by Lisa Duffy
“Holy crap is right,” Sky says. “It’s really good.” She studies the painting, amazed at the detail, how strange it is to see herself looking back at her.
“No.” Frankie shakes her head, steps up to the painting. “Holy crap, it’s gone. The picture of you that we left isn’t here.” She points to the empty clip. The one that held her school ID. Frankie bends down and looks in the box, then back at Sky.
“It’s empty,” she says, her eyes darting around them.
“Maybe it just fell,” Sky says, searching the ground.
“Or maybe you have an admirer.” Frankie raises an eyebrow. “Now this just got interesting.”
“Interesting? Try weird. And creepy.” She stands facing the woods, searching the trees. “Let’s just go.” She pulls the picture from the easel, rolls it up, and shoves it in her bag.
“Oh, relax, will you? It’s a school ID—not like you’re naked or something.”
Sky slings her backpack over her shoulder and walks past Frankie, heading back through the woods.
“Wait a second, will you?” Frankie says, scrambling after her.
When she finally catches up, they’re on the path in the woods, the tree house in front of them.
“Sky, wait!” Frankie tugs on her arm, stopping her.
“No way. You stay if you want. I’m leaving.” She turns, and Frankie tugs on her arm again.
“No. Look!” Frankie points to the ground.
She glances down. Her school ID is lying there, her face staring up at them.
“See,” Frankie says. “It probably just blew away. Okay?”
She’s ready to turn, walk away, out of the woods, but she pauses. Frankie holds out the picture reassuringly.
“So?” she whispers. “Someone still painted me. My whole face!”
“Which we wanted them to do! I mean, we left the school ID—it’s not like whoever it is knows what you look like. It’s no different than the view that they finished for you. It was right in front of them!”
“But why?” She looks around. “And who?”
Frankie shrugs, unzips the side pocket on Sky’s backpack, and tucks the school ID away.
“Who knows? It’s a game. Not like we have anything better going on.” She looks at Sky. “I say we keep playing.”
“Playing how?”
“Let’s go back and leave another picture. You know, like bait. I have a plan.” Frankie smiles at her.
“No way. You go. I’ll be up in the tree house. Knock twice when you get back or I’m not opening the door.” She hands Frankie the backpack, takes out the paintings, and the hammer and nails.
“I can’t climb up there with my arm. I’ll just call up.” Frankie slings the strap over her shoulder and turns.
“Chicken,” she calls over her back.
“Lunatic,” Sky answers, and scurries up the ladder.
On the landing, she opens the door and pokes her head in, surveying the room. She shuts the door behind her, throws the latch.
There’s a camping mattress in the corner, her pillow and goose-feather blanket folded on top. She’d begged her parents to let her sleep in the tree house for months, and they’d only agreed under three conditions. That she have bedding to keep her warm, Frankie had to stay with her, and her father would sleep in a tent at the base of the tree house.
After they died, she knew she was breaking the rules sleeping in the tree house alone. But she felt more at home up here than anywhere. Especially those first nights when Xavier slept over, looking around her small house as though he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
The walls are bare, something she’s been meaning to fix. By the time she nails the painting to the walls, she hears someone calling her name.
“Is that you?” she yells. “Frankie?”
“No,” Frankie calls backs.
She opens the door and steps out, looks down at Frankie, who’s smiling up at her.
“You ready for my plan?” Frankie asks.
She doesn’t answer. She’s known Frankie long enough to know she’s going to hear the plan, like it or not.
* * *
She begs Frankie to stay for the cookout. But she can’t. She made a deal with her mother that she’d go home for dinner and then she could come back to sleep in the backyard with Sky and Leo.
“It makes no sense,” Sky argues. “You’re already here. What’s the big deal?”
They’re waiting outside Sky’s house for Frankie’s mother, who’s running late as usual from one of Frankie’s brothers’ games.
“What’s the big deal about having a hamburger with your grandmother? You act like she’s scary or something.”
“I don’t even know what to call her.”
“How about Grandma?” Frankie raises an eyebrow.
“Easy for you to say. Your grandmother lives a mile away. You see her all the time. I don’t even remember the last time I saw her. Grandma just sounds weird.”
“You saw her at the Fourth of July party. And spoke to her. If you don’t like Grandma, call her Lillian. That’s what she told me to call her.”
She sighs. “I think you should just stay.”
Frankie’s mother pulls in to the driveway and waves at Frankie to hurry up.
“And I think you should stop overthinking it,” Frankie says over her shoulder. “See you at eight.”
She sits on the front step and watches the black Suburban drive away. Then she walks inside and into the kitchen.
Leo is forming meat into hamburger patties, and he gestures for her to sit at the counter.
“What time is dinner?” she asks.
He glances at the clock. “Five minutes ago,” he says just as she hears Joe announce from the patio that he’s here and watering Leo’s tomatoes that are clearly about to perish.
“I didn’t know Joe was coming,” she says, relieved.
“Maggie too.” Leo winks. “Just a casual cookout with friends.”
“And the grandmother I don’t know.” She sighs, puts her chin in her hand. “Frankie said I should stop overthinking it.”
They hear women’s voices from the patio, and Leo takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Good advice. Ready?” he asks, and she follows him to the backyard.
She hates being the center of attention, and ever since Leo told her about the cookout, she’s been dreading it. She’s expecting all eyes to be on her when she steps through the door, especially Lillian’s.
But Maggie and Joe are turned away from her, looking at Lillian, who is standing in front of them with an enormous dog on a leash. The dog is sitting on the patio, gazing lovingly up at Maggie, who’s rubbing his large, furry head.
Sky walks over to them, and the dog looks at her and sweeps the ground with his tail, wagging it back and forth in lazy strokes.
“Meet George,” Lillian says.
“He looks exactly like Beethoven. From the movie,” Sky says, burying her hand in his soft fur. He leans into her fingers while she scratches his neck.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought him,” Lillian says over Sky’s head to Leo, who’s putting hamburgers on the grill. “I was just leaving my shift when his owner called to say they were delayed getting back to the island. The mom was so upset because George hates the kennel and it was only supposed to be for the day and they were going to have to leave him overnight with the late ferry. I told her I’d take him with me and drop him at her house later.”
“Of course not,” Leo says. But there’s something in his voice that makes Sky watch him a second longer than Lillian, and when he looks back at the grill, Sky sees him roll his eyes.
She doesn’t know why Leo is rolling his eyes, but she doesn’t really care, because the dog is here, and her mother was allergic and only let Sky have stuffed animals that looked like dogs, and suddenly the dinner has turned from a thing she wanted to skip to a thing with an actual live dog standing in front of her.
“I’ll get him some water,” she tells Lillian
, and hurries to the kitchen where she fills up a deep plastic bowl and carries it as gently as she can back to George without the water sloshing over the sides. When she puts it in front of him, his head disappears inside of it. She smiles at the sound of his tongue slapping against the water.
“I should probably take him for a walk,” Lillian says. “I’m sure he has some business to do.”
“There’s a path in the woods,” she says. “I can show you if you want.”
“I’d love that—” Lillian stops talking and looks at Leo, who’s watching them from the grill. “But I don’t know if Leo needs your help getting ready for dinner.”
She turns to Leo, who blinks. Once. Twice. “Can I go?”
“Go.” He sighs, waves at her. “Tell George not to poop on the lawn.”
Lillian is waiting for her, and she holds out the leash. “Do you want to walk him?”
She nods and slips her hand through the soft leather handle. George is already standing, and he walks easily beside her, his fur brushing her leg.
“He’s so good. Frankie’s dog pulls us all over the place when we try to walk him.” She loosens her grip on the leash while George stops to sniff at the ground.
“He sounds like the dog we had when your mother was young.”
She looks up at Lillian. “I didn’t know she had a dog.”
“Ann might not have remembered him. She was very young at the time. And we didn’t have the dog long. Only a couple of weeks.”
She follows behind George, thinks about how sad it would be to get a dog only to have him for a couple of weeks. “What was his name?”
“Her name. Ella. Short for Cinderella.” She laughs when Sky wrinkles her nose. “That’s what happens when you let a four-year-old girl name a dog.”
“She said you couldn’t have a dog because you and her were allergic. How come you’re not allergic to George?”
“I’m not allergic to dogs. Ann just thought I was.” Lillian smiles and shrugs. “We had Ella for a week or two before I noticed Ann had a cold she couldn’t seem to get over. Turns out it wasn’t a cold. It was Ella’s fur.”
Sky stops, her mouth open. “You had to give her away? That’s awful.”
“It was awful. Ann was so upset. We got some fish, but she cried every night for weeks. She was mad as heck at me. I told her it was my fault. My allergies.”
She squints. Her mother knew she was allergic to dogs. It’s why they couldn’t have one. “But she knew she was allergic. When did she find out?”
“I told her when she was older. Old enough to start going over to friends’ houses where there might be pets. She’d forgotten about Ella by then. Of course, she was still mad at me. She thought she’d inherited the allergy from me. I never fessed up that I wasn’t allergic to anything. It was just sort of this lie that kept growing, and then it was too late to fix it. What a mess, right?” Lillian shakes her head and laughs.
Sky raises an eyebrow, grins. “You should’ve told her the truth from the start.”
Lillian nods. “You’re exactly right.” She pauses, distracted by something behind Sky. “That’s your tree house, right?”
She turns to where Lillian is pointing. “Yeah. Joe built it last year. Me and Frankie come out here all the time.”
“Can I?” she asks in a hopeful voice, walking to the ladder. “I’ve never been in a real live tree house.”
She nods, swallows a laugh at Lillian’s excitement. It’s funny to see a grown woman so excited about a wooden box in the trees.
George tugs on the leash, and she follows him over to a bush and waits while he lifts a leg. When she looks up again, Lillian pokes her head out the door. “The paintings look wonderful in here. I figured you were the artist when I saw the easel.”
She stares up at Lillian. Speechless.
How does she know about the easel? And she’d forgotten about the paintings. But Lillian had said they look wonderful, like she’d seen them before. The lighthouse and the self-portrait she’d nailed to the wall.
“The easel?” She stops. Waits.
“By the cliff,” Lillian says. “I was exploring out behind Agnes’s house and there’s a path. I followed it and it brought me to the easel, then past the tree house. I turned around when I ended up looking at the back of your house and Joe’s house. I didn’t want exploring to become trespassing.” She smiles, climbs down the ladder, and walks over to Sky.
“We should head back. I don’t want to make us late for dinner.”
She nods, glances at Lillian while they walk, and thinks about the paintings in the tree house. The ones somebody else finished.
The ones Lillian finished? Was she the mystery artist?
She could just ask her. But she can’t make the words come out of her mouth.
“Do you paint too?” she asks finally, and holds her breath.
George stops, sniffs at a large stump on the path. Lillian opens her mouth to answer when a voice breaks the silence.
“There you are,” Maggie shouts from up ahead, waving to them from the entrance of the path. “Dinner’s ready.”
“Oh, let’s hurry,” Lillian says, clapping several times. “Come on, George. Let’s go!” She’s walking so fast that Sky starts to jog to keep up with her. “Some dinner guest I am. Brings a dog without asking and makes everyone wait to eat!”
She hurries behind her grandmother, her question lost in the rush to return. The sound of her grandmother clapping ringing in her ears. She holds on to it. Perhaps she can remember it later. Place it in her head next to the sound of the clapping the night she and Frankie lit the sparklers.
See if they sound the same.
30
She heard their voices while she was putting the finished picture on the easel. She didn’t even stop to think, just took long, silent strides in the other direction, slipping quietly off the path into a massive tangle of brush, thorns scraping at her arms and legs. She deserved it—cutting it that close!
She only panicked when she heard the girls talking about the school ID—heard the tremble in Sky’s voice—and looked down to see the picture still in her hand. She hadn’t put it back on the clip like she’d planned. And now the girl was scared. She’d scared the girl!
It was unacceptable. Heartbreaking.
Which is why she didn’t even feel the thorns ripping her skin as she fought her way through the woods. Running as quickly and silently as she could. When she was almost at the tree house, she glanced around frantically. Where to leave it so they’d see it? Not too obvious! But she wanted them to find it. She dropped it right where she stood.
Let it settle just like it fell, as though the wind had carried it.
Then she ran. Ran as fast as she could back to the studio and slammed the door behind her, collapsed on the small bed, her limbs bloody and scraped, several thorns still lodged in her skin.
That was it. She was done with all of this. She hadn’t come here to harm anyone. To scare anyone! She’d only come for closure. To see one thing in this world she would be leaving behind.
She looks over at the wall to the picture of the girl. She’d painted a second one for herself. So when she takes her last breath, steps off the cliff, she’ll be looking in her daughter’s eyes.
31
They have variations of the same argument for almost twenty-four hours. Maggie asks what the hell he was thinking, and Pete denies any wrongdoing.
Or at least the first night he’s back, that’s how it goes.
Then he disappears into the bedroom. She doesn’t move from the couch—no way in hell she’s sleeping next to him in their bed.
The next morning, she phrases her question differently, asks why he thinks all these women are wrong and he’s somehow right.
“It’s not about wrong or right,” he tells her. And she merely looks at him quizzically, because she can’t imagine how there’s any other way to look at it.
“They’re talking about me joking around! Hey—I’m not cla
iming to be an altar boy, but I’ve never touched anyone. And it’s not all these women, Maggie. It’s two people who sucked at their jobs and got fired and now they’re coming after me.”
“Coming after you? Did someone file a complaint?” she asks, dumbfounded. The minute she says it, she feels foolish. He wouldn’t be on leave for rumors.
“Why the hell do you think I’m on leave? It’s a two-week investigation. Dean thinks it’ll be done by the end of the week. One of them has already changed her story a bunch of times.”
Maggie simply stares at him. Of course John Dean would want it to be over by the end of the week. Rookies together when they first joined the force and Pete’s surfing buddy, they’re practically brothers.
Two women? She looks at her husband and feels her stomach turn, her face grow hot. All of the social media comments she’d read about him running through her head.
She won’t get the truth out of him. The details of exactly what happened will be withheld. Even if he tells her his version, the facts will be skewed to make him appear innocent. His involvement will be downplayed until he has her believing that, somehow, he’s the victim.
She’s suddenly so tired, she could lie on the floor. Right here and now.
“I want you to leave,” she says instead, surprised by the strength of her voice. The steadiness with which the sentence is delivered.
“What? Enough of this, Maggie. I’m sorry you thought the picture in the paper was something more than it was. Let’s just move on.”
She’s not going to argue with him. It always ends the same. With her in tears, feeling ridiculous. Overly emotional. Crazy, he’s even called her.
She simply walks over to the counter and picks up her pocketbook. Then she turns and walks out the door, closes it calmly behind her, as though she’s stepping out to the store for milk. Or eggs. Or bread. Instead of what she knows she’s really doing.
Ending her insufferable marriage.
* * *