The Vanishing Season Read online

  Back home, though she was tired from walking, she got right into her running shoes. Just as she’d expected, the run soothed her. She turned at the silo again and thought that at least this—this running route—was perfect; she couldn’t ask for a better one: beautiful, challenging enough but not too hilly, and the fresh air felt great in her lungs.

  Turning back, she listened to her heartbeat and the crickets and the sound of her sneakers on the pavement and the distant sound of the hammering in the woods, getting closer and closer as she got back toward Pauline’s. She passed the long driveway with the mailbox marked No Trespassing and, turning toward the property, could hear the hammering far back and to her left.

  Thinking of what Pauline had said, she thought maybe she should go say hi. She hesitated, then veered off path and into the pine trees. She found the source of the noise in the middle of a stand of four, tall pines. It was like the setting from an old German fairy tale: a glade with a small, pine-needle-blanketed clearing; a slant of light; and in the middle of it all, an exquisite, miniature wooden house—skinny and pointed at the top, big enough to fit maybe four people inside if they stood shoulder to shoulder. The roof was missing a piece, and one wall was still open to the elements, and on that side a figure knelt, hammering.

  He looked up just as Maggie came even with the last pine tree. He stood.

  “You must be Maggie,” he said. He didn’t smile, but his face wasn’t unfriendly.

  “Hey.” She wiped a hand on her sweatpants, catching her breath, and waved tiredly. “You’re Pauline’s Liam.”

  He squinted slightly, amused. “Yeah, that’s me.” Liam wasn’t what she’d pictured. She’d been imagining someone who complemented Pauline—a handsome, strapping, well-dressed type—but Liam had a subtle, soft look about him: medium-framed, tall, he was dressed in a frayed gray T-shirt that had seen better days and worn jeans. He had shortish brown hair that fell a little over his blue eyes and pale skin that looked like it would blush easily—Maggie thought of it as British-boarding-school-boy skin. He squinted, his brows furrowed. “Welcome to our lonely little spit of land.” In his hand he grasped an intricately carved piece of wood.

  “Thanks. What’s that?” she asked.

  “Oh.” Liam looked down at his hand and frowned thoughtfully. “It’s nothing. It’s the roof.” He held it up. “What do you think?”

  It was a decorative edge for the roof—covered in intricate carved curlicues. It looked Scandinavian, like the carved bow of an old Viking ship.

  “You made that?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Liam nodded. Maggie tried to imagine his big hands carving such tiny, swirly things.

  “What is it?” she asked, gesturing to take in the whole scene. “A home for elves?”

  Liam didn’t seem to notice the joke. He laid down the wood and rubbed the tip of his thumbnail along his bottom lip thoughtfully. “It’s a Finnish sauna. My dad taught me how to do it. It’s for Pauline, because she’s cold all winter.”

  Maggie figured a girl as tiny and birdlike as Pauline probably had the circulation of her nana.

  “Do you mind if I look?” Maggie asked. Liam considered, then motioned for her to step up to the little building and look inside. There were two benches—one on either side—and a slatted crate in the back that looked like the place for the coals. Not that Maggie knew much about saunas, but she’d been in one at her mom’s gym back home once.

  “It’s not . . . it’s not perfect. I’ve never done one.”

  “How long did it take you?” Maggie asked.

  Liam put his hands in his pockets. “All summer, pretty much.”

  What guy spent his whole summer alone in the woods building a sauna? Clearly one of few words. The silence stretched on between them. Maggie was used to chatty guys. The guys in her circle of friends back in Chicago had been loud, always trying to impress each other.

  A moth flew across her sight. Liam’s eyes followed it, then turned back to her in a friendly, open gaze.

  “I’ve been reading about moths,” she said, to fill the silence.

  “What have you read?”

  Maggie shrugged. “They navigate by the light of the moon. They fling themselves into flames and electric lights because they think they’re headed toward the moon’s light.”

  “I guess they die in ecstasy then,” Liam said. His eyes followed the moth, tracking it into the trees.

  “What do you mean?” Maggie asked, confused.

  “Well, they probably think they’ve finally reached the moon.” Liam’s mouth spread into a slow smile that put her more at ease.

  “Yeah, I guess it’s probably the pinnacle of their moth lives,” she conceded.

  “All seven days or so.”

  They lapsed into silence for a few more seconds, but it wasn’t a bad silence. He was strange, definitely. But she didn’t necessarily mind strange.

  “How long have you and Pauline been together?”

  “Since we were five. We met”—Liam pointed the stick of wood in his hands toward Water Street—“there, in the middle of the street. We both hid behind our dads. I was eating baby carrots.”

  “How do you remember something that far back?” Maggie asked, amazed.

  Liam rubbed the back of his neck, reddening slightly. “It’s Pauline. I have a weirdly long memory when it comes to her. Wanna sit?”

  They sank onto a log, and Liam picked up his piece of wood again and began sanding it. Maggie looked around at the trees and listened to the birds. It was one of the quietest conversations of her life, but she felt, somehow, completely comfortable, sitting there with this guy she’d just met, not saying anything.

  Finally Liam looked over at her. “I’m sorry, I’m not much of a talker. Pauline says I should learn to talk about stuff that doesn’t matter, because people love that.”

  “People do love that,” Maggie said, amused.

  She studied his profile while he worked on the sanding, reflecting that he wasn’t really her type, physically. She could see how he might be appealing to Pauline though, or to other girls in general. He was gently handsome, his eyes the softest thing about him, but the effort he’d put into the sauna hinted at something more rugged than first met the eye. His hands looked rough and scraped up from building. He was clearly used to physical work. “I hear Pauline roped you into canoeing already,” he said, to the wood he was sanding vigorously.

  “I didn’t . . .” Maggie trailed off; she didn’t know what to say. More than not knowing how to swim, she hated not seeing what was underneath her in the water.

  Liam kept his eyes on his work. “You can try to resist her, but it won’t work; Pauline gets what she wants. Take it from one who knows.”

  “I’m already beginning to get that feeling.” Maggie lifted her eyebrows in the direction of the sauna, and then they both looked in the direction of Pauline’s house—just a distant blob of white peeking through the trees.

  “She’s decided you’re her new, good friend.” He flashed her a quick smile as his eyes caught hers, one that disappeared just as quickly.

  They sat in silence for a while longer. Another moth landed on a stump a couple of feet away.

  “I think this guy hatched right over there.”

  Maggie looked at him. “You know all the moths?” she teased. “Are you some kind of moth expert?”

  “He has a cocoon on that tree.” He pointed, then seemed to notice the look on her face. “I’m not Old Man Nature or anything. It’s just when you work out here all day, it’s hard not to notice what the other animals are doing.”

  Liam put down his work again and leaned back, stretching. It was almost dusk.

  “Well.” Maggie stood. “I’m sure you’re trying to get some stuff done before dark. . . .”

  Liam didn’t argue politely like she’d expected him to. He just held up a hand and waved to her.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  She turned and started away.

  �
�Maggie,” he called behind her suddenly, and she turned. “It’s not a bad place. It’s pretty nice. You’ll like it.”

  “Um. Thanks.”

  She lifted her hand in the air in a wave and then turned and jogged back toward the main road.

  There was something about Liam—his strangeness, his quietness, his alertness to things like cocoons—that made Maggie feel lighter as she jogged down the remainder of Water Street. It wasn’t every day that she met someone who surprised her—most people were surprisingly unsurprising. And now she’d met two.

  The sun was just sinking under the horizon as she reached her property—it glinted like the top of a gold coin and then disappeared behind the water. She could hear her dad out in the back field mowing down the tall grass, but here on this side, the lawn was still thick and overgrown and full of grasshoppers scattering and collecting and scattering again. In the fading yellow light, the metal roof of her house glinted, and Maggie lifted her face to the breeze coming off the water and making the low trees sway. She finally trudged through the grass to the lakeshore, then dipped a finger in the cold water.

  She looked out at the lake and tried to make out which dots in the distance were the islands she’d read about, and where all the ships might have gone down. Someone had made a campfire on one of the beaches protruding along the shore to the north, and the smell of the smoke wafted to her on the breeze. The sound of some people laughing far away echoed across the water, and Maggie remembered reading that water was a great conductor of sound. She felt relaxed and peaceful in a way she didn’t remember feeling much in the city, and she tried to take a moment to appreciate it.

  Maggie didn’t think she believed in God or astrology like Jacie did or even interpreting her dreams—nothing that she couldn’t touch and feel and see. But she found herself saying a prayer; for what, she wasn’t quite sure: to move back home to Chicago, to be happy here, to be safe from the big things she couldn’t anticipate. She said a prayer for the dead girl in Whitefish Harbor, just because she happened to think of her. She found herself longing for something that she couldn’t put her finger on.

  And then, because a fall coolness had crept into the air after the sun had dipped, she wrapped her hands around her arms and shivered and turned and went inside.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  4

  MAGGIE KNOCKED ON PAULINE’S DOOR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, AFTER QUICKLY changing out of the clothes she’d worn to work. The Emporium was already underwhelming and it was only day two; the morning had seemed to last forever.

  The temperature had dropped a little; she rubbed her fingers and tucked her hands into her pockets as she stared across the browning field at the changing leaves until Pauline opened the door in her pajamas, clutching a big mug of hot tea. Her face lit up. “You came.”

  Inside, the house was immaculate: marble floors, artsy rugs, sculptures and couches that looked so soft, you could sink into them and never come out. The AC was on full blast despite the cool weather. It all seemed hermetically sealed. They crossed a vast living room toward a set of stairs that curled up to the second floor.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Maggie noticed that someone was on one of the couches and realized it must be Pauline’s mom.

  Mrs. Boden sat in front of the TV with a magazine. She looked up and smiled politely at Maggie.

  “This is Maggie from next door,” Pauline said. “We’re going canoeing.”

  “Hi, Maggie,” she said distantly. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry I haven’t been over to meet your parents yet.” She was pretty in a mom way—blond with catlike brown eyes—and she looked younger than Maggie’s mom. She had perfectly straight posture and her clothes—dark pants and a cardigan over a tank top—were immaculate, as if she’d ironed them. Maggie wouldn’t have picked her out as Pauline’s mom in a million years. “How are you liking it here so far?”

  “It’s nice,” Maggie said.

  “That’s great.” She looked at Pauline. “Anyone else going?”

  “Liam,” Pauline said, giving Maggie a beleaguered glance.

  “Huh,” was all her mom said.

  Maggie followed Pauline up the carpeted stairs to the upstairs hallway and they turned right.

  Pauline’s room was, in contrast to the rest of the house, chaotic—her clothes were in an enormous pile in the middle of the room, and her walls were covered in magazine clippings of flowers and hummingbirds and abstract art, taped messily here and there, with no apparent design or reason. Little knickknacks—a papier-mâché heart like a child might have made; a violin-shaped music box; a little, white ceramic ghost—were scattered and bunched on her dresser along with expensive perfume bottles, all missing their tops. Pauline pulled pants and shirts out of the clothes pile indecisively (Maggie noticed some designer labels), finally settling on a wrinkled, blue sweater and jeans. She changed right in front of Maggie.

  “Your mom seems really different from you,” Maggie said.

  Pauline buttoned her jeans with her tongue between her lips. “Yeah. She’s . . .” Pauline glanced briefly in the mirror and tucked her long, messy dark hair behind her ears. “She’s really polite.”

  She led Maggie back downstairs and across the living room, where she kissed her mom on the cheek. “Love you, Mommy.” Mrs. Boden patted her hand and said she loved her too. Pauline grabbed a grocery sack off the kitchen counter and then led Maggie out of the house.

  Liam was waiting for them at the water’s edge.

  The girls loaded themselves into the canoe, Maggie pulling on one of the two life jackets as she sat down. Liam launched them and then climbed in after them. While he rowed them away from the shore, Pauline dug into the sack and pulled out a bag of Cheetos. In a moment she had them open and was stuffing them into her mouth and leaning over the edge of the boat to see if she could spot any fish.

  “Don’t tip us, woman,” Liam called to Pauline, who was half dangling a foot over the side. Maggie glanced over her shoulder at him, and he grinned. He was more animated around Pauline. “She’s dunked me more times than I can count. It’s like she does it on purpose.”

  Maggie put her dark hair in a clip and then double-checked that her life jacket was on tight enough. It was shaping up to be a dazzling, cool fall day. The sky was pure blue, and the sunlight glinted off the water. Pauline righted herself and turned to look at them. “My dad and I used to canoe all the time when I was little.”

  “Not anymore?” Maggie asked.

  Pauline paused a moment, tapping her heels against the side of the boat, sitting on her hands, and looking out at the island to their left. “Well, he died.” She said it lightly, as if trying not to land too hard on the words. “He was a fisherman who married into the great tea fortune,” she went on, “but he was just your average town guy. He was from Gill Creek. He was really funny; he made my mom laugh at everything, even herself. She really isn’t a laugher anymore, but he could crack her up. I think that’s why she married him, even when the rest of her family thought she was crazy. He loved Liam.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to ask anything or not.

  Pauline gazed around the sides of the boat, getting her bearings. “It didn’t happen far from here. He had a heart attack. He and some friends were out here on a fishing boat. It was one of those freak things.”

  Chills ran up and down Maggie’s arms.

  “It happened when I was eleven.” Pauline shrugged. “And that was it.”

  “Wow, I’m so sorry,” Maggie muttered.

  “It seems like a long time ago.” Pauline’s eyes narrowed, and she wiped slowly at the hair that was flapping against her face. “I always think of it out here. Well, I mean it’s hard to forget your dad’s dead, so I think of it a lot, but especially out on the lake. My mom never comes out on the water because of it. But I don’t want to miss somethi
ng just because . . . things went wrong. Life is short.” She shrugged again, then clasped her hands together. “That’s the biggest thing I learned from my dad.”

  Pauline pointed, and Maggie saw, to her surprise, that they’d floated out past a tip of land, and they had a perfect view of downtown, tiny in the distance.

  “I didn’t know you could see town from all the way out here,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, definitely. It’s not as far as it seems when you drive. Actually people used to walk across the ice to town, back in the old days,” Pauline said. “When it got cold enough to freeze solid, or I guess when they got desperate enough. Lots of history around here, you’ll see. Lots of weird, cultural tidbits.”

  Maggie gazed at the little town in the distance, wondering if she could see the roof of the Emporium.

  “Like, have you heard about Pesta?” Pauline asked suddenly.

  Maggie shook her head. “Who?”

  Pauline glanced at Liam, and Maggie looked at him over her shoulder. He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “It’s a Norwegian myth,” she went on. “You know, a lot of Scandinavian people settled up here.”

  Maggie nodded—it’d been hard not to notice on their drive in: the euro-themed chalets; names on the mailboxes like Haugen and Bjornsson; the Scandinavian-themed restaurants (one with mountain goats on the roof); the Viking-themed cafés scattered among old fireworks stands, pickle shops, bakeries, everything that seemed to speak of summer tourism.

  “She’s a dead old lady,” Pauline went on. “She’s basically the lady grim reaper. She wanders the rocky shores and collects the souls of the dead and haunts the houses, waiting. If you look out your window and see her ambling along the shore toward your house, you’re . . . well . . .” She turned two thumbs down.

  “Well, thanks for telling me,” Maggie said. “I’ll never sleep again.”

  Pauline let out a scratchy “ha.”

  For the rest of the ride they explained to her about Gill Creek, describing the two main groups: the retirees and the people who’d been born here. They told her where the tourists went (the restaurants downtown) and where the locals went (bonfires on the beach, a greasy spoon called Isla’s, a place called the Coffee Moose). They told her about Washington Island—which, Pauline said, was so stark and beautiful it could be Iceland—and, beyond it, deserted Rock Island. They promised to take her there on the ferry sometime.