Three
MARIS
Ididn’t mean to kick Henry. I really fucking didn’t. I was fine until that stupid fucking tourist had tried to sit with me. I’d been working on my latest piece for the newspaper when the man with the too bright smile and too much cologne sat down at my table and scared the shit out of me.
“I’m Vick. What’s a pretty girl like you doing alone?”
He’d reached out a hand to me and that’s all it took before I was grabbing my things and running as fast as I could. Henry saw the whole thing. That’s why he’d run after me, to calm me down. Oh my god, I didn’t just kick him, I hit him in the nose. What if I broke his nose? There was blood on it when he said it was okay but I know it wasn’t.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I whisper and look down at my hand. My palms are turning pink from how hard I’m squeezing them into fists. There’s half moon crescents across the center of my palm from where I dug my nails in hard. Like if I hurt myself just enough it would atone for what I did to Henry.
Oh my god.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Henry Canton is one of the only people in town that still treats me like me. Like the Maris Martinez I was before…beforethat night.A shudder runs through me and my knees go weak. It’s hard to stay standing on legs that feel like they’re made of paper-mache but I manage it by bracing my hands on my knees and leaning against the post office wall. I’m half a block down from The Perky Perch trying not to puke over the fact that I hit one of my father’s best friends.
Henry.I hit Henry.
I’d known him all my life. He went to high school with my dad and was his best man. He carried me on his shoulders for the Christmas Day Parade. He was there when I had piano recitals and cheered the loudest as I tried my hand for Ms. Vesper Point my senior year of high school. I hadn’t seen Henry though when he grabbed me.
I saw him.
That fucking cunt that did this to me. And now I hurt Henry. Who was I? What the fuck was I?
I shift against the wall. The cold brick chills me through my cardigan. I didn’t grab a coat when I left. I hadn’t been thinking. I never was anymore. I press my palms against the damp brick and take in a deep breath. I hold the breath and then take in another, and then another until I don’t feel like I’m going to come apart into a million fucking pieces. Every day it was like this. Like I was a puzzle that couldn’t be put back together. All the edges bent wrong and the picture scraped off the pieces.
I was never going to be normal. I knew that with the kind of clarity that only ever hit me one or two times in my life before. Once when I stood at the edge of town on graduation night with my high school best friends Jenn, Alice and Minnie, and I just knew I wasn’t going anywhere. All the hoping and dreaming in the world wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
I was going to live and die here just like my parents.
The other moment was when I lost my parents. I knew then I was going to be alone forever. When they became anotherpair of headstones in the creeping and overgrown section of the graveyard my family owned. Generations of Martinez’s were buried in the ground just like my parents were. One day it would be my turn too. I’d realized that as a kid. The first snap in the thread of normal that knit every day people together right and made them whole. I had to be missing more than a stitch with the way I was coming apart.
“You’re fucked,” I whisper to myself. “You’re so fucking fucked.” The soft pitter-patter of rain around me is the only answer to my words. The rain serves as my echo and I dry heave. I stay bent over for another breath and then push myself away from the wall and start the journey home.
The walk home is quick. Much quicker than normal for a two mile walk, most likely because I’m being pursued by the truth of just how unwell I am. By the time I get to the front gate I feel feverish. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself as I trudge through the iron front gate and up the front steps to the porch.
“What if I’m going into shock? Can you die from that? Probably, knowing my luck.” I mutter as I fish my keys out. A gust of wind hits me and sends rain sideways at me. I’m thoroughly soaked. I shiver again and nearly drop my keys. It’s not shock. It’s just the freezing rain that has me shaking. I unlock the door and stop when I catch sight of the bronze Historical Places plaque next to the doorbell. It’s crooked from the wind.
Vesper House, established 1884.
Vesper House was commissioned by heiress Isla Martinez—a Vesper Point Founder in the year of the town’s founding.Built from local quarried granite and imported walnut and mahogany, Vesper House was the first home built outside of city limits and served as both residence for the Martinez family as well as a gathering place for the town’s early civic meetings. Isla Martinez was known for her philanthropic and tenacious spirit, founded the Vesper Point Call Newspaper and the first schoolhouse. Her legacy lives on in those that pursue truth and in the continued education of all who reside in Vesper Point.
Designated a protected site in 1972 for its architectural and historical significance, Vesper House stands as one of the finest examples of late-Victorian coastal estates in the Pacific Northwest.
—Historic Preservation Society of Vesper Point
Isla would be horrified if she knew what a pariah I’d become. Just how little the Martinez name meant in Vesper Point when I was a member of it. I frown and right the plaque until it’s perfectly straight. Only then do I step inside the three story Victorian.
The house is quiet save the ever present tick-tocking of the grandfather clock in the foyer when I enter. I inherited Vesper House from my grandmother after she passed three years ago. That was the before times though, when I was still…someone.
She’d changed her will and pissed off a couple of my aunts and their kids. My parents hadn’t been around, god rest their souls, to comment, but I know they would have been happy I’d gotten the house. I was the only one willing to take care of the monstrosity. A big house with overgrown rosebushes and climbing ivy that covered the front facade and made its way up to the turret that had operated as a mini lighthouse back before the turn of the century. Light, bright rooms from floor to ceiling windows and wide hallways with polished hardwood and thick flemish wool carpets. Soaring high ceilings and a grand staircasethat made me feel like the kid I’d been when I’d sat on its steps and read my chapter books. Family portraits and photos of Vesper Point as it developed lined the walls and above the mantle was my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s portrait—Isla Martinez.
She was a beauty. An heiress that came to Vesper Point to make a name for herself, and she’d succeeded spectacularly. I hang my bag onto one of the bronze hooks by the door and go to the living room but not before I lock up. Two deadbolts and a security bar lock that goes under the door handle. Only when I check everything twice do I kick off my shoes and pad through the foyer and into the living room. The fireplace is dead and cold, just like the rest of the house so I set to work on a fire. The thermostat will kick on in a few minutes now that I’m home but a fire will keep my hands busy. I look up at Isla’s portrait while I stack the wood and strike the kindling.
Isla looks serene in her portrait. Dark hair piled into an elegant updo. She wears a red ballgown with a wide neckline, her shoulders bared, and a strand of pearls on her neck. The necklace is her only jewelry but she doesn’t need it with how beautiful she is. Angled cheekbones and dark eyes, with a delicate nose and gently rounded chin that gave away just how young she was. Isla was seventeen when she arrived in Vesper Point as part of a venture party she argued her way onto. How she convinced her father to let her do it, no one knew. He never came out this way. As a matter of fact, none of the New York branch of the family had ever set foot in Vesper Point. I don’t even think they exist. Not anymore.
She’s smiling, just the slight upturn of her lips to soften the seriousness in her eyes. Whoever painted her had a thing for her eyes. They’re unflinching. Cold. I always felt like they followed me wherever I went in the room. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned it was an artist’s trick to do that.
