The sun broke from behind a cloud, shining through the tent’s yellow skin. The beams of light turned everything golden. Charles lay on his back again, soaking it up. He wasn’t in his backyard anymore, but in the wilderness, all alone. There was no one around to help him. He was responsible for his food, his shelter. He imagined lying here all night, listening to the deer crash through the woods, shivering under a blanket, experiencing every inch of the bumpy soil. Honestly, camping wasn’t for him. It would never be for him. But it was, he understood now, in its own way, beautiful.
Chapter 19
Charles’s car was parked crookedly in the driveway, so Sylvie called his name as she walked into the house. No answer. She dropped her bag on the counter and looked around, trying to feel comforted by the familiar. “Charles?” she called again. Nothing. She walked through the living room to the dining room. Everything was still. She went outside and cupped her hands on Scott’s apartment windows. Dark.
Figuring he’d gone out for a run, she walked back into the kitchen and absently paced from fridge to table to telephone to island. Her letter to Warren was still in her pocket, along with the check. There was no way she could bring herself to read what she’d written. What had he done after she’d left? Called the police? Reported her to Swithin? Actually, she hoped Warren did go to Swithin. He could say she stalked him. He could say she was trying to manipulate him, bribe him. Maybe he’d seen her reach for the letter in her pocket. Maybe he sensed there was a check in the envelope, a check for him. All at once she didn’t want to be a part of Swithin any longer. It had mattered so much but it didn’t anymore. It felt like the wrong thing to care about.
She crouched under the telephone table and fed the letter into the paper shredder. Same with the check. The shredder made a whirring noise and deposited the remains into the basin below. The kitchen was still. A peace came over her, one she hadn’t felt in a long time. Smoothing back her hair, she started for the second floor. She could see the key in her mind, sitting on James’s desk. It was small and silver with a square top. “Sentry,” it said on one side. On the other: “Made in China.”
There were conflicting voices in her head. It doesn’t matter. She would look in the cabinet and find some evidence of the woman, whoever she was … and then what? It would open up something she should just let pass. But on the other hand, she wanted something real, something truthful. A name. Even if it hurt. She was ready.
A glint of light on the landing caught her eye. James’s office door was already ajar.
She walked inside. It was chilly in the room. She walked to the window and looked out. There was something in the yard. She leaned her head against the glass, frowning.
It was a tent.
She hurried back downstairs and out the door, certain it was a hallucination—for how could she have missed it when she came inside? But no, it was a tent, big and yellow, fully erected in her backyard. She had no idea when she’d last seen a tent. Its presence here seemed alien, unnerving. And then she saw something dark moving inside. A shadow.
Slowly, she walked toward it. She squatted, her heels immediately sinking in the mud. There was a zipped flap at the front. “Hello?” she said softly.
There was rustling. “Mom?”
More rustling. Then the opening unzipped and Charles stared out at her. He’d taken his shoes off; they were sitting on the tent floor next to him. He was dressed in work clothes, a blue button-down shirt and dark khaki pants. His eyes, cheeks, and the tip of his nose were red. At first she thought it might be windburn, but then she wondered if he’d been crying.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She tapped one of the posts. “Where did you get this?”
“In the garage. It was Dad’s.”
She blinked, still not understanding.
“I built it,” Charles went on. “Do you want to come in?”
She hesitated, the idea of it was not very appealing. The ground was cold, wet, and there was a bitter chill in the air. But she wondered if something in him had broken, just like something had in her. It was probably high time things broke inside all of them. She looked inside the tent again. Everything was an iridescent gold. “I guess I could come in for a minute,” she said softly.
Charles moved back so she’d have enough room to crawl in. She climbed into the tent awkwardly, her skirt riding up, her necklace bouncing against her collarbone, her knees instantly cold, separated from the tent’s floor by only a thin layer of pantyhose. Charles was lying down, so Sylvie did, too. There was just enough room for them to lie side by side, their arms touching.
For a long time, neither of them said anything. There were a lot of things Sylvie wanted to ask him—why he’d built the tent or why he wasn’t at work, for instance—but she sensed that she shouldn’t. They lay next to each other in their own separate and walled-off pain, listening to the wind.
“It kind of doesn’t feel like we’re in our backyard,” Sylvie said.
“I know. We could be anywhere.”
“And it’s cozy, in a way. Sort of like a nest.”
“I guess it is,” Charles said. “It’s pretty crazy that people used to live like this. Not in tents, I mean, but so exposed to the elements. So primitively.”
“They were used to it, though,” she said. “I guess if you’re used to it, it’s not such a big deal.”
Far off in the distance someone started up what sounded like a buzz saw. “Why did Dad hate me?” Charles asked.
A shiver ran through her. She sat up halfway. “Honey. He loved you.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly like me. Is there something I could’ve done differently? Is there something I should’ve said? A way I should’ve looked?”
Her throat was tight. “I don’t know if it was as simple as that.”
“So you did notice it.” He watched her for a moment. She neither nodded nor shook her head. “Couldn’t you have said something to him? Couldn’t you have asked?”
“You don’t think I tried? You don’t think I agonized over it? That I questioned why he acted the way he did? You don’t think it killed me?”
“I …” Charles stammered, surprised.
She shut her eyes. It felt like there was a tidal wave brewing deep inside of her, beginning to build momentum. What had she harmed, trying to keep the peace? Apres moi, le deluge, her grandfather said. She didn’t know any answers. She wished she did, but she didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sighing. “I did try. I did. But no, I didn’t try enough. No one did. Don’t just blame him, though,” she said quietly. “It’s my fault, too. Maybe it’s mostly my fault. Don’t think it’s yours.”
Charles said nothing in response. Sylvie touched his hand, and then leaned her head on his shoulder. His skin was warmer than hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
He looked away, maybe guilty. A crack formed in her brain. Could he know, too? About this girl, as Tayson had called her?
But, no. It hadn’t been a girl. She couldn’t believe that. Tayson had heard a rumor and took a gamble. It worked on Sylvie, too. He’d hit her in her softest, weakest spot, exactly where he needed in order to get her to act.
She waited for Charles to say something, but all he did was shake his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said. And then she moved onto her hands and knees. “I think I’m going to go inside now.”
“Okay.” Charles unzipped the tent flap for her. She crawled out, stood up, and assessed herself. Her skirt was wrinkled. Individual blades of grass were imprinted on her knees. She peered in at Charles, who was sitting cross-legged.
“Are you going to stay in there?”
“For a while, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.”
She turned and opened the front door. Retraced her steps up the stairs, walking under her grandfather’s portrait, coming to a stop outside James’s office. She took a deep breath and walked across the room.
The key slid easily into the filing cabinet lock. She heard a release, and the drawer opened. A dull, metallic sound echoed throughout the room.
There was a single paper clip at the bottom of the drawer. Rusted. A bit bent. Nothing else.
She pulled the next drawer open. It, too, was empty. And so was the next. She reached to the very back, but there was only cold metal. She stood back and pushed her hand through her hair, letting out a defeated laugh through her nose.
All this time, fearing an empty drawer.
She sank down on his office chair. What James had done was an indelible part of her now; she would have to live with it. So it had blindsided her; so she hadn’t seen it coming. So James hadn’t seemed like the type of man who would ever do such a thing. The point was that it had happened, and there was nothing she could do to change that. He had made a mistake; a lot of people did. People she loved, people she thought would never make mistakes. That was the only conclusion she could come to, the only way she could really come to terms with it.
The sun outside broke free from a cloud, sending a carpet of gold across James’s desk. Sylvie was sitting at just the right angle to notice a gleaming hair next to his old computer. She bent down. It was a gray hair, short and coarse. His.
A sob welled in her throat. It felt like it was the only tangible, organic thing left of him. Not the ring he gave her, not the clothes in his closet, only this single, tenuous hair. Her heart clenched. She’d spent so much time fixating on the woman, maybe as shelter from the fact that he was really gone. And he was gone. He would not come downstairs to talk to her ever again. He would not sit next to her when she was sick, putting cold washcloths on her forehead. She wouldn’t hear the noises of him moving around, getting ready for work, swearing as he bumped around in the clumsy, woozy morning. She had stood over him in his last few hours alive, cursing what he’d done, and after he died, she’d stared down at him, too numb to think. And that was all there was. She wouldn’t get any more time with him. She’d squandered what she had.
After a while, she looked down into the backyard. The tent loomed, silent and cheerful, next to the same exact brick patio that had been there when Sylvie was a girl. And there were the same exact flowerbeds, too, and the same gazebo and pool that no one used but they’d never replaced with something else. That old decking. That old blue diving board. The DNA from her grandfather’s feet was probably all over that diving board, as well as skin from his hands on the edges of the pool and the metal ladder and the long-handled device that skimmed the bugs from the surface.
Sylvie supposed she could imagine that the Charles inside the tent wasn’t a troubled adult but still a little boy. Both he and Scott could still be little boys, and things could still turn out differently for them, more like she’d envisioned. She supposed she could even imagine that she was a little girl, too. This office was still her grandfather’s, and the tent down there was hers. And she wondered if that was what she’d been doing all this time, living in this big, broken house, working so hard to keep things exactly the same. She wondered if, deep down, she hoped time wasn’t a straight line but could loop back on itself, letting her start over.
