Page 72 of Ten Beach Road

“As soon as the house is ready for the Realtor to list, I want you and Dad to come down and help us finish here.”

“Dad’s not going anywhere. Not if it means getting off the couch.”

Maddie flinched at the disgust and disappointment in her son’s voice, but there could be no more sugarcoating or evading the reality of their situation. She could not be in this alone. “Andrew,” she said. “Carry your cell phone to your dad and tell him I need to talk to him.”

“He won’t talk. He hardly even moves.” His tone remained sullen with a hint of whine, and she had no idea whether he simply didn’t want to get out of bed or couldn’t face seeing his father that way.

“He doesn’t have to talk at the moment,” Maddie said. “I’m going to do the talking. He just has to listen.” She clung to her anger; if she let the wave of helplessness swamp her, they were lost. “Hurry up, Andrew. This won’t take long.”

She held on while he did as she asked. She could hear the sounds of home melding with the sounds of Bella Flora: Chase and Robby’s trucks pulling up out front. The whine of a wave runner motor out in the pass. Upstairs, the bathroom door slammed. The scramble of feet and a shout of irritation followed. If Robby didn’t get another bathroom up and running soon, blood would be drawn. The only question was whose.

“Mom, he says he can’t talk right now. Grandma says . . .”

“Andrew,” she said, hating that her son had to be put in this position. “Put the phone up to your father’s ear so he can hear me.”

“Here, Dad,” Andrew said. An unintelligible murmur from Steve followed. And then she heard him breathing.

Maddie hung on to her resolve. Steve didn’t need any more pity, and he certainly didn’t need even one more second of enabling. “Steve,” she said clearly and forcefully. “We can’t afford for you to lie around feeling sorry for yourself anymore.”

There was no response.

“I get that a horrible thing has happened. I know you feel guilty about all those losses and that not having a job has thrown you. But you have to get up and help.” She paused, concentrating on not letting her voice break. Crying would be pointless; if ever there was a time for tough love, it was now. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes.” That was it. Nothing else.

“You need to get up off that couch and get back in our life,” she said. “We need you.”

The breathing stopped for a second; there was the slightest hitch before it resumed, but he didn’t speak. She had no doubt Edna was hovering protectively nearby. The image of their son being forced to crouch next to his father, holding the phone in place, summoned back the anger that she needed.

“You know what?” she said, no longer weighing each word before she uttered it. “The man I married was not a quitter. He was not someone who would abandon his wife and children in an emergency.” She drew a breath, forcing herself to continue, giving free rein to her hurt and anger so that there could be no doubt in his mind that she meant what she said.

“And in case you need something to think about, you can think about what I’ve been doing down here. I’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor and fighting complete strangers for bathroom time in the only bathroom that works. I’ve worked ten-hour days scrubbing and cleaning a seven-thousand-square-foot home that hasn’t had a two-legged resident or a lick of attention in years. I’ve been on scaffolding re-glazing windows and removing doors and hardware and polishing them until my hands are numb. I’ve been pinching our pennies so tightly that Abraham Lincoln’s face is imprinted on my fingers.”

There was no response, but she could feel him listening. His breathing sounded labored in her ear.

“And you know what the worst part is?” Emotion clogged her throat and turned her voice ragged. “I sat alone at the doctor’s office with our pregnant daughter who wouldn’t even let me go in with her and insists on believing that Daniel Deranian is going to show up here and carry her off to happily-ever-after land.” She swallowed again, but her throat burned with all the words that spewed out. “She barely talks to me anymore because I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”

She sat for a moment staring out the window through the sheen of tears, gathering herself, waiting once more for a response that never came.

“I love you,” she said, a new resolve growing inside her. “And I love the life we’ve shared. I’ve always assumed we’d be together until the end. But you need to get your shit together now and help our family get back on its feet. I’ll expect you down here ready to help put the finishing touches on Bella Flora by early August. Or . . .” She barely hesitated as the ultimate ultimatum formed on her lips. “Or I’m going to file for divorce.”

Both of them stopped breathing then as they absorbed the threat. But still he said nothing. Even in her shock at what she’d said, she recognized that the threat could not be an idle one. Quietly she hung up the phone.

Maddie’s hands shook as she made a fresh pot of coffee, refilled the sugar bowl, and set out a new carton of nondairy creamer. The kitchen began to fill up with coffee seekers—first Chase and Robby, then Avery. Deirdre came down dressed and made-up and settled at the table with the morning crossword puzzle. Nicole returned from her run.

Normally, Madeline enjoyed everyone congregating around the coffeepot before the workday began, but she still felt raw and uncertain in the wake of her conversation with Steve. “Please, God,” she murmured to herself as she set out a bowl of fruit. “Help him get it together. Don’t let me have to carry out my threat.”

Kyra was the last one down. Ignoring Maddie, she set her video camera on the table then went into the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice. Maddie pushed the fruit bowl, which she kept stocked, toward her daughter, but Kyra ignored that, too.

“How’d you sleep, Ky?” In the wake of the ob-gyn visit and the whole YouTube debacle, Kyra had not been overtly nasty but maintained just enough emotional distance to let Maddie know she’d screwed up.

Kyra spent a good bit of time surfing the Internet architectural salvage sites when some knob or pull or another needed to be matched, and putting together a Bella Flora “sales piece.” Maddie had made it a point not to look for her postings on YouTube, but Avery, who did, said Kyra was honoring their ban on extreme close-ups and had dialed back the sarcasm to an acceptable level.

“Fine.” Kyra moved toward the table where Nicole sipped a morning smoothie.

“Look, Kyra, I’m sorry.” Maddie had lost track of the number of times she’d tried to apologize; she was so tired of being made to always feel in the wrong.

“I said I slept fine.” Kyra kept her back to Maddie, plopping down into a seat next to Avery, who was peeling off the wrapper from a granola bar. “What do you need me to do today?”

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