The Children (29 page)

We heard their footsteps on the stairs and we both made ourselves busy—pouring coffee, putting bread in the toaster.

“Morning!” said Laurel.

“Good morning, dear,” Joan said. “Who wants breakfast?”

Joan made us scrambled eggs, and as soon as we sat down, Spin began. “Joan, Charlotte, we wanted to have a talk. I think this is a good time, while Sally's still away. You know, Laurel and I have discussed this a great deal. We just don't see living on campus. Laurel's not going to take the teaching position. She needs to finish this manuscript. She's not going to be able to teach until her book is finished.”

Her book. She wasn't writing a book. I had been up all night. Matt had found out more about Laurel. She had never been to college or graduate school—that's why she'd suddenly decided not to apply for the teaching job. All of it, everything she had told us about herself, had been fabricated.

Joan said, “Spin, are you trying to tell us that you want to stay on here? With us?”

“I'm really sorry, Joan,” Spin said. “Laurel and I've talked about this. I've talked about it with Perry. There's no way that would work. That's too much of a strain to put on a new marriage, sharing a house with—family.”

“Besides,” Laurel said, “we're going to have some work done on the house, and we know how unsettling that would be for you, Joanie.”

“Nobody calls me Joanie,” my mother snapped. Actually, we often call her that. We children do—her children and stepchildren.

“They want to sell the house, Joan,” I said.

“No,” Joan said. “Spin, that's not true, right? Why would you sell it? Where would you live?”

“Anywhere, Joan. Anywhere I want. I'd like to live someplace that I choose, not a place that was chosen for me.”

And there it was again: the quiet rage I had heard that day with Sally.

“I could live anywhere I want, if I got my assets out of this place.”

Joan took on the stern maternal voice she had used when scolding us as children. “Spin, I didn't ask you to buy Perry's share of the house. If you hadn't done that, you'd have plenty of money.”

“You have plenty of money. You could live anywhere,” Spin said. “Joan, one of the reasons Dad kept the house separate from the marital trust is because you always complained that all your friends went to Florida in the winter. He thought that you might want to move there and he didn't want you to be burdened with the house. I remember having that conversation with you, Perry, and Dad.”

“Yes, that's true, Spin. But I didn't expect your father to die when I was still relatively young. I can't move to Florida now. This is my town. I've lived here all my life. Your father meant for me to live
here,
in this house, as long as I want. I'm not planning to move anytime soon.”

Laurel stood up and said to Spin, “This is uncomfortable for me. It's family business. I'm going upstairs, sweetie.”

After she left, I said, “Spin, listen, before you met Laurel, you were so happy at Holden. This lake project with Yale was really important to you. Now you want to abandon all that? You just met Laurel—”

“I'm calling Jim Haskell. Then I'm calling my attorney,” Joan interrupted. She stood up shakily. “Your father would be so disappointed in you right now, Spin.”

“He was
my
father, Joan. I'll have to reconcile that with myself, but it has nothing to do with you.”

Joan stormed out of the room. I started to go after her, but Spin put his hand on mine and whispered, “Wait, Lottie. I shouldn't have said that to her.”

“Let's go out on the porch,” I said.

He followed me outside and I sat on the old porch swing. He stood there, staring out at the lake.

“You know, Lottie, I thought I loved Holden, but what I really loved was that I had a neutral place to live when I was a kid. That's why I spent so much time there before I even became a student. My mom always resented the time I spent here; my dad resented the ‘influence' he thought Mom had on me. They were both happy when I was at Holden, because I wasn't with one of them or the other.”

“I get that,” I said.

“Shove over a little,” he said, and he sat next to me on the swing. “Holden was more of a home to me than either of the houses that I grew up in. My mom's house was really her husband Peter's house. This house was yours—Sally's, Joan's, and Dad's.”

“How can you even say that, Spin? Whit always made this a home for all of us. And you've always been so involved here. What about the lake study? The task force?”

“I'm just telling you the way I experienced it. When I finished school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It felt comfortable to go back there. But now I want to move on. I'm almost finished with the lake survey. The results are going to be published, my name will be on it. Laurel and I want to travel. Use my schooling and experience with inland waterways in parts of the world where clean water is a matter of life or death for the people living there.”

We could hear somebody, either Joan or Laurel, walking around upstairs.

“Spin,” I said quietly. “I get it. I really do. And I'm sure there's some way that we can work something out with the trust so that you can get your assets out. The trust should be able to purchase the house back from you, right? Or maybe, with Joanie's money, and some money I've saved, we can lease it from you.”

“No, we're selling Lakeside. We're going to do some renovations and then we're selling.”

I said, “What if things don't work out with Laurel?”

“Not this again,” Spin said.

“She's not who she pretends she is. I have proof.”

Spin turned to me angrily. “Proof of what, exactly?”

“She wasn't in an accident, she never had a sister who died.”

“I know you think that's shocking for me to hear, but I've always known that.”

“You have?” I asked.

“Well, I've known it for several months, yes. She told me before she moved here. She was trying to write a novel. It turned into sort of an online writing experiment. Maybe a little bit like your fake blog.”

I said nothing.

“Yeah, Laurel told me about it—about your whole weird virtual family.”

“That's not really what my blog was.”

“That's true, your blog is different. Your blog is about getting money by deceiving people.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn't that. Anyway, it's gone now, the blog.”

“Well, Laurel didn't profit from what she was doing online. And you're wrong about the other stuff. She did go to college and graduate school. She was on the U.S. ski team.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because she told me,” Spin said, his voice trembling with rage again.

Why hadn't he ever told us he was so angry? All we'd ever done was love him. How could he be such a fool?

Fuck him.

My sudden anger gave me relief. He was right. He was an adult, he could make his own decisions. He deserved her. I had Everett. It was time for all of us to move on.

I put my hand on Spin's arm and squeezed it gently, then I went up the back stairs to the attic.

 

TWENTY-FIVE

I was sitting in the dark when I heard Everett's truck pull in. I peered out the window and waited until he turned on the little lamp next to his kitchen window—the signal we'd used for years—inviting me over.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then opened the door and peeked out into the hallway. I walked down to the second floor. It was dark; there was no sound coming from any of the rooms. Riley, who had been asleep on the floor, rose and wandered over to me, his tail thwap-thwap-thwapping the wall as he came. I grabbed his collar and we made our way down the stairs together. Then we both crept out through the dog door. The front door is creaky; I didn't want to wake anybody.

Everett met Riley and me at his front door. He pulled me into the house, into his bed. He hadn't been gone a full day, somehow it felt like years. Afterward, we went down to the lake. The rain hadn't cooled the air, it had only made it thicker, soupier. Everything was sodden. We dove into the cool water and swam out to the float. We needed to be away from the land, Spin and Laurel's land. Away from our houses, the houses that belonged to Spin and Laurel. We lay on our backs on the float, just as we had done so many times when we were children.

I told Everett everything.

“Spin needs to know,” Everett said.

“He doesn't want to know,” I said. “Let's get out of here. Let's move. We can both work anywhere. Let's move to California.”

Everett sat up and grinned at me. “Who
are
you?” he asked.

“I'm serious,” I said. “Would you want to do something like that?”

“Hell yeah,” Everett said. “I could get a lot more business if we were someplace where I could work outside with dogs year-round. Maybe Southern California. I can't believe you're even considering this. Let's do it.”

The idea terrified me. The idea terrified and thrilled me.

“Or the San Francisco area,” Everett said. “I have a cousin there. In the meantime, let's get out more. I can't look at the two of them together. You're right: There's no point in telling Spin. He won't believe us.”

“Right,” I said.

“Let's go to the diner for breakfast tomorrow,” he said.

“Okay,” I agreed.

We did go to the diner. I didn't feel the dread when we pulled out of the driveway. I felt free. Free of Laurel and Spin. Free of Lakeside. We drove through town. At the diner, I saw an old friend from high school, Hailey Borden. She has a baby now. A little baby girl. She let me hold her as we chatted. On the ride back to the house, Everett and I talked excitedly about our plans for the move. Sally could come with us if she wanted. There would be more access to the film community in California. Joan would likely stay here in Harwich. She could afford to buy or rent anyplace that was a reasonable size. It would be good for her to move into a smaller place. She wouldn't be so overwhelmed.

Spin had married Laurel, we kept reminding each other. Nobody had forced him. He was an adult.

“He made his bed, now he can lie in it,” Everett said.

Lakeside belonged to him. He could do what he wanted with it. It was time to get on with our lives.

Spin was standing ankle-deep in the lake when we returned to the house. He was frowning at something in the water. He leaned over and plucked out a long, spirally weed and examined it.

“Look at him,” Everett said, chuckling.

“I know,” I said.

Spin turned and gave us a smile.

I never held a baby before Spin was born. Sally and I loved to help the nanny care for him and play with him. The nanny's name was Camilla. She was English, and she had a degree in early childhood development. When Spin started smiling at us—real smiles, not those newborn grimaces—Camilla explained that babies start smiling around four or five weeks of age. That was nature's way of ensuring that the mother/baby bond remains strong.

“At first, the mum is just awash with love for the new baby, but after a few weeks, the constant feeding and caring becomes tiresome. The mum—well, most mums without help are exhausted. But then, a miracle! The baby starts to recognize faces. And when he sees a face, it makes him smile. This is just when the mum needs it most, because that smile does something to her chemistry, to her emotions. It's just nature's way of ensuring that she keeps caring for her little one.”

Sally and I spent hours pressing our faces close to Spin just to get him to smile. Later we did it to get that delicious giggle of his. It's not just a baby's mother who has her chemistry changed by the smile of an infant.

“I have to tell him,” Everett said after a moment.

“I know,” I said.

Spin wandered over to the truck and leaned in on Everett's side. “Hey, bud, you wanna give me a hand this afternoon? I have to do a final reading for this lake survey. You wanna come out and give me a hand for an hour or two?”

“Sure,” said Everett.

“Great,” Spin said. He managed to give me a forced smile. “I just have to run over to Holden and grab my meters and some other equipment I left there.”

“I'll tell him when we're out on the lake,” Everett said to me when Spin was gone. “That way, Laurel won't be able to interfere. I'm just going to tell him about the night of the Fourth. I'll let him find out the rest on his own.”

 

TWENTY-SIX

The other day, I came across another video Spin sent me during that week in Sun Valley, that week he first met Laurel. He couldn't have shot it on the same day as the one he shot with Laurel, because that day had been snowy and gray. The day of this video, the sky is blue, the snow is fresh and untouched. He's at the top of another peak, only this time he's alone. What I love about this video is that you can see his shadow for most of the run. From the moment he pushes off until he reaches the bottom of the mountain, almost seven minutes later, he doesn't stop, and you can see his entire shadow the whole way down. For the longest time, I thought it was lucky footage, I thought the sun just happened to be hitting the mountain at exactly the right angle. Spin has always had a gracefulness. I know that's not a word often used to describe men, but it's the perfect word to describe Spin's lithe, silent shadow in that footage—the shoulders and hips moving up down, up down, just barely, just the right amount to coast down the mountain. He made everything look so easy.

I thought it was just luck that his shadow was captured on that video. I thought it just happened that the sun was at the exact angle at that time. The other day, though, something occurred to me. I watched it again. I called Sally. She was in a recording session. She called me during a break.