You’ve got a few super-modern houses, mostly built by basketball and football stars that are hardly ever in them, and on the edges of the township, tucked away behind the fire station, there are some streets of more modest homes from the postwar housing boom. I always imagine that the people who live there—a mix of normal retirees and young, less affluent families—must get sick of having to look out across the untended back lots of the lakefront behemoths every time they leave their houses.
Most citizens of Bratenahl do make an effort, though. Even the poorest of the rich folks put a flag up for the Fourth of July, spring for a cheap plastic basket of begonias beside the door. In the clustered world of Magpie Court all the heavy upkeep is done for you, and the unspoken understanding is that if youmustdo more, then your Halloween scarecrow will be a tasteful chappie, and your Christmas lights will be virginal white.
Which is why the Evans house stands out. Granted, Hailey Evans does manage to grow pots of red geraniums that tone nicely with the lavender, and the souped-up Jeep Cherokee they sometimes leave out in the driveway is unusually clean for a family car. But there are cracks in the facade. Hideous, gaping cracks: cheap plastic pinwheels stuck in front of the hedges, bird sculptures of reclaimed metal on the lawn, wind chimes swinging from the corner of the garage. And the shoes. Oh my God the shoes.
I can only surmise that they went for some kind of rare flooring option. Expensive, elegant, and utterly impractical. The delicate nature of bamboo, maybe, is the only possible explanation for the piles of footwear that I have seen amassed on the Evans’s front porch: tiny Crocs and muddied running shoes, stilettos and snow boots, flip-flops and sneakers and fur-lined slippers and Wellingtons. Golf spikes and ski boots and roller skates and... it’s a miracle they can still access their own front door, the absolute hillbillies.
Let me tell you, growing up in my house, you kept your shoes in the closet or on your feet. Otherwise, you got hit with one right across your backside.
5.
Mack
What the hell is this?”
Mack’s stomach did a little flip. Hailey had snuck up on him in the kitchen, a letter in her hands. It would be the one from the English department, telling him that he was on probation, that he was under investigation for inappropriate interactions with his students, during and after the Covid lockdown. The department administrator had warned him this was coming, and Mack had been patrolling the mail even more religiously than usual. Except today Hailey beat him to it. He had not given her even the tiniest warning about the shitstorm that was blowing in, and this was not the way he wanted her to find out. He braced himself for impact, until he realized that what she was actually holding was another check from Sunshine Enterprises. He snatched it from her.
“Why do you insist on opening mail addressed to me? That’s a felony, you know.”
“Why is someone paying you seven thousand dollars?”
Mack pushed his glasses down from his forehead. She was right about the amount. This was the third check in six weeks, and each time the amount had increased by $1,000.
Hailey stood staring at him. He sighed. Maybe this would be good practice for the rest of the truths he had to deliver.
“I think they’re coming from my dad.”
“They?”
Interesting that she had seized on the pronoun. “Yep. He’s been sending money.”
“Yourdad? The dad you hardly know? How much money?”
Mack was an English professor; it took him a long minute to do the math. “This makes eighteen grand. There were two other checks.”
“How could you not... Youcashedthem?”
“Idepositedthem. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”Turn it around on her,he told himself. The best defense is a good offense.
“Don’t try to turn this around on me. You didn’t think to mention that your father—the father that you hate, the father that you haven’t spoken to in twenty-five years—has been in touch? Have I just entered the Twilight Zone?”
“He didn’t get in touch. I mean, not other than to send these.”
She took the check back from him. “But how do you even know it’s him? There’s no name on it. What’s Sunshine Enterprises?”
Mack sighed again. This was but a drop in the ocean of what he had been keeping from her. “He’s tried to send me money before, back when I was starting college. I thought I’d told you about it before. I sent it back.”
Hailey’s face softened. He had to give her credit; she had always trodden lightly around the topic of his father, had sensed not to poke that bear. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you ever knew where he lived.”
“He lives in Daytona. Or at least he did then.”
“How would he get our address?”
“Google?”
Gulliver’s nails clicked across the kitchen floor. His ears were tied up like pigtails with two purple hair scrunchies, and he was wearing a pink-and-blue bathrobe commandeered from Mabel’s American Girldoll. The pained expression in his eyes almost made Mack feel sorry for him, especially when Hailey laughed. The betrayal must’ve broken Gulliver’s momma’s-boy heart; he fled the kitchen immediately.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know this about your dad. Maybe he’s trying to—”
