“Hi,” said my sister. “How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Good.” She glanced around. “The house looks nice. Oh, hi, doggy. What’s his name again?”
“Zeus.”
“A great name. Look at that heart on his nose. So cute.” She stepped to the side to avoid Zeus’s gynecological nuzzling.
“Zeus, stop,” I said. “No sexually harassing our guests.” I took Hannah’s coat. “Um, how’s your cat? Thomasina?”
“She’s good. Sleepy. Old.”
“Any weddings or events coming up?”
“One corporate Christmas party down in Chatham. Otherwise, it’s pretty quiet.”
“Mm.” We looked at each other for a minute. “Sit down. I made food.”
“Of course you did,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a mild insult. “Hey, your shed lights are on,” she added.
“Oh, yeah. Ben Hallowell is staying there for a little while.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Dad thought I could use a babysitter after you narc’ed on me about Bralissa’s wedding.”
“Well. Ben is a good guy.”
“Yeah, sure. Yep.” I sat down in the chair across from her, and Zeus collapsed on his bed in front of the fireplace. “Hannah, do you remember that car accident I was in?”
“Of course I do.”
“Ben was the driver.”
“I know.” She poured herself some red wine and swirled it in the glass, sniffed it and managed not to look like an idiot while doing so. “He pulled you out. Saved your life, didn’t he?”
“I don’t remember, but that is the story.”
“Why do you bring it up?”
“I don’t know. Just . . . having him here made me think about it, I guess.”
I had no memory of when Ben’s truck went off the road. None at all. The last thing I remembered was the smell of coffee and the cool of the window against my head . . . and then the hospital, the searing pain, the morphine fog.
Hannah leaned back and looked out the window. It was too dark to see the pond. I wondered if she ever missed it. Her own place was lovely, but it wasn’t this. Even now, the forest smelled like pine needles, and the rain blew against the windows, that loveliest of sounds.
Beth came in at that moment, bringing a gust of salty air with her, and Zeus leaped out of his bed like he’d been zapped with a cattle prod. “It’s getting cold out there!” Beth said. “Hi, Zeus! Who’s my baby? You are! Yes, you are!” Zeus, wagging so hard he fell down, offered Beth his stomach to rub. She obliged, then came into the living room, poured herself a glass of white, stuffed a piece of chorizo in her mouth and chewed. “What did I miss?”
“Lillie was asking about the car accident with Ben.” Hannah and Beth were sort of friends, too, since Hannah pitched the Ice House to a lot of her clients.
“Right! The bad boy of the bay is living with you! How is it, having him out there? Weird? Sexy? Do you watch him from the windows? Are you guys doing it? Because he’s wicked hot.”
“Did you forget your Adderall today?” I asked.
“I may have.”
Zeus climbed up onto the couch to gaze adoringly at the food. I slipped him a piece of sausage. “In answer to your questions, no. He’s practically my father’s son, so it would be almost incestuous and therefore wrong.”
“But so hot. Right, Hannah?”
“Sure,” Hannah said. “We graduated the same year, I think. But I was in Provincetown, and he was down here at Nauset.”
“Did you ever have a crush on him, Han?” Bethie asked.
“No. But he was always fun to talk to.”
Was he? Not to me.
Beth sighed happily. “Remember how we’d go to the dock to watch him when we were teenagers, hoping he’d take off his shirt?”
“I remember going to the dock to see my father,” I said firmly, stroking Zeus’s silky head. “Not to ogle Ben.”
“Liar.” She raised her eyebrows and sipped some wine. “I would do him in a New York minute. Wouldn’t you, Hannah?”
“I invoke my right to the Fifth Amendment,” she said. She was so graceful that way . . . dodging the question, being in the conversation but also being neutral, never having much of an opinion about anything. Always completely in control. God. We were so different. “Speaking of handsome men, Beth, how is your husband?” Hannah asked with a smile.