“How can there be a storm big enough to stop the ferries?”
“I listened to some guy on the ferry explain it,” said Jeremy. “It has to do with the offshore winds, and what the pattern is in the Caribbean, and then the angle of the winds as they head toward the island. I don’t remember all of it exactly. But basically it can be really calm here, and a mess out there, and then—bam, everything can change direction. And it hits. A hurricane.”
“A hurricane?”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“Geez,” said Anthony. He’d have to track down Cassie, make sure she and Max were safe. Were they back at their hotel? Had anyone told them a storm was coming here?
Then Jeremy’s phone must have vibrated, because he held up a finger to Anthony, indicating he should wait, and put his phone to his ear. He walked toward the ocean and when he turned back the set of his jaw had changed, and his posture had changed. Nancy.
Lu had been a good friend to Anthony this summer—a calming, next-door presence, just like Amanda Loring had been in fourth grade. He remembered how much trouble he’d had with place values and rounding that year, and how much Amanda had helped him. He remembered the crook of her neck as she bent over the paper, chewing the eraser on her pencil. Everything had been so uncomplicated in fourth grade, so clear and right.
Anthony steeled himself and called, “Your mother has it all wrong, you know.”
“Sorry?”
“Your mother. Your mother has it all wrong. Whatever she told you about Lu, it’s not right. It’s not what’s going on.”
“I’m not really sure what’s going on,” said Jeremy. “But I’m about to go figure it out.”
Plot twist, thought Anthony grimly. He turned to go inside.
His mother was still on the couch, with her hands folded and her gaze pointed straight ahead, steady, staring at nothing.
“I don’t understand,” said Anthony. “What do you mean, specifically, about the writing? What was your involvement in the work? Are you talking about a few suggestions here or there . . . the untangling of a knotty plot point? That’s not really writing, with all due respect, Mom. That’s simply editing. Helping. Pick whichever words you like best. But lots of writers need to bounce ideas off somebody else sometimes . . . you know, just to see if things make sense.”
“I did pick the word I like best,” said Dorothy. “The word is writing.”
“You wrote the books for him? Mom, are you telling me you wrote Dad’s books for him?”
Dorothy nodded crisply. “It differed somewhat, here and there. Sometimes we would work together—he with his legal pad, I with mine. We’d each take a chapter or a scene. Maybe they were different viewpoints. For example . . .” She tapped her forehead. “Ah, yes! For example, the Drug Me Tender books. I’m sure you remember that those were written in alternating points of view, the detective and the killer.”
“Yes.” It had been a trilogy to start with, but the Drug Me Tender books sold like crazy. The publisher wanted more, and it became a series of seven, released every six months for three and a half years. A gold mine. That series had sent Anthony to college with plenty left over.
“Well, your father was the detective. And I”—she brandished an imaginary knife—“was the killer.”
“Holy cow,” whispered Anthony. The killer points of view in the Drug Me Tender series were all written in second person—a nearly impossible voice to sustain over one book, never mind seven. He’d always been impressed that his father had pulled it off. But his father hadn’t pulled it off. His mother had pulled it off.
“There are many more examples,” Dorothy said. “The Beauty’s Beast. Red as Rubies. Jury of Peers. I’d have to look at a bibliography of all of his work to sort it all out.”
“Not his work,” said Anthony. “Your work too. Your collective work. Mom, I still don’t get it. Can you explain it to me further, so I can understand, how you could be doing this all this time, how you were okay with it, and how he was okay with it?”
“I’m not sure I can completely explain it, Anthony. Marriages are complicated.” She paused, and looked up to the ceiling for several seconds. When she met Anthony’s eyes again she said, “I’ve loved your father forever, Anthony. Forever. Since before leggings counted as pants. Since before the Beatles broke up, and the wall came down.”
The Beatles broke up, and the wall came down. That was beautiful. Poetry. His mother did have a way with words.
“And you didn’t mind,” said Anthony. “You never minded.”
“Who said I never minded?” There was something in her gaze he’d never seen before. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m here right now, Anthony, why I took Max and fled. Maybe it’s because all of a sudden I minded.”
Plot twist, Anthony thought.
“Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Maybe it’s because I want to finish our current contract, and be done.”
“You do?”
“I want to stop.”
“You should stop, then, Mom.”
“I’m ready. I’m ready for our current contract to be our last. But he’s not.” Major plot twist. There was so much to absorb. Anthony’s head was spinning.
“And also, Anthony?”
The purple flag was up. A storm was coming. His father might be on the island. He needed to make sure Cassie and Max were safe. And there was only one person he wanted to talk to about all of this.
“Anthony?” his mother said again. “There’s something else, something really important. There’s one more thing—”
Anthony’s thoughts were flying; there was a surge of adrenaline flooding him. The flag. The storm. The father. Joy.
“Mom—let’s talk later, okay? I have to do something. I’ll be back, as soon as I can be.”
Chapter 53
Lu
“Where are the boys?” Jeremy asked. Nancy had gone home. She’d spoken to Jeremy, she told Lu, and now it was up to the two of them to talk it through.
Lu was too nervous to sit still, so she puttered around the kitchen. “They walked over to the club,” she said. “There’s melted crayon painting today!” She tried to make it sound as if melted crayon painting were something to celebrate.
“I see,” said Jeremy. “Did they walk over to the club by themselves?”
Lu shook her head.
“They couldn’t have walked over to the club with my mother, because my mother called me, and she was here, she wasn’t with the boys.”
“Right,” whispered Lu.
“So . . . who’d they walk over with?”
“Maggie.” She watched a small muscle in Jeremy’s jaw clench and unclench.
“Maggie, who you said you weren’t going to use anymore?”
“It’s not what you think,” she said. “It’s not even remotely what you think. It’s not what your mother thinks.” And then she took a deep, deep breath. She said, “It started a while ago, when the boys were little.” It occurred to her that this could also be an explanation for a love affair. Then, in a voice that was so shaky and uncertain it didn’t even sound like hers, she told him all of it.
Chapter 54
Anthony
He had the feeling that if he could only talk about everything with Joy it would all make sense—he could recapture the sense of peace he’d felt those weeks with her. But he couldn’t find her. He couldn’t find Maggie either. The Jeep wasn’t outside the cottage and nobody answered the door. He could hear Pickles sniffling and snuffling on the other side, though, so he let himself in. Pickles greeted him joyfully, like he was a sailor who’d been at sea for six months. Anthony couldn’t get over how much Pickles licked his face and pawed at him and nibbled at his ears. It felt like the dog wanted to climb right inside his shirt with him.
“Well, that makes one of you,” he told Pickles. Pickles wriggled her hindquarters so hard Anthony thought her tail might fall off.
“Joy?” Anthony called. “Maggie?” The cottag
e was quiet and immaculate. Nobody answered.
He called Cassie: she didn’t pick up her phone. She didn’t want to talk to him; she was hurt and angry. He texted her. Storm coming. R u someplace safe? No answer.
He tried Joy Bombs—Olivia Rossi was there, but Joy wasn’t. Olivia told Anthony the shop was closing early because of the storm; Joy had called to tell her but hadn’t said where she was calling from. Anthony looked for Joy’s Jeep at Mansion Beach and Scotch Beach. He drove up Spring Street. He lucked out with parking at Mohegan Bluffs, arriving just as somebody else was leaving. He ran down all 141 steps. Nope. He jogged back up. He didn’t have to stop even once to catch his breath, but little good that did him now.
He drove all the way out to Corn Neck Road and checked out Settlers’ Rock. All he found was a family of five having their photo taken by a kid in a blue sweatshirt that said Art Academy of Cincinnati. “Say, ‘Christmas!’” said the photographer. “Think snow! Let’s get this done before the storm starts!”
“Christmas!” said the family members obligingly. They smiled.
Anthony didn’t want to think snow. He wanted to think about Joy. He wanted to talk to Joy. Where was she? His head was spinning. He stood for a moment and gazed out at the water, and he thought about what a different person he was from the one who had first driven up this road in June, thinking that the island was too small to hold his regrets and his grief on its shores. How wrong he’d been.
The fact was, he hadn’t had enough confidence in himself. That was where this had all started. The success of A Room Within had seemed like a fluke, not a beginning. So he’d sold a second book he didn’t believe he could write; he’d undertaken a career he didn’t feel qualified to see through. He’d panicked, and he’d made a big mistake. The fact that he was going to correct his mistake down the line really had no bearing on the truth of what had happened.
All summer he’d been looking to cast blame: on the New York Times, on the anonymous source, on Cassie, on the pressure of his father’s reputation. Even now, when Dorothy had told him what she’d told him, he’d wanted his father’s deception to somehow excuse his own. But it didn’t. What he viewed as his father’s sin of publishing Dorothy’s work under his own name did not absolve Anthony of his. This was what he’d been trying to get at earlier today with Lu, before they were interrupted by Nancy. He’d hidden from what he’d done, but he’d never really owned it, and now he could. He did. There was nowhere else the blame belonged, other than on Anthony’s own shoulders.
Oh, sorrow, he thought. Oh, Joy!
He looked at his phone. No reply from Cassie. Text me back! he typed in. Right away, Im worried!
Chapter 55
Lu
“Let me get this straight. You have a secret food blog, where you pretend to be a man.”
Put that way, it sounded like an odd little hobby, not the makings of a food empire. Of course, Jeremy wouldn’t know anything about food blogs; the second-to-last thing he would be interested in would be recipes, and the very last thing would be exhaustive write-ups of how and why the recipes were created.
“A successful food blog,” Lu said. “A very successful food blog. I’m getting two hundred and fifty thousand page views a month.” (Over the summer, even with the limited cooking supplies in the cottage, her page views had increased. The momentum was there; everything was coming together beautifully.)
“But a secret.”
She held off for a long moment before answering. Finally she said, “Yes. A secret.”
Even then some optimistic, idiotic part of her felt proud of what she’d accomplished. No, feeling proud wasn’t idiotic of her. Expecting Jeremy to feel proud on her behalf, that was idiotic. He wouldn’t think she was clever or entrepreneurial. He wouldn’t be impressed by her signature charcoal drawings or the fictional life she’d created for her fictional family. He’d feel like he’d been made a fool of by not knowing. He’d think she’d taken her attention away from the boys unnecessarily. He’d focus on the fact that she’d hidden so much from him.
They were in the kitchen. When Anthony had come over to make the phone call to Abigail Knowles she’d been laying out ingredients for a strawberry and arugula salad. She wanted to add jalapeño and radishes to it, and she wasn’t sure which cheese would be best: goat or feta. She’d wondered if the peppery tang of the arugula would complement or do battle with the radishes . . .
But all of these questions seemed pointless now, with Jeremy pacing back and forth across the kitchen like this. He opened the door that led to the back deck.
“Where are you going, Jeremy?” Was he going to go back to the mainland, sleep at the hospital, find a hotel? She felt short of breath. Was she going to hyperventilate? “You’re not going to leave the island, are you? Please don’t leave the island.”
“I. Can’t. Leave. The. Island.” The way he spoke, each word parceled out like a noxious gift, gave her chills. She’d seen him angry before—of course he yelled, everybody yelled sometimes, she did too—but this anger was so quiet, so neatly contained. “Because of the storm.”
“Storm?” Lu looked outside. She didn’t see any storm.
“It’s coming,” he said. “Apparently offshore the winds are really picking up. Hurricane-force. Should be hitting the island later today. They’ve shut down the ferry.”
“They’ve shut down the ferry?” All she could do was stand there like an idiot, repeating his words. “Should I call back Maggie and the boys?”
Jeremy shrugged. “Apparently you know what’s best for the boys, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
The words stung, as he’d meant them to. He was waiting for her to say something else. He was waiting for an apology, she realized. She started to gather one up but then the words lodged in her throat, or maybe even deeper, in her soul. It wouldn’t be true to say them, because she wasn’t sorry. She lifted her chin and waited for him to say something else.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said finally, in that same strange, cold voice. “On the beach.” He held out his phone. “But first, before I do. Can you please tell me how I can find this blog?”
Lu took his phone. Her hands were shaking so much that at first she couldn’t open the browser. Then she typed in the address and handed the phone back to Jeremy.
He was going to read all of it now. He was going to read two years’ worth of her posts, and he’d see all the wrong things. He wouldn’t see the artistry behind the cooking or the beauty in the charcoal drawings.
“Okay,” he said. He was still wearing his scrubs, but he kicked off his shoes and left them at the door. He disappeared.
He was gone more than an hour. When he came back, he went right up to the bedroom, not saying a word, walking by Maggie, who was delivering the boys back after arts and crafts.
“Do you mind hanging out for a little bit?” Lu asked Maggie. “Just a few minutes?” This conversation with Jeremy needed to happen now, not after Maggie had gone. Now.
She knocked on the bedroom door. There was no answer, so she pushed it open. Jeremy was sitting in the straight-backed chair by the window. To Lu’s knowledge nobody had sat in the straight-backed chair all summer.
“I can’t believe you would keep this from me,” he said, without preamble. “Something so big. A whole job. You had a whole secret job, and you never told me about it.”
He said had, and the tense made her a little bit nervous. “I thought you’d be mad,” she said in the world’s tiniest voice. “I thought you wouldn’t support it.”
“I don’t support it, Lu. I don’t. I am mad.”
A flame of self-righteousness licked up at her. “I knew it.”
“Can you blame me? Can you blame me, Lu? We had an agreement. For four years, ever since Sebastian was a baby, we’ve had an agreement. I would do that”—he gestured toward his scrubs, and maybe toward a hospital filled with unseen patients a great distance away—“and you would do this.”
“By this,” she sa
id, “I suppose you mean every single thing that has to do with the care of the boys.”
He sighed: he was exasperated. “That was the deal, Lu. I’m sorry you’re sad your life isn’t the perfect fantasy you’ve created in your blog, but no one’s life is perfect. We had an agreement. We agreed that it was best for the boys to be raised by a parent. Don’t you think I would like more time with the boys? Don’t you think I would love the luxury—and let’s call it what it is, it’s a luxury—of these long summer days at the beach with my boys instead of being inside a hospital all of the time?”
Lu drew herself up to her full height, wishing it were fuller: she was a perfectly average-sized American woman, five feet five inches. “No,” she said. “I’m not sure you would.” Full-time family time was one of those things that sound lovely in the abstract, but wait until Chase cut his foot on a clamshell and then got sand in the cut and had to be carried back to the house. Wait until Sebastian came home from a birthday party high on cupcakes and Capri Sun and turned into a wet puddle of emotions.
Jeremy tented his fingers together. “I do the work I do so I can provide for this family. I thought we were working for something together. Your part, my part.” He made motions with his hands while he was saying this, as though he were marking out different sections to be constructed later with plywood and nails. “I thought we were going to have another baby, Lu.”
She had the sensation of standing on the high dive at the community pool she used to go to as a child. (She only went there when a friend’s mother could drive, because her mother had to work.) She closed her eyes, and she jumped. “My part isn’t enough for me, Jeremy. It’s just not. I wish it were, I really, really wish it were. But it’s not.” She inhaled, then let the breath out slowly. “You wouldn’t be you without your work to make you complete, and nobody expects that you would be. You told me once that being at the hospital is like a drug for you—that you actually feel like you get high on it sometimes! I can’t . . .” She paused, trying to make sure she was saying the right thing. “It’s not enough for me, being with the boys all the time. The blog is really important to me.”
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