The lawn was landscaped with pine trees and hydrangeas, a rose bower and half a dozen mature, flowering trees that would, I told Melissa, be stunning in just a few more months. There was an infinity pool in dark granite, a hot tub, a cabana, an outdoor shower and a subtly placed building covered in ivy that housed the sauna, a meditation room and a changing room. Just outside that was an exterior plunge pool of icy salt water. The vast lawn stretched right down to four stairs that led straight into the bay.
“At high tide, you can take a kayak or sailboat right off here,” I said. “At low tide, you and Ophelia can go dig your own clams.”
Melissa Spencer Finch paid a hundred thousand dollars above the hefty asking price, “just in case someone else falls in love with it.” She paid in full, in cash. Within three weeks, she and Ophelia had moved—I saw the trucks as they passed Wellfleet OB/GYN. Since my in-laws were still abroad, I called Melissa for the official welcome, recommended some local vendors for handyman work, decorating and housekeeping, and invited her to dinner with Brad and me at the Mews, one of Provincetown’s best restaurants.
The evening of that dinner, I felt proud of Brad and me as a couple. Me, the local, an earthy midwife who loved to garden and knew everyone, proud daughter of a Portuguese fisherman; Brad, the more erudite, preppy PhD from Beacon Hill. He studied the wine list as if it were a lost gospel and ordered a bottle of ridiculously expensive wine （since his parents’ company would be paying） and listened to Melissa and me chat.
Was there a local florist open year-round? According to her, a house without fresh flowers wasn’t a home, something I agreed with （though the flowers in my house were from my own garden）。 Did I know of any French tutors, since she wanted Ophelia to continue her lessons and become fluent? My mother’s wife was from France, and I’d put them in touch. Did I know any wine vendors to help her stock her wine cellar? I did—Beth was a second-level sommelier. Were there any parenting groups, because she didn’t know a soul other than Brad and me? I told her I’d call some people I knew who had kids Ophelia’s age.
“You’re so wonderful, Lillie,” she said, her green eyes so pretty and clear. “It was my lucky day when I met you. I just know we’ll be friends.”
In the space of a few weeks, she and Brad were sleeping together, he decided he no longer loved me and that it was imperative for him to discover joy.
I think you can see why I kidnapped the skunk.
CHAPTER 1
Lillie
Let’s spin back a few months.
Brad had never had great timing. Some examples . . . He booked a weekend for us to New Orleans for September 1. A massive hurricane hit two days before. A decade later, he planned a vacation to Puerto Rico for the last week of October, and New England had a nor’easter that crushed the power grid and grounded all planes for a week the day we were supposed to take off.
When he was twenty, his grandfather died and left him a drafty, never-renovated, single-family brownstone in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a part of New York that no one had really heard of before. Brad, not telling his parents, wanting to be his own man, sold it immediately for $350,000. （The house is worth upwards of $4 million today . . . I check Zillow from time to time.） He invested the real estate sale money in the dot-com bubble four months before it burst and lost every penny he’d earned on the sale.
Brad would leave for the airport early enough, but he’d pick the wrong bridge to cross—if he chose the Sagamore, there’d be an accident. If he picked the Bourne, there’d be construction. If he went to the bathroom during one of Dylan’s games, our son would sack the quarterback or make a leaping interception and run the ball in for a touchdown.
He proposed to me as I was vomiting up lunch the day I learned I was pregnant. Literally, as I was on my knees in front of the toilet, gacking, he sat on the edge of the tub and said, “Will you marry me, Lillie?” I had to puke twice more before I could answer.
And then, the night before our son graduated from high school, he told me he was leaving me, mere seconds after I told him I had booked us a trip to Europe come October.
I should’ve known something was up. Brad never arranged our date nights, but that night he had announced he was taking me out to dinner. To Pepe’s in Provincetown, even, one of my favorites, especially because of their incredible coconut cake.
“Wow!” I said. Pepe’s was usually reserved for special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries. “What a nice surprise!”
And, you know, how lovely. Maybe Brad was doing this to celebrate our eighteen years, four months, two weeks and three days of parenthood. Dylan Gustavo Fairchild, named for a poet and my grandpa, was our near-perfect son, a wonderful human and the sun, moon and stars to us. Maybe Brad was feeling sentimental, too. Maybe he wanted to talk about our boy and thank me, something he had done at every one of Dylan’s birthdays over the years, which never failed to make me tear up.