Oh God, the Shaws. She couldn’t think about them without hearing an explosion echo in her ears.
Ann was holding the photo when a car crunched toward the house on the broken oyster shells her father scattered on the driveway.
The Realtor.
Suddenly the picture burned in her hands. She furtively stuffed it under the old Popeye-themed sheet that covered the couch, grateful she’d hidden the evidence before Carol arrived. Michael looked nothing like Ann or Poppy. He could be any random kid, a cousin or friend. Even if the Realtor saw the photo, why would she suspect he was their adopted brother, an heir?
* * *
CAROL MADE ANN FEEL EMBARRASSED about the house. She touched every surface, ran her fingers along the window casings, setting free so much dust that it flew loose in a cloudy puff. “Needs a good scrub-down,” she said. She wiped her hand on her vest, leaving a gray smear. “I’ll give you a list of cleaners. They do an excellent job.”
“I can take care of it,” Ann said.
“I’m sure you can.”
Carol was younger than Ann thought she’d be, maybe thirty-five, about Ann’s own age, and she was ruggedly attractive. She was cool, even for someone who chose to live on the lonely outermost Cape year-round, a coolness that Ann thought was wasted here. It would serve her better someplace more hip and urban, like Boston or New York. Ann thought Carol’s beauty was wasted here, too, with so few people to appreciate it. She had big, watchful eyes and a heap of curly blond hair piled on top of her head. She wore an artsy purple A-line skirt made out of thick sailcloth material that looked heavy and uncomfortable and swished when she walked. Unlike Carol’s thick wool tights, Ann’s hose were sheer, and her frozen toes were stuffed into black, pointy pumps with straps around the ankles. Ann followed Carol from room to room, the sound of her stupid heels like pickaxes digging into ice when they clicked against the hardwood plank floors. It was an odd sound in a place where everyone had always gone barefoot.
“So, what do you think?”
“About the price?” Carol paused to lean into the fireplace to look up into the flue. “Well, it’s hard to say. Houses like this don’t usually come on the market.”
“It’s one of the oldest on the Cape,” Ann said, feeling a tingle of pride combined with sadness. “It’s one of a kind.”
Carol said, “Actually, there are plenty of antique saltboxes in Wellfleet.”
“They say the house was made from the wood of a merchant boat that was stranded in the cove. It’s old. Really old.” Ann looked around at the historic putty-colored oil trim that was thankfully untouched, just like the flinty woodblock-print wallpaper sagging against the walls. Until that afternoon, seeing the house through Carol’s eyes, she hadn’t noticed how stained and worn it looked, as though it had been exposed to a fire. She was so familiar with the house that she didn’t even see it anymore, the way she could listen to an old song she’d heard a thousand times on the radio and not really hear it.
“Oh, I’m not disputing that the house has an interesting history,” Carol said. “I’m sure your buyer will want to learn everything you know about it. What’s unique is that it’s coming on the market in the first place. Out here, old houses usually stay in the family.” The way Carol said it made Ann feel like she was being judged, like her whole family had failed. And they had.
“So, tell me,” Carol said. “Why are you selling this treasure?”
“Treasure” sounded good, or maybe Carol was mocking her? Ann couldn’t tell. This bothered her, because she liked to think she usually could tell these things. “My sister and I think selling makes the most sense.”
If only Poppy could hear Ann speaking as if they were a united front. We. They hadn’t talked about what to do with this house, not yet. Poppy said she wanted to spend her summer here, and who knew, she might want to keep it, but she didn’t have a practical bone in her body. Besides, Poppy couldn’t afford to buy Ann out, not with the money she made teaching yoga and waiting tables in Puerto Rico, South Africa, wherever. She flitted from beach to beach, chasing STDs and waves. She didn’t even check her email regularly, which was why she didn’t hear about their parents’ accident until two weeks after it had happened—the loneliest two weeks of Ann’s life.
“Does your sister also live in Boston?”
Ann shook her head. “She’s a bit of an itinerant. She lives all over.”
Carol nodded as though this was perfectly normal. Wellfleet was filled with artists and outsiders like Ann’s parents.
“She’s back home now,” Ann said, thinking about how strange the word “home” sounded. What was home anymore? She tried to clarify: “At my parents’ house. In Wisconsin.” Ann pointed at the Green Bay Packers potholder hanging from a hook near the oven as if she needed supporting evidence.
“Wisconsin?” Carol said “Wisconsin” the way most people out East said it, like they’d just heard the name of a high school classmate they’d long forgotten.
“That’s where we, where they, lived most of the year. We have to sell that house, too. My parents were in the middle of a remodel when it happened.”
Carol didn’t seem particularly interested in what “it” was, and Ann was grateful. She didn’t think she had the strength to talk about the semi driver who had crossed lanes and hit her parents’ car head-on while they were headed back home from the Cape last August. Talking about the accident here, in this sacred space, would only make it real again.
“My sister and I, we aren’t any good at houses and now, suddenly, we have two to sell, and they both need work.”
“Divide and conquer.”
“That’s my plan,” Ann said. “My sister is getting the Milwaukee house ready to sell, and I’m taking care of this one. We’ll both be in real estate hell.”
“It’s like childbirth,” Carol said, although Ann suspected Carol was childless. “You’ll forget how awful it is as soon as you get the check at closing.”
“Closing”: Ann suddenly appreciated what a nice word that was. Ann wanted closure.
“It’s good that you and your sister are in agreement about selling,” Carol said. “Houses, even houses that aren’t special like this one, well, they often make people sentimental.” She talked about sentiment with anthropological distance. “The ones that are hardest to let go of are places that are passed down generation to generation.”
Ann’s great-grandfather had initially come from Ireland to the Cape to work for the Pacific Guano Company in Woods Hole, a business that imported bat shit for fertilizer. When the company went bankrupt, he moved farther up the Cape to Wellfleet and tried to start a farm here. Her father, an only child, eventually inherited the house and wouldn’t think of selling, even though he lived halfway across the country. They could have sunk the money into a much cheaper cottage in Door County or Waupaca—it seemed everyone had a lake place in Wisconsin—but her parents loved it here. They let the Cape house dictate their lives. Her parents never earned high salaries; they were teachers because they adored kids, but mostly because their jobs allowed them to spend their summers in Wellfleet.