4152 Witchwood Lane

by Katie Winters

  “Well, you can’t very well feed your baby only chili cheese fries,” Amelia pointed out.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s mostly what Olivia ate when she was pregnant, funnily enough,” Mila said, as a memory trigger in the back of her mind. “Looks like everything worked out.”

  “Maybe if I don’t eat chili cheese fries, my baby won’t leave the island,” Mandy said softly. “Right now, with motherhood so new to me, I just can’t imagine ever being apart.”

  The thought of this made Mila’s heart crack all over again.

  The night was a beautiful one. They ate crab legs and lobster bisque and lemon cake and then sat around a crackling bonfire near the shoreline and talked until ten. Throughout, various guests from the hotel itself wandered in and out of the group; all were incredibly complimentary about The Hesson House as a whole and spoke to Olivia with excitement.

  “What you have here is really special,” they told her. “We’ll definitely be coming back.”

  As one of these same people wandered away, Olivia spoke quietly to Chelsea, who’d curled up alongside her. The firelight danced across their cheeks.

  “I could really use your help here at the hotel. If and when you decide to come home.”

  Mila could feel it already: this plea for everything to return to the way it always had been.

  But Chelsea, on the verge of the rest of her life, was resistant. Mila understood both sides. She understood the wanting to push forward and she understood the wanting to hang back and keep everything just the same. How did anyone choose to press forward? How was anyone brave enough to go on?

  “I just have to get out and see what I can be, Mom,” Chelsea said. “As cliché as that sounds, it’s true.”

  Olivia’s lower lip quivered at her daughters' words. “I know,” she whispered. “I just figured I would ask one more time.”

  Just before Mila headed home for the night, she found herself near Camilla.

  “You know, Rudy really liked you,” she said with a half-grin. “He told me he hasn’t been able to pinpoint what exactly he did wrong. But he knows he screwed it all up.”

  Mila shrugged. “There’s no screwing anything up in this life, is there? There just wasn’t any chemistry. And unfortunately for my bank account, your doctor friend and I just don’t connect in the same ways.”

  “Fair enough.” Camilla slid a blond curl behind her ear and grimaced. “Are you going to be okay alone at home tonight?”

  Mila nodded. “Sure, of course.” But in actuality, the thought of that creaking, empty house filled her with darkness. She hugged Olivia as she walked back to her car and told her, “Let me know if you want to talk more about this. Isabelle and Zane have totally broken my heart.” At this, Olivia let out the tiniest, but most emotional, of sobs. Everything would be all right – eventually. It just didn’t feel like it. Not yet.

  When Mila reached her house, she placed her keys on the counter, poured herself a cup of apple juice, and then immediately spilled the apple juice all down her blouse. She cursed herself and rushed for the sink, where she removed her apple juice-stained shirt and splayed it beneath the running water. For a moment, she panicked and thought, “What if Zane walks into the kitchen and sees me like this?” But of course, she was home alone.

  Again, the dread set in. It seemed to be an animal that lingered on her stomach and growled.

  From her stance at the sink, she was in full view of the old answering machine, which they still had hooked up to the landline. Her friends teased her for this, telling her that nobody still had a landline, but Peter had set it up, and it still had his voice on the recording. It was akin to killing him again, taking it away.

  And right then, the answering machine blinked. It had a message.

  Mila stepped toward it, leaned down, and pressed the PLAY button.

  “Hey — Mila. Mila, hi. It’s um. It’s Liam. The police officer who came to your children’s party.”

  Mila’s smile was crooked with surprise.

  “I realized that I never got your cell phone number. I looked up your house number and lo and behold, you still have one. So anyway. I wanted to tell you that my skin has never been brighter and smoother than it is now, after the facial you gave me. And also, that I hope everything went okay with moving your kids up north. And um — yep. Maybe that’s it. Oh, and also, if you’d like to go out again sometime, that would be wonderful, too.”

  Mila listened to the recording two more times, smiling to herself, like a teenage girl. She tried to understand what it made her feel. Excitement? Joy? She wasn’t sure. Her stomach and heart stirred with sadness and sorrow and Liam had attempted to penetrate that with hope for some kind of future. But was she ready for that?

  She pledged to call him back the following day or maybe the one after that.

  But in the meantime, she had some groveling to do. She grabbed a small piece of chocolate and headed to bed alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Saturday night. Mila stood at the microwave and watched her bean burrito perform a little twirling dance around and around. The answering machine continued to flash with Liam’s message, but she hadn’t bothered to call him back. She felt lost on the idea of coming up with an intelligent topic or how to get to know someone on this level and it filled her with anxiety and resentment. She wasn’t sure where the resentment was directed toward. Perhaps just time itself — the frantic nature of it. The fact that time had taken away first Peter, and now her children, and left her alone in her pajamas, on a Saturday night, with a stupid vegan burrito in the microwave.

  It was just past eight when Isabelle called. Mila’s heart lifted as she greeted her; she swiped at the bean on her lower lip and grinned into the receiver. But instead of saying hello back, Isabelle’s wail sent chills down Mila’s spine.

  “Honey! What happened?” Mila quickly sat up on sudden alert.

  “I — I don’t know — I don’t know what I’m doing here, Mom.”

  Mila furrowed her brow and dropped her burrito back onto her plate. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know how to do any of this,” Isabelle wept. “It seems to come so easy to all the other girls. They just hang out and swap stories and talk about what they want to do this year and drink beer and make out with boys and I just — I just — I miss Harry and I miss you and I don’t know how to do any of this.”

  Before Mila knew fully what she’d done, she had packed herself a little backpack, rushed into the night, and driven her car over to the ferry. The final ferry of the evening left at eight-thirty, and she was over on the mainland in no time. She whipped around the outer edges of Boston and headed straight to Tufts. And by the time she parked and rushed toward her daughter’s dorm, Isabelle was stationed outside in a pair of pajamas and her bright white tennis shoes.

  The moment Mila saw her, she rushed forward and threw her arms around her daughter. Isabelle wasn’t resistant, despite the fact that they were surrounded by college students — all of whom seemed to be having an absolutely wonderful time together. They hollered out, “There’s a party at the SNU Frat!” and, “I’ll grab the solo cups!” without any regard for this forty-one-year-old woman before them. Isabelle shook slightly in Mila’s arms. Mila recognized the signs.

  “We need to order you dinner. And fast. Right?” she said.

  Isabelle nodded somberly. Mila then laced an arm around Isabelle’s shoulders and guided her back toward her dorm room. Admittedly, the place was already kind of a dump, in the style of how Mila envisioned Zane’s room to be.

  “Where’s your roommate?” Mila asked as she tossed her backpack in the corner.

  “She’s at a party. She invited me, but I just — ugh. Drinking is so lame, Mom.”

  Mila’s heart lifted. “Have you been going to parties?”

  “A little,” Isabelle said. “I just don’t want anyone to flirt with me or look at me like this piece of freshman meat or whatever.”

  Mila ordere
d them a large pizza and then sat at the edge of Isabelle’s bed and waited for Isabelle to speak more. She knew she couldn’t push her.

  “I just feel so pathetic,” Isabelle breathed. “Like, I was always in total control on the Vineyard. Everyone knew my name. I was loved. I had great friends. I knew you were always there. And now, at the first sign of me getting super lonely, I call my mom. It’s pathetic.”

  “It is not, honey,” Mila breathed.

  “Nobody else did.”

  “I don’t think that means they don’t want to,” Mila assured her. “It’s a tough thing, moving away. I know it’s tough because I never did it. It sounded way too scary to me.”

  Isabelle turned her large eyes up toward her mother’s. Mila’s stomach tightened with recognition. This had once been her face; those tears looked precisely like hers had when she had wept as an eighteen-year-old.

  She supposed back then, those tears had largely been for Michelle and all they’d lost in the wake of that horrible day.

  “You’ve been given a gift of this life,” Mila told her daughter somberly. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t feel complicated about it.”

  Isabelle buzzed her lips. “I’m sure Harry is already messing around with some other girl at Ohio State.”

  “Yeah, right. Harry isn’t going to know how to do anything without you,” Mila told her pointedly. “He’s loved you since he was a little boy. And he will continue to love you— probably forever. It’s not the kind of love that just dies. And you know that.”

  After Isabelle and Mila ate half of the pizza, Isabelle’s roommate, Connie, arrived back at the dorm. She brought with her two new friends from the party. They were boisterous and friendly and seemed totally willing to bring Mila into their fold. They told stories about the party, all of which were only slightly funny. Still, Isabelle’s face cracked open as she laughed.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she told them. “I can’t believe I missed it.”

  “Come with us next time,” Connie said with a shrug. “Meg here doesn’t drink that much, either.”

  “It gives me a stomachache,” Meg told her.

  “But you don’t feel weird that everyone else is doing it?” Isabelle asked.

  Meg shook her head. “No way. Nobody even notices that I’m not doing it.”

  “I’m just jealous because it means you won’t have a hangover tomorrow,” Connie told her brightly. “While the rest of us will be hating our lives, you’ll be like, going on a walk in the early morning.”

  “Early bird catches the worm!” Meg said with a laugh.

  Slowly, bit-by-bit, Mila watched as Isabelle slipped into conversation with the other girls. At one point, Mila stepped away to call Olivia and explain what had happened. She felt closest to Olivia in these moments, as Chelsea had only just left the island.

  “Wow. She still needs you,” Olivia noted.

  “Yes. For now, at least.”

  “No. I think they’ll need us forever,” Olivia said. Mila could hear the smile over the phone. “Chelsea called me today because she spilled coffee all over her white dress. She had to ask how to get the stain out. She was freaking out.”

  Mila cackled. “You’re right. Maybe we didn’t prepare them enough for the real world, but it means they’ll always have to call us for help.”

  “That’s so true. We did it,” Olivia returned. “We raised half capable humans.”

  “At least they’re pretty. The world will treat them nicely,” Mila joked.

  “At least there’s that,” Olivia agreed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “There you are.”

  The voice rang out overhead. Mila lifted her chin to peer up through the sun rays to find a familiar form; Diana Ellis herself was stationed there between the gravestones at the Martha’s Vineyard cemetery. In passing, Mila had mentioned that she planned to plant new flowers at Peter’s grave that afternoon; she hadn’t expected her mother to make any kind of appearance. In fact, Mila couldn’t remember a single time Diana had come to Peter’s grave since the burial two years before.

  “I’m glad I remembered where it was,” Diana said. She lifted her tote bag from her shoulder and splayed it out between them on the sharp strands of bright green grass. “I brought my gardening tools, just in case. But it looks like you have everything.”

  Mila nodded. She still hadn’t broken ground, and she slipped her hair behind her ears and pondered about what to say. The blue sky above seemed overly bright, especially for a task like this.

  “Thank you for coming,” she decided to say. In actuality, it was incredibly kind that her mother recognized Mila’s suffering.

  “Sure. Well, I know how important it is to you to keep up the gravestone,” Diana said. She sat gently on the ground alongside her daughter and sniffed at the collection of flowers. “And you always had such a good eye for beautiful things.”

  Mila gave her mother a lopsided grin. “I guess that’s why I wanted to open the salon.”

  Her mother didn’t miss a beat. “It’s a good thing you did, too. Plenty of women on this island were hit with an ugly stick.”

  “Mom!”

  Diana shrugged as she cackled. “What? It’s true. You and your friends and those Sheridan girls are heads above most.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Mila returned.

  “Are you going to tell me that everybody is unique in their own beauty?”

  Mila nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you.”

  “Well, that’s a bunch of bologna,” Diana replied, her voice light, teasing. “But let’s get to work.”

  Mila and Diana worked alongside one another diligently, without speaking much. Mila did tell Diana about her recent trip to Boston to see Isabelle but left out the fact that Isabelle felt so homesick, as she felt it was too private. Regarding Zane, she reported that she had hardly heard from him. “Just a text message here and there. I think he’s off to the races in terms of his social life. That’s just the way Zane is, or should I say, the way boys are in general.”

  When the flowers were firmly planted in the soil, Diana and Mila stood up and inspected their work. Mila bent slightly and traced Peter’s name with her finger. In many ways, she couldn’t believe that even now, he was gone.

  “You should have had many more years together,” Diana said then. This was something she’d never expressed.

  Mila’s eyes glistened. “He gave me all he could.”

  It was decided that they would drive back together to have lunch at the Sunrise Cove Inn Bistro. Afterward, Diana would bring Mila back to her car at the cemetery. Mila tried and failed to remember the last time she and her mother had purposefully hung out together without others around.

  As they eased into Oak Bluffs, Mila couldn’t help but notice that Diana pressed harder on the gas. She muttered, “I just want to get there. I have to pee like a racehorse.”

  Mila burst out with laughter until she spotted the flashing police lights behind them.

  “Shoot!” Diana cried. “No! No, no.”

  But, unfortunately, they were being pulled over. Diana pulled her car to the side of the curb and splayed her hands out at the ten and two positions. “This is so embarrassing,” she cried. “I haven’t been pulled over in thirty years. This is ridiculous.”

  To add insult to injury, the cop who appeared in the window of Diana’s car was none other than Liam Caldwell himself. He blinked at Mila, the woman who hadn’t yet called him back and looked immediately flustered. Diana sensed the shift in the air immediately.

  “Oh! I remember you. From that night at the crazy out-of-control bonfire,” Diana said with a little too much excitement in her voice. She seemed ready to talk herself out of any ticket and would use any and all niceties to do just that.

  But Liam’s eyes remained fixed on Mila’s. Mila felt a blush creep up from her chest, over her neck, and across her cheeks.

  “Hi, Liam.”

  “Mila.”<
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  He seemed to not know what to do, as though the normal script of a speeding ticket had fallen away from him. Mila thought about telling him that they had just been planting flowers at her dead husband’s grave. She also considered explaining that she’d recently felt as though her insides had been torn apart by Isabelle and Zane’s departure. She knew he deserved a million explanations.

  “I’m sorry, Officer. I know I was speeding,” Diana continued. “But you have to understand. My bladder isn’t what it used to be.”

  Mila burst into laughter. She couldn’t believe that her overly proper, refined mother had just told a police officer she had a full bladder and couldn’t hold it any longer. She laughed so hard that her stomach began to hurt. And when she looked up again, she found that Liam laughed, too.

  “I can understand that,” he said finally. His eyes reflected the light beautifully. It seemed like he couldn’t look anywhere but in Mila’s eyes.

  After a moment of silence, Mila cleared her throat and said, “Officer Caldwell, I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”

  Diana balked and leaned back the slightest bit. She looked at Mila with wonder.

  “Would you like to go out on a second date? With me?”

  Liam turned his eyes toward the road. He looked totally shocked, then pleased, and finally lost. When he returned his gaze to Mila’s, Mila had the sudden suspicion that Peter had sent this man to her. There seemed to be a higher power at play.

  “I would like that very much, Mila,” Liam told her. “I’ll make sure not to leave a message on your answering machine.”

  “Just take my cell phone number down now. You can text me. Like the kids do these days,” Mila said with a funny grin.

  Liam did just that. And as Diana ducked away from the scene of the crime already, Mila’s phone received a text.

  UNKNOWN NUMBER: What on earth will you get in trouble for next, Mila Ellis?

  UNKNOWN NUMBER: You’ve been on the other side of the law more times than I can count this summer.