“Yeah,” I said. “So I’ll stay for the haunted house, to help out. And then I’m headed back to New York.” My stomach twisted as I said the words out loud. But this was the plan. It was only feeling wrong because Michael was here, looking so sad.
“Okay,” he said, and I wished for him to beg me not to go, though I’d known he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t need me here, and I wasn’t part of his plan any more than he was part of mine. What we’d had was . . . wonderful. Magical. But that was only because it had been a fantasy.
“And with the house,” I began.
“I’ll just finish things up. Get it painted.”
“Right.” I felt uncomfortable, like I didn’t belong here at all. “And so you can finish up your six months, and then I’ll live here for three months after you move out. We can sell it after that.”
“You’re coming back?”
“I’ll have to, right?”
He nodded.
“At least part time. I’ll talk to Anders to see what’s permissible.”
“Right.” He looked disappointed again. “You understand, don’t you?” He said suddenly.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to hear what I already knew.
“It’s Daniel,” he went on, his eyes begging me to tell him it was okay. “I have to do better for him. Be the right kind of man.”
The unhappy kind, I wanted to say. But I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. “Okay,” I said instead. Wasn’t I leaving anyway? Who was I to tell him he was doing things wrong?
“I just have to see him succeed. Grow up and establish himself.”
“And then?” I asked.
“That’s it,” he said.
That was it. He refused to make any plans for himself, refused to do anything to claim a piece of his own happiness. Instead, he’d martyr himself in the name of his son, out of fear of his ex-wife, and in the name of being a better man. But he couldn’t see that half a man would never be enough for anyone, especially himself.
“Okay,” I said. “So I’ll see you Saturday afternoon to set up.”
“Right,” he said, sounding defeated as the porch lights illuminated his burnished hair from behind, making him look like he was wearing a halo. My heart twisted a little, watching him. It hurt for me, for what I felt like I’d gotten a tiny little taste of and then had snatched away. But it hurt more for him. Because if Michael Tucker were willing to accept that he deserved to be happy too, that maybe we were happy together, then I’d fight for it. But he had to fight first.
I turned and walked back out the big iron gates, feeling a little bit like I’d turned back the clock to the first days after I’d been home from New York.
My heart ached. My soul felt wrung out.
And I was tired. So tired.
31
Emmett Speaks
Michael
“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one,” Emmett said, shaking his head Thursday at the store as we hauled heavy rubber matting from one place to another to make room for the fall seasonal items.
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked. My voice was harsh, and it matched my mood. I’d been angry and frustrated since the weekend, and having Addie stop by to tell me she was going back to New York just made the entire world look bleak and hopeless.
It was ridiculous. A week ago, I’d felt like every day was a new adventure, like even discovering a raccoon infestation was exciting.
Now?
There was nothing to look forward to but an endless parade of days without Daniel interspersed by days with him. The handoff of my son was the only thing that really marked time going forward and even that might potentially be coming to an end if Shelly had her way.
“It means,” Emmett said, coming to stand in front of me with his thick arms crossed and sweat trickling down his face. “That you are a dumbass.”
Virgil took up a spot next to Emmett, nodding his stringy-haired agreement.
“The first time I’ve heard you put more than two words together in five years it was to tell me that?” I asked, pushing around them to stack another heavy mat. The punishing work felt like a debt I owed, and I hoped it would wear me out enough to fall straight to sleep instead of laying for hours wondering what Addie was doing.
“That Tanner chick liked you, loser,” Emmett said.
Oh God. Was I really going to have to have a heart-to-heart with these two?
“Okay, thanks for your input.” I turned and picked up another mat.
“And you’re wrecking it,” he pointed out.
“She’s hot, too,” Virgil added.
“Enough,” I said spinning to face them, dropping the heavy mat between us with a thunk. “Enough. I know. I know what I did, and who with, and I don’t need you questioning the decision. I need to focus on raising my son, and on making sure Shelly sees me doing a good job at that so that I have the opportunity to continue doing it.”
“Why you letting her run your life, man?” Virgil asked.
I clenched my teeth. “Because she is the mother of my son.”
“So she gets a say about what you do with him, but not really about what you do with little Mike.” Virgil said.
“Little Mike?” I asked just before my brain caught up. “Oh for fuck’s sake, guys.”
“I wasn’t going to say this,” Virgil said quietly, leaning in. “But you were acting really happy there for a while. Like super happy.”
I was not enjoying this conversation at all. I glared at them both, willing them to suddenly morph into valuable employees. Quiet employees.
“Yeah, like you were in love even,” Emmett suggested.
“I am not in love with Addison Tanner!” I nearly yelled it, and Helen Manchester turned to stare at me, her hand midway between pulling a pair of garden gloves from the rack and stuffing them into her bag. “Mrs. Manchester, put those back,” I said.
“I won’t tell the Tanner girl you’re in love with her if you don’t tell Tess I took these,” Helen suggested.
Tess walked around the endcap of the aisle then, holding a potted plant. “Oh for the love of Warcraft, Gran.” She snatched the gloves from the old lady and hung them back up.
“Those were going to be a gift,” Mrs. Manchester sniffed. “For you.”
“Lovely,” Tess chirped, steering the old woman away.
“Look guys,” I told my cousins, lowering my voice to a hiss. “I’m not in love with anyone, and the last thing I need is Daniel thinking I am.”
The brothers exchanged a look and then stepped into my space wearing identical frowns.
“Our dad loved our mom,” Emmett said, his voice more clear and pronounced than I’d ever heard it. “And those years, when she was alive, were the best years of our lives.” Virgil nodded. “And now that he is in love again, Virge and I are the happiest we’ve been in a long time.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“Seeing your parent in love isn’t a bad thing. It’s not selfish for you to fall in love, Mike. It’s actually good. Watching Dad fall in love with Lottie Tanner is teaching us how it’s done.” Emmett said.
There was almost too much there to unravel.
“Mom died when we were little. We almost forgot what Dad looked like happy,” Virgil said. “Until now.”
“Don’t make Dan wait to see what you look like happy,” Emmett suggested.
I knew there was a kernel of sense in their words, but I was too angry and tired, and confused about getting wisdom from tweedle dee and tweedle didn’t, and I just wanted to crawl into a cave to think.
“I’m going home,” I told them.
They shrugged and I spun on my heel and went out to the truck. Only I didn’t go to the big house on Maple. I went back to my two bedroom cottage, opened a bottle of whiskey, and sat myself down on the couch. And a couple hours later, I passed out.
“Well, this is lovely,” Shelly said, and her voice seemed to be coming through a barrel of cotton and accompanied by needles po
king into my brain.
I shook my head, setting off a ricochet of pain inside as I blinked my eyes open.
Oh yeah. The couch. The whiskey.
It was morning, and I was sprawled on the couch, the half-drunk bottle open beside me. The cushion behind my head was wet, and I could only imagine I’d lain there snoring and drooling the better part of the night.
“Why are you in my house?” I asked with a tongue that felt three inches thick.
“Because I owe you an apology.”
That brought me upright. Oh shit. Ouch. “Huh?”
“Daniel made me realize—” Shelly stopped talking, taking a step back and glancing around. “Listen, could you maybe like, take a shower or something? And then we can talk.”
“I don’t want to take a shower,” I said, though I was just being stubborn. Even I could smell that I would benefit from some hot water and soap. “Fine.”
Twenty minutes later, I walked back into my living room to find Shelly fluffing couch cushions, the vacuum pulled from the closet and resting in the corner. “You’re cleaning?”
“Just tidying up. I guilt clean, you know that.” I did remember that.
“Why are you guilty?” I was a bit hungover and also needed her to narrow it down.
She handed me a glass of water and sat on the couch. I took a seat beside her.
“I’ve been a shit,” she said.
I lifted a shoulder. “I’m used to it.”
“Thanks.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Our son,” she said, staring at her hands resting on her knees. “He made me sit down and listen to him the day after we walked in on you groping that Tanner chick.”
“Always a snappy turn of phrase at the ready.”
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “This is hard for me, Mike. But I think I was wrong. I think I’ve been wrong.”
“About what?” I could count on one hand the number of times Shelly had apologized. Once was for telling me the corsage I bought her for prom looked cheap. Once was for screaming at me that everything was my fault while she was giving birth to Dan, and once was for eating all the cookies and cream and then putting the carton back in the freezer. That was it.
“I’ve been unfair.” Her eyes raised to meet mine then, and the sparkling blue depths I remembered from high school looked worn, faded. “I haven’t been happy for a long time,” she said. “And so I didn’t want you to be happy either.”
She paused and I let that sink in. It wasn’t a shock, but it was a shock to hear it out loud. And it was more of a shock to know that Shelly was mature enough to say it.
“I didn’t like the arrangement with Addison. Not because of Dan. Because of me.
“But when we caught you guys the other night and I got angry, we went home and I guess we both thought about it. Because the next morning he sat me down and asked me to drop my custody fight. He told me that the last few months have been the best ones he’s spent with you—that you’ve been more alive than ever before.”
That crushed me to hear. I’d been failing him all along without even realizing it.
“He said that seeing you happy and being with you while you were full of joy was like getting his family back.” Her blue eyes lifted to mine again, and they were shining with unshed tears. “Mike, I feel like we’re just screwing this all up with him. He just wants to see us both happy, and I’ve been too busy being mad, and you’ve been too busy beating yourself up. All he wants is for us both to be happy.”
My heart crumpled into an even smaller ball than it had been before at the thought of Daniel being unhappy. Because of me. Because I was so busy making myself miserable I didn’t realize I was making him miserable too.
I dropped my head into my hands. “Fuck, Shell. What the hell do we do now?”
She sighed, flopping back into the couch beside me. “I don’t really know. I guess we start thinking about what we really want out of life?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Right.”
“Well, it’s easy for you,” she said.
I turned to look at her. “What?”
“You just need to tell Addison you love her.”
“I don’t love her. I just met her.” But that wasn’t really true. None of it was. I’d known her my whole life, in a way. And I found that I very much wanted to know her for the rest of it too.
“And as long as you keep lying to yourself, Daniel’s going to know you’re not happy. Do it for him, Mike.”
I stared at her, unable to believe this was Shelly telling me to go do something to make myself happy. “You really think I should?”
She nodded. “I was wrong about something else. I thought it would make me unhappier if you were happy. But I think it would make me happy to see you happy.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I mean, it might not look like it. It will also piss me off and make me jealous, but somewhere down deep inside, it’ll make me happy too.”
That sounded about right. “Thanks.”
She sighed and then pulled herself back up to sit straight. “Okay. I better go.”
I watched my ex-wife stand and walk to the door, still feeling too rough to even be polite and go open it for her. “Shell?” I called from the couch.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for this,” I said.
As the door shut behind her, I let my eyes slide shut again. For now, I needed to sleep off this hangover. And then? I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I knew it would have something to do with Addison Tanner.
32
Don’t Upend the Pens
Addison
I called my boss to let him know I was coming back early, and things didn’t go quite the way I’d imagined.
“We definitely have a place for you here,” he told me. “It just might not be the same place you left.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, Addie. It’s just . . . I mean, you upended my pen cup the day you left.”
“Is that a metaphor?” I’d been really angry about Luke that day and didn’t remember exactly what had happened when I’d stormed around work and told my boss I was taking leave.
“No. It isn’t an expression. You dumped all my pens on the floor.” He said this in the same tone one might say, “you stormed in here with a knife and took hostages.” My workplace was traditionally quite sedate. Upending pens was practically a violent offense.
“Um. Sorry?” I didn’t feel sorry. I’d been upset.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure that after that, you wouldn’t be coming right back, and we needed an analyst. So we hired one.”
That hurt a bit. “So where does that leave me?”
“Junior analyst.”
“Roger. I’m thirty-five.” I’d spent ten years working my way up to the position I’d left not four months earlier, and now I was going to be demoted?
“And a bit unpredictable.”
I would figure this out with him in person. “Fine. Fine. I’ll be back Monday.”
“Ah, okay. We’ll see you then, I guess.”
After that less-than-positive interaction, I had to scour my network for a place to stay, finally landing a couch with a friend from college for one week.
Still, I needed to get back to the city. Get back to building the life I’d intended in the first place. Once the house was sold, I could make my city life more comfortable. More permanent.
I just needed to hold to my commitment to help Daniel put on the best haunted house Singletree had ever seen, and then I’d be leaving.
“There you are!” Daniel crowed from the front porch as I strode up the walkway on Saturday, steeling myself to see Michael again.
“Here I am,” I agreed. I had worn a white dress, as instructed, so that I could play the part of Lucille Tanner, ghostly and lovelorn.
“Good. Dad needs help with the lights upstairs.”
“Ah, okay,” I said. “Or I could do something down here. Set up gravest
ones?” I gestured toward the lawn.
“Emmett and Virge have that covered.”
“Oh,” I said. It had been my plan to avoid Michael as much as possible, not help him hang lights. And though I didn’t want to let Daniel down, I also didn’t want to spend my night in an uncomfortable situation with Michael, and I was guessing he would think the same. So I did us both a favor.
I hid. Like a scared little girl.
I was still dawdling around the back door, watching a surprising number of middle school and high school kids running around setting up, when a tall thin guy with about half a beard appeared from around the back of the garage, squinting as he regarded the organized chaos around him.
“Here for the traps,” he told me.
I must have looked semi-official, the way I was guarding the back door in my efforts to avoid Michael. “Sorry, what?” I asked him. Had we planned traps into the event? Maybe Dan and Michael had changed the plans since I’d left. “Traps?”
“The coons.” He nodded once, as if to show that we were both now in agreed understanding.
“You are?” I asked.
“Liam. Exterminator.”
“Oh, you’re the guy catching the raccoons!”
“Yeah. And I got these for you.” He held out a bag that held a few things I recognized, and some I didn’t. Michael’s watch. My silver earring. A couple spoons. The ring we’d found in the little box. And a slim silver bracelet I’d never seen before. “Had ‘em in their hidey hole up there. Coons like the shiny things,” he said, and winked at me like this was a secret we shared.
“All right, Liam,” I said, moving aside. “Do what you need to do, I guess.” I watched him disappear inside the house I’d still been too chicken to enter.
It didn’t feel like my house anymore. It felt like Michael’s house now. I was beginning to question why I had even bothered to come when I heard a familiar deep voice inside. “Thanks,” Michael was saying, and every nerve in my body fired at once. I nearly fell over right there on the back step.
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