“What are you doing?” Miguel asks in a teasing tone. He walks over to the sofa. “You’re not supposed to be on screens.”
“I just needed to check one thing. What did the police say?”
“Someone is coming. But you heard what the doctor said about screens.” There is an edge to his voice that I don’t recognize.
“Why are you being like this?” I ask. “I’m an adult. I can decide for myself. Besides. He said tominimizescreen time.”
“You know that’s not what he said, Caren. You’re not thinking straight. Don’t you want your brain to heal?”
He holds out his hand. Every inch of me resists turning over my phone. It feels like an admission of guilt, that I can’tbe trusted to take care of myself. And there is something unsettling in the tiny shift in power between us. It’s too reminiscent of a parent confiscating a phone from a naughty child. But another part of me wants to submit. He’s not wrong. I do want my brain to heal. Exhausted by my own internal debate, I relent and hand over the phone. I pull the throw blanket over me, ready for my nap, when the doorbell’s sharp chime echoes through the house.
Miguel slips my phone into his back pocket and looks out the window that faces the front stoop. “That was fast. The police are here.”
SEVEN
Finn stands in the middle of the Allards’ giant kitchen, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants, waiting to be assessed. He was late for the interview after helping that Caren woman back to her house, but Jo Allard didn’t seem to mind, which surprised him. She didn’t seem like the laid-back type. He could hear movement above him, his potential employer searching for the aging Muffinhead somewhere on the second level of the immense house.
“He’s old and sleeps a lot. I’ll be back in a flash,” Jo told him before excusing herself to look for the dog.
Finn takes the opportunity to gather himself. Finding Caren so confused and disoriented like that in front of the Prison House had shaken him. He knew of her and her husband, Miguel, the way he knew of almost everyone in this neighborhood, but her house wasn’t that close to where Autumn lived, so she had never pinged his radar. But there was something so strange about seeing her, dressed for a night out, come out ofthathouse and slip and fall in the mud.
Finn shakes the thoughts of Caren away. He needs to focus. He looks around the kitchen, obviously an addition, with one redbrick wall demarcating where the original house ended. The expansion takes up most of what was once a very large backyard, with so many recessed skylights in the high ceiling that the room is bright even without the lights on.
He walks past a worn farmhouse table to the French doors and stares out at what looks like the remnants of a party. A few Mylar balloons float lazily in the air, not quite deflated but clearly leaking life. A gold garland stretches across the boxwood hedge that separates the lawn from the backyard of the Prison House, which seems to strain angrily at the edges of the property, bullying the Colonials and Capes around it.
“Here we go,” Jo says as she enters the kitchen, cradling a small dog with hair so curly Finn cannot make out his eyes. She’s dressed in mint-green leggings and a sports bra, and Finn notices that Muffinhead wears a matching green bow tie.
“This is Muffinhead,” she says in a baby voice. “Muffinhead, this is Finn.” She bends down to put him on the ground. “He’s going to be your new dog walker.”
Finn crouches, offering his hand for the dog to sniff. “Hey there, Muffinhead.”
The dog ambles over and allows Finn to scratch him behind his ears.
“He’s a sweetie,” Finn says.
“He is. But his bladder is getting worse, and he needs to be walked more often. My son, Van, is still in Europe. He took a gap year to charter a yacht across the Med. Tough life, right? And Eloïse, that’s my daughter, is at lacrosse camp. And I’m running around like a crazy woman getting ready for our trip toFrance. I’m rarely home during the day.” Jo babbles on, buzzing with the energy of a thousand espressos.
“Happy to help.” Finn stands.
The woman narrows her eyes at him, and Finn feels himself grow uncomfortable. He still doesn’t like to be stared at like this, even though he hasn’t been clocked as trans in almost a year. He can feel his whole body go on high alert, from his tense jaw to his clenched fists. He hates this full-body reaction, prepping for the worst. It used to be what every day was like for him in high school and even his first year of college, before his top surgery. Now when these moments do occur, and they are rare, it makes him realize how far he has come.
“I swear I’ve seen you somewhere,” she says.
Oh God, he thinks, his mind switching immediately from the anxiety of being clocked to the fear of having been seen putting up the flyers. “I work at the library, Little Falls.”
She wags a finger at him. “Oh right! I have seen you there. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“That obvious?” He smiles. He’s safe, for now.
She holds two fingers about an inch apart. “You have just the tiniest bit of an accent.”
“I grew up in North Carolina, but I’ve been here since college.”
“Oh, North Carolina. We love North Carolina!” She makes an exaggerated frowny face. “We don’t get back much now that we have the house in Provence. But we used to spend every summer in the Outer Banks when the kids were little. Southern Shores? Do you know it? Did you get out to the beach a lot growing up?”
“A little.” Finn smiles at the thought of his uncle’s ramshacklehouse on stilts named Country Time. The stretch of beach he visited as a kid, with its nearby penny arcades and biker bars, may have been in the same state as Southern Shores and its private beaches, but it felt like an alternate universe.
“Where are you from?”