“Hello there!” he called out. “So sorry for dive-bombing you back there. I just got this drone and I’m still getting used to the controls. I thought I’d have more time to practice. The whales don’t usually arrive in these waters until later in the season.”
“You were whale watching?” Jo asked.
“Yeah, my girlfriend and I are just out for the day. She’s organizing a party for one of the residents, and I thought I’d try out my new drone. I had no idea I’d get lucky. How’d you know the whales would be out there today?”
Nessa hugged her sketchbook to her chest. He thought they’d been whale watching, too.
“I didn’t,” Celeste said. “I told them it was too early for whales, but they proved me wrong.”
“We got lucky,” Jo said.
“Did we?” Harriett asked with a grin.
That evening, the sun was heading toward the horizon when Jo turned onto Woodland Drive. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, which read 6:33, and goosed the gas. She and Nessa needed to drop off Harriett and get to the Stop & Shop by seven to meet Amber Welsh.
As they approached Harriett’s house, Jo brought the car to a crawl again.
“There’s a hobo sitting on your front porch,” Nessa said.
“Really?” For a moment, Harriett was curious. The moment didn’t last long. “That’s just Chase,” she said, disappointed.
“Chase?” Nessa asked.
“My ex-husband.”
“Holy shit,” Jo said. “We were just talking about him. Did you—”
“Summon him? No. I have a feeling he’s here about a fungus. I meant to mail him the treatment a few months ago. I must have forgotten. Silly me.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Jo asked. “Do you need backup?”
“Backup?” Harriett laughed. “If it came to combat, who would you put your money on—the hobo or me?”
“Don’t murder him,” Nessa said in response. “The three of us have too much work to do.”
“I have no intention of killing him,” Harriett assured her. “That urge passed a long time ago.”
She slipped out of the back seat and made her way up the drive. The salt air and wind had blown her hair into a terrifying tangle of silver and gold that made her appear impossibly tall, Nessa thought, like the statue of a goddess come to life.
Chase rose to greet her, and Harriett drank in his surprise. In the months since they’d seen each other, he seemed to have shriveled while she had grown. Chase’s beard had gone bushy and his pants looked like he’d slept in them more than once. Still, she experienced a pang, like a spasm in an organ that had been removed or a cramp in a phantom limb. It faded quickly, and she knew that was the last pain of its kind she would feel. A woman much like her had once loved a man who looked like him. Neither of those people existed anymore.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he lied awkwardly. Honesty had never been Chase’s strong suit.
“I don’t need you to flatter me,” Harriett replied. “I’m very content with my surroundings.”
“You know, if you didn’t like the landscaping, you could have just said so.”
“I did say so,” Harriett told him, without an ounce of bitterness in her voice. “Come inside, and you can have what you came for.”
She stepped past him and twisted the knob on the front door.
“You don’t keep it locked?” he asked. “Someone could come in and take everything.”