The Winters(36)

“Sorry,” he said to me. He turned away and spoke into his phone. “I have to go.”

I stepped towards the boat. My eyes possessively scanned the hull, the tools, his phone.

“She was just curious about what you were doing in here. So I thought I’d show her.”

“She’s more than welcome to come down here and see for herself,” I said. I didn’t like his expression, the way he had looked at me with pity almost. “When is she coming home?”

“I’m just heading out to get her. Unless you need something.”

“No, thanks.”

He left without another word. I looked around the boathouse and shuddered at the thought that Dani didn’t even need to be on the property to spy on me.





FOURTEEN


When I heard the sound of wheels on gravel, I didn’t even pause to wash my hands. I dropped my brush and bolted from the boathouse and up the path. Max was home, later than he said he’d be, but he was home! There was so much to tell him about the boat and the kitten, so much to hear about his days and nights in Albany. I breathlessly rounded the corner of the garage and jumped into his arms, heedless of how dirty I was or how laden his arms were with bags.

“I should leave more often,” he said, laughing, as I kissed him all over his face.

“Never, never, never leave again,” I said.

He dug his nose into my mess of curls. “Am I smelling . . . what is that? Formaldehyde? Have you been embalming the dead again?” He looked at my hands, my nails stained by my efforts. “Where’s your ring?”

“In the boathouse. Come. I have a surprise for you.”

“Great. I think. Listen, I also want to talk to you about something.” I pushed his bag off his shoulder and tugged him by the sleeve over the side lawn.

“Me first.”

I planned to thrill him with the boat first, then tell him about our new furry tenant convalescing in the greenhouse. I opened the boathouse door with a flourish and we were both freshly hit with the smell of varnish, which had begun to turn the boat back to a gleaming liver color. Only two or three more coats to go.

Max, his mouth half-open, took a few steps closer to the boat, one hand floating towards it, careful not to disturb the finish.

“This was my father’s boat. He never let me touch it. I’m . . . speechless.”

I couldn’t place his tone, whether he was grateful or angry. “I wanted to surprise you. Please say you don’t mind.”

He turned away from the boat and came towards me, his face slowly relaxing into a beatific expression. Was he tearing up? He swept me into his arms. I wrapped my legs around him, and as he walked, he murmured into my ear.

“What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“So you don’t mind?”

He shook his head, placing me down on the leather couch and unbuttoning my plaid work shirt, then my jeans. For all of this ardor and my eager compliance, his expression was not triumphant. He seemed, for lack of a better word, mournful, as though preemptively sorry for what he was about to do. When I held his face in my hands, he avoided my eyes.

“Hey. What is going on in that head?”

“That I want to get you naked right now.”

“I can see that,” I said, helping him with my jeans. They bunched at an ankle and he angrily worked off a running shoe to free them. Stopping for a moment, he looked at me again with that same sad expression.

“You didn’t want such a big life, did you? You might have been content on that little island tinkering away on a boat like this.”

I leaned forward and kissed him. “Not without you.”

It was still bewildering how well he knew how to please me, without my ever having to explain my body’s intricacies to him. He simply knew where to touch me and with what part of his body, using the right level of fervency. Knees bent, body slack, I lay there while he pleased me again, my fingers spidering through the hair on the back of his head. Moans filling my ears, ones that were loud enough to drown out the sound of approaching footsteps. When I saw Dani in the doorway I snapped my knees shut on Max’s ears.

“Wow,” she said, laughing. “This boathouse has seen a lot of action lately.”

Then she slammed the door shut, sending up angry dust motes in her wake.

Max sat upright, keeping his eyes shut tight as though with enough concentration he could turn back time. After what seemed an eternity, he muttered, “I’ll talk to her about this.”

I dressed, enraged. “About what? About knocking? About privacy? About . . . sex? Oh my God, I’m going to throw up.”

“Look, it was bound to happen. These things happen. We live with a nosy teenager.”

He bent to retrieve my shoe, waiting a beat. “What did she mean about the boathouse seeing action?”

I looked at him squarely and snatched my shoe from him. “Gus helped me ground the boat before she went to New York,” I said, my voice flat. “She’s been spying on me. I’m guessing she would like you to think that I am fucking him.”

Max collapsed against the wall and let out a dark laugh. “I see,” he said, shaking his head.

I wanted to tell him Dani was more than just a nosy teenager: she watched me from the turret, went through my purse for my wallet, followed me into town, had Gus chronicle my activities. I wanted to say I’d been at Asherley for more than a month and things were not thawing. They were becoming worse. She was getting chillier and meaner and odder. She wasn’t following me around because she was nosy. She was trying to menace me, threaten me, to make me afraid of her, so afraid that I would leave. That’s what she wanted. She wanted me gone. And barring that, she wanted to wreck what I had with Max. And I wanted to tell him that if she kept it up, she might succeed.