He jerks a thumb toward the kitchen, where Andrea Haviland and the chef are getting ready for lunch. She wears a black apron, her gray ponytail peeking out from the back of a baseball cap.
“Hey, Blancy,” I say. “Did that guy who sat with me at the bar ever come back?”
“Not when I’ve been working, but I have your number. I’ll let you know if I see him. And Charlie, your brother owes me. Tell him if he doesn’t return my calls, I may show up at the house.”
Great.Reid probably hasn’t paid the catering bill from the memorial service. “Will do,” I say as Mrs. Haviland takes off her apron and greets me with a long hug, then piles chocolate chip cookies from the bakery case onto a plate. She leads us through the café to the back porch, where we sit at a high-top. “You’re looking better,” I say. “How’re the lungs?”
“Functioning,” she says, “though it was touch and go there for a few days.”
She pushes the cookies toward me, as though she doesn’t know what to say next. I break one in half. It’s salty and sweet, the chocolate warm.
“I baked them this morning,” Mrs. Haviland says. “But don’t tell Seton. That girl eats my profits, especially now that she lives upstairs. Are you two talking to each other yet?”
That’s part of the reason I stopped by here this morning. “I owe her an apology,” I say.
Mrs. Haviland reties her ponytail. She can’t be much older than Freya, but she carries a life lived in the lines around her eyes. “Don’t wait too long,” she says. “The summer’s short. So is life.” She glances down at the table. “I’m sorry about Jane, about your mother, Charlie. I wanted to talk more at the memorial service, but—”
“But Reid was showing his charming side,” I say.
“Making myself scarce seemed like the respectful option. These last few weeks must have been impossible.”
There’s that grief again, rearing its ugly head right when I thought I might have tamed it for good. Andimpossibleis an understatement. “I’m distracting myself by playing cop,” I say.
“Is that why you’re here? Do you think I started the fire? Your brother does.”
“Reid needs someone to blame. You have to admit the whole situation is suspicious, though. The cameras at Burkehaven are destroyed, and then the house burns.”
“Suspiciousis a good word for it,” Mrs. Haviland says. “I heard I’d destroyed those cameras before I’d heard the cameras had been destroyed. Seems to me someone wanted to cast blame, and I was the easiest target.”
“Tell me what happened,” I say, laying my phone between us.
“The infamous podcast,” Mrs. Haviland says. “There are consequences for telling other people’s stories, Charlie.”
“You owe me for saving you from the fire.”
Mrs. Haviland leans back on her stool, skepticism etched into her expression. “How do you decide what you’ll use on a podcast? How do you know which parts of the story you’ll tell?”
“I don’t know until I hear it,” I say. “And sometimes I don’t know then. Connections show up when you least expect them.”
“Which story are you telling?” Mrs. Haviland asks. “Past or present?”
I’m not sure anymore, or how the strands intertwine, but I do know understanding whatwasis essential to understanding who we’ve become. “Right now,” I say, “you’re telling me your story. Later on, I’ll see how it weaves into the whole.”
Mrs. Haviland considers the phone for a moment and gives me a curt nod. “Go ahead,” she says.
I start recording.
“Tell me about my father,” I say.
“You first,” Mrs. Haviland says. “I heard Mark bought you a beer.”
There really aren’t many secrets in Hero, though I’d hoped Seton would keep this one to herself. “Seton tells you everything,” I say.
“Except what she doesn’t.”
“Well, yeah. My dad sat with me at the bar and told me he was worried about an old friend. And since you’re getting right into it, you’re an old friend he could have been worried about.”
The corners of Mrs. Haviland’s mouth turn up. “Now I get it,” she says. “You’re wondering whether Mark heard I was in the hospital and had almost died. I could buy into that story if it were true, but I haven’t seen your father since he disappeared. If he was here, it wasn’t for me.”
