“I know. But we’re not usually here for the whole summer, usually just a week or two.”
“This summer we’re here for a long time,” explains Claire. “Daddy stayed home to work.” And then, although nobody has asked for elaboration, “He works for a start-up. In Brooklyn. He works all the time. She takes a breath. “All the time.”
“I see,” says Mark. He smiles again. When he smiles the corners of his eyes crinkle up in a way that is unfairly more attractive on a man than on a woman. “What’s he starting up, then?”
Both children look at Louisa expectantly.
“Oh, it’s sort of complicated,” says Louisa. That’s not true, so she continues, “It’s not really that complicated. It’s a podcasting company. It’s pretty simple actually. They make podcasts. They’re looking to be acquired, so it’s a lot of long hours...” Her voice trails off. “They’re in a delicate part of the process, with funding and all of that. And suddenly everyone and their sister is making podcasts, so there’s a lot of pressure to stand out.”
“Also you’ve been fighting a lot,” adds Claire unhelpfully.
“Claire!” say Matty. Instantly Louisa flushes.
“What?” says Claire, unperturbed. “It’s only the truth.”
“Notfighting,”says Louisa. “Discussing.” She frowns warningly at Claire.
Mark Harding, Knox County detective, laughs—a startling, full-throated laugh that is instinctively as familiar to her as the eyes and the dimple. They’d laughed all the time that summer, Louisa and Mark and Nicole. “I’m twice divorced,” he says. “Believe me, I get it.”
“Twice!” She doesn’t mean to grimace, but it happens anyway.
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s at least once too many. One divorce can be the other person’s fault—two, well, you might have to look in the mirror.”
If I keep talking, thinks Louisa,I can distract myself from worrying about my father. So she keeps talking. “Your family was only ever here for the summer, just like mine. How’d you end up here full-time?”
“Wife Number One got me used to the winters.”
“And Wife Number Two kept you here?”
“Something like that.” A wry smile.
“I’m on sabbatical from my job,” Louisa says. She feels the need to make sure Mark doesn’t see her as a mother who doesn’t work while her husband puts in impressively long hours. “I’m writing a book, actually. I’ll be doing a good amount of work on that this summer. Or at least that’s the plan, assuming the cooperation of these angels.” She looks around. “Speaking of the angels, whereisAbigail? You guys, where’s your sister?”
Matty and Claire both shrug.
“Is that her?” asks Mark, turning to point out the long rectangular windows that look from the living room onto the porch and the lawn beyond. “Out there? Louisa, is that your father with her?”
The next morning Louisa finds this letter waiting to go out:
Dear Daddy,
We had a lot of excitement when we got back from lunch at Archer’s today. Grandpa was gone!
Barbara who is Grandpa’s aide was crying. She said she had only turned her back to go to the bathroom, and when she did Grandpa was dozing on the porch. She was positive she had time to VISIT THE LADIES’ ROOM as she put it. But when she came back from the bathroom he was gone!
Poof!
Naturally everybody went crazy. Granny called the police. You know how there are all of those woods right across the street? The old logging roads? One of the police went to look for him there. Barbara got in her car to drive up toward the post office.
But guess what? In the end it was ME who found him!
I had what I guess you could call a HUNCH and I walked down the grass and through the gate and down the stairs, and there was Grandpa, sitting on a flat rock. It was a rock you couldn’t have seen from looking out the window so that’s why nobody saw him.
He wasn’t doing anything. He was just looking out at the ocean with one hand on each knee. Have you ever looked at Grandpa’s hands, Daddy? They are absolutely COVERED with AGE SPOTS. I hope that doesn’t happen to you when you get old.
I approached WITH CAUTION. I was thinking of the diseased brain Mommy showed us online, with all of the tangles.
I said, “Grandpa?”
