She turned on the light. He did not blink. His eyes were still focused on her, right at her chest.
“Whoa,” he said. “What happened to you?”
Hailey froze, following his gaze. The coffee stain. From her Starbucks. It was worse than she’d realized. It had been there all day.
“Feldmans back at it?”
“No, I was just... clumsy. What’s going on?” But before he could answer, she saw the check in his hand, recognized the color of the paper and the font of the serial numbers.
13.
There used to be this unwritten understanding in Bratenahl that everyone would share the main path down to the waterfront, even though technically it runs through private land. It had been this way— a gentlemen’s agreement—since the dawn of the twentieth century. In recent years, though, the families in the abutting estates got together and decided that the clock had run down on free beach access for every slob in the neighborhood.
One look at the local papers will tell you that this has not been a popular decision, and it was only aggravated when new development began to cut off other, lesser-used paths to the lake. But I get it: Why should these homeowners let people trespass on their private property? Whowants some random in a banana hammock and flip-flops peeking in the windows at your art collection, or watching your kids play Marco Polo in your pool? The Beach Lords maintained they didn’t have a problem with their freeloading fellow Bratenahlers per se; their focus was on a potential outsider, they said, some serial killer who happened to be passing through this part of Cleveland, waiting for just the right ungated path to go down, who would no doubt snatch any privileged offspring right out of their $20,000 tree houses. It was their right! one Mrs. Martin Leland toldThe Plain Dealer. It was their prerogative to protect their babies from strangers!
I’m all for a man’s home being his castle, but I will venture that this is bad parenting on the part of this Leland woman. I mean, sure, you can manage like that for a while, in a suburb. You can make your advances on Whole Foods in Rocky River and Crate & Barrel in Beachwood in your souped-up SUV tank, with maybe a concealed-carry in your glove box for good measure. But sooner or later, real life is going to hit your little brats like a load of artisanally crafted bricks, the way this world is going.
My own father, God rest his soul, was a big believer in getting young persons ready for the harsh environment we live in. He sent me off through Central Park late at night on my shiny new bike (goodbye, bike!) and let me ride the subway alone as soon as I could see over the turnstile (hello, pickpockets and muggers!). There was no greater badge of honorthan when I was thirteen and some guy in a ski mask held a gun to the back of my head right in the middle of Fifth Avenue. And you survived to tell the tale, was what my father said afterward. Good for you kid!
I did survive (goodbye, wallet!), and so I can tell you, based on all of my years of practical experience in the field, that stranger danger is not what you should be worrying about. It’s the people you know who will really fuck you over.
Someone should tell Mrs. Martin Leland this, before one of her landlocked neighbors finally loses it and burns down her house because of a three-foot gate across a cobblestone path that leads to a beach that’s too cold to sit on for ten months of the year. Stranger things have happened.
14.
Mack
He had never known Hailey to be this reckless.
She was flying down I-95, going at least thirty miles per hour over the limit, overtaking even the boy-racers in their ricers. She hadn’t said much since they passed through the edge of Virginia, where they’d stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel. Mack had driven the first seven hours or so, and under normal circumstances he would have polished off his Sunrise Sampler, laid back the passenger seat, and fallen asleep, especially since they’d left home at 4:00 a.m. He should have been drifting off gangsta-style, safe in the knowledge that Hailey drove like a little old lady, but today she was scaring him half to death. He tried to suppress his gasps—he hated when she got dramatic abouthisdriving—but it wasn’t easy, especially when she was inches from the rear bumper of a Honda CRX that was itself doing ninety-five.
The check had thrown her, that he could tell. It was all well and good to spend Sunshine Enterprises’s money when it was inMack’s name, but now that she’d been officially dragged into it, Hailey had gone into panic mode. She’d stood there in the family room two nights before, staring at her name on the payee line, and then at Mack. She’d acted like he’d tricked her, so much so that he began to wonder if he had. They’d agreed not to cash this one—that part was easy—but she still seemed off... stiff somehow. Even stiffer than usual. And then she’d gone and agreed way too quickly to this fool’s errand to Jupiter. It had been so easy to convince her to leave the kids with her parents and to take time off work that it felt to Mack as if he’d blinked in Cleveland and ended up south of the Mason-Dixon with a complete stranger.
What Mack was doing here was taking charge;of coursethey were not going to cash that check, and so he needed a plan for his mother before they faced down those $10,000 monthly bills. Inviting Hailey to come along with him had been an afterthought, a courtesy, and he’d expected a firmnoinstead of the “Okay” that came from her lips. Maybe she saw this as a way to hurry his return to work, or maybe she just wanted to get as far away from the temptation of that check as possible, because it was fucking tempting. She’d left it pinned to the corkboard that hung next to the refrigerator, among the birthday party invites and a flyer for the Halloween parade. More recklessness on her part—who sticks $25,000 to the wall of their kitchen? She was trying to make a point, Mack knew; it was as if she’d taped his bad report card to the fridge door.
“What will your parents think?” he’d wondered aloud. Twenty-five grand might as well have been a million to the Byers, who were staying at the house with the girls so the school run would be easier.
“They’ll think it’s a mistake, which it is,” Hailey had barked at him. “We’ll figure it out when we get back, return the money to whoever sent it. I don’t want to talk about it now.”
She still didn’t want to talk about it, or anything else. They sped past billboards advertising fireworks and strip clubs and tracked their progress on the signs for South of the Border—YOUNEVERSAUSAGE APLACE!YOU’REALWAYS AWEINER ATPEDRO’S!JUST TEN MORE MILES!
“Should we stop for a quickie?” Mack asked Hailey, gripping the door handle as they weaved around an ancient Ford Probe.
Hailey managed the ghost of a smile, but otherwise gave no sign of fondness at the memory he was referring to: in the spring of their senior year at Duke, they’d been on their way to Myrtle Beach with a carload of friends. On a dare, and with enough beers in them to make it seem like a good idea, they’d had sex in the disabled bathroom of the giant tourist-trap service station, exiting to the claps and cheers of half a dozen truck drivers. He’d known then that Hailey was his soulmate: smart, beautiful, and more than a little rough... not around the edges, but way deep in the cracks where no one could see it but him. He still had the faded Sombrero mug he’d bought that day in his office. He shifted in his seat at the memory, but Hailey stared straight ahead, expressionless.
When the SOTB mileage signs finally reached zero, they did not stop for a quickie, but pressed on for nine more hours, barely pausing to eat and pee. They slept a little in a Best Western on the edge of Jupiter, in side-by-side double beds. Mack dreamed that he’d accidentally let Gulliver loose in a parking lot, and he was trying to dodge cars and giant sombreros to catch him before Hailey noticed. When he woke, covered in sweat and freezing in the air-conditioning, he wondered what would have happened if his dream self had simply asked for Hailey’s help, instead of hiding from her like a bad little kid.
* * *
Sandy Hollow felt different with his wife there. Or maybe it was that he’d visited twice in a single month. He’d been coming here (more or less) annually for fifteen years, and yet had hardly noticed the ocean views before, or how cushy the furniture in the lobby was. He’d always entered the place with his head down, his jaw clenched. Now he saw it as if for the first time, this luxurious God’s waiting room by the sea. It probablywasworth ten grand a month. He hoped his wife thought so too, since it was her money they’d have to spend, at least until they could make a change or work something out. Hailey had never been to Sandy Hollow, had never met his mother even after all this time, and Mack stumbled at the introductions.
“Well, here she is,” he said as he rounded the final corner to Leonora’s room, his throat closing up with the smell of old age and disinfectant. He wasn’t quite sure whether he was presenting his mom to Hailey or vice versa, but the stakes felt high. His stomach churned with watery orange juice and coffee, his back throbbed from the hotel mattress, and his eyes were dry and stinging from the stale air of various climate-controlled environs. What if Hailey went allHaileyon his mom, and rushed through this encounter like it was some kind of sidebar? Or she might continue this judgy, quiet thing she’d been doing lately, and just shrug her shoulders at the sight of his mother—after all, Leonora was a disappointment to her too. Their daughters were down two grandparents right from the word go, and Hailey had been denied the basic human right to complain about your mother-in-law. The prospect of a disappointed silence from both Mrs. Evanses, of such a terrible combination of emptiness and resentment, brought forth a verbal diarrhea like Mack had never experienced.
“Looks like they’re doing breakfast now, maybe we should come back. It’s going to be hard to top the food here, if we have to move her. They’re limited as to what she can eat, of course, but Tilda says they do a pretty good job of offering variety, and even though it’s hard to know exactly how much she’s aware of, it’s a good sign that she can still digest real food. She has to be fed, of course, but—”
He stopped because Hailey had reached his mother’s bedside, had stepped around the untouched breakfast tray and moved in close.
“Hello,” Hailey said softly, and Mack heard himself exhale. His mom returned his wife’s gaze, but only by coincidence. And yet Hailey took his mother’s hand in both of her own and gently uncurled Leonora’s fingers. “I’ve been waiting such a long time to meet you.”
