Hadley puts a hand to her mouth to suppress a laugh. “Oof! Just a friendly little conversation between loving brothers, right? Is that what you want to tell the world?”
“I don’t know that I want to tell it to theworld,” I say. “It feels as though I’m betraying everyone I know. But Reid’s in trouble. He owes money, and my guess is I’ve only found a small part of it.”
“Talk it through with me,” Hadley says. “Maybe you’ll find the story you do want to tell for the podcast. Or for yourself.”
I’m not sure what I want to do with the podcast anymore, but Hadley’s been the most willing participant so far. I lay my phone between us. The mic will capture the water lapping at the pilings, and our feet dangling in the water. If Julian ever hears this, he’ll appreciate the ambience.
“You and me,” Hadley says. “We make our own way when others dismiss us.”
“No one’s ever dismissed you,” I say. “You do whatever you want.”
“Not always,” Hadley says. “My father—your grandfather—doted on Jane, on your mother, watching what she did, shaping her into a little version of himself. It made me feel invisible. That’s why I left for California. It’s how I got to become my own person, and not someone my father wanted me to be.”
I suppose we do have more in common than I realized. My mother kept Reid close while packing me off, first to boarding school, then into the world. “I wish I felt as fully formed as you,” I say.
“You’re a lump of clay, waiting to be shaped,” Hadley says. “Butyouget to choose the shape. My father, he wanted to ignore me and control me at the same time. He couldn’t stand that I’d left, that I didn’t hang on his every word.”
“Is that why he cut you out of the will?” I ask.
Hadley rolls her eyes. “He and I got into the stupidest fight. I was visiting Idlewood for a few weeks the summer before I started my residency and found out my father had paid Jane’s student loans, but not mine. He claimed it was because she went to a state school, and I decided to move away, but it was really because I kept leaving and she didn’t. And I wasn’t angry about the loans—I was mad because my father favored Jane over me. But I told him I never wanted to speak to him again. He went to a lawyer about the will as soon as I left town. Honestly, once he cooled off, I bet he’d have changed everything back to the way it had been. But he died before he could.”
“You haven’t seemed to mind,” I say.
“I cared more than I let on, and I took it out on Jane in ways I never should have. Hurtful, selfish ways.” Hadley lifts her feet out of the water and flexes her toes. “But,” she says, her expression brightening, “in retrospect, it was a gift. My father cast me off and made me fend for myself. Jane could only be who he wanted her to be, a good girl who spent her life watching over the homestead and running the familybusiness. I’ve been all over and made friends everywhere. And I’ve loved every minute of it.”
“How long did it take you to get there?” I ask. “To forgive?”
Hadley laughs. “I talk a good game. I never fully got to a place of forgiveness. Idlewood was this thing sitting between Jane and me, and it would have been kind of me to release her from any guilt. I owed her that.”
My phone beeps from where it lies on the dock between us. A text from Freya lights up the screen.??Sorry for how things went down today??, she writes.??The cops finished with my truck sooner than expected. I’m headed to New York. Tonight. I’ll see you around, Harold.??
“Freya’s leaving,” I say.
“Where’s she off to?”
“New York. For good.”
“That’s a surprise. When I took her out on the boat earlier, she seemed done with New York, with TV, with having to look a certain way all the time. I thought she wanted to give it a go up here.”
I tap,??I’ll see you around??, into the phone, then stare at the screen. I’m more disappointed than is warranted from a one-night stand with someone twice my age. “Reid used to have photos of Freya in his bedroom,” I say.
“I remember that,” Hadley says.
“I heard you talking to my mother once. She said the photos made Reid feel safe.”
“I hope they worked,” Hadley says, swinging around and taking in the burned-out shell on the shore. “So much for Paul’s castle. Reid will need to find someone else willing to dole out the cash. As for you, Charlie, no matter how exciting Freya may seem, she wasn’t right.”
I turn on my side, my head propped on a fist. “Freya and I hooked up, nothing more. But don’t I get to decide what’s right for me?”
“You do,” Hadley says. “And that’s something I need to remember, even though I am most certainly right.”
The last rays of evening sun shine on her face, and for a moment I can picture Hadley here, at Burkehaven, decades ago. “Freya’s father thought you were a bad influence,” I say.
“I bet he did. I showed Freya how the world worked.”
“Do you remember the last time the two of you talked? When you were teenagers? It was the summer after your first year in college. You were dating my father.”
Hadley glances toward my phone as though she wants to jump through the lines and strangle Freya. “Mark and I didn’t date,” she says. “We were friends. But I did have a mad crush on him. He was all I could think about that summer. We’d go out in the boat, and bike around town, and hike the foothills. I returned to California for my sophomore year at Berkeley intending to transfer to Kingston State, but distance and the California sun worked their magic, and I forgot the plan. The next thing I heard was that Jane and Mark had started dating. They got married the year I graduated from undergrad. I had an internship in Nairobi and couldn’t make the wedding. Reid arrived seven months later.” Hadley stands and steps into her shoes. “And before you ask,” she says, “losing your father was another disappointment that transformed into a gift. Imagine my life living in Hero. It’s a beautiful town, but this wasn’t the place for me.”
