Page 2 of The Last Stars in the Sky
Long year, I think, but don’t say. I’m not about to bring that all up now, right when we are about to embark on our supposed second chance.
Because the cottage has now come into view, a dark hulk against a darker sky, its pine boards interspersed with once white, now graying pitch, looking smaller than I remembered, and definitely more dilapidated. A gutter is hanging askew, and moss has spread across the boards, over the windows, turning the wood fuzzy, the glass greenish. The place looks completely forgotten, and it is—or at least it was.
Daniel brakes, bringing the car to a stop in front of the back door, which basically operates as the front, since the front of the house has a deck that faces the lake.
“This is it?” Mattie demands. She sounds horrified, and I’m not surprised. Compared to the sprawling, modern McMansions back in Connecticut that she’s familiar with, this place is an unappealing rural ghetto. And yet already, improbably, my heartis lurching, warming. This is, in essence, my home, even if I pretended for seven years that it wasn’t.
Next to Mattie, Ruby stirs and stretches, blinking sleep out of her eyes, looking around. “Are we here?”
Daniel slides me a look that’s hard to interpret in the darkness of the car, but I think it’s something likeSatisfied? It was my idea to come here after we’d lost our house. I knew I’d rather be at my family’s cottage than in some depressingly affordable two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport or Stamford, eking out an existence with Daniel as a delivery guy for Amazon, Ruby and Mattie in the mediocre public schools. At least the air is fresh here. We might remember how to breathe. How to be. Or at least I will. Maybe.
Not that I’ve ever said that aloud. If I did, I think Daniel would laugh at me for thinking such things were possible, the cottage as some sort of magical cure-all, a Hallmark movie come to life, with all the accompanying sugar.
“Come on, let’s go.” Resolutely I reach for the door handle. “Darlene said she left it open for us.”
I step outside of the car and take a deep breath; the air is definitely fresh, pure, and sharp with cold. Already my lungs hurt and the inside of my nose tickles, and it’s only November. What will it be like in December? January? Will we still be here then?
“Come on,” I call to the girls, and I walk toward the front door. It’s unlocked, just as Darlene promised, and as I step inside, the familiar smell of the cottage—pine, woodsmoke, a hint of leather, and dust—hits me, and a thousand memories rush through my mind like a flock of sparrows, wings beating, bodies rushing by. I’m six again, happily huddled by the fire; I’m eleven, readingArchiecomics in the loft, dust motes dancing in the air; I’m fourteen and bored out of my mind. I’m twenty-five, bringing Sam here for the first time, dipping our toes inthe crystalline water of the lake as he laughs, and then I do too, reveling in this simple pleasure. I’m thirty-nine, aching with grief as I gaze at my father’s empty chair, the silence reverberating all around me.
I blink, and the memories fade away, replaced by this new reality. Nobody is here. Nobody is waiting to welcome us. I step into the laundry room, which serves as an inelegant foyer to the rest of the cottage—the washing machine and dryer on one side, and a clutter of old boots and coats on the other. My gaze skims over the narrow wooden shelf my dad built decades ago that still holds a jumble of keys, old receipts, some bug repellent, probably ten years out of date. A lump rises in my throat, surprising me. My dad died seven years ago, and yet for a second, it almost feels like he’s here, like he’ll walk around the corner, arms outstretched, smile wide.
Alex!
“Mom, are you going to let us in?” Mattie huffs from behind me, and I step into the kitchen to give the rest of my family room to enter.
“Sorry.”
“This isn’t so bad,” Daniel remarks in surprise because the cottage is not nearly as derelict inside as we might have feared. Darlene has left a few lights on, and everything is clean and tidy, if well-worn. It feels like entering a time capsule; nothing has changed, and yet everything has.
I was last here for my father’s funeral, three days after Christmas, a world of ice and snow and frozen grief. My mother was in a daze; my older brother mostly silent, my younger sister having flown in just for forty-eight hours from some far-flung place where she’d been working as a freelance photographer, eager to get away again as soon as she could. With three small children in tow—Ruby had been little more than a toddler—I somehow managed to feed everyone, find funeral clothes, get usto the church,exist. I can barely remember any of it now. I don’t really want to.
“Shall I build a fire?” There is an enthusiasm in my husband’s voice that hasn’t been there in a long while—months, at least. Being laid off and losing our house, our whole way of life, both humbled and embittered him—or maybe it just embittered me. We haven’t talked about it enough for me to know, and I don’t know which of us is more reluctant to have that conversation, painful and necessary as it surely will be. Maybe we can have it here, or at leastwantto have it? That, I suppose, would be a start.
I take a deep breath, inhaling those familiar, cottagey smells. I walk into the living room, the heart of the house, with its massive stone fireplace, wooden beams, faded sofas and the loft area above where my brother used to sleep. My sister Jenna and I shared a little bedroom off the living room; it’s filled with boxes now, or at least it was, the last time I came here. I haven’t looked inside yet. My parents had a bedroom on the other side, with windows facing the deck and the lake, and the bedroom opposite theirs was for guests—a motley crew of cousins and friends who were gamely willing to make this journey to the outer boondocks of Ontario. Add a kitchen, small bathroom, cellar, and a porch, and that’s the cottage in total. Sprawling in its own way, yet essentially small.
How many summers did I spend here, watching the fireflies blink and weave outside my window, listening to the melancholy late-night call of the whippoorwill or the persistent whine of mosquitoes, the desperaterat-a-tat-tatof moths hurling their tiny bodies against the screen window? How many winter evenings, huddled under a heap of blankets, the comforting crackle of the fire the only sound in the still, icy night, making me feel safe and warm, loved and protected? How many card games around the table on the porch, how many sun-drenchedmornings pouring homemade maple syrup over my pancakes, how many gray, wet afternoons, the lake obscured with mist, the rain dripping from the eaves, feeling relentlessly bored?
Yet it was all so long ago, it feels like it happened to a different person. A different me.
“Alex?” Daniel prompts.
“Sure,” I say after a second; it takes a moment for the memories to recede and my brain to kick in gear. “A fire is a great idea. I think there should be some firewood stacked on the porch.”
Daniel goes off like the proverbial hunter, while I walk slowly around the living room, running my hand over the fireplace mantle, the back of a chair, reacquainting myself with this place. Mattie and Ruby follow me like a pair of lost puppies.
“Where are we supposed to sleep?” Mattie asks, looking around, her lip curling a little. It is basic, for sure. Rustic is the kinder term, I suppose, but I doubt my daughter feels like using that now. Compared to our five-bedroom house with its finished basement, bonus room, and three-car garage that we left back in Connecticut, it’s going to seemrustic, indeed.
And that is without telling her that the pipes are probably frozen, the water turned off for the winter; there will be no hot baths or showers, no washing dishes or even flushing the toilet for the entire time we are here, at least not without drawing water from the lake.
I realize I’m not entirely opposed. My kids’ lives have been soft, at least until Daniel lost his job and pretty much all our money, and then lied about it, to boot. Not that I’m blaming him. Not exactly.
“There’s plenty of firewood on the porch,” Daniel announces as he comes back into the living room, his arms stacked with logs. “So, that’s good.”
Yes, it is, because we’ll certainly need it. The fireplace is the cottage’s only source of heating, besides a few ancient electric heaters buried away somewhere whose wires have probably been chewed through by mice. I shiver because even though Darlene texted to say she put a fire on earlier to warm the place up—its woodsmoke scent is still lingering in the air—it’s died out now and the place is freezing.
“I’ll get us warmed up in no time,” Daniel says, and I wonder if I’ve spoken aloud.
Mattie is still looking around in something close to distaste. “So, where am I supposed to sleep?” she asks again plaintively.
