He didn’t bother answering. He figured she could see.
At one time, the wishing well in the Gallaghers’ yard had been painted blue to match the house. Even held flowers for a while, Joe remembered, before the string broke and the bucket rusted out. It needed a hell of a lot more than a coat of paint to fix it now.
Which was fine. It felt good to be using his hands and enough of his brain that he didn’t have to think about anything else. The color of Anne’s eyes, green and gold, like sunlight filtered through the trees. Her bright, hopeful expression when he walked into the shop every morning. At least out here he knew what he was doing.
Maddie crossed her arms, watching him as he picked up nails, dropping them in the coffee can he’d set on the grass. She’d never been much of a talker. She was like Rob that way.But while Rob’s silences were comfortable, Maddie’s were sharp, expectant.
“Anne’s not home,” she said when he didn’t respond. “If you were wondering.”
Heat crawled up the back of his neck. Because Anne was at his house, baking with his mother and sister for the tea party thing at the library. Which Maddie had to know. Which meant that she also knew—or suspected—he was avoiding her daughter.
He liked Anne. The problem was she made him feel things, want things, he mostly tried not to think about. It wasn’t her fault, any more than it was Maddie’s fault that he’d bought out Rob. He was grateful to them both. But it didn’t change the fact that he was a measure-twice, cut-once kind of guy, and Anne was building castles out of air.
He tossed another rotten board on the pile. Nothing worth salvaging there.
Maddie came down the back steps. “You don’t need to do that.”
He lifted a pressure-treated two-by-four he’d brought from home. “Well’s falling apart. Somebody could get hurt.”
She snorted. “It’s a planter, not a well. Nobody’s going to fall in there and drown.”
He bit down on a smile. “It’s still dangerous. Those rusty nails sticking out.”
“So take it down. Some things aren’t worth fixing.”
He fit the board into the gap of the frame. “Rob liked it.”
Maddie’s gaze softened. “He did. He was big on wishing, Rob was.” A pause. “He built that well for Anne. Like throwing pennies into a dry well could make her dreams come true.”
Joe gave her a level look. “You got something to say, say it.”
Maddie stooped for a shingle lying on the grass. Turned it over in her hands, avoiding his gaze. “I had her late, you know. We didn’t think we could have kids. Rob and me. We lost two, before she was born. By the time she came along, I was pretty much settled into the life we had. And money was a problem.” She looked at him then. “Well, you know.”
His heart gave a hard tug.I’m sorrydidn’t seem like the right thing to say, so he settled on “It’s okay.”
And maybe it didn’t matter, because it was like she didn’t hear. “Anne…She wasn’t like the other little girls. She was always talking. So smart. Rob was good with her. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her,” Maddie said with painful earnestness, “but he adored her. Didn’t want her going off. I was the one who had to push her out of the nest. Missed her something terrible, though.” She smiled, a little ruefully. “Missed the noise. And the messes.”
Because any space that no longer held Anne would seem empty. Shewasnoisy. And messy. Colorful. Alive.
“She’s back now,” he offered.
“For the summer. Her dad dying and that business with the boyfriend…That clipped her wings some. But she’ll get her confidence back. And when she does, there’s nothing to keep her here.”
There it was. The warning he’d been waiting for.
He didn’t need it. He sure as hell didn’t want to hear it. Yeah, things with Dr.Dick hadn’t worked out, but what were the odds Anne was ever going to stay?
There’s nothing to keep her here.
Nothing compared to the life she could have out there. She had dreams, she said. Teaching in Tahiti. Moving to Colorado.
“You’re a good man, Joe,” Maddie said kindly. “I don’t want to see you hurt because somebody else leaves.”
She might as well have slammed him with his own hammer. He didn’t talk about Brittany. But of course Maddie knew. Not all the humiliating details, but the whole island heard when his wife of five months left him on Christmas Eve. A week after Brittany split for Vegas, Rob had shown up at Joe’s apartment with a six-pack he must have bought for the occasion and a lamp he claimed needed fixing, the kind of small house repair he usually ignored. Joe was no electrician, but he’d learned something about wiring in those classes Rob had urged him to take. He had seized on the excuse, glad to have something to do besides stare at the walls and brood over his failed marriage. Or wait for his wife to change her mind and come home. He’d fixed the lamp and drunk the beer, pathetically grateful for the company, and then Rob had put him to bed like the father he’d never had.
He cleared his throat. “Everybody leaves. That’s life on the island. The season is over”—the marriage is over, this summer would be over—“and they’re gone.”
“Not everybody,” Maddie said. “Not people like you and me. We’re good at standing on shore, looking at the water. Others…They’ve just got to see what’s on the other side. Annie, she’s one of those.”
