Now That You Mention It

by Kristan Higgins

  "Are you kidding? I'm never invited anywhere." She cringed, then clamped her mouth shut, her face going red.

  "I was the same way, Audrey. So let's be outcasts together, us three," I said, smiling, and relief blossomed over her face. Someday, though she'd never believe me now, Audrey Fletcher was going to be striking. Not pretty--she looked too much like her dad for pretty--but the kind of looks that lasted for decades, not just senior year of high school.

  *

  On Friday night, I was ready. I had a marathon of Project Runway on the DVR, some healthy food, some not terribly unhealthy food, four shades of nail polish and a mud mask allegedly made with products from the Dead Sea (or La Mer Morte, as the package said). I'd taken the ferry to Portland and hit Target to stock up, bought the latest teen apocalypse movie and a few board games (old-school, I knew, but it was going to be hard to get Poe to engage in actual conversation).

  I'd also gone to some effort to make her room welcoming. I picked flowers and put them in the bathroom and on her night table along with my own copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (read so many times I couldn't count).

  Audrey would sleep in the loft under the peaked roof. I put flowers up there, too.

  At five o'clock, my niece came through the door.

  "Hey, honey!" I said, going to hug her. She turned her shoulder away.

  "Why am I here? Am I being punished?" she asked.

  "Rewarded, actually, by spending time with your fun and adoring aunt," I said.

  "I'd rather be home."

  "With Gran?"

  "Anywhere but here."

  I was twenty years older than Poe, I reminded myself, but the urge to ask "Why are you so mean to me?" and burst into tears was strong.

  "Why are you so mean to me?" I asked (not bursting into tears, yay for me).

  "Why are you pretending to care?" she said. "I know you're only here for the summer."

  "So should I ignore you for the entire summer, then?"

  "Yeah." She made it into a three-syllable rejection, and I sighed. Boomer, blissfully ignorant to teenagers and their leaden moods, nudged Poe's skinny thigh with his nose.

  "Well," I said, "just another thought...maybe we could hang out, do things together, get to know each other, act like relatives." I shrugged, eyes wide.

  "From what I've heard, our relatives just up and leave and you never see them again," she said. "Dog, get away from me."

  "I take it you're referring to my father." Good! Finally! We could talk about it. "What did Lily tell you?"

  "Can I have some wine?" Poe asked, sliding onto the counter stool, her posture shrimp-like.

  "No. What do you know?"

  Poe sighed. "Like, he was great, and Gran was a total bitch all the time, and he had this book, but she totally resented his talent, and she kicked him out, and life got even shittier after that."

  "It did get shitty, but that's not quite the whole story." Not that I knew the whole story. "Life was pretty fantastic before he left." Stupid of me, still defending my absentee father.

  Poe's eyes flickered, not quite meeting mine. Aha. Interest. "That's not what my mother says."

  "Really. Well, maybe I could show you some of the things we did, and you can decide for yourself."

  Her eyes went back to the counter. "Maybe," she muttered.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Maybe."

  "As in, yes, why not, there's nothing else to do here?"

  I swear, she almost smiled. "Maybe," she repeated.

  "Hi! Am I too early? Or late?" Audrey was here, standing at the half door. Her father stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder.

  "Hey, Audrey! No, this is perfect." I kicked my niece's leg.

  "Hi, Audrey. Wanna play Barbies?" she said.

  Audrey smiled uncertainly.

  "Come on in," I said. "Hey, Sully."

  He nodded.

  "Any food allergies, medication, anything I should know about?" I asked him. I tried not to look at his hearing aid.

  "No," he said. "You'll be alone here tonight?"

  "Do you mean, is she entertaining gentlemen callers?" Poe said.

  "Ayuh. That's what I meant." One corner of his mouth pulled up.

  "It'll just be us girls," I said. "Hey, got a second?"

  He was looking at Audrey, who was petting Boomer.

  "Sullivan?" I said, laying a hand on his arm. His eyes jerked back to mine. Brown eyes, calm and deep. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

  We went out on the deck, able to see Poe not talking to Audrey, and Audrey pretending not to care by rubbing Boomer's belly.

  "What's up?" he asked.

  "I saw Luke the other day," I said.

  He waited.

  "He wouldn't do anything, right?"

  "No. He's just..." Sullivan shrugged. "He's just a little bitter. Especially now, with you back, living here--" he jerked his chin at the boat "--making friends with Audrey and such."

  "Is he still using?"

  "No. He drinks too much once in a while, but he doesn't drive anymore. Lost his license."

  I nodded.

  "Heard you ran into Amy," Sullivan said.

  "Yep."

  "She doesn't know Audrey's here. I have custody."

  "So Audrey said." There was a story there, I was sure.

  "If Amy knew," Sully said in a softer voice, "she would've asked Audrey to stay over at her place, and Audrey would've said yes, because she loves her mother and Amy doesn't spend a lot of...well. Audrey would've said yes."

  "Ah."

  "So I didn't mention it, because I think it'd be nice if my kid had a friend, and Poe seems like a good kid."

  "She does?"

  He shrugged. "She doesn't seem horrible."

  "No. Not horrible."

  He smiled a little, and something pulled in my chest. "Thank you for having Audrey over. Call if you need anything." He handed me a piece of paper. "My cell."

  We went back inside, and Sullivan said, "I'm leaving, sweetheart. You have fun, okay?"

  She hauled herself to her feet--fifty or so pounds overweight, and I remembered that difficulty, that envy at the girls who could stand from a cross-legged position as gracefully as an egret. "Bye, Daddy," she said, hugging him and kissing his cheek.

  Another tug in my chest.

  "Bye, honey. Love you." He jerked his chin at Poe. "Have fun, Poe."

  "Thanks," she said, not looking at him.

  Sullivan left, and a momentary silence fell over the three of us. "Well, I thought we'd make homemade pizza for dinner. I have some games, and Project Runway is booted up, and, uh...we could go for a canoe ride, if you want."

  "A canoe ride?" Poe said. "Are you serious? I'll pass."

  "Um, me, too," Audrey said. "Maybe another time. The mosquitoes are fierce this time of day."

  "Good point," I said. "Well, who likes what on pizza?"

  "Pizza's too fattening," Poe said, dropping her eyes to her phone to text her mysterious friends from Seattle.

  Great. There was no way Audrey would eat pizza if Poe the Gazelle had just deemed it fattening. My jaw tightened with anger at my niece.

  "I like tomatoes and sausage," Audrey said, and my head whipped around at her.

  "Great!" I said. "Me, too. How do you feel about mushrooms?"

  "Love them."

  "Poe, why don't you make a salad?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Let me rephrase. Poe, please make the salad. Everything's in the fridge."

  With a martyred sigh and a long, long pause, Poe stood up, shrugged out of her leather jacket to reveal her tank top and delicate shoulder blades. There was a fresh tattoo on her back--angel wings, the perfect skin still red from the needle.

  I wanted to hug her, wash her face and send her to bed.

  "What can I do?" Audrey asked, and I gave her plates to set the table.

  She chattered sweetly as we worked, talking about her job at the boatyard, how she loved to fish, what she might do this summe
r. "My dad said we could go somewhere for a long weekend," she said. "I kind of want to go to a big city, since I've only been to Boston a few times. Maybe New York. Or, um, Seattle? I've heard it's cool out there."

  We both waited for Poe to respond. She didn't, just cut up scallions as if the knife weighed forty pounds.

  "Seattle's beautiful," I said.

  "Oh, are you an expert because you've been there three times?" Poe asked.

  "Five, and yes. Audrey, the Space Needle is--"

  "For idiot tourists," Poe said.

  "--weird looking from the outside, but you can eat up in the high part, and the view is fantastic. The food there is great. I mean, I've never had a bad meal in Seattle. Salmon and crab in everything, fresh seafood, I mean, not that we don't have that here. But--"

  "Can we change the subject?" Poe asked.

  "Sure," Audrey said. "What would you like to talk about?" She smiled at my niece, who returned with a pained look.

  "I don't know, Audrey," Poe said. "How about Girl Scouts? You must be a Girl Scout, right?"

  "Not anymore," Audrey said. "But it was pretty fun while it lasted."

  Touche, Poe. Audrey would not let her good mood fade, and God bless her for it.

  So the evening went. Audrey, lovely but a little nervous, as if I'd send her home if she were anything but Little Miss Perky. Poe, on the other hand, stayed determinedly miserable. We played Apples to Apples, watched Project Runway, ate food. Well, Audrey and I did, though I noticed Audrey kept looking at the pizza after eating her one slice. Poe chewed a piece of spinach from the salad and left everything else on her plate.

  By the time I announced it was bedtime (11:30 p.m., a respectably late enough hour, I thought), I was exhausted. I showed them to their rooms and told them to sleep well. Poe closed her door immediately.

  "Sorry about her," I whispered.

  "I heard that," Poe said.

  "She speaks!" I said. "Sleep well, honey." No response. "You, too, Audrey."

  "Thank you so much for having me," she said. "I've never slept on a houseboat before." She gave me an impulsive hug, then, blushing, went up to her loft.

  I felt guilty for liking her a hundred times more than I liked Poe. "Come on, Boomerang," I said to my dog. "One more pee, and you can come to bed."

  I let my dog out and walked down the dock a few paces as Boomer loped into the woods to sniff and do his business.

  The stars were a glittering swipe over the cove tonight. No wind, the slight, almost-unnoticeable bob of the dock as the tide slipped in. The pine trees were silhouetted in black against the dark plum of the sky, and I breathed in deeply, imagining the island air scrubbing my city lungs clean. Though I loved Boston, it did have some pretty nasty smells--the exhaust of belching trucks on the Mass Pike and the swampy, human-excrement smell from the Back Bay; the Orange Line, which always smelled like urine; the sulfuric smell of North Station in winter.

  Here, the air was so pure you could feel your lungs turning pink.

  "Come on, Boomer," I called softly, in case the girls were already sleeping. My dog loped obediently onto the dock. "Good boy," I said, scratching his head. "Thank you, good boy."

  Just as I turned to open the door, I saw something.

  A tiny light from the woods glowed orange, then faded.

  Someone was out there, smoking a cigarette. As soon as I thought it, I could smell the smoke. The orange glowed again as the person took another drag.

  Boomer growled.

  I didn't own this land. This wasn't my property, so I couldn't call for trespassing. I did, however, go inside, then locked the doors and closed all the windows and pulled all the shades. Checked on the girls, who were both asleep.

  I texted Sullivan. Someone is smoking in the woods on the north side of my dock.

  The phone screen showed three dots waving reassuringly. He was awake and he was answering.

  Lock the doors.

  Me: Already done.

  Sullivan: I'll call my brother right now.

  Then I went to my room and took out my Smith & Wesson 1911, went back to the living room and waited, staring at the door.

  If someone came in--if Luke Fletcher came in--would I shoot him? Kill him with his niece upstairs? Could I actually pull the trigger? Would it be enough that I was here with a big dog and a gun, or would I have to fire? I could shoot him in the leg. I didn't want to kill him.

  The other guy--my personal terrorist--yeah. I might kill him. But he didn't know I was here. There was no public record that had me moving here to Scupper. Was there? My rental agreement? Was that public information?

  A second later, my phone rang, and I jumped like I'd been stabbed. "Hello?"

  "It's Sullivan."

  "Hi."

  "Luke said he was taking a walk in the woods. Didn't mean to scare you."

  I took a breath, aware that my heart was thudding. "Right."

  "I told him to leave you alone and go back to the boatyard."

  My shoulders dropped four inches with relief. "Thanks, Sully."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Thank you."

  There was a pause. "You want me to swing by?"

  I did.

  But I also remembered lying on the street, the Beantown Bug Killers mascot looming over me, thinking I wasn't the person I wanted to be, and now my chance was over.

  I cleared my throat. "No, I'm fine. I'll see you tomorrow. Hey, I have to take the ferry to Boston...why don't I drop Audrey home on my way?"

  Another pause that made me wonder if he heard me clearly. "No, she can walk to the boatyard," he said. "She's working there tomorrow."

  "Oh. Okay." I bit my lip. "Well. Sorry to wake you."

  "I wasn't asleep."

  I pictured him, home alone (or maybe not alone), sitting on the edge of his bed.

  He had a good face, Sullivan Fletcher did. A calm, reassuring face. Just thinking of it made me feel safer.

  "Good night," he said.

  "Good night," I echoed.

  And I went to bed. Me, my dog and my pistol, just in case.

  13

  Dear Lily,

  I know you said not to write to you, but who cares what you think?

  So guess what? I'm working at the clinic on Scupper for the summer. Yesterday, a lady came in with a brand-new baby, and the smell of his head made me think of Poe when she was tiny. She was the most beautiful baby I've ever seen. Still is. She misses you. I do, too.

  Love,

  Nora

  There was the bowl of six lemons on the counter. The red gerbera daisies on the coffee table. My pretty little apartment, just as tidy and lovely as I'd left it. My perfect home.

  But this time, the glass slider was open, and I already knew he was here. I pretended not to know, thinking that if I could pretend hard enough, he'd disappear. I could hear him in the bathroom, getting into the shower, the hiss of the rings as he slid back the curtain. But I was sure, I was so sure that if he thought I didn't believe he was here, he'd somehow disappear.

  Then the shower curtain opened, and this time he already had the knife.

  I jolted awake from the nightmare, drenched in sweat, panting like Boomer after a run.

  Speaking of, where was my dog? What about the guy in the woods last night? Was it really Luke, or had Voldemort found me?

  Holy shit, where were the girls?

  I burst out of my room, and there they were, at the kitchen table, Poe sprawled out, Audrey sitting across from her. They both looked up at me.

  "Are you all right?" I blurted.

  "Shockingly, yes," Poe said.

  "Want some coffee?" Audrey asked.

  My heart clattered and banged in my chest. "Um...sure. Thank you."

  Audrey brought me a mug. She'd set the table with the sugar bowl and creamer already.

  "Bad dream?" Poe suggested, eyes flicking up and down my form.

  I nodded.

  "You talked in your sleep all the time at Gran's."

  "Sor
ry," I muttered. I wondered if I'd said anything that would make her worry. Then again, worry for her aunt didn't seem to be one of Poe's problems, and that was good. I wanted to help her, not add to her burdens.

  "Want me to make waffles?" I asked. Collier Rhodes's houseboat was equipped with every appliance known to Williams-Sonoma.

  "I have to work," Audrey said. "I'm gonna walk down to the boatyard. But thank you so much for having me over," she said to me. "And, Poe, it was nice hanging out."

  "Yeah. Same here." She gave an awkward smile, and my heart tugged. I was almost positive that under her tough-girl act was a lonely kid.

  I hugged Audrey. "Thanks for coming, honey. Drop by anytime."

  "I will! Thanks. This was really fun. Bye, Boomer." She ruffled my dog's fur, then grabbed her backpack and left.

  "She's so nice," I said, sitting down.

  "Bet you wish she was your niece instead of me."

  I took a sip of coffee. "Nah. She doesn't have blue hair, and I love blue hair."

  Poe rolled her eyes, practically dislocating them, reached for the coffee and winced. There was a damp mark on the shoulder of her T-shirt.

  "How's that tattoo?" I asked.

  "Fine."

  "Mind if I look at it?"

  "Yes, I do mind. Too pervy."

  "I'm thinking it might be infected. I'm a doctor, remember?"

  She hesitated, then pulled her shirt up.

  Yep. Those angel wings were oozing. "I'll get some bacitracin. Hang on."

  Once, when I visited and Poe was about four, she had loved pretending to be sick so I could fuss over her. She'd hold up her little hand and I'd put a Band-Aid on her finger and give her a Hershey's Kiss to make it better, then take her temperature and prop her up with pillows. "You just rest," I'd say, "and Auntie will rub your feet."

  That had been the best visit. I'd really thought Lily and I would be close after that one. She even hugged me when I left.

  When I'd called a week later, she didn't answer or return my call or answer the subsequent email.

  I went to the bathroom and got the first-aid kit and a clean facecloth, then ran it under hot water and wrung it out. Poe sat at the table, her back to me. Her shoulder blades were those of a little girl's, it seemed, thin and fragile.

  "Is it gross?" Poe asked, and for once, there wasn't any snark in her tone.

  "Not to me," I said, gently pressing the cloth against her tattoo. "I've seen gross, and this doesn't even come close."

  "What are some gross things you've seen?" she asked. Gasp! Interest in her aunt's profession!

  "Well, there was this woman who came into the office because she had bad breath. And I'm not talking onions-at-lunch bad breath." I eased the hot compress off and put on some bacitracin, covered it with gauze and taped it in place, then held an ice pack against it to help with the swelling. "Her breath smelled like feces. Actual sewage."