She promised that she was.
“And you’re happy!” Reese, who Diana suspected was thoroughly drunk, was giving her a probing look.
“I’m fine!” She lifted her glass of champagne as proof. “I promise.”
“Okay, then.” He patted her upper arm and sent her back into the throng. Instead of returning to the party, Diana had gone to the ladies’ room. She’d washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, wondering what other people saw. A tallish young woman with golden-brown hair, a girl who wore baggy clothes and a wary expression. A girl who’d forgotten how to smile.
When she came out of the bathroom, Ryan was waiting. He grabbed her hand. “Come dancing,” he said, and dragged her toward the center of the room, where people were doing some kind of line dance to “Love Shack” by the B-52s. Diana had let herself be pulled toward the center of the action, throwing her hands in the air with three dozen other revelers whenever Fred Schneider sang “The whole shack shimmies!”
She hadn’t made it home until after two in the morning, and had immediately fallen deeply asleep without bothering to set her alarm, because it was Saturday, one of her days off. She had just opened her eyes when the knocking began.“Caretaker!” a loud, male voice shouted.
She jumped up, badly startled, calling, “Just a minute!” as Willa yelped and scrambled underneath the bed. Diana snatched up the previous evening’s white shirt, wincing at the combined odors of tequila, cigarette smoke, and clam juice, which must have gotten splashed on her sleeves during service. The dresser, with the rest of her clothes, was downstairs, on the opposite side of the cottage, and she could see a bulky male shape looming outside of the screen door.
“Just hang on!” A few weeks ago, there’d been a sale at one of the fancy home goods stores on Commercial Street, the same place she’d bought Ryan’s birthday socks, and she’d treated herself to a blanket of soft knit wool, purple with fringed tassels. She snatched it up, wrapped it around her waist, and came down the stairs to stand on the opposite side of the door.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Michael Carmody. I’m the caretaker,” said the man. He was a tall, heavyset, bearded fellow, thick through the chest and thighs, and he spoke with a broad Boston accent. She guessed that he was maybe five or ten years older than she was. He wore a barn jacket, jeans, and work boots and a Red Sox baseball cap. Beneath its brim, she could see a round face, full cheeks, pale, faintly freckled skin, and a thicket of reddish-brown beard.
“I don’t need anything taken care of,” she said.
The man looked puzzled at this assertion. “Dr. Levy and her husband hired me. I do for them every year. This place, and the other.”
“You do what for them, exactly?” She was slightly reassured that he knew the owner’s name. Then again, anyone could have looked that up.
“I caretake,” said the man, as if that single word should have been enough. When she waited, clearly expecting something more, he gave her another puzzled look, his brow furrowing. “I close up the houses at the end of the summer, and make sure everything’s shipshape for winter. I make repairs. I nail down boards and oil hinges. Check the weather stripping; put up the storm windows. I keep an eye on things through the winter. Making sure that the pipes don’t freeze, plowing out the driveways if it snows. I fix what needs fixing, order replacements for things that need replacing. Making sure nothing gets stolen, and no mice take up residence, so everything’s the way it should be when summer comes.”
“Did Dr. Levy tell you that I’d be staying here for the winter?” Standing on the porch—no, she thought, looming on the porch—he was making her small cottage feel even smaller. She hadn’t had any guests, and hadn’t realized how the place would feel like a doll’s house with another adult nearby.
The man pulled off his baseball cap, poked at his hair, which was a few shades lighter than his beard, and put the cap back on. “She mentioned that they had a tenant, but she didn’t seem sure about your plans.”
Which made sense. Diana had only called Dr. Levy three days ago to ask if she could stay on. Dr. Levy had told her that was fine, that she was welcome to stay through the spring if she liked, but the news didn’t appear to have made its way to Michael Carmody, Caretaker.
“Well, I’m going to be here,” Diana said. “I can take care of the place.”
“So you’ll put up the storm windows?”