The Last September: A Novel

“I THOUGHT I WOULD die,” Maxine said.

We were back inside the house, Sarah and I—Ladd having driven away before we gathered ourselves from the lake. I put Sarah down on the floor and an impressive hunk of sand dropped from her bathing suit. Maxine grabbed a broom and started sweeping furiously, still wearing her nightgown, her hair disarranged from sleep. Her salient trait had always been a cool put-togetherness; it was disconcerting, this new impression of utter disarray.

“I woke up,” she went on, “and your bedroom door was open and both of you were gone. Then the little dog is scratching at the door, all frantic. I was almost too scared to open it.”

I could imagine Maxine, mustering up her courage to open the door just narrowly enough to let the dog shoot through. Lightfoot, recovered from whatever fright Ladd had given her, jumped up on a broad leather armchair. With the broom, Maxine reached out and gently shoved her off. “Then I look out the window,” she said, “and there’s this man . . .”

“It was just Ladd,” I said, conscious that my voice should sound soothing and not defensive. As far as Maxine knew, Ladd was not upsetting.

“I know that now,” Maxine said. “But for that one second . . . I thought I would die.” She looked briefly remorseful at repeating that most extreme of expressions, but then, reconsidering, wanting to affect me, she said it again. “I thought I would die.”

“Well, you didn’t,” I said. “Right? Here we are. Alive, still.”

She stopped sweeping and closed her eyes. A buzzing sounded from my purse. At any other moment, I would have ignored it, but grateful for the interruption I hustled across the room. Probably it annoyed Maxine, the way I tossed my purse on the nearest available surface and forgot about it until it was time to leave again. She always hung hers on the coat stand by the front door. Fishing for my phone, I made a mental note to start doing the same.

“It’s Charlie’s father,” I told Maxine before I answered.

“Listen, Brett,” Bob said. Sometimes family can be most evident in a person’s voice. Traces of Charlie and Eli, like living molecules, came wafting in. He said, “I’m heading back to Florida tomorrow and I need to get the keys from you.”

“The keys?”

“The keys to the house. Don’t you have keys?”

“I do.”

“Meet me at the Olde Pub,” he said. “It opens at eleven.”

“He wants his keys back,” I told Maxine when I hung up. Her eyes widened, and I could tell that for a moment she wanted to exclaim over this, the nerve, how could he. But then something shifted, and she kept quiet. I realized that although I’d been staying here in this house for over a week—with no particular plans to go anywhere else—I didn’t have a key. A year ago, my key chain had rattled with our apartment key, and the one to our building, the ones for my office at school. Now, once I handed Bob Moss back his house key, the only key I’d own would be the one to our old car, Charlie’s mother’s car. And quite possibly I’d have no place to drive it.

FOR SO LONG, CARRYING Sarah everywhere, I’d thought life would be easier once she learned to walk. In the parking lot of the Olde Pub, she squirmed in my arms with much more strength than someone her age and size should possess. The second I put her down she didn’t walk but ran, in the direction opposite the restaurant, toward a patch of grass and a couple Canada geese. The larger one spread its wings in warning, and I sprinted after her.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said, in a singsong voice, scooping her up and biting her cheek. She laughed, a burbly giggle, and a small piece of joy rose up inside me. It shocked me, that joy was still a possibility.

“Hey,” I said, holding her fast. My voice sounded so normal. “I know you just learned to walk. When did you learn to run?”

“Run,” she yelled, a primal yawp.