Excerpts from tree house down by Sean Patrick Brennan. Copyright © 2019 by Sean Patrick Brennan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any
electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the
author. All characters are fictional, and should not in any way be construed as
exact depictions of any person, living or deceased. All writing, except where
otherwise attributed, is the creation of the author.
*
For Andy, who encouraged me to
write something crazy,
for the crazy
world we
live in.
* *
tree house dawn:
plotting and pantsing my way to bloody murder
Conventional
wisdom has it there are two ways to write a book: plotting or pantsing. You can
either plot out a story and its
corresponding timeline with copious notes, or you can cozy up tight to your
keyboard and just start typing the damn thing out by the seat of your pants.
As an active participant in NaNoWriMo
(National Novel Writing Month), I’ve heard plenty of good arguments made for
one or the other approach, and the authors I’ve spoken to directly most often
favor pantsing, despite all their very best plotting intentions at the start.
In the summer of 2016, months before I wrote
the very first word of tree house down,
I’d already laid out some rudimentary ideas for what I hoped to accomplish with
this book. I sketched out notes for some of my characters, ways in which these complex
creatures could move my plot forward as they interacted with one another over
the course of a summer, as well as some cool side plots I thought would work
well too.
Looking at all those notes now, however,
you’d think I was planning an entirely different book. Names changed, personalities
evolved, and whole plots transformed completely over the past three years. So
much of what I knew for sure totally disappeared
in every conceivable way.
To put it more succinctly, I plotted this
motherfucker out day after day with increasing excitement, then pantsed my way
through hundreds of changes over the next 34 months of my life.
The pantsing process is by no means a bad thing though, and it actually opens
you up to some super cool possibilities all the time, possibilities you’ll never
discover if you’re too reliant on notes. In my case, for instance, my plotting
led to my pantsing, which soon led me right back to plotting again in the midst
of my pantsing.
By keeping detailed notes on each
character’s birthday, personality profile, and all their important life dates,
I was able to write about them like they were already old friends—which I’m
happy to say they now are.
A character map came next, where an Excel
file showed me with just a brief glance who shows up in which chapters, helping
me keep all my main characters involved in the novel as much as possible. If I
hadn’t mentioned a character in three chapters, for instance, I made sure to
find time and space for them in the ensuing copy.
Actual calendar pages from the years and
months involved in the story (2000 and 2017 respectively) painted a perfect
picture of how the timeline moved along, and by filling the calendar with notes
about which chapters and events occurred on which specific dates, I had a
priceless tracking system for the entire book. This kind of behind-the-scenes
work is extremely important, because it allows me to do the kind of thinking
you the reader should never have to do.
Murder is no joke, and for me, killing a
character doesn’t come easy just because it’s a work of fiction. While I take
no joy in the death at the heart of this story, it was a fascinating journey to
start the book well after the event in question. By jumping into this family’s
story almost seventeen years after a murder changed all their lives, I was able
to focus on the ramifications and reverberations it had for them much more
closely, something that’s rarely explored in a traditional murder mystery.
A few years ago, I was a guest speaker at
a college on Long Island, and I quickly shocked the students and teacher alike
when I announced to the room that I never have any idea how a given book will
end until I write it. They were shocked that an author wouldn’t know this going
in, but the truth is, why would I want
to know how it ends? What’s the fun in that?
Not knowing who killed Kerry Ann Jefferson seventeen years earlier was an
absolute gift to my creative writing process throughout, especially throughout
the first draft. I needed to honor these people and the lives they’re living
now, so that if one of them turned out to be the poor girl’s killer, you’d see
how easy it is for a murderer to blend back in with the rest of society.
Here’s something else I learned early on
in the first draft. If I had only one suspect in mind on page one, I might hint
at their guilt too frequently for the next three hundred pages, or worse, I
might completely hide the person’s guilt from you in some artificial way.
Instead, I simply allowed the story and characters to flow out of me the same
way they’ll soon flow into you: naturally.
So without any further delay, I offer you
tree house down, a murder mystery set
in Ludlow, Vermont in the year 2017. Have a great trip! We’ll chat some more
when you get back.
*
A dysfunctional family
is any family with more
than one person in it.
Mary Karr
* *
Chapter 1
June, 2017
Sam Newhaus is no
murderer. If you take a moment to ask him, and if he cares to talk to you at
all, that’s what he’ll tell you anyway. The truth about how and why Kerry Ann
Jefferson died though, well, that’s a bit more complicated. One thing to be
absolutely sure of at the start: no matter what Sam ever told his family and
friends, he’s no innocent.
But that all happened some seventeen
years ago now, and while certainly none of it is forgettable, everyone
connected to both Kerry Ann and Sam have tried their best to put it behind
them.
Kerry Ann’s family celebrates her
birthday each year with posts on Facebook and Instagram, and though her cause
of death is never mentioned anymore, you can easily read between the lines.
“You were ripped away from us far too
soon,” her sister wrote last year, and the replies to her post ran the gamut
between sympathetic wishes and angry-face emojis. None of them ever mention Sam
by name, at least publicly, but some of her friends forever refer to him as
either ‘that sick man’ or ‘the animal’.
The Jefferson family isn’t perfect, but
they sure as hell didn’t deserve any of the heartache and pain caused by the
sudden, horrifying loss of sweet Kerry Ann.
Most of them still live nearby in central
Vermont, although Kerry Ann’s brother Eddie moved to Denver a few years back,
just after a fallout with his parents over some nonsense regarding their will,
as the story goes.
Yeah, the Jeffersons have their fair
share of issues, as any family does, but no family has nearly as many quirks as
the Abrams clan does, which may be at least part of the reason why Sam Newhaus
ran away from them when he did.
The
Abrams family, past and presently residing in three homes in Ludlow, Vermont, is
comprised of only eight people—well, nine if you include accused murderer Sam
Newhaus, but they’d prefer you not.
Alan Abrams, grandfather extraordinaire—his words—is now 75 years old, and
comfortably if not always happily married to his wife Phyllis, three years his
junior. Originally from Brooklyn and briefly Port Jefferson, New York, Alan and
Phyllis long dreamed of a life in Vermont when they were younger, but they
didn’t end up moving to Ludlow with their two kids, Olivia and Lenny, until they
were both finished with grade school.
This proved itself a particularly sore
spot for Olivia, as she had to transfer to Black River High School in Ludlow
the summer before her junior year, only after Lenny finished the eighth grade
back on Long Island.
Alan Abrams is rugged and handsome for
his age, but he doesn’t move around as well as he used to, and spends most of
his time complaining about a great many things. Doctors just out to make money,
cashiers who spend too much time chatting with one another, not nearly enough time tending to his
groceries, and music—if you can even call
it that—a far cry from the classics he grew up with in Brooklyn.
Phyllis just smiles at Alan’s
complaining, and laughs him off when he dares air his grievances out loud.
‘Don’t mind him’, she jokes with the clerks at the pharmacy. ‘He hasn’t been
happy since I married him.’
Her hair is always well coifed, clipped
back tightly on both sides like she hopes to never introduce it to her face,
and she likes keeping her nails painted silver to match her jewelry.
Alan and Phyllis live on the southeast
side of Ludlow, not far from the entrance to town off Route 103, and their now
adult children, Olivia and Lenny, each live a bit closer to the village proper.
Lenny, now 43 years old, is very happily
married to Caroline, 42, and his big sister Olivia, now 45, is very happily divorced from one Sam Newhaus, 43, suspected
murderer, residing in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lenny and Caroline are themselves parents
to two girls—Erika, 17 years old, and Peaches, 16 years old—while Olivia lives
alone with her only daughter Haley, now 22, who against all her mother’s
pleading over the years to change it, has still held on tightly to the Newhaus
name regardless of what anyone says about her father.
Unlike the Jeffersons, you’ll never catch
anyone in the Abrams family even mentioning either Kerry Ann or Sam on their social media feeds.
Instead, most choose not to discuss her at all anymore, lest the past haunt
them even further than it already does.
Sam did try friend-requesting Haley on
Facebook two years ago, but she denied it right away, and sent him a short,
private message back.
“Maybe we can follow each other instead,
Dad,” she suggested. “But,” she quickly added, “please don’t comment on any of
my posts, or, you know, like any of
them.”
Haley decided this was for the best, but
neither did she mention any of it to her mother, Olivia. She felt sure no one
would fault her for simply allowing her dad to follow her posts online, and as
long as Sam didn’t like or comment on any of them, no one would even notice
they were connected anyway.
Sam rarely posted anything on his own
wall, and Haley ended up unfollowing him less than a year later, opting to only
rarely check his page for updates instead, so when he recently posted about
selling his place in Vegas, and his plans after sixteen long years to ‘finally
move back east’, Haley had no idea.
Chapter 2
Alan Abrams, grandfather extraordinaire,
couldn’t care less about woodwork, or learning to build anything with his own
two hands. He’d forfeited enough blood, sweat, and tears pursuing his own
dreams over the decades to waste any time learning a skill he knew he’d never
have.
His father though, a strong man and
proudly observant Jew, was obsessed with wood. Crazy obsessed, Alan thought. Wood and nails, he taught Alan, could
be thrown together to create all sorts of things: barns, benches, bridges—even
crosses.
“It doesn’t take more than two hands to slap
something together, Allie,” his dad always said, “but any true artisan worth
his salt will tell you the more time you spend getting it right the first time,
the less likely you’ll have to go through the whole process all over again.”
It was a phrase Alan thought about often
after watching his father divorce his mother, and then divorce his second wife only
two years later.
Still, Alan knew a good build when he saw
one. As a little boy, his father once brought him out to Amish Country,
Pennsylvania—that was what he called it anyway, as if there were no towns or
roads, just Amish countryside as far as the eye could see. He’d stopped the car
suddenly one crisp October morning, and ordered Alan to get out and look
around.
“Look over there, Allie. You see that?
That’s gonna stand taller and longer than half the shit those guidos put up
back in Brooklyn. You see, these people out here do it all themselves, and they
get much better results because of it.”
Alan stared out across the field,
watching as a team of men pushed a wall of wood up from the ground. It looked
like they might be building a huge barn for the house, but he was afraid to
ask. Instead, he just nodded obediently until his dad ordered him back in the
car.
Driving through Ludlow, Vermont that
morning some 64 years later, Alan couldn’t help but notice the paint chipping
off front porches, their posts bent slightly with age. Nothing is built like it used to be, he thought, not even these old homes, and no one cares
about wear and tear anyway, as long as things hold up enough to not fall down.
Through his windshield, he spotted Haley
up ahead, one hand typing away on her phone, the other tipping back a large cup
of coffee. He beeped his horn far too loudly with a wave as he passed.
“Hi, Grandpa!” Haley waved back with a
smile that faded quickly.
She pushed open the door and walked in,
making eye contact briefly with Doctor Finny to let him know she was back. He
was still inside with a patient, the same older man Haley brought in earlier
after he’d filled out all his paperwork.
No
missed calls. Good.
A missed call meant she had to dial the
number back and apologize for missing the call in the first place. It also
meant Doctor Finny had heard the
phone ring while she was out, and probably cleared his throat in that angry way
of his. She’d only been gone seven minutes this time, but Haley knew how much
he hated it whenever she left the front desk unoccupied.
The doctor was a friendly man for the
most part, dotty and a little weird, but just self-aware enough to smile
through his eccentricity. He was easily in his 60s, but still quite healthy and
sharp.
Putting her phone away and lifting her
coffee for another sip, Haley glanced down at her magazine again, trying to
find the place where she’d left off before she’d run out.
“Your blood pressure’s a bit high, John,
but if you’re on that medicine, you should be fine. Do you want a full physical
too, or should I just top off the fluids and change your oil?”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Sorry. Just a little joke. How ‘bout I
check your eyes and ears quick. Hang on.”
Doctor Finny walked out into the hallway
and opened a drawer to grab something. He made eye contact briefly with Haley,
who smiled. She’d heard his ‘top off the fluids’ line enough times now already,
so it’d become an inside joke between them to see how new patients would react.
Some laughed or grinned right away, but others were too confused to understand.
She leaned back in her chair and took
another sip of coffee, looking out at Main Street and life outside.
Haley never wanted this job, but knew she
had to earn money doing something until she figured things out. With very few
positions for journalists in central Vermont, let alone photojournalists, her
degree seemed destined to collect dust for a while.
Glancing back toward the examination rooms
to make sure Doctor Finny was still occupied, she stood up and walked over to
the window.
Ludlow was quiet this time of year—too quiet—but the summer crowds would
be in soon. The number of cars in their one-traffic-light town would more than
quadruple most days come late spring, especially weekends, and everyone and
their mother would hijack all the best parking spaces in town.
Across the street, she spotted a couple
in their thirties walking past DJ’s restaurant holding a tourist map of the area,
and it made her sigh. The flatlanders were already beginning their invasion.
The phone rang from behind her, and she
darted back to her desk to pick it up. One ring only, Doctor Finny told her.
One ring only, or they’ll hang up and try a different doctor’s office instead.
Haley knew this was ridiculous, of course, as no one was that impatient, not even the loud tourists from New York, but she
kept to his rule nonetheless.
“Hello, Doctor Finny’s office,” she said.
She turned and looked back toward the
examination rooms again, where she wasn’t surprised to see Doctor Finny staring
back at her over the patient’s left ear.
“Yes, Mrs. Dougan. Next Tuesday should be
fine. Do you want— Okay. Yeah, ten o’clock should be perfect, actually. Let me
just check to make sure. Annnd, yep. That works for us too. Ten is open. Okay,
great. We’ll see you then. Thank you. You too.”
Haley tossed the pen and pad aside, then
pulled her chair in tightly to the desk to type the information into Excel. She
could sense the doctor’s eyes were on her still, so she moved quickly. When she
finished logging the info, she crosschecked the notepad with the screen, and then
threw the small piece of paper away.
Doctor Finny had scolded her on her very
first day of work for not checking the note one last time before throwing it
away, so now she always did. Even though she’d been working there for over a
month already, he still watched her every single time, just to make sure she
didn’t forget.
A few minutes went by, and as she slowly
turned the pages of her magazine, she could tell Doctor Finny was finishing up
with his patient.
“Just get plenty of rest, and drink lots
of water. You won’t do yourself any favors getting too upset over this. I’m
sure things will work themselves out. Haley will get you squared away, and if
there’s anything else you need, call me anytime.”
Haley went into autopilot mode,
triple-checking Mr. Caraway’s paperwork in case Dr. Finny glanced back one more
time on the way to his office, which she was pretty sure he always did. She
stapled the man’s paperwork together—another of Dr. Finny’s instructions for
this period of time when a patient left the office, so as to come across as
extra efficient—and then smiled and asked him for his $30 copay.
“Gosh, is it really that much now?”
“Yeah, it actually just went up,” Haley
said, offering him her most sympathetic smile.
He took out his wallet, and handed her a
twenty and a ten. Haley thanked him, opened her lock box to deposit the money,
then updated his part of the Excel file as paid.
“Okay, you’re all set, Mr. Caraway. Is
there anything else you need?”
“No, I don’t think so, unless you know of
any wedding photographers?”
He smiled at her kindly, as Haley’s own
smile faded.
“My daughter’s getting married next
Saturday, and the man we hired is—well, he’s suddenly unavailable.”
Haley just kept staring at him without
saying anything, so he smiled politely one more time, then turned to leave. She
watched him leaving as if in slow motion, unsure if she should say something,
then turned and looked toward the back, to see if Doctor Finny’s office door
was shut. It was.
“Sir, wait,” she called out.
Haley didn’t know what to say, or how to
even do this. She knew she’d stumble over her words too, but needed to make the
pitch anyway. Mr. Caraway paused at the door, his eyebrows furrowed with
concern.
“It’s just that, well, I have my degree in
photojournalism? Well, it’s in journalism. But my specialty is photojournalism?
From Middlebury? And, anyway, well, I think that maybe, if you’d like, I could
probably do it? I mean, if you don’t want to trust me, I understand, but maybe?
I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just thought that maybe I should ask in case you
wanted to hire me?”
John Caraway stared at her
sympathetically, and she could tell he was about to decline her offer as
sweetly as he could muster. He was already thinking he could do it better than
she could, and save some money at the same time.
“I think I may just do it myself,” he
said, and Haley wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve been known to capture the occasional
great shot on my wife’s iPhone. Thank you, though.”
He opened the door to leave again, and
Haley just nodded with disappointment, looking down at her feet.
Her whole life had been this way. She’d
tried too hard, come on too strong, and just learned that no matter how pushy
she was, nothing and no one ever came her way. But as the door closed slowly
behind him, something deep and loud bellowed out from the very depths of her
soul.
“Wait!” she screamed out, jumping up from
her chair.
Doctor Finny ran out into the hallway
right away.
“Haley, what’s wrong?” he asked.
She looked back at him briefly, but then
at the door again, where Mr. Caraway was standing in the entrance looking
surprised.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but can I just show you
something quickly on the computer here?”
As she sat down again and started typing,
the two men glanced at each other with confused shrugs and approached her desk.
In a few seconds, Haley had called up her website, which she’d pieced together
on her own throughout her final semester at Middlebury.
Clicking the “Portfolio” link as they
watched, the screen soon filled with all the beautiful photos she’d taken. She
scrolled through them slowly as they both watched.
Finally, as she reached the bottom of the
screen, she pushed back from her desk and looked up at Mr. Caraway, who seemed
to be thinking.
“I’m sorry, sir. I know I don’t have any
real experience, but—”
“Is next Saturday morning at 10 good for
you?”
Her eyebrows went up as she smiled.
“Yes! Absolutely!”
Mr. Caraway smiled and pointed to the
paperwork waiting on her desk.
“My phone number’s in there somewhere. Call
me tomorrow, and I’ll give you all the details.”
He turned and walked out, and as Haley
beamed up at the doctor, she soon noticed the ashen look on his face.
Doctor Finny walked around her desk and
sat down in one of the waiting room chairs, scratching the back of his head
with his pen.
Haley was supposed to be there at the
office next Saturday until two in the afternoon, and he was about to remind her
of this. He was about to scold her, in fact. He was about to grow very upset,
very quickly, because Doctor Finny did not
handle stressful situations well at all, despite all his good advice to
patients.
“Sir, I promise you I’ll get a replacement
for that morning,” Haley said before he could start in on her. “My cousin
Peaches will be here at 8 AM next Saturday, and she’ll be great, I promise.”
Doctor Finny leaned back in the chair,
doubtful of her plan. Without a second’s hesitation, Haley grabbed her cell
phone and dialed Peaches, who picked up right away.
“Peaches, it’s Haley. Hi. Listen, I need a
fav—yes, yeah, right, I know. Peaches, listen. I need you to do something for
me. Could you— Peaches, listen to me! I need a favor. Can you work my shift at
Doctor Finny’s office next Saturday from eight to two? What? No, 8 AM to 2 PM.
Why would it be at night? Yeah. It’ll be easy, I promise. Okay, great. Yeah,
we’ll talk tonight. Thank you so much. Gotta run. Bye.”
Doctor Finny had made all sorts of faces
as she spoke into her phone, but he could tell it was all a done deal now, so
he didn’t even try. He just shook his head and went back to his office.
“Just make sure she knows what to do,” he
called back to her. “Give her the binder. And tell her to pack her food. I
don’t want her disappearing on me for lunch.”
Haley smiled back at him and nodded. She
was so excited to have finally landed her first real job as a photographer. As
she closed her website and tucked herself in at the desk, she watched as Doctor
Finny flashed her a sweet smile as he walked back into his office and closed
the door.
Too many disappointments had crowded her
life. Too many boys who said no, or who had ignored her from the start. Too
many friends who moved away. One too many fathers
who’d moved away. Too many wrong turns, U-turns, and one-way streets of
frustration. But this new adventure felt different. She’d finally prove herself
in life, and everyone would see it. Everyone would see that Haley Newhaus was a
changed woman.
Twenty-two years old and inspired by just
the idea of a new career, she felt completely recharged to take on the world.
Nothing would stop her now, and she was confident the wedding job would lead to
many more after that. Everyone would see her photos, and hire her for their own
weddings, graduations, and grand openings. She’d be the talk of the town, and
maybe even the county.
As she walked in the door that evening at
a quarter past five, Haley was still on a high from the good news of the day.
“Mom, I’m home!” she called up the stairs.
She began looking through the stack of
mail on the table by the door, not surprised to see only advertisements and
bills. A moment later, Olivia blew the smoke from her cigarette across the
coffee table, and Haley jumped back in surprise.
“Jesus, Mom. You scared the shit out of
me. Why didn’t you say hello when I walked in the door?”
Olivia made a face and shrugged, like she
didn’t know why she hadn’t.
Haley noticed the empty glass of melting ice
cubes next to her on the end table. She’d forgotten to use a coaster again.
Haley marched over and added one for her, quickly wiping up the condensation
with a tissue.
They stared at each other with equal
measures bittersweet disgust and disappointed love, until Haley returned to the
other side of the couch to grab her mail and head upstairs to her bedroom.
Olivia watched her daughter carefully,
and noticed something different about her. Something was off, she was sure, odd
even. Unless she was just imagining it, Haley seemed strangely happy?
“What’s up with you?” Olivia asked.
Haley couldn’t help but smile, giddy with
the exciting job offer ahead of her. Though she hadn’t called Mr. Caraway yet
for the details, any wedding shoot meant good money, she was sure of that.
“Well, I got offered a photography job
today. One of the patients at Dr. Finny’s office said he needed a photographer
for next weekend, and when I told him I could do it, and showed him my
portfolio, he hired me right away. I’ll be shooting his daughter’s wedding next
Saturday.”
She watched her mother’s face change as a
sly smile appeared. Haley thought she was about to congratulate her, but then—
“And does this idiot know you have
absolutely no experience doing that
kind of thing? That you’ve never
photographed a wedding in your entire life? That you’ve barely accumulated
enough experience for homework assignments at school? Did you tell him any of that?
Did you even bother to tell him who
he was dealing with?”
Haley quickly turned her back on her, and
punished the stairs with a furious glare. She debated whether or not to even
try to argue with her mother, but decided not to.
“I’ll be in my room,” she announced to the
wall, retreating up the stairs with only half the energy she had when she came
in.
Olivia shook her head at her, then took
another long puff of her cigarette. Haley
should know better than to lie to some stranger about that kind of thing,
she thought. She had half a mind to warn the man too, if she ever found out who
he was.
“Don’t forget we have cake for Erika’s
birthday tonight at seven!” Olivia screamed up the stairs. “And there’s some
leftover pasta salad in the fridge, by the way!”
Haley didn’t respond, and Olivia heard
her door slam shut a second later. Relaxing deeper into the couch, Olivia
stared at her cigarette for a while. The ash was long now, about to fall off.
She wiggled it in her hand a bit to see
if she could get it to fall, but it didn’t. As she took another puff a moment
later, the ash dropped onto her blouse, and Olivia once again stared at it like
it was a beautiful treasure worthy of adoration and respect. She watched it as
if it would move on by itself, then flicked it off onto the couch with a grunt.
Chapter 3
Lenny strode down the
hallway toward his front door with relief. His one saving grace had arrived at
last. As he opened the door, Olivia and Haley smiled in at him from the stoop.
“Hi Uncle Lenny,” Haley said, leaning in
to kiss him on the cheek.
She moved past him quickly on her way to
the kitchen in the back of the house, happy to get away from her mother.
“Your cousins are in the backyard hanging
out with their friends,” Lenny called after her, then turned back to his sister
Olivia, who seemed firmly against entering the house at all.
“Mom and Dad are inside,” he said, then laughed
as she turned around and pretended to leave.
“But there’s a bottle of wine open in the
kitchen,” he added.
Olivia turned back around and leaned
forward, offering Lenny her cheek for a kiss. They exchanged a glance that
said, ‘here we go again’.
Lenny was two years younger than Olivia,
who he knew had a rough life in many ways, so perhaps because of that, and due
to her overall sullen personality, he never tormented her the way many other
younger brothers would have. He was instead her very best friend, and always
would be.
They seemed to have made an unspoken pact
as children not to criticize the other too much, mostly because they each knew
their parents offered them quite enough of that already.
As Olivia made her way into the kitchen,
she spotted the wine before she saw her parents’ faces, and was grateful for
that, certain the merlot would provide a much friendlier welcome than her
mother would.
She poured herself a full glass, then
started gulping right away, finally making eye contact with Caroline as she
did.
Caroline, Lenny’s wife, was drinking
already too, but she always seemed to tolerate her in-laws just fine.
“Hey, Car?” Lenny called over to her. “Can
you help me with the garbage? Mom? Dad? Livi’s here.”
As her parents turned around, Olivia shot
Lenny a glare, mouthing a sarcastic ‘thank you’ his way.
Olivia walked over and kissed her parents
hello, watching as Phyllis sized her up like she was dressed in garbage bags. None
of it surprised Olivia anymore, but neither did she find it amusing.
‘That’s
just her way,’ Caroline once told her. ‘Playing
the judge and expecting perfection from everyone is just who she’s always been,
and who she’ll always be, so there’s no point trying to change her at this
point.’
“Olivia, darling. I was wondering if you’d
be coming too,” Phyllis said. “You know the party started over twenty minutes
ago. Haley came through here earlier.”
“Yeah, we came together. I’m sorry Haley reached
you a full thirty seconds before I did, but she’s 22, and moves faster than
45-year-olds do.”
“Your father and I are both in our 70s,”
Phyllis said. “By your logic, we should still be struggling to put our
seat belts on.”
Olivia shook her head and walked away
from them again, back to the kitchen island and the wine.
“I can help you with that seat belt any
day, Ma,” she muttered under her breath, so only Caroline could hear.
“Hey, Phyllis? Alan?” Caroline said. “You
guys want some wine? We have red and white.”
Caroline looked across at their faces as
she said this, and she already knew how they’d react. It was practically a
script at this point.
“You got any Jack?” Alan asked.
Phyllis walked into the kitchen then, grabbing
the wine bottle out of Olivia’s hand just as she was pouring herself a second
glass.
“Oh,” she said with a frown. “The red’s
not refrigerated? I like it refrigerated. It’s much better that way.”
Olivia pretended to vomit, and flashed
Caroline a look of dark judgment from behind her mother as Caroline stifled a
smile.
“No, we keep the red at room temperature,
but I’ll get you some ice.”
“Oh, okay. I guess that will be fine,
dear, as long as the ice doesn’t melt too quickly. Oh Olivia, darling, did you
hear? I saw Sam in town this morning.
He was coming out of the hardware store while I was on my walk with Nancy
Hensley. He came over and gave us both big hugs and kisses, of course. I hadn’t
seen him in so long, you know.”
Olivia just stared at her mother for a
moment in shock, half at her mother’s ignorance, and half at the fact of the
matter. No one had heard from Sam in years, as far as she knew. Then she turned
back to Caroline.
‘Does
she know she’s being such a bitch?’ her face said. ‘Or is she really just this fucking obtuse?’
It was a question she could never figure
out, and as much as Caroline and Lenny both swore to her that Phyllis really
didn’t know any better most of the time, Olivia wasn’t so sure.
She hadn’t spoken to her mother at all
that day, so how could she have known she saw Sam? And why would she care how
sweet her ex-husband was to her mother?
“Yeah, well, I haven’t seen him in quite a
while either, Mom.”
“Well, he looked fantastic.”
Phyllis moved past her with her wine
glass, and sat down on the couch, soon poking her ice cubes with her nails to
make sure they were solid.
Alan stared up at Olivia with his brow
furrowed in thought for a while, then raised a finger as he remembered
something he wanted to tell her.
“Oh! And I saw Haley in town today. She
was walking with a cup of coffee toward that doctor’s office. That what’s-his-name guy she works for.”
“Doctor Finny?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Funny Finny. I
don’t go to him, you know. I go to my doctor in Rutland. He’s much better. Best
ratings on Zillow too.”
“No, Dad. Zillow is—”
“Prices are ridiculous either way, of
course. Goddamn copays are astronomical too. Although it would’ve been much
worse if Crooked Hillary had won.”
“Dad, stop.”
“I mean it. She would have tripled all our
bills. But of course the goddamn liberals wanted her anyway. They had no idea.
Totally clueless, as always. Thank God for President Trump, that’s all I’ve got
to say.”
Alan couldn’t help himself around Olivia
sometimes. He knew she’d let him say whatever he thought about anything, and he
liked that. He liked having kids who tolerated their parents, even when they
disagreed with him.
“You know, Dad, I’m a goddamn liberal who
voted for Hillary.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said with a nod, then
flashed a grin her way a few seconds later.
In the backyard, Haley found Erika with
two of her friends, and had just finished telling them about her photography
job. All three of them said it sounded ‘super cool’, but Haley was pretty sure
they didn’t really care.
Erika and her friends were seniors in
high school, and for the first time in her life, Haley noticed how much younger
they all seemed. They were each drinking bottles of beer Erika had snatched
from the fridge inside, and though Haley was pretty sure they’d had less than
one beer each, they were acting much more drunk than they could have possibly
been.
“Wait. You’re 22, right?” Erika asked.
“Yeah,” Haley said with a sigh. “The big
2-2.”
Jenn and Isobel both laughed really hard
at this, and Erika nearly spit out her beer as she was guzzling it. Haley
sighed. Part of her wanted to mock them for being so dumb, but she knew she
wouldn’t have enjoyed a buzz kill if she was in their shoes.
“So listen,” Erika went on, “you should
totally hang with us tonight. We’re going up to the woods on Okemo to get
wasted. Jenn’s brother’s driving. And if you want, maybe you could bring some
beer too?”
She’d made it sound like an afterthought,
but Haley quickly realized they wouldn’t be able to get more beer on their own.
She was only asking her to come so she could buy some for them.
“No, I don’t think so, sorry. I have too
much to do tonight,” she lied.
“Eh, it’s alright,” Erika said. “I can
probably just steal some from my dad. He’d probably offer to come drink with us
if he knew.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” Haley said, thinking
how much cooler her Uncle Lenny was than her mom.
“No way, Haley. Don’t get me wrong. I
mean, I love my dad? But he’s always freakin’ staring at Jenn’s tits. He can be
a real perv. Not a party we’re
inviting him to.”
The three girls all laughed at this, and
Haley did too, but only nervously.
In the silence that followed, Haley
looked at Jenn, and thought about how to ask the question now on her mind.
“Hey, um,” she finally said, “so you’re
Jonathan’s little sister, right?”
“Mm-hm, he’s driving us tonight, but his
license is suspended, so he can’t get us beer. Wait, so do you know him?”
“Yeah, he was in my class at school. Just
tell him I said hi.”
Haley
immediately felt foolish. Jonathan was the source of one of her biggest
embarrassments senior year of high school. She’d been watching him walk one
day, because she liked his ass, and suddenly he was staring her down with his
hand out to stop her. Before she realized what she’d done, she had apparently
followed him right into the boys’ bathroom.
Deciding she’d had enough of their
company, Haley looked around for her other cousin.
“Hey Erika, where’s Peaches? Is she here
tonight?”
Erika was gulping down the last of her
beer, making sure to get every last drop from the bottle before she responded.
“Yeah. I think she’s on the hammock back
past the tree.”
“Okay, thanks,” Haley said, squinting
toward the hammock as she stood up. “Oh, yeah. I see her.”
As she walked toward the back of the
property, Haley relived the moment in her head: the bathroom incident with
Jonathan Fisher. The joke was mercifully over three days later when Bobby
Tinson flipped off the principal, but for three weekdays straight, the whole
school teased her about it. All she could do was laugh with embarrassment, as
her face found new and brighter ways to shine red. But if Bobby Tinson hadn’t
given Principal Montgomery the finger that Friday afternoon, the whole school
would’ve been talking about her for weeks more instead.
“Hey, Peaches,” she said, sitting down on
the woodpile nearby. “Thanks for subbing for me at work next week. It’ll be
really easy, I promise. I can walk you through everything.”
Haley examined her shoelaces, wondering if
she had enough money for a new pair of shoes. The wedding money would come in
handy, at least. Even if it wasn’t too much, it had to be enough for a nice new
pair.
Looking back up at Peaches, she wondered
why she hadn’t answered her. She leaned forward and waved her hand, and Peaches
turned over on the hammock and took her ear buds out.
“Oh hey, how are you?” Peaches asked.
“I’m good, thanks. I didn’t realize you
had ear buds in, sorry. I was just saying I appreciate you helping me out by
subbing for me next weekend.”
“Sure, no problem. I’m looking forward to
it.”
“Well, it’s honestly pretty boring, but
it’s really easy. I’ll walk you through the binder and show you what to do and
stuff. I’ll bring it over one day next week.”
“Yeah, it should be fun.”
Peaches was a year and a half younger
than Erika, and by all accounts, she was the strangest 16-year-old anyone knew.
Before that, she had held the title of strangest 15-year-old anyone knew, the
strangest 14-year-old anyone knew, and so on. Ever since she was a toddler,
Peaches was different. Her
personality was charming to some, strange but acceptable to others, and just
plain weird to everyone else.
Behind her back, even their grandfather
called her a weirdo, though Peaches would have never known.
“Trust me, Peaches, the job’s not fun.”
“Well then I’ll make it fun. It must be
cool to meet the patients and see what’s wrong with them, at least.”
Haley shrugged and nodded.
“Yeah, I guess.”
The door to the back deck slid open, and
Caroline’s face poked out into the cool night air. She tried to see what Erika
and her friends were up to, but part of her really didn’t want to know anyway.
Caroline believed that ignorance may not always be bliss, but it’s still most
often the best path to family harmony.
“Guys, it’s time for cake!” she yelled out
to anyone who would listen.
She watched and waited until faces
started appearing from the dark, walking toward her. First Haley and Peaches,
and then a moment later Erika and her friends. Caroline tried to ignore the
familiar clink of beer bottles in the distance.
Once inside, a new dance began.
Haley loved her family, but she wondered
how much they were all just going through the motions sometimes, pretending to
like each other out of some sort of centuries-old tradition. She knew they
loved her, and she knew her Uncle Lenny and Aunt Caroline were happy together,
but there was so much unspoken animosity between certain people too, especially
between her mother and grandmother.
Worst of all, Haley worried that she and
her mom were already repeating all the same patterns in reverse, that the two
of them would always be at each other’s throats for the rest of their lives,
just like Olivia and Phyllis were.
“So Haley,” Lenny said. “A little birdie
told me you were hired to photograph a wedding next Saturday?”
“Hey, Uncle Lenny. Yeah. I just got the
job today. I’m really excited. I don’t know all the details yet, but I think
I’m gonna do well with it.”
“That’s great, kid. Good for you. My
boss’s nephew is getting married next Saturday too though, so if you see a tall
bald guy with a bright white beard, that’s probably him. He can be a real dick,
so steer clear of him.”
Haley laughed.
“Okay, will do. The man who hired me is
the father of the bride. Mr. Caraway. Does that name sound familiar?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Olivia approached the two of them from
behind, already more than halfway through a piece of birthday cake. She licked
the fork, then poked Haley in the back to make her presence known.
“Ow.”
“Did you tell your Uncle Lenny that
you have zero experience
photographing weddings, and that you might just fuck the whole thing up? I
doubt you’ll ever have more work in the field if all your pictures come out
blurry. You can’t be right up in their faces, either. Does your lens even reach
that far if you’re taking pictures from a distance?”
“Mom, please. Of course it will.
Everything will be fine.”
“Now, now, Livi. Leave her alone. I’m sure
she’ll do great.”
“Thank you, Uncle Lenny.”
“Whatever. Your funeral,” Olivia said,
then dropped her plate and fork a little too loudly on the countertop as she
went back for more wine.
“Don’t listen to her,” Lenny said. “She’s
probably just jealous. I bet shooting a wedding is a lot more fun than whatever
she does at the bank. And it sure as hell beats my job in accounts payable.”
He smiled at her again, but quickly
excused himself when he spotted Caroline looking annoyed over by the kitchen
sink.
“What’s wrong? Erika drinking again?”
Caroline smiled fakely.
“Probably, but no, that’s not it. Did you
see her birthday cake?”
“Yeah, it looks beautiful. Why, what’s
wrong? Do we not have enough candles to stick in?”
“Your sister already helped herself to a
slice.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Don’t. It’s not even worth it when she
gets like this. We’ll only make it worse if we raise a stink. I’ll spread in
some whipped cream, and it’ll be fine. Don’t say anything to her.”
“Fine,” Lenny said, “but you know I’d be
happy to give her hell if she deserves it. I don’t care how fucked up she is.
She shouldn’t have helped herself to cake until we were ready.”
“It’s fine. Never mind. I’ll fix it. I
just want the rest of the night to go as calmly and peacefully as possible.”
A huge crash came echoing in from the
dining room just then, and as everyone ran over to see what it was, they found
Olivia staring down at a rack of DVDs she’d accidentally pulled away from the
wall, now barely leaning on one of the dining room chairs. DVDs were strewn everywhere
below the table and across the shiny wood floor.
They all stared at Olivia then for an
explanation, but she just stared back at them blankly, as if she had walked in
on the mess herself only a moment before they had.
She took a long sip of wine as she took
note of each of them, pausing to nod toward Erika’s friends in the back. Then
she looked back down at the floor, and finally leaned down to pick a DVD up,
scanning the front and back of it with a smile.
“Oh. Here it is.”
