Up in the musty attic, they combined the contents of all the small bags of hand-me-downs into two giant boxes. And then they looked to the toys, seats, play mats, things that defied categorization. They agreed they’d donate all of it, rather than leave it on the curb to watch it get picked over. Jess found a women’s shelter that would be happy to take it.
“I had something like this,” Jess said, spinning the wildly patterned ball bolted to a rimmed seat with wheels. It was for learning how to walk. One of her first memories was of her father grabbing the edge before she went tumbling down the stairs and then smacking her thigh, hard, and telling her to never go near the stairs again.
“I had one, too,” Malcolm said. The seat had a complicated system of belts and clasps. He couldn’t imagine a life where he’d find it second nature to understand how these things worked.
“It’s funny,” he said.
“What is?”
But what was it he was going to say? It was so hard to capture a feeling and then make it understood, even to Jess, even to himself sometimes. He remembered being a kid, all the things he felt capable of, all the streets and avenues that branched away from his body, all the possibilities. But in the end you can only have one life. One at a time, at least. You could turn, you could pause for a while, but you couldn’t go down two streets at once. The things they didn’t end up doing, the places and people they decided against, all defined them as much as anything else, in the way negative space defines a photo or a song. The lives they didn’t lead were there, too, always with them. Only recently did he begin to see the shape those choices had made.
* * *
While Malcolm was getting settled in St. John, Jess would square away what was left to organize in Gillam and at her job, and then follow a few weeks later. Mr. Sheridan came by one evening and talked to Malcolm out on the patio. He stuck to practical things—that Gail needed a sump pump at the house, that it was dangerous for her to trim her hedges on her own, up on a ladder, but they both knew there was no stopping her. He said he wished she’d let him take out the bathtub in her main bathroom and replace it with a walk-in shower in case she fell. He made his whole house senior friendly years ago, no sense pretending life wasn’t headed full speed toward the inevitable. He repeated what Gail had already said to Malcolm, that a year was nothing, it wasn’t like he and Jess wouldn’t be back and forth—holidays, other visits—and if Malcolm didn’t mind, he and Gail would like to come down to St. John to see them. Neither of them had ever been.
“Anyway, the whole point of me stopping by is to say you don’t need to worry. I’ll look out for your mom,” Mr. Sheridan said. “Always have. Lately when I make my doctor appointments I make one for her, too, so we can go together.”
“You’ve looked out for her ever since my dad died,” Malcolm said. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize.”
“Longer than that even,” Mr. Sheridan said, and Malcolm decided to say absolutely nothing but to hold it in his hands and carry it to Jess for discussion later.
“I’m glad about you and Jess,” he said. “Your mom is, too.”
“Yeah, me too,” Malcolm said, not wanting to get into it. “Life is complicated, right?”
“Funny,” Mr. Sheridan said. “I was about to say exactly the opposite. I was just about to say how simple it is. Life is actually really simple when you boil it down.”
Why?
Because he loved her.
* * *
Malcolm’s flight was early, ten past seven in the morning. He offered to take the bus to the airport but Jess was an early riser, she wanted to drive him, plus they wouldn’t see each other for a few weeks. They decided five fifteen was early enough to leave—a summer Friday, little traffic. But they were still home at five thirty, groggy, the airport forty minutes away, so it was a mad rush and then they got lost in Queens—road construction, a detour—and Jess kept saying it was insane to be lost so close to home, going to a place they’d been so many times. He could hear the panic escalating in her voice. She’d been up late reading about how the island was evacuated in an emergency. She’d looked at a hundred images of the destruction after the last hurricane. Now, she kept leaning over the steering wheel to check the sky for planes, as if one of them might guide her.
She didn’t used to worry so much.
“We’re not lost,” Malcolm said. He read aloud the directions along side streets, narrow one-ways, wide boulevards. Next thing they were back on track.
When they got to the airport, everything was quiet, like it was not yet open for business, the coffeepots cold in the terminals, the planes still resting out back. Jess pulled up to the curb and no cops shouted at her.
“You have everything?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said. He was looking ahead at the pedestrian bridge that connected the terminal to the parking deck, and then at the bright cobalt sky above everything. An older man pulled his roller suitcase behind him as he crossed at the light, a pleasant expression on his face. “Good morning!” Malcolm said to him as he got out of the car.
Jess shook her head. Leave it to him. He’d have to sprint to his gate, but he’d probably say hello to everyone he passed on his way.
She got out of the car and walked around for a hug.
“You okay, Jess?”
“I’m just thinking, what if it doesn’t work out? This ‘reset button’ as you call it.”
Suddenly, or so it seemed, the lane filled with cars, the cops found their whistles, reps from the airlines were tagging suitcases and directing people to the correct doors. It was like witnessing the day swing open, usher everyone inside. Malcolm patted his pocket to confirm his wallet was there. He checked his phone. The driver of an enormous black truck blasted his horn as a low-flying plane passed over their heads, white bellied, and Malcolm imagined himself and all the people around him becoming smaller as it climbed higher, hauling whatever it carried deeper into the blue.
“We’re not even there yet. Why do you worry so much?”
“We haven’t really talked about it though. What will happen if we don’t like it or I can’t find work or they don’t renew your contract or—”
As she spoke, she ran her hands along his arms to his shoulders. She laced her fingers at the back of his neck and held fast. He felt overcome for a moment—all they’d been through, all that lay ahead. He kissed the part in her hair.
“What will happen? We come back home. That’s all. We just pick right up and head home.”
acknowledgments
Thank you with all my heart to my longtime first and best readers: Eleanor Henderson, Brendan Mathews, and Callie Wright. I truly can’t write anything without you three telling me all the ways it’s bad before it’s good.
My deepest thanks to Jeanine Cummins, Catherine Keane, Annette Keane, and Anna Solomon, for feedback on later drafts. Your enthusiasm helped me believe this story had promise.
Thanks to Seamus Keane, Danny Keane, and Jimmy McMorrow, for answering a thousand questions about bartending.
To Taylor Duck and Callie Wright in particular, and to the many anonymous women in various online fertility support groups, for speaking to me about your most private struggles.
Thanks to my brilliant editor, Kara Watson, whose careful questions made this novel so much stronger. To my agent, Chris Calhoun, and everyone at Scribner and Simon & Schuster who helped bring The Half Moon to the world: Jon Karp, Nan Graham, Brian Belfiglio, Wendy Sheanin, Stu Smith, Jaya Miceli, Emily Polson, Ashley Gilliam Rose, Katie Monaghan, Jason Chappell, Hope Herr-Cardillo, and so many others. I truly appreciate all the hard work you put into this.
Thank you to Jess Leeke at Penguin Michael Joseph (UK) and Jenny Meyer at Jenny Meyer Literary Agency. This makes four books together and counting!
Thank you to my parents, for always rooting for me. And most of all, thank you to Marty and our boys, for putting up with my preoccupation with this book when we were in a very real lockdown. The strange and shapeless loneliness of early Covid is in this story. I wouldn’t want to be trapped at home with anyone but you three. And I’ll never see a Monopoly board again without thinking of you dirty cheaters.