Mercedes from neighbors. Except one, of course.
A weathered wooden sign with THE CHENOWITHS painted in various colors was hung above the sliding glass doors. Ah, yes. Pushy Carolyn Chenowith and her husband, whose name she couldn’t remember, a couple in their thirties with one child, a three- or four-year-old girl. She had a nineteen-year-old Irish au pair with huge breasts, a tiny waist, and a warm, bright smile.
What a cliché. Edward was screwing the hot Irish au pair.
She closed her eyes as a rush of tears stung her eyes. Did she go home and pretend she didn’t know until she figured out what to do about it? Did she call Carolyn Chenowith right now and tell her that her au pair was sleeping with Isabel’s husband and likely Carolyn’s, too? Or did she storm in and confront them?
With rubbery legs, Isabel walked up the deck steps to the sliding glass doors and gave the latch a slide. The door opened. She stopped and listened. Muffled voices. Coming from upstairs. Holding her breath, Isabel walked up the white-carpeted stairs, leaning heavily on the banister, her heart pounding so loudly she was surprised no one came rushing out of the bedrooms.
And the moment she landed, Edward McNeal walked out of a room wearing only his unbuttoned shirt.
His mouth fell open and he stared at her, his face going so pale she thought he might faint. He staggered back and held on to the doorway. “What the—”
“Baby? What’s wrong?” came a woman’s voice.
And not an Irish accent.
Carolyn Chenowith, naked, walked out of the same room, saw Isabel standing there in the hallway, and turned white. She seemed frozen for a moment, then ran back in and returned with a bedsheet wrapped around her, her face now red.
“Isabel, I—” Carolyn started to say, her expression… full of sympathy.
Edward held up his hand and stared at Isabel, his eyes glistening with tears. “Iz. I’m… Oh, God, I’m sorry, Isabel.”
Isabel stood there, not breathing, unable to move, unable to process, unable to think.
“You’re—” Isabel tried to get out the words. You’re having an affair. And with Carolyn Chenowith? A mother.
She stared at both of them for a moment, then ran back down those white-carpeted steps and out the door.
CHAPTER 2
June Nash
June had always hoped that if she ever had to see Pauline Altman again, Pauline would be forty pounds heavier with adult-onset acne, but no such luck. Still blond, still slim, still pretty in a horsey way, Pauline stood flipping through a travel guide to Peru in the Travel section of Books Brothers. June, about to reshelve Paris on the Cheap, which someone had left on one of the café tables, darted into the Local Maine Interest aisle and whispered to a salesclerk that she was heading into the office for a moment.
When the door closed behind her, she let out the breath she’d probably been holding for seven years.
The last time she saw Pauline, June was twenty-one years old and eight months pregnant and working as a clerk in the Books Brothers store in Boothbay Harbor, her hometown. Pauline, whom June had beaten out for valedictorian of their high school class, had come to the checkout counter with the LSAT study guide and her mouth gaping open. “Oh, my God, Juney! You’re pregnant? And huge. Guess you’re not going back to Columbia University.”
Guess not, June had thought, wanting to disappear behind the boxes of new books that had just come in. She’d miss her senior year, but she wouldn’t miss how lost and lonely she’d been the previous semester in New York City. She’d gotten pregnant back in November but hadn’t known till the spring term had begun. And once she’d known, everything but the pregnancy—and finding the father of the baby—had gone out of her head.
Pauline had eyed June’s ringless left hand, triumph blazing. “I can’t believe you of all people got pregnant. I figured you’d be doing some amazing internship at a magazine or publishing company and set on your path to become the editor of The New Yorker.” A customer came up behind her, so Pauline had sl
ipped her book in her bag and said, “God, it’s amazing how even the smartest people can make the dumbest mistakes.” Then she and her flat stomach and her cutoff sweats with YALE across her butt had walked away in her flip-flops.
June had had to request a ten-minute break—she’d gotten as many as she needed in those days from her kind boss—and she’d sat down on the back of the toilet seat and closed her eyes and tried to breathe it out. She hadn’t made a dumb mistake. Even if it looked that way to everyone else.
Now, here she was, seven years later, hiding again in the back room, though at least the Portland Books Brothers store had a much bigger office than the tiny original shop in Boothbay Harbor, which June rarely visited for a number of reasons. But mostly because the small town was full of Pauline Altmans who’d remember June as the valedictorian with the big dreams of taking over the New York City publishing world, but who’d gotten herself knocked up on a two-night stand and had spent the past seven years as a single mother working in an indie bookstore.
She was manager now, at least. She made just enough to pay her bills and tuck a little away every month for emergencies. Luckily, Charlie’s college fund was set.
And she had Charlie. Which reminded her what was important. Screw Pauline and her judgment. Screw feeling bad about what could have been. This was her life and it was good—no, great, with a great kid and great friends and a job she loved. June pulled her long, curly auburn hair up into a loose bun at her nape and stuck a pen through to secure it, then sat down at her desk in her tiny office and wrote a Post-it note to pick up a snack for Charlie’s playdate today after camp. His beloved cheese sticks and green grapes and maybe those little mini-cupcakes with sprinkles. She smiled at the image of Charlie and his friend sitting on the moon-and-stars rug in Charlie’s room, building LEGO robots, peeling their string cheese, oohing at the cupcakes.
“Oh, June, there you are,” Jasper Books said as he came out of his office, which was next to hers and even smaller, since he only came in twice a week. Tall and dapper in his trademark suspenders, thirtysomething Jasper owned both Books Brothers (with his twin, Henry, who ran the Boothbay store), and she owed him a lot. Both of them. Jasper had hired her as a clerk in the Portland store when she’d had to get out of Boothbay Harbor, away from stares, away from “Oh, wow, you had your whole life ahead of you,” as if she’d robbed a bank and was being sent off to prison, and away from her aunt’s… disapproval, if that was the right word. She’d been so grateful for the two-bedroom apartment that came subsidized above the store on vibrant Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port, where the bookstore was nestled among one-of-a-kind stores and great little restaurants and coffee shops. She was raising her son in that apartment and had been able to because of this store and her kindly neighbor, a loving grandmother who babysat. And because of Jasper, who’d promoted her to assistant manager and then manager. She loved Books Brothers, loved the smell of the books, loved helping customers choose gifts or find something for themselves, loved making her shelf-talker cards of titles she recommended. She loved the scuffed wood floors and round braided rugs and overstuffed sofas, where people could drop down and read half a book, even if half the time they put it back.
“Hey, Jasper. Going over the financials again?” Over the past few months, Jasper had mentioned more than once that sales were down and he was worried, so June had come up with several initiatives to bring business to the store. Readings from local Maine authors and two bestsellers. Three book clubs. A coffee stand and the three little café tables. And story time in the children’s section. Business had improved. Not much, but some.
Jasper looked at her for a moment, then sat down in the chair wedged between the side of her desk and the wall. “June, it kills me to have to say this aloud, but Henry and I came to a decision about the Portland store. We’re going to have to close it.”
June bolted up. “What? Close the store?”
“In a few months, we won’t be able to afford rent and overhead. We’ve got to face facts and let it go. Maybe we can expand the Boothbay store, which is doing fine because we own the building and it’s one of only two bookstores in town. It’s Henry’s baby, of course, and he does seem to manage it fine from that boat of his, but he’d take you on as manager, I’m sure. You know we wouldn’t just let you go.”
Oh, no. No. No. No. Closing the Portland Books Brothers, a fixture on Exchange Street? Her beloved shop?
And manager of the Boothbay store? It was bad enough she had to drive up to Boothbay Harbor tomorrow night for dinner with her family. Her aunt Lolly had called a few days ago and said she had an announcement and had called Isabel too. The idea of facing her rich sister and smug Edward, her all-observing cousin Kat, and silent Lolly, who’d go about her business as though her nieces weren’t even there, spending the evening watching movies with her guests instead of spending time with her nieces, was unbearable in general—but when she’d just lost her job? “Three years at an Ivy and you’re still stocking books, June?” Smegward (her pet name for Smug Edward) had said more than once last Christmas. “Surely you could become an editor for a regional magazine, like Portland or Down East.” Right. Because it was that easy to go from stocking books to getting hired as an editor, a dream she’d let go of when a steady, secure job, paycheck, and subsidized apartment was essential. And anyway, she wasn’t a clerk. She was manager. “Oh, sorry. Manager,” Smegward liked to say with a sneer.
She could barely believe she’d once—as a thirteen-year-old—spent hours thinking about Edward’s face, the length of his eyelashes, the slope of his nose, the dark brown eyes that sometimes still triggered a memory of the angry, grief-stricken girl she’d been, a girl who’d been full of dreams until the accident that had changed her and Isabel’s lives and their cousin Kat’s too. Once June had gone off to Columbia, she’d found those dreams again. She’d been away from Aunt Lolly, away from that old-fashioned inn that tourists seemed to think was “authentic fishing-village chic,” and she’d found herself. Until one day on a stone bench in Central Park, when she’d been stood up and her life changed again.
And work in that town where she’d been poor-Juney’d so many times she started expecting it from even strangers? No. “But, Jasper, Boothbay Harbor is an hour and a half away from Portland. I couldn’t commute that far back and forth every day. And I can’t go back there, anyway. I’ll just find something here. Maybe the library—”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but… when we give up the store, we give up the two apartments. They’re part of the lease agreement and were well under market.”
June slumped in her chair. Oh, no.
Jasper squeezed her shoulder again. “You’ll find where to go, June Bug. A new job, a new home. You always land on your feet.”
Then why did she feel as if they were going to fall right out from under her?
June stood at the counter in the small kitchen where she’d fed Charlie his first spoonful of peanut butter, played Go Fish with him over and over at the table, and often sat for hours late at night when she couldn’t sleep, with a cup of tea and the one photo album she had of her parents. She glanced around at the old cabinets and worn black-and-white vinyl floor and knew the place wasn’t much, not like her sister Isabel’s Architectural Digest house in Connecticut. But it was hers, and she’d painted the walls a pretty pale yellow, put down colorful, cheap kilim rugs, done some decent work with slipcovers, throw pillows, and curtains, and the little apartment on the busy street had become a cozy home for her and Charlie.
Do not cry, she ordered herself, her back to the table where Charlie, wearing the Batman cape her cousin Kat had sent him for his seventh birthday, and his new friend, Parker, sat with their take-home folders from day camp. The boys were as physically opposite as could be—Charlie, with his fine, dark hair and green eyes (he did not get that from her), and Parker, with a mop of blon
d curls and angelic blue eyes. June grabbed two cheese sticks from the fridge, poured two plastic Batman cups of apple juice, and brought the snack to the table. She had stopped at the bakery for the mini-cupcakes, needing something to cheer her up, such as the peanut-butter whoopie pie she’d bought herself. She’d surprise the boys with their cupcakes later.
“Guess what?” Charlie whispered to Parker, scooting his chair closer. “I can’t even do our camp project because I don’t have a dad.”
June sucked in a breath. What was this about?
“Why don’t you have a dad?” Parker asked.
Charlie shrugged his thin shoulders. “I just don’t.”
Parker shrugged too. “I thought everybody has a dad.”
Charlie shook his head. “Not me.”
Both boys turned to look at June.
That same old strange fear and dread came over her as it always did when Charlie asked where his father was. No answer was right. Sometimes, especially when she’d see moms and dads together at school functions or when she heard children mention their dads in front of Charlie, she’d feel that awful sadness that used to stop her from sleeping when Charlie was a baby, which came in handy for his night feedings. She’d let herself fantasize that John had met her at the bench that cold November day, that they’d gone through the discovery of the pregnancy together and decided as a couple to keep the baby. That they’d gotten married, magically found a great apartment in New York, where she’d finished her last year at Columbia and become an editor at The New Yorker, and he’d… taken a year off from taking a year off, which was what he’d told her he was doing, and the three of them lived happily ever after, an intact family. In this fantasy, Charlie had a dad.
In reality, he did not.
She took in a breath and knelt down between their chairs. “What is this project about?” she asked, peering at the open folders.