I didn’t have a plan for when I got to the front door. How do you say hello when you’ve been gone for so long?
So I stayed in the car for a minute too long, maybe five minutes too long, tapping on the steering wheel. I willed someone to open the door so I wouldn’t actually have to ring the bell and give them the chance to slam it in my face.
Then I heard sirens in the distance. Except they were getting closer.
I looked in my rearview mirror to see a squad car racing down the driveway, its lights flashing.
A police officer stepped out of his vehicle, screaming into his megaphone, apparently at me.
What was happening? I got out of the car, squinting toward the squad car in the afternoon sun.
“Step out of the car.”
“I am out of the car!”
“Step further out of the car. And keep your hands by your sides!” the officer yelled.
I pointed toward the house. “No! See, this is my family’s home.”
“HANDS BY YOUR SIDES!”
I put my hands down as the officer walked over from his squad car, the sun backlighting him. It took me a second to place him: Zeddy Morgan, fellow graduate of East Hampton High. Fellow native. He’d had a crush on me when I was in sixth grade—or was it seventh?—and left a pack of half-eaten Twizzlers and a love note by the front door. A front door he was now trying to keep me away from.
“Zeddy?” I said.
I gave him a smile, relieved that whatever had started this misunderstanding, it was about to be over.
A look of recognition swept across his face. “Sunny? Sunny Stephens! What are you doing here?”
“Visiting.”
“Visiting who?”
I looked at him, confused.
His face turned beet red. “Sorry to do this, but the owners want you to get off the property.”
I pointed in the direction of the house—my childhood house. “It’s my property,” I said.
“Yeah . . . not anymore,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The new owners took it over a few years back. Celebrity folk. Very private. They’re not here too often.” Then he pulled out his notepad and started writing me a ticket. “Though they are here now.”
He handed over the ticket. I looked down at it, still trying to process what he’d said about my family’s house, no longer in my family. And then trying to process what the ticket said: $500.00. Trespassing.
“Zeddy, you’ve got to be kidding!” I said. “We used to live here. Would you just explain to the owner?”
He shrugged. “Already did.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said you don’t live here anymore.”
I put the ticket in my pocket. “Nice.”
I looked in the direction of the house.
“VERY NICE!” I screamed.
“All right, all right,” Zeddy said, motioning toward my car, motioning for me to leave. “Let’s not make a scene. I’m going to meet the guys at The Sloppy Tuna. Why don’t you come? Five-dollar oysters, two-fifty beers. And they usually just let me drink for free. I can see what I can do. Considering the ticket.”
It was a terrible invitation. But it was the only one I had.
I nodded my agreement, and Zeddy opened my car door.
Then I noticed movement on the guesthouse porch. A little girl. At least, I thought it was a little girl. All I could confirm was that whoever it was who raced out of the doorway and back into the house was a blur of blond curls and glasses and skinny, adept legs.
I turned back toward Zeddy.
“So . . . you remember how to get there?” he said. “Just take a left on Old Montauk and—”
“Zeddy, are they living in the guesthouse?”
He looked away. “No.”
“Zeddy!”
“They may be living in the guesthouse,” he said.
“And you didn’t want to mention that?”
He shrugged. “Not my information to share.”
I walked down the driveway and toward the small guesthouse, the ocean breeze growing stronger, propelling me forward.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” Zeddy called out. “COME BACK! Five-dollar oysters. Two-fifty beers.”
I kept moving, taking the front steps two at a time, ringing the doorbell.
“It’s my treat!” he said.
She opened the door. She was barefoot in a baby-doll dress (did people still wear baby-doll dresses?) with a ballet slipper in one hand and a jar of peanut butter in the other. And she had curlers in her hair. At least they looked like curlers until I realized they were sticky balls of the peanut butter.
And yet she looked me up and down, and rolled her eyes. “Of course!” she said.
The first words my sister had said to me in five years.
14
I sat at the kitchen counter, my sister perched over the sink, washing the peanut butter out of her hair. I tried not to make it obvious as I looked around. The guesthouse was more of a guest cottage: a living area with a loft above it, a small kitchen, one bedroom in the back. My sister had decorated it (if you could use that word) with bright throw rugs and sofas, large chairs, my niece’s artwork everywhere. Not an empty square foot. It made the house look even smaller.
“I’m leaving for work in five minutes, so you better make this quick,” she said.
I looked up at her. She was still tugging ferociously at her hair. “Who did you sell the house to?”
“A celebrity and her husband. Doesn’t matter. They’re here, like . . . never.”
“They’re here enough to be assholes,” I said.
“Well, I don’t see it that way.”
She kept pulling at her hair, the kitchen reeking of peanut butter.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Is the smell bothering you?” She motioned toward the front door. “Because you’re free to go.”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well, Sammy thinks it’s hilarious to put peanut butter in my hair whenever I sleep. And I made the mistake of taking a nap, since I’m on the late shift tonight. So currently I’m in the process of getting it out and trying not to kill her!”
She said this last part very loudly, and I noticed movement in the loft above. Sammy.
Samantha. Her daughter. My niece. I put a thousand-dollar check into an education trust fund for her every birthday. I hadn’t laid eyes on her since she was two months old. My heart started racing at the sight of her. And, quite honestly, at the thought I couldn’t stop myself from having: Could I get that six grand back, if I promised to replace it later? It would be enough for a shitty sublet in New York for the month, it would be enough until I was made whole again.
“We can skip the formalities, I know why you’re here. I mean, I said to Thomas, she is definitely going to show up, and he said she would never. But I knew.”
I knew she was setting me up by saying Thomas. The name of someone that I should have known and didn’t. Instead of taking her bait, I searched her finger for a wedding ring. Nothing there.
“Look, I have to get to work,” my sister said. “So if you could get to what you need, I’d like to speed this little visit up. And if you’re looking for money—”
“I’m not,” I said. “I just need a few days to hide out.”