Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

Chapter Five

BEING ALONE IN THE COTTAGE at night had spooked Annie from the beginning, but that night was the worst yet. The windows had no curtains, and Theo could be watching her at any time through his telescope. She left the lights off, stumbled around in the dark, and pulled the covers over her head when she went to bed. But the dark only stirred her memories of the way everything had changed.

It had happened not long after the dumbwaiter incident. Regan was either at a riding lesson or locked in her room writing poetry. Annie had been perched on the rocks at the beach, daydreaming about being a beautiful, talented actress starring in a major motion picture when Theo had come along. He’d settled next to her, his long legs emerging from a pair of khaki shorts a little too big for him. A hermit crab had scampered through a tidal pool at their feet. He’d gazed out toward the break where the waves began to curl. “I’m sorry about some of the stuff that’s happened, Annie. Things have been weird.”

Sap that she was, she’d instantly forgiven him.

From then on, whenever Regan was occupied, Theo and Annie had hung out. He showed her some of his favorite spots on the island. He began confiding in her, at first hesitantly but gradually being more forthcoming. He told her how much he hated his boarding school and how he was writing short stories that he wouldn’t show anyone. They talked about their favorite books. She convinced herself she was the only girl he’d ever confided in. She showed him some of the drawings she now did in secret so Mariah couldn’t critique them. Finally, he’d kissed her. Her. Annie Hewitt, a gangly scarecrow of a fifteen-year-old with a too long face, too big eyes, and too curly hair.

After that, every moment that Regan was away found them together, usually inside the cave at low tide making out in the wet sand. He touched her breast through her swimsuit, and she thought she’d die of happiness. When he’d pushed the top down, she’d been embarrassed because her breasts weren’t bigger, and she’d tried to cover them with her hands. He moved her hands away and stroked each nipple with his fingers.

She was in ecstasy.

Soon they were touching each other everywhere. He unzipped her shorts and pushed his hand in her underpants. No boy had ever touched her there. His finger went inside her. She was bursting with hormones. Instantly orgasmic.

She touched him, too, and the first time she felt the wetness on her hand, she thought she’d hurt him. She was in love.

But then things changed. For no reason, he began to avoid her. He started putting her down in front of his sister and Jaycie. “Annie, don’t be such a dork. You act like a kid.”

Annie tried to talk to him alone, find out why he was being like this, but he avoided her. She found half a dozen of her precious paperback gothic novels on the bottom of the swimming pool.

One sunny July afternoon, they’d been crossing the marsh footbridge, with Annie slightly ahead of the twins and Jaycie trailing. Annie had been trying to impress Theo with how sophisticated she was by talking about her life in Manhattan. “I’ve been using the subway since I was ten, and—”

“Stop bragging,” Theo had said. And then his hand had slammed into her back.

She’d flown off the footbridge and hit the murky water facedown, her hands and forearms sinking into the muck, ooze sucking at her legs. As she tried to pull herself out, rotting strands of eel-like cordgrass and clots of blue-green algae clung to her hair, her clothes. She spat out the mud, tried to rub her eyes but couldn’t, and started to cry.

Regan and Jaycie were as horrified as Annie, and in the end, it had taken both of them to pull her from the marsh. Annie had badly skinned one knee and lost the leather sandals she’d bought with her own money. Tears slid through the muck on her cheeks as she stood on the bridge like a creature from a horror movie. “Why did you do that?”

Theo had regarded her stonily. “I don’t like braggers.”

Regan’s eyes had filled with tears. “Don’t tell, Annie! Please don’t tell. Theo will get in so much trouble. He won’t ever do anything like that again. Promise her, Theo.”

Theo had stalked away, not promising anything.

Annie hadn’t told. Not then. Not until much later.


THE NEXT MORNING, SHE WANDERED through the cottage trying to wake herself up after a fitful night’s sleep before she made the dreaded trek to Harp House. She ended up in the studio, safely out of range of Theo’s telescope. Mariah had expanded the back of the cottage to make this a spacious, well-lit workspace. The paint spatters on the bare wooden floor testified to the parade of artists who’d worked here over the years. A bright red bedspread peeked out from beneath half a dozen cardboard boxes stacked on the bed shoved into the corner. Next to the bed was a pair of cane-seated wooden chairs painted yellow.

The room’s light blue walls, red bedspread, and yellow chairs were supposed to evoke van Gogh’s painting Bedroom in Arles, while the life-size trompe l’oeil mural on the longest wall depicted the front end of a taxi crashing through a storefront window. She hoped to God that mural wasn’t the legacy because she couldn’t imagine how she’d get away with selling an entire wall.

She imagined her mother in this room, feeding the artists’ egos in ways she never did her own daughter’s. Mariah believed artists needed nurturing, but she’d refused to encourage her daughter to draw or act, even though Annie had loved doing both.

“The art world is a vipers’ pit. Even if you’re enormously talented—which you aren’t—it eats people alive. I don’t want that for you.”

Mariah would have done so much better with one of those naturally feisty little girls who didn’t care about others’ opinions. Instead she’d given birth to a shy child who lived on daydreams. Yet, in the end, Annie had been the strong one, supporting a mother who could no longer care for herself.

She set her coffee mug aside as she heard the unfamiliar sound of a vehicle approaching. She went to the living room and gazed out the window in time to see a battered white pickup stop at the end of the walk. The door opened and a woman who looked to be in her early sixties climbed down. Her bulky figure was wrapped in a gray down coat, and a serviceable pair of black boots sank into the snow. She wore no hat over her big blond bouffant but had looped a diamond-patterned black and green knit scarf around her neck. She leaned into the truck and withdrew a pink gift bag with raspberry tissue paper frothing from the top.

Annie was so happy to see a face not connected with Harp House that she nearly tripped over the painted canvas rug in her hurry to get to the door. As she opened it, a dusting of snow blew off the roof.

“I’m Barbara Rose,” the woman said with a friendly wave. “You’ve been here nearly a week. I thought it was time somebody checked in to see how you’re doing.” Her bright red lipstick stood out against her winter-pale complexion, and as she came up the steps, Annie saw a few flecks of mascara lodging in the faint puffiness under her eyes.

Annie welcomed her inside and took her coat. “Thanks for sending your husband out to help me that first day. Would you like some coffee?”

“Love it.” Beneath the coat, stretchy black pants and a royal blue sweater clung to her ample body. She took off her boots, then followed Annie into the kitchen, bringing along the gift bag and the strong floral scent of her perfume. “It’s lonely for any woman by herself on this island, but out here in the middle of nowhere . . .” The quick hunch of her shoulders turned into a shudder. “Too many things can go wrong when you’re alone.”

Not exactly the words Annie wanted to hear from a seasoned islander.

As Annie made a fresh pot of coffee, Barbara gazed around the kitchen, taking in the collection of kitschy salt and pepper shakers on the windowsill, the series of black-and-white lithographs on the wall. She seemed almost wistful. “All kinds of famous people used to come here during the summer, but I don’t remember seeing much of you.”

Annie switched on the coffeemaker. “I’m more a city person.”

“Peregrine sure isn’t a good place for a city person in the dead of winter.” Barbara liked to talk, and as the coffeemaker began to gurgle, she spoke of the exceptionally cold weather and how hard it was for the island women during the winter when their men were out in rough seas. Annie had forgotten about the complicated laws regarding when and where commercial lobstermen could set their traps, and Barbara was more than happy to fill her in.

“We only fish here from early October to the first of June. Then we concentrate on the tourists. Most of the other islands fish from May to December.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier when the weather’s warmer?”

“That’s for sure. Although, when it comes to pulling up traps, a lot of things can go wrong, even when the weather’s good. But lobster fetches a higher price during the winter, so there are advantages to fishing now.”

Annie finished making the coffee. They carried the mugs out to the table that sat in the front bay. Barbara handed Annie the pink gift bag, then took the chair across from her. It held a black-and-white scarf knitted in the same diamond-pattern as Barbara’s.

Barbara used her hand to sweep the leftover toast crumbs from Annie’s breakfast into her palm. “Knitting keeps a lot of us busy during the winter. Otherwise I start fretting. My son’s living in Bangor now. I used to see my grandson every day, but now I’m lucky if I see him every couple of months.” Her eyes clouded, as if she wanted to cry. She stood abruptly and carried the crumbs she’d collected into the kitchen. When she returned, she hadn’t quite regained her composure. “My daughter Lisa’s talking about leaving. If that happens, I’ll lose my two granddaughters.”

“Jaycie’s friend?”

Barbara nodded. “It seems like the fire at the school might be the last straw for her.”

Annie dimly recalled the small frame building that had served as the island schoolhouse. It perched just up the hill from the wharf. “I didn’t know there’d been a fire.”

“It happened in early December, right after Theo Harp arrived. An electrical fire. Burned the place to the ground.” She tapped the table with the tips of lacquer-red fingernails. “That school educated island kids for fifty years, right up to the time they left for high school on the mainland. Now we’re using an old double-wide—all the town can afford—and Lisa says she’s not goin’ to let her girls keep going to school in a trailer.”

Annie didn’t blame the women who wanted to leave. Life on a small island was more romantic in concept than in real life.

Barbara toyed with her wedding ring, a thin gold band with a very small diamond. “I’m not the only one. Judy Kester’s son’s getting lots of pressure from his wife to move in with her parents someplace in Vermont, and Tildy—” She waved her hand as if she didn’t want to keep thinking about it. “How long are you staying?”

“Till the end of March?”

“In winter, that’s a long time.”

Annie shrugged. The terms of her ownership of the cottage didn’t seem to be common knowledge, and she intended to keep it that way. Otherwise, she’d look as if she were being controlled by someone else, just like one of her puppets.

“My husband’s always telling me to butt out of other people’s business,” Barbara said, “but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t warn you that staying out here by yourself is going to be hard.”

“I’ll be fine.” Annie said it as if she believed it.