Good for You: A Novel (12)
“There might be a bus you can take, or a car service. Changing the reservation to tomorrow afternoon will save you about a hundred and ten dollars.” She smiled apologetically. “You’d lose the discount for renting more than a week.”
A hundred and ten dollars would only cut down the total fee by about a third. And in addition to getting back to Saugatuck tomorrow, she’d still have to find a way back to the airport in ten days. “Leave the reservation as is, please,” she said, trying not to wince as she passed the card to the clerk. Maybe someone would offer cash for Luke’s house. Having been a renter her entire adult life, she didn’t know much about real estate. But the search she’d conducted while waiting for her plane to board indicated that Western Michigan was a hot market, especially waterfront properties; places often sold in a mere day or two. Fingers crossed, she thought as the clerk handed her a clipboard with a stack of papers to sign.
The drive from the airport to Saugatuck wasn’t unpleasant, especially after she made it through the Detroit-area traffic. Winters could be long and cold and gray in Michigan, but in June the fields were green, and the trees practically sparkled from either side of the highway. Still, with every mile that passed, Aly felt the invisible weight on her chest grow heavier and heavier.
“You need to separate the place from the past,” Luke had told her the one and only time she’d visited him after he’d moved back to Michigan. He’d lived in New York for years because that’s where the financial firms he’d worked for had been located. He’d never meshed with the city the way she had, though. And seeing him practically bound around his new house made her realize why. She may have been the shark, but he needed to be near water. It enlivened him in a way that few things did.
Luke’s house perched on the top of a hill at the south edge of town, not far from where Saugatuck abutted its sister city, Douglas. Two stories high and about two thousand square feet, the place wasn’t a mansion like many of the nearby houses. But with its cedar shakes, big picture windows, and nearly panoramic view of Lake Michigan, Aly had to admit that it was incredibly charming.
Still, as she’d confessed to Luke as he gave her a tour, she didn’t understand. He could’ve lived anywhere. Why there? Where he was so much farther from her—and closer to their mother? Luke had always been far more generous toward Cindy than Aly thought he should’ve been. It certainly wasn’t to be closer to their father, who’d moved down to Florida, or so he’d claimed when they’d last heard from him a decade earlier. Luke made friends wherever he’d gone, but like Aly, he hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone he’d grown up with. So truly, she didn’t get it.
“I just like it here.” He shrugged as they stared out at the lake. The sun was setting, painting the waves in sherbet shades. “The water calms me. And it feels like home, don’t you think?”
Home to Aly was the sound of horns bleating and ambulances wailing—sweet music compared to the yelling and the subsequent sounds of her own crying that had so often filled her ears as a child. Home was the unintentional jostle of a fellow pedestrian, rather than the deliberate sting of her father’s hand. It was the incongruent odors of food carts and perfumed air wafting out of expensive stores, rather than the smell of cigarettes and cheap booze. “Suit yourself,” she’d told him. “New York is my home now and always will be. I just wish you’d come back.”
Luke had looked at her then, questioning and perhaps even a bit hurt. “Always is a very long time, Aly,” he’d said softly, then put his arm around her. “I know you’re the word person, but you might want to pick another one.”
Her eyes blurred with tears as she pulled off the highway and headed toward town. Now that Luke was gone, the only word worse than always was forever. For a person so good at knowing the right thing to do, why on earth hadn’t Luke stayed away from the water? Why hadn’t he remained on dry land, where human beings were meant to be? Why hadn’t he used his stellar judgment and taken Wyatt with him on the sailboat—hadn’t that been the point of inviting his best friend to Florida? Or why hadn’t he at least turned around the minute he realized a squall was approaching?
Damn it, Luke.
She was nearly to his house. Before her, the horizon was a grayish blue. June was high season, and the homes on the lakefront were abuzz with signs of life—children running around on the lawns, adults hauling groceries and suitcases inside, cars zipping down the winding lakefront drive.
When she reached the front of Luke’s house, she considered driving around for a while longer, but she’d been up since the crack of dawn and felt a bit woozy. As much as she hated to admit it, it was probably best not to stay behind the wheel.
She took a deep breath as she pulled onto the long gravel driveway. The house was set back from the road, behind a thicket of trees. As she got closer, she saw that the Craftsman looked exactly as it had when she’d last visited: weathered shakes, low boxwoods bordering the perimeter, the brass bell that Luke had hung over the door. But then she spotted a small SUV on the side of the house.
That’s weird, she thought. It was probably a cleaning crew or gardener. Luke had pressed a set of keys into her palm when she’d last seen him. “My place is your place,” he’d said. “You’re welcome anytime, even if I’m not here. Everything will be taken care of for you.” As a child, Aly had longed to hear these words from her parents; they were no less impactful coming from her brother as an adult. She’d had no interest being in Michigan, of course, but just knowing she had somewhere to go where the fridge would be stocked and she had a warm bed and where she’d be safe meant everything to her, as she tearfully told Luke.