My father grabs my hair, roaring—
I stand up, open the patio door to let in the cool air, take in deep lungfuls. I told Phoebe I was going to call my therapist, and it’s important, but I hold the phone in my palm, feeling texts buzz and buzz and buzz again.
From Phoebe:
Suze? Was it weird?
Suze, you okay?
Are you all right?
The air fills my head, my lungs, settles me. On top of the Starfish Queen, which is what we always called the regal middle rock, birds touch down and take flight, bringing food to others, keeping watch for hawks.
I text: I’m okay. Sorry. Got distracted. My nerves are pretty raw.
I bet. You want us to bring Yul Brynner back?
Some small part of me had been maybe hoping to go back down there tonight, but that’s foolish. I live here. I can’t go live at my friend’s house, even if I did when I was a teenager, though it wasn’t her house then. It was Beryl’s.
Sure. Joel had to go get some parts, so I have to stay here.
Jasmine wants to come over anyway. She loves that house as much as we did.
She sounds so friendly. It breaks my heart, because the whole reason I came back is to work out all the things between us, to finally tell her the truth. But instinctively, I know that the fight that ostensibly wounded our trust in each other was nothing compared to this secret, the secret I’ve kept for decades.
What would Beryl do? I wonder.
I’ll put the kettle on.
Chapter Thirteen
Phoebe
Jasmine and I load Yul Brynner into his carrier and drive him up the hill. Maui insists he needs to be included, which makes for a crowded cab. I feel weirdly happy and keep forgetting why, and then I hear Ben’s voice again, asking me out.
On a date.
I’m excited to tell Suze. She knows how long it has been since I’ve had a date or the possibility of a relationship, or even a good roll in the hay. Between caring for Amma in her last two years and the pandemic, I didn’t have many opportunities. Or desire, honestly, though I thought I’d get over missing sex with another person and I haven’t.
Jasmine chatters about the history of Ragdoll cats, about which she has written an entire page in her little notebook. I’m murmuring in response, but honestly, my mind keeps returning to Ben’s warm eyes, his big, solid body—
Oh, don’t do this!
The warning sounds in a nasty voice in my head. Don’t get your hopes up, who do you think you are, you’re too old for this nonsense, men have never really liked you, why do you think this would be any different?
A big blue truck with BLUE RIVER ELECTRIC painted on the side is parked in the circular driveway. I did know that Joel lived in town—I’ve seen him sometimes in the store or at a restaurant, always by himself, wrapped in a weary sort of sadness that comes from life losses. His mother died during the pandemic, which I saw in the Blue Cove Crier, a weekly newspaper that comes out every Wednesday, but I don’t know anything more. I had such a wretched crush on him when we were teenagers, a crush that ended only when he was sent away for burning down the church.
Why did I always yearn for a boy, anyway? After Joel was sent away and I was in high school, I transferred the longing to Billy Mascarenes, a dark-haired charmer who had more girls than he knew what to do with, and pined for him for a full year. Finally, I had an actual relationship in my senior year, with a fellow artist named Andy who’d been in classes with me for years. We connected over an assignment to imitate our favorite artists and both of us chose comic books. We learned about each other’s minds and bodies and hearts, and broke up only when his family moved away after graduation.
But as I hold the door for Jasmine and Maui to jump down, Joel comes out the front door, a thick utility belt around his waist. He’s still good-looking in a haunted sort of way. I wonder what has left those lines around his mouth.
Seeing me, he lifts his chin my direction. “Hey, Phoebe! How are you? You guys are still friends, huh?”
I’ve been keeping her at such a distance that this is a loaded question, but honestly, how do you stop being someone’s sister? Suze is my family. There’s unresolved stuff between us, but . . . “Yep. How’s it going back in Blue Cove?”
A nod. “Good enough. I was sorry to hear about your grandmother. She was one of the best people I’ve ever known.”
“She was. I still miss her.”
He gives Jasmine a kind smile. “Hello, young lady. Is this your grandmother?”
“She’s my nana,” Jasmine says. “We brought Yul Brynner back to Suze.”
He gives me a quizzical look. “Like The King and I?”
“Yep.” I touch my girl’s head. “This is Jasmine.”
“Like Aladdin,” she pipes up.
It makes him laugh. “Smart, too, I think. She’s inside.”
Maui bounds up the steps, Jasmine right behind him with the cat carrier in hand, leaning sideways to balance the weight of it.
“How are you, Phoebe?” Joel opens a toolbox on the side of the truck and reaches inside. “I see the flower farm every morning on my way down the mountain. It’s a splendor.”
“A splendor,” I repeat, smiling. “You always had the most surprising vocabulary for a guy.”
“Yeah?” He glances at me over his shoulder, and I remember how bad my crush was, a living thing that was born of a single week of kisses followed by nothing at all. “Thanks,” he says as he straightens. He’s gathered a handful of bits and pieces. Waits for me, and we walk up the steps. “You were the only person I ever met who read more than I did.”
“Suze was pretty close.”
“Nah. You always outread us both.” He gestures, and I step inside ahead of him. Maui bounds toward me, slurps my hand, runs back toward the kitchen, his nails clattering on the floor. I’m here all the time in my capacity as caretaker, for which Suze pays me too much money. I’ve repeatedly told her I’d do it for free, for the love of the place, but she continues to deposit a ridiculous sum in my account every month.
The thing is, I do love the pleasure of the quiet rooms when I’m here by myself, disturbed by nothing but my ghostly presence. I love the space and have since I climbed in a window when I was ten and found the abandoned rooms still perfectly furnished, as if someone ran away in the middle of the night. The truth was much sadder—an old man died here and had no heirs, so the place fell into probate and was somehow forgotten.
Filled now with animals and a little girl and Suze and Joel, it’s an entirely different place. The kettle has made the window behind it steamy. A seagull is sitting on the railing outside. Jasmine and Maui have landed in the living room, near the bookcases, and Joel walks toward the back of the kitchen. “Don’t turn anything on,” Suze says, poking her head into the living room from the kitchen. “The electricity is off.”
“Okay.”
Suze stands by the counter, one foot over the other—it’s a tic we both have, one among many. In the soft, stormy light, she looks haggard. Older than I could ever have imagined back in the day.
As if to mock us, behind her on the shelf is a photo of the two of us when we were three weeks past our twenty-first birthdays, at the premiere of A Woman for the Ages.
She invited Amma, too, but Amma didn’t want to bother with all the folderol and dressing up. I was a nervous wreck on the inside, but my entire job for the night was to be support for Suze, who pretended she wasn’t nervous, but I knew she was by the torn thumbnail on her left hand, which a nail tech fixed with some glue and fresh polish and then painted with a bitter something to keep her from doing it again.