The View from Here

by Hannah McKinnon

  It was her father where Emma had trouble. She thought harder. If Perry Goodwin were a tree, he was unlike the others in his family. His trunk was straight and true. It rose dutifully out of the ground in one direction, due north. His leaves may not have been as frilly and soft, or as vibrantly colored, as the others in the forest. But Emma knew one thing: they were strong. They were branches you could climb on, and branches you could swing from. They provided sound shade on an unforgiving day, and respite from the rains.

  As she sat alone in the dark kitchen and filled her stomach with food, Emma contemplated her own place in the forest. She was a sapling. A branch or two may have cracked. Hell, she’d broken more than a few. But saplings gave and flexed. Where one twig snapped, another unfurled. Always reaching toward the light. From now on, she’d try to grow toward the light. Alongside her fellow trees. Because underneath them all, where the soil was dark and pithy, their roots ran together. A complicated tangle of tuber and stem, root and rhizome coursing through shared earth. They were hers.

  Suddenly a roll of thunder rumbled overhead and a flash of light filled the foyer windows, but it was not lightning. Emma watched the headlights cut through the dark, spilling across the marble floor and into the kitchen where she sat. Emma pushed her empty plate away. When the front door opened, and her father filled its frame, she ran to him. There was nothing she needed to say. Her father flung his arms open like branches, and she fell into their shelter.

  Olivia

  She and Luci lay side by side in the dark, exhausted. Jake was downstairs on the couch, unable to speak since Perry had left. They’d not talked much to each other on the way home from the disastrous dinner party, but Olivia had prattled on about things outside the window and what a nice dinner Jane had made… on and on, wondering what Luci had heard or thought about the whole unendingly awful evening. Olivia was pretty sure she’d managed to whisk her out before it got too ugly, but still—kids instinctively felt when things were wrong. They always knew. Now, side by side in the solitude of Luci’s bedroom, was the chance to talk to Luci about it. But Olivia wasn’t sure where to begin. “That was quite a dinner,” Olivia whispered. “I’m sorry that some of Jake’s family seemed mad. I hope it didn’t upset you.”

  In the darkness, Luci slipped her fingers into Olivia’s hand.

  Olivia went on. “This is what it means to be in a family, Lu. Sometimes people laugh and play and talk together, and sometimes they argue. Just like with friends. Or with husbands and wives. Sometimes people who love each other get mad at each other.” Olivia felt her throat tightening, as she spoke, and she had to pause.

  “Are you mad? At Jake?” Luci’s voice was so soft and the room so dark and her head so heavy, Olivia wasn’t sure if she was hearing things. She rolled over, face-to-face, and from the faint hallway light she could see the question in her daughter’s eyes.

  “Lu Lu!” She’d heard right.

  “Are you?” Luci asked again.

  Olivia pressed her hands quickly to her eyes, and smiled. “No, baby. I was mad, but I’m not anymore. Jake and I are having some quiet time now, and then we will sit together and talk. That’s what you do when you love someone. Right?”

  Luci nodded, but she still looked unsure.

  “Tonight, I learned something I didn’t know. That Emma was driving the boat before the accident.”

  Luci nodded again.

  “It’s important to tell the truth, Lu. Even when you love somebody and don’t want them to get in trouble.”

  Luci rolled over on her side, nose to nose with Olivia. “I like Emma.”

  Olivia was so relieved to hear the whisper of words coming from her daughter, it almost didn’t matter what she was saying. And yet it did. Now they could confront that day. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for a while. But Luci was talking. Some tied-up, knotted piece inside her had worked itself loose, and with it, finally, came her words. And with those would come her thoughts, her worries, her feelings; all of her little self.

  Oliva wrapped her arms around Luci and pulled her in close against her chest. “Sweet girl. You are safe and you are loved.”

  * * *

  She must have fallen asleep because she awoke much later. Luci was curled against her, snoring lightly. Olivia stretched and gently rolled off the bed. She pulled the covers up around her child then pressed her lips against her forehead before tiptoeing out.

  Downstairs, she found Jake splayed across the couch. His leg was elevated on a stack of pillows, one arm thrown across his eyes. He was sound asleep. Olivia took the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over him. His eyes fluttered open.

  He looked at her a long while, then reached for her hand. She let him take it.

  “I’m sorry, Liv. I won’t keep any secrets from you again, I swear.”

  She sat down beside him. “I know. I’m sorry, too. But you could have told me. I would’ve understood.”

  Jake struggled to find the words, and Olivia waited. “I felt so much guilt. I didn’t want Emma to get in trouble, and as awful as it was to let you believe that I was the one who drove the boat into the dock and hurt Luci, I didn’t know what else to do…” Jake’s voice trailed off. He began to cry.

  Olivia sat very still and rubbed his head, listening. Jake talked about the accident. About how Emma had begged him to drive that day. About how happy it made her. They were cruising gently along the shore, just as he’d told her to do, and they picked up speed. He’d cautioned her to slow down. But then there was a log in the water. A giant log, floating directly in their path. He was holding Luci on his lap, and he set her down in an attempt to reach for the wheel. But then Emma swerved. Which must’ve panicked her, because she also accelerated, and swung toward shore. The dock rose up before them. In the last second Jake had to decide. Whether to leap for the wheel, if there was even time, or grab Luci. “I grabbed Luci,” he cried into Olivia’s lap. “I tried to hold on.”

  As she listened, Olivia cried with him. When he finished, she took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead. Then his lips. Jake reached for her and she pressed herself against him as hard as she could and pulled him as close as she could. And she, too, tried to hold on.

  Later, when she’d helped him upstairs and settled him into bed, she waited until his breath gave way to the rhythm of sleep. Then, softly, she padded downstairs. She plucked her raincoat from the hook and eased the door ajar. “Shhh,” she said to Buster, who stirred from the living room rug. “You stay.”

  There was no need for her raincoat, after all. A warm gust blew her hair back and she looked up. The storm had ceased, and overhead dark clouds tumbled across the sky, flashes of stars appearing and disappearing behind them. She hurried across the driveway and tugged the barn door open.

  Inside, she flicked on the lanterns. The studio was empty, the worktops clear. All of Ben’s sculptures had been shipped out for the show. Since then, he’d cleaned off the tabletops and scoured the surfaces. Every tool had been polished clean and returned to its place in the rusty coffee cans that lined the workbenches. Olivia had never seen the studio so spartan, and it made it harder to ignore the one table in the corner. Her corner. Where her own work was shrouded in darkness.

  It took no time to gather her tools: A small bucket she filled in the slop sink with water. A sponge. A handful of rags. And a metal rasp. She spread them out across her table, pulled her stool out from under it, and sat. Then she pulled the canvas off her sculpture, slowly.

  The clay fingers rose into view first, their splayed fingertips opening to the light. Her eyes followed them down to the knuckles, the hand, the palm. Then the wrist, the very wrist she remembered from old photographs of her mother. She placed her own hands on either side of it.

  It was time to work.

  Phoebe

  Phoebe was terrible at goodbyes. Whenever they’d lost a pet over the years, Phoebe grieved hard, often for weeks. On the occasion a friend moved away, she avoided driving past their house f
or weeks. Graduations were the worst because of their false premise: They were meant to be celebratory? All those memories and baby photos colliding with caps and gowns and speeches about the future and the rest of your life. It was like a funeral, for your childhood.

  Phoebe’s father had once told her it was because she had a big heart. Perry had suggested it was because she was stubborn; she didn’t like change. Both were probably right.

  But saying goodbye to a house was something she had not considered. Because a house was a something. Not a someone. And what excuse did she have for falling apart over that?

  Granted, it was not just any house. It was her childhood dream, that little cottage on that little lane. And a dream it was, with its lakefront yard and fieldstone fireplace and leaded glass windows that creaked just so when you cranked them open… but she was getting off track, again. What she had eventually realized, the hard way, was if she did not let go of the house, she risked losing much more. Her marriage, for one. Rob, her best friend and college sweetheart, whose patience and good humor had been stretched as thin as their finances. Who had, if she were really honest, leaned away from the project from the beginning. But she was stubborn, like Perry said, and Rob loved her, and in the end her heart went out to the house. It should’ve stayed with her family, she realized now. But her heart was back, if a little battered and bruised.

  Phoebe had been unable to go to the final bank meeting with Rose Calloway. After all, she and Rose were not friends, and she’d had enough soul-baring conversations with the woman to last a lifetime. Rose-the-loan-officer was one person she actually would not mind saying goodbye to. But Phoebe did go to a meeting. A much more important one, and one that proved even harder.

  Since the first day, Dave had been her partner. Her GC. And yes, eventually her friend. Dave had steered her away from danger, and through highs and lows. It was not his fault that the build got away from them. It was hers, and to some extent Rob’s, and they would have to continue to work through that together for some time. Because she and Rob had decided they would. And Rob was not going anywhere. Dave, however, was not someone Phoebe would likely see much of anymore. And the man deserved a proper goodbye.

  Phoebe had called and asked him to meet her at the property. Along with some of the subs and the regulars on his crew who’d done the framing and the roof. Who knew her and her kids and her husband by name and face. She knew how they took their coffees. The names of their kids, and even some of their dogs. That’s what happened when you worked together on a home with a crew. Your home became theirs for a while. In a strange way, it was like a little family.

  Dave said he’d meet her, though she didn’t tell him exactly what it was for. They agreed on eight thirty. Which was why Phoebe arrived at eight sharp. She and the house needed time together first. The house, too, deserved a goodbye.

  When she pulled into the driveway, Phoebe sat in the car for a while before getting out. She needed to let the memory soak in: the way she’d felt during the renovation each time she pulled in and saw the changes as the house grew and took shape; the intoxicating rush of adrenaline and hope.

  On the walkway to the front door, she stopped one last time at the fifth stone, the one where the flagstone slab tipped upward just enough to grab the toe of her Keds sneaker every time. This time, she hopped over it. The front door creaked as she opened it, but she did not go in right away. Instead, she inhaled. The intoxicating scent of fresh-cut wood. The stretch of Candlewood Lake beyond the bay window. All of what she’d come to associate with home these last eight months. She swiped at the tears that pressed behind her eyelids. She would not cry yet.

  One last time, she walked through the rooms. She ran her hands over the farmhouse cabinets that had been hung in the kitchen. And the plywood frames for counters that had not yet been laid. She wandered upstairs, peering into the new master bath where she and Rob would not shower. And into the master itself, where they would not lay their heads down to sleep at night. In the walk-in closet she reached her arms out and twirled one last time.

  Last, she headed to the end of the hall, where two rooms overlooked the front yard. She walked through the first and stopped in the Jack and Jill bathroom that connected them. The black-and-white basket-weave tile had been laid on the floor, and she stood in the middle of it, looking left, into what would have been Jed’s room, then right into Patrick’s. That was where she came undone. She cried for all the memories they’d never have, for the childhood dream unrealized. For the hell she and Rob had been through, and put each other through. For the mess of their finances, which would take years to repair. For the embarrassment of explaining to friends and family that they’d gone under—it was over.

  And then she stopped. It was not because Dave’s Ford pickup was rumbling down the driveway, though it was. And it was not because she was still unable to let go, because that would take time. It was because even though the house was over—she and Rob were not. In spite of all of it, they were still a family. They had fought, and they had resented. And for a while Rob had taken to her parents’ couch, which everyone noticed and no one dared say a damn thing about. But they were making their way back to each other, one apology, one admission, at a time.

  Phoebe dried her eyes with the tail of her shirt. She looked around and took it all in one last time. Then she went downstairs and out the front door. Where she met Dave, handed him a check large enough to pay off his crew and his labor, and hugged him hard. Rob’s work bonus had covered most of it, and Perry had helped with the rest. Though that would have to be paid back, too. The bank was taking over, but the build would continue. Rob had talked them into keeping Dave on as manager. And when it was all said and done, the house would be put up for short sale.

  When Rob had come home from the meeting at the bank and told her the news about the decision for a short sale, Phoebe’s eyes had popped (she’d felt them). “Don’t even think about it,” he’d said. “Even if it’s months away, we will not be in a position to buy it. Not then, probably not ever.”

  That was the thing about being stubborn and terrible at goodbyes. You could never really admit you needed to say it. And you were never ready.

  Phoebe got into her car and looked at the time. Per usual, she was late. The boys had a T-ball game, and she was meeting them there with Rob. Jane and Edward were going. As were Olivia, Luci, and Jake, who had just gotten his cast off. She started the car and allowed herself a final look at the front door.

  A long time ago, when she was applying to colleges, her father had given her advice. At the time she was headstrong and eager to leave her small town of Lenox so she could elbow her way out into the big exciting world. Where exactly she was going didn’t really matter to her at the time, as long as she escaped. Edward had cautioned her. “Never run away from something, Phoebe,” he’d said. “Wait until you have something to run to.”

  As she rolled down the driveway one last time, Phoebe did not look in the rearview mirror. Not even once. She wasn’t running away, she was learning to let go. And besides, right now she had everything to run to. And they were waiting for her at the ball field.

  Perry

  Perry knocked for the second time and stood outside the door, waiting. Why was it no one ever seemed to monitor the door when they were hosting a party? He checked his watch. He was on time. At least for another minute.

  He was about to knock again when the door swung open. “Perry!” It was Olivia, and she was in one of those wildly patterned dresses she was so fond of. He blinked. “Come in, come in! The others are out back.”

  She led him through the cozy stone foyer and the living room. The house was like he’d expected: toys and books and food and kids and music. Loud and colorful, kind of like her dress. But he was a guest, and she was now family, so he supposed he needed to get used to it.

  The sliding glass doors to the back lawn were wide open. Beyond them, there was a lot going on for his taste: groups of people he did not recognize talking and l
aughing, the smell of spicy barbecued food that was sure to set off his stomach, and one oversized hairy dog.

  But as he looked more carefully around the yard, which probably could have benefited from a good mowing for the occasion, his gaze fell upon a few faces he recognized. Emma was playing with a group of children with that boy, Sully, from camp. Perry didn’t exactly love seeing Sully spending so much time with his daughter, but what he did love was the look on Emma’s face. She was back to her old self, but better. Happier. And if it meant putting up with Sully on occasion, Perry supposed he could muddle through. From the corner of the yard came a whoop of laughter, and his gaze landed on Phoebe and Jake, whose heads were bent together in some sort of private joke. At that moment Jake looked up and saw him. If there was any hesitation, Perry could not tell, because his little brother headed straight for him.

  Jake’s limp had not receded, something that pained Perry every time he saw his brother. Jake, who did not like to sit still, who was lithe and quick and graceful, now carried a distinct hitch to his long stride. But true to form, his smile remained in its place. “Perry. You made it.” He clapped his big brother on the back before embracing him.

  “It’s a good house,” Perry said, offering him a bottle of wine. Jake thanked him and dropped it into a cooler of indiscriminate beers, not bothering to take notice that Perry had just handed him another fine Shiraz, this time from a boutique vintner out of New Zealand. No matter. If someone opened it, Perry hoped they would enjoy it.

  “Have you seen the view?”

  Perry followed Jake to the far edge of the yard, where their parents conversed. The house was perched on a steep hillside, in a heavily wooded family community known as Deer Run Shores. But if you cocked your head and squinted, through the trees there was a slim glimmer of Candlewood Lake blue. Perry nodded in appreciation. “Congratulations,” he said.