by Lisa Duffy
He glances up at Leo, who’s waiting for him to continue. But Xavier simply looks at him.
“But you know that’s not true,” Leo says. “Your mother loved you. I was with you when she died. I remember her telling you that you were one of the best things that ever happened to her.”
Xavier scowls at him. “Will you listen to me? I’m not talking about my mother. She didn’t kick the son of a bitch out of the house until I was almost eighteen! He never remembered what he said after a blackout. And I wasn’t brave enough to bring it up—he scared the shit out of me. Hell, he’s dead and still does. What I’m saying is, I’m not going to do that to Sky.”
Leo squints at him. “What are you talking about? I’ve seen you drunk maybe twice, and you simply close your eyes and fall asleep. And unless someone kidnaps your body and replaces your brain, you would never behave that way—”
“But I feel that way!” Xavier shouts, leaning forward. “Even if I might not say it to her—I feel that way.” He stops, picks at the label on his bottle. “I hate to admit, but I do.”
Leo pauses, not trusting his voice. “What way?” he finally chokes out.
Xavier studies him. “Like all of this is just a big mistake that I’m going to wake up from. That it’s just a bad dream. I want to go back to that day when the phone rang and you found out you were suddenly a parent and just snap my fingers and wake up! Go back to our old life. When it was just me and you. And we slept naked. And made love whenever we wanted to. I miss you. I miss us—”
“I miss us too,” Leo cuts in. He stands, walks over, and sits on the coffee table in front of Xavier. “And we’ll get to do all those things again, I promise. I’ll do a better job at making time for us and getting a babysitter for a weekend night—”
Xavier holds up his hand. “Stop,” he whispers.
He looks at Leo, and simply like that, it’s over.
Leo sees it in his eyes. They were one of the first things about Xavier that he fell in love with. Deep-set and a thick green the color of a forest at dusk, they also reveal too much.
Xavier doesn’t need to say that he’s done coming to the island. He’s done pretending this parenting thing might just work.
“Go back to the island. I’m staying here.”
“Come with me. Please.”
“I’m not going to ruin your weekend.”
“Maggie is watching Sky overnight. Let’s at least enjoy the time—”
“Until when?” Xavier interrupts. “Tomorrow morning, after we’ve spent the night together and you have to leave, and the house is silent again? Like it is all week. I thought it would get easier when we first started doing this. Me leaving the island every Sunday. Or you stopping in when you come to the city for work—I thought saying goodbye wouldn’t be as awful. But it’s the opposite.”
Leo doesn’t have it in him to argue. He hasn’t even had a chance to share his bad news with Xavier. That Leo’s boss had called him while he was on the ferry to tell him they’d need him in the office more—that this working-from-home thing wasn’t working as well as he’d hoped.
It didn’t help that the firm had lost the $11.2-million library bid. The one that Leo worked on for months.
All these things are churning up his insides when he stands and turns to leave. He can’t turn around again. He’s afraid he’ll stay. Afraid he’ll never go back to the island.
He opens the door and closes it quietly behind him. Then he stands in the hallway and waits.
He listens for the sound of crutches against the wood floor. He listens for any movement at all. He waits for the door to open. For Xavier to tell him he was wrong. Of course they’ll make it work.
Five minutes pass. Then ten.
Finally, he walks outside, stands on the sidewalk in front of his house, the one he’s called home for more than a decade, feeling more lost than he has in his entire life.
15
The Fourth of July starts with Maggie’s own version of fireworks. Not the good kind.
Pete picks a fight with her. Or maybe she picks one with him. It’s hard to tell these days who is to blame for their mutual discontent.
Every argument seems to veer off the rails, lurching here and there, until the very thing they started fighting about is so far in the distance, they can’t get back to it.
This one starts with Pete passing behind her while she waits for the coffee to brew, pecking her on the back of her head, a kiss that reminds her of how he used to greet Molly, their old retriever, who died years ago.
Pete would come home from work, and the dog would amble over, her tail wagging, bouncing against the low cabinets, and he’d lean down and give her a tight-lipped peck on the head.
“What a good girl you are,” he’d say. “Such a silly old girl.”
That’s how he makes her feel now, with that type of kiss to say goodbye. As though she’s just a silly old girl.
He doesn’t even wait for her to turn around. Just peck, right on the crown of her unwashed head, and off he goes to the front door.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he calls over his shoulder.
“What?” She follows him to the foyer. “Where are you going?”
He turns, looks at her. “To work,” he says simply.
She glances at her watch. “Now? It’s not even eight in the morning.”
“I told everyone I’d bring coffee and doughnuts.”
Well, how nice of you, she thinks. How sweet.
“Did you say you’d see me in the morning? As in tomorrow morning?”
He tilts his head at her and sighs. “I told you I had to work,” he says slowly, as though she’s daft.
Just a daft, silly old girl.
She knew he was working on the Fourth. They’d talked about it weeks ago. She’d pressed him for details—asked if perhaps he could take some of the night off. He was the police chief, after all. It seemed to her that he’d been working this holiday since he was a rookie. Why didn’t some of the younger guys take the shift?
He’d given her vague answers. Not once did he tell her he was working from eight in the morning until the next day.
“You did tell me. But overnight too?”
“I always work overnight on the Fourth. You know that,” he tells her irritably, as though she really should know it. As though an entire year hasn’t passed in which she might have just simply forgotten.
Maybe he had worked overnight last year. Maybe she had forgotten.
But that isn’t the point.
“Well you might have reminded me,” she replies. “I’ve been asking for weeks if you had to work on the Fourth, and all you said was yes.” She makes quotes in the air with her fingers.
“Because I do!”
Maggie waves him away. “No—it’s as though you try to give me the least amount of information. And then you pretend that I’m silly for not knowing something. Here’s silly old Maggie getting all riled up again!”
Pete sighs again. “I never said you were silly.”
“You don’t have to. It’s all over your face.”
“Look—what’s the big deal? We’ve never spent the Fourth together. I work. You go to Agnes’s party. That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Alone,” Maggie points out. “I go alone every year to Agnes’s party because you’re working.” She softens her tone as much as she can manage. “I thought this year might be different.”
Pete frowns. “Why?”
“Because I asked if things could be different. I’ve been asking if things can be different. I was hoping maybe you could work part of the night. Then we could spend some of it together. You know, to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” he asks, befuddled.
She waits. He raises an eyebrow.
“The Fourth of July, Pete,” she says finally.
He pauses. “Is that a thing? I mean, for folks our age? Adults? Without grandchildren or anything?”
“Yes, it’s a thing—I’m go
ing to a party later specifically to celebrate the Fourth of July. An adult party.”
Silly old girl.
A tear slips down her cheek, hot and fast.
“Jesus, Maggie,” Pete says, and steps toward her. “What in the world. Are you crying?”
She wipes the tear away. “It’s nothing. Forget I brought it up.”
He presses his fingers into his eye sockets, as though she’s given him a headache. “It’s obviously not nothing. You’re crying—”
“Go,” she interrupts, and waves him away. “Just go to work. I’ll be fine.”
He hesitates, but she waves him away again and he opens the door and steps out. He looks back at her. “So we’re okay?” he asks.
No, she thinks. We’re not.
“Yes,” she says.
* * *
After Pete left, she made her flag cake for the party and left it cooling on top of the stove. Then she went upstairs and showered and dressed, and before she knew it, it was already afternoon.
She thought she’d have Sky and Frankie for a sleepover last night with Leo tending to Xavier in the city, but Leo had shown up unexpectedly after dinner with news that Xavier was fine but had decided to recover in the city for the weekend.
She had been looking forward to the girls’ company, as sad and pathetic as that was—a fifty-year-old woman seeking companionship from two ten-year-old girls. But they were easy. Easy to laugh with. Easy to take care of. Easy company.
Now, she’s on the patio, drinking a glass of wine before Agnes’s party.
She doesn’t normally drink during the day. But it’s the Fourth of July. It feels like an act of defiance against Pete and his awful attitude. Not that she’s fooled anyway.
As the chief of police, Pete would know more than anyone how festive the harbor would be today. How many adults would be lugging coolers and grills to the beach. How many adults would be enjoying the holiday. Couples holding hands as fireworks exploded in the sky. Maybe sharing a kiss at the end of the finale.
To be honest, a tiny part of her hoped he’d change his mind. Come back to the house and tell her that, of course he could take some of the night off.
Part of it, at least.
Maybe he’d tell her there was nowhere he’d rather be than with her.
This makes her laugh. Snort, actually—the wine almost spilling out of her nose—it’s that absurd.
She leans back in her chair and considers this. When had it become absurd to think he might say something like that to her—his wife?
Certainly not when they were first married.
Although it’s hard to remember back that far—they had been kids. Both of them just twenty-three years old. A cliché, of course. A shotgun wedding when she was three months pregnant with PJ. Nobody knew except her and Pete. Not even her parents or Agnes.
Not one of the thirty guests had a clue.
They just saw two people in love.
And they were. She and Pete. She knows that. They were in love for a lot of years. Certainly, at their tenth anniversary. Even their twentieth.
And then two things happened. Pete turned forty-eight and two days later, his twin brother dropped dead from a stroke. No warning. Not one symptom.
A perfectly healthy man, Tim was the mirror image of Pete.
Fit and athletic. Married to his high school sweetheart and father to their four kids, Maggie always thought they were the golden family. Sun-kissed and blond in their pictures. The perfect California family.
Except that wasn’t the story Pete held on to after Tim died. Not the one he believed to be true.
According to Pete, Tim felt trapped.
“Trapped how?” Maggie remembers asking Pete. “In his marriage?”
“No, not trapped like that,” he’d said. “He loved Abigail. Loved the kids. It’s just… he said he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t expected to be somewhere. To be doing something. You know, between work and Abigail and the kids. He had this whole list of things that he wanted to do. Travel. Hobbies. One of them was just a goddamn day when he did what he wanted to do. When he wanted to do it. Then poof! He’s dead. Game over.”
“Your brother was happy, Pete,” she said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have any regrets about how he chose to live his life.” She nodded, confident, and waited for him to agree.
But Pete hadn’t agreed.
And the following year after Tim died is still a blur in Maggie’s head. Their life changed, just like that.
It wasn’t even subtle. Almost overnight, Pete pulled away and morphed into someone she no longer recognized.
He did what he wanted when he wanted. Planned weekends away to fish or surf without consulting her—never mind inviting her along.
Oh, she tried to be patient. Give him time. Then a year passed, and nothing changed, even though she talked to him about her feelings.
Talked and talked. Told him she knew what he was going through until she knew if those words passed her lips one more time, she would scream.
Because she had known what he was going through—she lost both her parents in a short amount of time. She understood grief! And this thing with Pete may have started as him grieving his brother, but somewhere along the way, it developed into something different.
She knew it to be true when he cheated on her with his secretary. And then had the audacity—the nerve—to deny it. But Maggie had seen it with her own eyes. A text on his phone when Pete was taking out the trash one day. She’d walked by his phone on the kitchen counter and stopped short when she saw the word sexy.
Hi sexy, she’d read. She saw the other texts. Scrolled through, scanning them until Pete was back in the kitchen, grabbing the phone out of her hand.
It’s police business, he’d mumbled, shoving the evidence in his back pocket. She didn’t argue with him. She went upstairs and packed a bag. Only then did he tell her that he was sorry. Admit that he screwed up.
He tried to convince Maggie that it was a professional relationship that had crossed over a line. Inappropriate but nothing sexual, he insisted. He said he didn’t know why he did it—it just happened.
As if this was some consolation. It still didn’t explain why the secretary had texted him at midnight. Or on Thanksgiving. Or on Sunday mornings. All details that trickled out in therapy, sharp and breathtaking.
Like small cuts to Maggie’s soul.
And slowly, in Maggie’s mind, she started to think of Pete as a child. An immature, unformed, large child of a man who couldn’t control his actions. A person who lacked the desire to understand why he did what he did.
Now, sitting on the patio, her glass of wine empty, Maggie stands up abruptly and walks around to the front of the house.
Across the street, Joe is working in his garden. Sky and Frankie are in his yard, running through the sprinkler, the spray soaking their shorts and T-shirts.
Maggie strides over before she changes her mind. By the time she reaches them, Sky and Frankie are flopped on their backs, faces to the sun.
Joe smiles when he sees her. “Well, don’t you look pretty,” he says, eyeing her dress.
Maggie feels her cheeks warm at the compliment.
She usually wore the same red skirt and white shirt to Agnes’s party. But she’d reached into the back of her closet this morning and found a sundress she’d bought on sale at the end of the summer last year. Simple and black, there was nothing festive about it.
“Thank you,” she says to Joe, who points to several chairs in the backyard.
“Come sit. I’ll get us a drink. I have iced tea. Beer. Wine. Water. Your choice.” He smiles, waits for her to answer.
“Will you come with me tonight?” she blurts. “To Agnes’s party? I know you don’t like her—and I don’t blame you. She can be, um…” She searches for the word.
“Uppity?” Joe offers.
Maggie nods. “Among other things.”
Joe is quiet, studying her. “Well,” he says finally
. “To tell you the truth, I sort of imagine that party to be just that. A bunch of overdressed uppity-ups from snob hill.”
She grins. “Snob hill? I wasn’t aware there was such a place on the island.”
Joe shrugs. “You get my drift.”
“Okay,” Maggie says, turning. “I figured you’d say that, but I thought I’d ask.”
Joe steps forward, his arm out. “Well, hold on now. I wasn’t finished.”
She turns, waits.
“I would be honored to go with you. As long as Pete’s fine with it. I don’t need the chief of police on my case,” he jokes.
“He’s working as usual. And I just don’t feel like making small talk with people I only see once a year. There will be good food. And beer. You like beer.”
Joe nods, and Sky looks up at Maggie.
“We’re going too,” she says.
“You are?” Maggie asks, surprised.
“Leo bribed us,” Sky says. “He said he got on Agnes’s bad side and she always wants all of the neighborhood to come and nobody besides you ever does, and if we go for an hour, he’ll give us each ten bucks.”
Joe laughs, and Maggie eyes him. “It’s not that bad of a party,” she insists.
He holds up his hands. “I’ll take your word for it. I’m the only one she doesn’t invite. Glad to go as your guest and get under her skin. Besides,” he says, “any party with you by my side is one I want to be at.”
She smiles and waves goodbye, says she’ll see him in a bit.
Her cheeks are warm again as she crosses the street. She knows Joe’s just being playful—she’s used to his teasing.
But when she opens her door and shuts it behind her, she catches her reflection in the mirror on the wall.
There’s someone looking back at her. A stranger almost. Only a hint of someone she remembers.
A woman in a sexy, black dress. Flushed and happy and smiling.
16
Leo decided to go to Agnes’s Fourth of July party at the last minute. The morning of, actually, when he’d found the invitation on the table and noticed that it read regrets only for the RSVP, and even though he wasn’t overly fond of Agnes, he felt it was just plain rude to cancel the day of the party.