“You didn’t have to bid on the project,” I say.
“Spoken like someone who’s never run a business. People depend on me. I don’t have the luxury of walking away from cash, Charlie. Especially not right now. Besides, if I didn’t win the bid, someone else would have. And I mitigate what I can.”
Vance Moodey stands by a truck withDon’t Get Mad, Get Moodeystenciled on the door aboveMoodey Lumber. He wears a Red Sox cap and a blue flannel shirt and is doughy and tall with the red nose of someone who drinks too much.
My mother introduces us. “Come back after the weekend, Vance,” she adds, her words clipped. “Right now, I can’t tell you what you want to hear.”
“Jane,” Vance says, “you’ll have to deal with me eventually.”
“I need time,” my mother says. “I mean it.”
Vance turns his cap around. “I suppose we’ll touch base on Tuesday, then.” He gets into the truck and rolls down the window. “I won’t wait around forever. It’s not fair.” He backs the truck out and guns the engine as he takes off through the trees.
“He’s salty,” I say. “How much “” do you owe him, anyway?”
“More than I want to,” my mother says, “but it’s nothing for you to worry about. And everything isn’t about money. Get settled at the house. The boys from the marina will be by soon to install the docks. Make sure they have what they need.”
The scarf around my mother’s neck flutters in the breeze, lifting to reveal one of the scars from when my father slashed at her with a chef’s knife. My mother fought him off and then dragged herself a half mile through the woods to the bungalow, where she passed out in a pool of her own blood.
She’s been fighting ever since.
I take the Volvo to the fork in the road, then drive to another parking area on the shore. Across this cove, golden light bathes the trees around Idlewood, our summer cottage. I toss a suitcase into one of the wheelbarrows and cross the footbridge, a narrow set of planks about fifty yards long connecting the mainland to the three-acre island.
The camp consists of a cottage, a second sleeping cabin, and three docks positioned around the island to catch the sun at different times in the day. We have the Bryant 219 motorboat, four kayaks, two canoes, and a hammock. We don’t have Wi-Fi or television. This is a place built to touch grass and relax.
The cottage appears through the trees, with its granite foundation, wraparound porch, and shingles stained brown. Unlike that new houseat Burkehaven, this cottage blends in with the shoreline. Between bunkrooms and sleeping porches, the house accommodates twenty people. My mother finally installed a septic system fifteen years ago, but our proximity to the lake necessitates selective flushing.
Inside, sheets have been pulled from furniture, and shutters have been removed and stowed in the crawlspace beneath the house. Despite the open windows, the air in the vast great room retains a musty smell from being closed off for the winter. I roll the suitcase across the warped floorboards and up the narrow back stairs to my room, where a twin bed covered in a green-and-blue quilt I most recently tucked in last October greets me. Rickety secondhand furniture fills every corner of the room, and the crooked windows offer views of the lake.
Downstairs, I retrieve the old issue ofGourmetfrom a row of cookbooks covered in cobwebs. I turn to the recipe for Bolognese, where a splatter of tomato sauce dots the magazine’s well-worn pages. I start the digital recorder, moving the mic close to the cutting board to capture the knife slicing through onions. I light the stove with a match and put an orange Dutch oven over the flame to heat.
“I don’t question enough,” I say. “So much of what happens at Idlewood is tradition. Five minutes ago, I parked my car in the same lot where my father stabbed Isaac Haviland. Right now, I’m making Bolognese using the same recipe from the same magazine my father used on the day he disappeared. There’s a stain across the page Ihopeis from a tomato. Later, we’ll watch paper lanterns floating over the lake. Afterward, we’ll have this Bolognese for dinner and play cards on the screened-in porch, and we’ll do it all as though nothing ever happened here, as though this recipe, this magazine with its tomato stains, those white orbs floating overhead, don’t have meaning.”
I add the onions to the Dutch oven, where they sizzle in the hot oil.
“I know how effed up this is,” I say.
Through the window, I see a barge-like boat turn around the point and chug toward the island. A bevy of young men sit atop a pile of docks and rafts that they’ll spend the next week installing at camps along the shoreline.A moment later, two red kayaks edge around the point, following the same path as the barge—my mother in one, Reid in the other.
A voice sounds from behind me. “Reid better hurry. He never misses the show.”
My aunt Hadley has materialized in the kitchen, still wearing those pink scrubs with the hand puppets on them. Another tradition at Idlewood is that Reid supervises the men in their skintight wetsuits as they install the docks. He used to believe no one noticed him watching. Now I doubt he cares.
“You were talking to yourself,” Hadley says.
I nod to where the digital recorder captures our words.
“A new project?” Hadley asks.
I unwrap ground beef and add it to the pot to brown. “Where were you when my father killed Isaac Haviland?”
Hadley glances at the recorder. “That kind of project,” she says. “Is it for the radio station?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Mostly.”
