The Last House on Sycamore Street

by Paige Roberts

  “They have cocktails, too, by the way,” Grace said, as if reading Amy’s mind. Amy wondered if she’d inadvertently made a face at the mention of IPAs and stouts.

  “Hmmm, so many choices . . .” Amy said as she scanned the menu, even though she already knew she would order the cucumber gin cocktail.

  The waiter came and took their order, and before they knew it the drinks and food started arriving. The conversation flowed easily, mostly relating to the kids but occasionally drifting to topics like must-try Philly restaurants and reality TV. Amy found Grace refreshingly approachable. Despite what she knew about the Durants’ financial situation—so many unanswered questions, so many unsavory possibilities—Amy couldn’t help but feel drawn to Grace. She was so easy to talk to. Amy was no longer the socially awkward girl she’d been in high school, but in new situations where she didn’t know anyone, she could occasionally still be a little shy. But not with Grace. She had a calming effect.

  “You guys have any trips planned this summer?” Grace asked as she took a sip of her second beer. Amy was still working on her cocktail.

  “The move was pretty much it for trips this summer. We were talking about visiting my family in Rhode Island, but the timing isn’t great.”

  “You’re from Rhode Island?”

  Amy nodded. “Woonsocket.”

  Like almost everyone Amy had met outside of Rhode Island, Grace looked mystified. “Is that near Newport?”

  “Not even close. Newport is all the way across state.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize Rhode Island was that big.”

  “It isn’t. When I say ‘all the way across state,’ I mean like an hour drive.”

  Grace laughed. “So basically from here to West Chester.”

  Amy didn’t know the area well, but she knew West Chester was another Philadelphia suburb west of the city. “Yeah, all my Rhody friends talk about Newport like it’s so far away. I guess culturally it is, at least from the part where I grew up.”

  “Is your whole family still there?”

  “Yep. Well, what’s left of them. My dad died when I was six, but my mom has lived there her whole life. My brother, too.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  Amy shrugged. “It’s been almost thirty years. To be honest, I barely remember him. It was a freak accident—he was swimming super early one morning in Wallum Lake while we were on vacation, and he had a heart attack in the water and drowned.”

  Grace’s jaw dropped. “Amy, I’m so sorry. That’s . . . horrible.”

  “It was. Looking back on it, I have no idea how my mom carried on. I was six, my brother, Tim, was four. I mean, can you imagine?”

  Grace shook her head. “Your mother must be an amazing person.”

  “She is I guess. I never really thought of her that way. She wasn’t exactly a sentimental person, but then again, after something like that, with two kids to support, who’d have time for tears and hand-wringing?”

  “I’d never make it. Doing all of this alone? I couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could. You’d do it for Ethan.”

  “True.” She took a deep breath and sighed. Amy felt guilty for having steered the conversation in such a negative direction.

  “Anyway,” Amy said, “regardless of what happened to my dad, my mom can be a little, shall we say, difficult, so aside from lacking the funds at the moment, visiting her always comes with headaches that none of us are in the mood for at the moment.”

  “I hear you. What about your brother? Are you guys close?”

  “Not exactly. We used to be but . . .” Amy hesitated, but she’d nearly finished her cocktail, which was proving to be much stronger than she’d thought, and she felt her inhibitions melt away. “He’s had some problems over the past few years,” she said. “It’s made staying close difficult.”

  “Oh. That’s a shame.”

  “It is. It’s both of our faults, but mostly his.” Amy finished the last sip and laid the drink on the table. “He got into drugs. Pills first. Then heroin. He’s been in and out of rehab for years.”

  “Wow. That’s . . . oooh.”

  Amy knew Grace probably didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t blame her. Drugs was one of those dark, shameful topics that most people didn’t want to talk about, and when the topics of addiction and rehab came up in conversation, the responses were usually lots of wide eyes, shaking heads, and strange filler words and interjections like, “Mmm,” “Ohhh,” “Yikes,” and “Ugh.”

  “It’s been tough. Noah barely knows him. He met Uncle Timmy once when he was one, but he doesn’t remember it.”

  “Is he in rehab now? Or in recovery?”

  “A little of both? Last I talked to my mom he’d tried a new program that was longer and more intensive, with a price tag to match. Getting off heroin doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, in a way that suggested she knew exactly what Amy was talking about. She finished her beer and flagged the waiter for another.

  “Another cocktail for you?” the waiter asked.

  Amy vacillated. “Eh, what the hell. You only live once, right?”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said. “Back in a minute.”

  Amy almost immediately regretted ordering another drink—she was going to feel terrible tomorrow, she already knew it—but she was enjoying Grace’s company and didn’t want to bring the night to a premature close.

  “Sorry,” she said, once the waiter returned with their drinks. “I’ve turned this conversation into a real downer. First my dad, then my brother. Moving on!”

  “No, no, I totally get it—trust me.” She took a sip of beer. Her cheeks had turned a little pink. “In the interest of full disclosure, since we’re sharing family secrets, there’s something I should probably tell you.”

  Amy felt her stomach gurgle. She’d been waiting for Grace to spill the beans, but now that Grace seemed to be on the cusp of doing so, Amy wasn’t sure she was ready to hear the truth.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Julian had a problem with drugs, too,” Grace blurted out before Amy could stop her.

  “Oh,” said Amy. “I didn’t—I had no idea.”

  That was actually true. Of all the things that occurred to Amy, drugs—the issue with which she had the most personal experience—hadn’t entered her mind. Why not? Was it because the Durants seemed so together? Because they had a kid Noah’s age? Because they were inarguably much more successful that her brother?

  “He’s clean now,” Grace said. She gripped her beer tightly. “But it got bad for a while. He spent all of our savings on pills. Oxy mostly. That’s why we needed to sell the house so fast. We needed the capital.”

  “So the new construction . . .”

  “There is no new construction. We never had anything else lined up. The plan was to sell the house and move in with my parents while Julian put the pieces back together and got a fresh start.”

  “So your parents know?”

  “Sort of. They don’t know it was drugs. They think it was his business. He runs a nonprofit that promotes access to healthy food in poor urban communities. Nonprofits always have budget troubles, so we didn’t go into details.”

  “Ah. Got it.”

  “I know we probably should have told them the truth,” she said, her guilt gushing onto the table, “but my parents can be pretty judgmental, especially about things like drugs. We figured it was better to keep it simple.”

  “And Ethan—”

  “Oh God, Ethan has no idea. And for obvious reasons, we want to keep it that way.”

  “Of course.”

  Grace had cut Amy off before she could actually ask her question. She assumed Ethan didn’t know, and regardless, she certainly wouldn’t bring the matter up in front of him or Noah. What she’d really wanted to ask was about Ethan’s trust fund, but she realized bringing that up would reveal that she’d opened their mail by accident, which would open a can of worms
she didn’t want to deal with. Besides, given what Grace just told her, the liquidation of Ethan’s trust was probably something both Julian and Grace knew about. If they had to sell the house, who knows what other financial sacrifices they had to make?

  “It’s been really hard on both of us,” Grace said. “But he’s clean now, and he’s throwing everything into getting his nonprofit back on track. He’d really neglected the business at the height of his problem.”

  “That’s great. It’s really encouraging to hear that he’s getting his life back on track.”

  “Thanks. You know, I have to say, I feel so much better after talking to you about it. It’s like this horrible, shameful secret no one knows about except me and Julian, and it’s been eating me up inside.”

  “It isn’t shameful,” Amy said. “Addiction is a disease.”

  “I know. But the way most people talk about it . . . Anyway, it was good to get it off my chest, especially with someone who has personal experience in the area.” She raised her glass. “How about a toast? To clean slates and new beginnings.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Amy clinked her glass against Grace’s and bit her tongue to keep from saying that, in her personal experience, when it came to addiction, a new beginning didn’t always mean the end.

  Chapter 7

  Amy was exceedingly excited for date night. She and Rob hadn’t been on a date since they’d moved, and even before that, it had been quite a while. They’d been to a few “going away” parties before they moved, but at those events they hadn’t been able to talk in any sort of meaningful way. That was part of the reason they hadn’t been to the movies in a long time either: If they were lucky enough to score a babysitter, Amy wanted to be able to have a conversation with her husband, not sit next to him in the dark for three hours.

  “You okay out there?” Amy poked her head out of the bathroom as she tousled her wet hair with a towel. Noah was lying on her bed watching PBS.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  “Good. I’ll just be in here drying my hair. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Amy tried to spray and blow-dry her fine hair into some sort of style—if not a sexy one, then at least one that maintained some semblance of togetherness. She hadn’t exactly let herself go lately, but a few days ago she had realized, with some horror, that she had worn her hair in a ponytail for the last thirty-four days. She was basically a few weeks away from showing up places in an oversize sweatshirt with no bra underneath. She needed to stem the tide.

  She finished her hair and put on what felt like a ton of makeup, given her current barebones regimen of mascara, concealer, and blush. When she opened the bathroom door to grab her dress from the closet, Noah turned and raised his eyebrows.

  “Mommy,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  He furrowed his brow. “But . . . where is your pony?”

  “My what?”

  He pointed to his head. “Your pony. For your hair.”

  “My ponytail?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s just for when I’m busy. When I dress up, I like to wear it like this.”

  “Oh.” He scrutinized her head a bit more. “But I like your pony. You should wear it like that.”

  “Not tonight. Tonight, I’m going for a different look.”

  Noah sighed and had turned back to the TV when the doorbell rang. Amy glanced at the clock.

  “Shoot. That’s probably Bubbe and Zayde.”

  “I can get it!”

  Noah bolted from the bed before Amy could stop him and hurried down the stairs. Amy quickly grabbed a navy sundress from her closet and threw it over her head as she heard the door open.

  “Mommy?”

  “Tell Bubbe and Zayde I’ll be down in two seconds!” Amy called down the stairs.

  “It isn’t Bubbe and Zayde. It’s Ethan’s daddy.”

  Amy froze halfway through putting on an earring. Julian? What was he doing here?

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry—coming right down.”

  She slipped on her shoes and hustled down the stairs as she popped on the other earring. Julian stood on their front stoop—his old front stoop—looking sharp in a pair of tailored white shorts and a dark chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  “Sorry to barge in on you,” he said as Amy opened the door wider.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, even though she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this surprise visit. She tried not to look at him differently now, after what Grace had told her, but she couldn’t help herself. What was worse, she knew better. Her brother hadn’t always been a screwup. Before the pills and heroin, he’d been a funny, personable guy with a real talent for soccer. At his core, that was still who Tim was. But that was the problem with drugs. Once you’d gotten into trouble with them, people didn’t think about you as you’d been before. Now you were a miscreant, a delinquent, a loser. Even when you tried to get clean—even when you were clean—your every move was tinged with a veneer of transgression. Maybe that’s part of what made fleeing addiction so hard. If everyone sees you as a sinner already, at some point it must just be easier to give in to that assumption.

  “What can I do for you?” Amy asked.

  “I was in the area and just wondered if any more of our mail had arrived.”

  “I don’t think so. Actually, I take that back. There was something small, like a reminder from your dentist. Hang on, let me grab it.” Amy turned toward the kitchen, then spun back around. Should she invite him in? It seemed like the friendly thing to do. “You want to come in for a second? It’s awfully hot out.”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  He came in and looked around the foyer and halls as they walked toward the kitchen. “Looks like you guys are pretty settled in.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Amy joked.

  “Really? From what I can see, you’ve done a great job. I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Thanks.” Amy knew the house wasn’t nearly as together and polished as it had been under their ownership, but she appreciated the compliment.

  She rifled through the stack of mail on the counter until she found the postcard from Dr. Edward Chaswick, DDS.

  “Here you go. A friendly dental reminder.”

  She’d meant to sound congenial, but now she wondered if that was a mistake. Her words implied she was looking at who was sending them mail, which she was, but she didn’t want Julian knowing that. Admittedly, she would have to be blind to miss the bold red lettering on some of their mail, but pretending she did not see or care to see anything about their correspondence was part of the ruse.

  “Thanks,” Julian said. He waved the postcard in the air. “Better get those teeth cleaned.”

  “Mommy, I have to go potty,” Noah called from the foyer.

  “Okay,” Amy said. She rolled her eyes as she heard the powder room door slam. “I don’t know why he needs to make an announcement every time he uses the toilet.”

  “Ethan is the same way. He wastes at least ten precious seconds telling us that he has to go before he actually goes.”

  “Kids.” She shook her head and escorted him to the front door. When she opened it, Sherrie and Bruce were on the other side.

  “Sherrie! Hi!” Amy could tell that her face was flushed. Despite the fact that she was expecting them, they’d caught her by surprise.

  “Hi,” Sherrie said, a foil-covered platter in her hands. Her eyes landed on Julian.

  “I’m Julian,” he said, extending his hand. “I was just picking up some mail. I used to live here.”

  “Ah,” Sherrie said. She pretended to sound satisfied with that answer, even if Amy knew she wasn’t. Sherrie already thought it was odd that Amy and Grace hung out with the kids. She probably had a dozen questions as to why Julian was visiting his old house.

  “They forgot to forward their mail, so we�
��ve been collecting it for them,” Amy said. “I usually give it to Grace at our playdates, but I guess Julian was in the area so he stopped by.”

  Amy realized continuing to explain probably only made Sherrie more curious, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “You can start forwarding at any time, you know,” Sherrie said. “I think you can even do it online now.”

  “You can,” Julian said. “But by now I’ve changed our address with most of the important places anyway, so it’s not really worth it. Plus we’re living with my in-laws for the time being, so it’s not our permanent address anyway.”

  “Mmm.” Sherrie didn’t sound as if she bought his story. Amy wasn’t sure she did either.

  “Anyway, he was just leaving,” Amy said.

  “Actually—sorry—would you mind if I used your bathroom? I’m meeting Grace and Ethan at some sort of picnic, and I’m not sure what the bathroom situation will be there.”

  “Of course. Only . . . Noah?”

  “I’M POOPING!” Noah called back.

  Amy took a deep breath. “That’s what I thought. You’ll have to use the one upstairs, if that’s okay. It’s at the top of the stairs—”

  “To the right. Yeah, I remember.”

  Amy blushed. “Obviously. Sorry.”

  “I’ll only be a second.”

  He hurried upstairs, and Amy let Sherrie and Bruce into the house. “Sorry about all of the chaos. He really caught us by surprise.”

  “So I see.”

  Amy felt her ears. Both earrings were in. Shoes were on. Dress was zipped. The only thing she needed was her purse, which was in the laundry room.

  “Dinner is on its way,” she said. “I ordered a pizza and some salad. And for dessert . . . well, I’m guessing you’ve got that covered.” She nodded at the platter Sherrie had placed on the counter.

  “Triple-chocolate brownies,” she said.

  “Oh, boy. Noah will go crazy. Better leave some for Rob, too.” She craned her neck to see if Julian was in the foyer, but then she heard footsteps above her. He was still upstairs.