Prologue
Blame it on a stone. The flat and oblong kind. A water-worn stone, perhaps from when Lake Champlain had been an Ice Age inland sea covering this flat stretch of grassy ground, where a well-smacked ball getting past the right fielder would roll far and fast enough for an automatic home run.
Tucked into the laces of the catcher’s right cleat, the stone was heavy enough to be noticed on impact, but not enough to say for sure it was deliberately flung, or so he thought. It was a trick Reuben learned in his high school years from Teddy Marks, the Varsity catcher, who’d essentially taught Reuben how to play the position when he was just a Freshman. Teddy had said, “Use it sparingly. You gotta save it for just the right moment, just the right asshole.” Because every team has one: the guy who takes thirty practice swings before even stepping into the box. Hand held up to put the pitcher on hold as he digs, digs, digs at the dirt beside the plate, then takes yet more practice swings. Tall or short, but always on the stocky side, he’s louder than everyone on the field. He throws his hands up at teammate errors, and argues the close and not-close calls (never mind that, in this case, the ump is a local high school kid getting paid in snack bar vouchers).
And this time, it’s not a he, it’s a her. Dana Van Sykes. Clocking in at about 5’3”, built solid and bowlegged like a bulldog with a bark to match. And this isn’t a high school team but a bunch of grown-ups playing in a competitive co-ed softball league in Orrsville, Vermont. Now the top of the fifth, the game is scoreless but the emotional stakes are high, amped up over things both related and unrelated to the game, things like past grudges and present grievances, “oil and water” personalities, and a community controversy that was imposing attention even on those who claimed they couldn’t care less about it.
With a sudden buzz, the overhead lights kick on, their sensor set for dusk just as it becomes difficult for the players with middle-aged eyes to track the ball. The spotlights fade up to fully bright, heightening the drama as if the field is a stage.
The pitcher, Maddy rolls her shoulders a couple times to loosen up, then she begins a complicated series of push-and-pull arm movements before windmill-whipping the pitch toward Reuben’s outstretched mitt. An inside pitch that Dana chips up and out of play over the backstop.
The next pitch is nearly identical to the first, which allows Dana to recall and adjust, stepping just a hair back from the plate to catch the ball solidly, sending it soaring toward right field. But the hit sails sideward. Reuben lets out a relieved breath.
“Foul ball.” The ump has the kind of flat-voiced, under-enthusiasm perfected by 16-year-olds. “Oh-and-two.”
“Van Sykes,” Reuben says. “Didn’t I once hear you say that actually, there is shame in going down swinging?”
Dana digs, twisting her cleat in the ditch. “I’ll show you swinging…”
Reuben can tell by the focused power in her stance that Dana Van Sykes is spring-loaded to crush the next pitch. With his right hand, he carefully slides the stone from his shoe. The timing would need to be perfect. Reuben gives the signal to Maddy for a changeup. He can tell she is wary, both of them knowing that Dana is a sharp read, and the consequences of her catching a lob could be disastrous.
“C’mon Mags. I got ya,” Reuben assures.
The infielders chime in, too, “Alright, Maddy.”
“Make her work, Maddog!”
The windup is a perfect deception, its full-speed motion revealing nothing of the flat, deadspin release. Maddy was right to worry as Dana had a calculation ready in her head if the change-up was served. She checks her swing for a split-second and lock-targets on the ball sailing toward her. But just before it comes in reach, Reuben flicks the stone at Dana’s ankle. The distraction, coupled with the brainwork she was already employing to adjust to the changeup, was simply too much. Dana Van Sykes swings and misses.
“Strike three, batter’s ou—!”
Fortunately for everyone involved, Dana Van Sykes drops her bat before body slamming Reuben, who crashes back into the ump, the two of them domino falling into the backstop.
Like a match lit near a propane leak, the players explode into action. Joss, the shortstop—always the fastest runner—gets to Dana Van Sykes first, pulling the batter’s shirt and spinning her around while Dana lets fly a few blind punches. The first-base coach tries to reach them, but instead gets sucked into a fast wave of players shoving and shouting, wrestling and fist-swinging. Reuben rolls off the flattened umpire. Peeling off his catcher’s mask, he enters the fray, pulling people apart, which proves to be futile as a handful of spectators spring from the bleachers and add their bulk to the fray. The obscenities and condemnations fly.
"Cheaters!”
“Go back to where you belong!”
“God’s gonna strike you down, Reuben Downes!”
This is not your typical brawl. Most of the players had never taken, much less thrown, a punch, and so the chance of any injuries more serious than bruises and scrapes is small. Look left and you see Toren Abernathy, voted Washington County’s Postal Delivery Person of the Year, grasping a fistful of organic farmer, Aaron Reichert’s beard. Marnie Colombe, mortgage lender and vocal PTA member has Donny Scavutto in a headlock. The waitress swinging at the coffee roaster; the herbalist taunting the naturalist. And of course, Reuben, who is arguably the lightning rod in this situation, trying to defend himself against car-dealing twin brothers, Dwayne and Shane (“Come see Dwayne and Shane—you’ll never drive the same!”).
If there was one cool head on the field, it is Patrice, who rushes in from right field to usher the stunned umpire off the field, insisting on giving the boy a ride home. The headlights of Patrice’s car reverse out of the spotlighted scene—a chaos that could almost be described as gleeful. Or at least, a valve release on a pressure cooker whose force had been building all week and maybe even a couple of decades.
As the last of the sun slips behind the Adirondacks across the lake, a local patrol car pulls up, lights flashing. And just as quickly as it started, the brawl deflates. Players and fans, neighbors and friends dust themselves off, wipe their bloodied noses and blink at each other as if waking from a confused dream.
CHAPTER 1
The rolling suitcase was like an obedient dog that slowed and paused with Reuben’s gait as the innkeeper stopped along the hallway to show him and Hannah where they could find extra towels and blankets, then a few steps later pointing out a sepia photograph of the Schuyler Inn from the 1930s.
Hannah went up close to inspect, squinting into the details.
“The original part of the house was built in 1816 by Thomas Schuyler, one of the town’s original settlers and owner of the lumber mill.” Rosemary’s voice was bright with the practiced tone of a tour guide. Full-figured in a floral dress, tan hose, and blocky shoes, the woman very nearly resembled one of the stuffed taffeta chairs in the sitting room they had just passed through.
“Ghosts?” Hannah asked.
Rosemary tilted her head questioningly, but Reuben knew where this was headed.
Hannah slowly shifted her weight side to side so the floorboard creaked like a sound effect in a horror movie. “There’s so much history here, I would imagine there’s some energy of the lost hanging around.”
“Energy of the lost?”
“Cold spots?”
“Only from drafty windows.”
“Things gone missing?”
“When you’re my age, you’re certainly apt to misplace things.”
“Doors inexplicably slamming?”
“Not that I’ve experienced, dear.”
Hannah sighed. “Please tell me there’s been at least one murder or suicide?”
It was a thing Hannah did, steering conversations into unexpected, sometimes off-putting directions, often but not always to do with the macabre. Hannah had once told Reuben it was a trait she took on as a kid, a way of upending the kind of trite, small-talk exchanges that made her want to slice her ears off.
“No murders, no suicides. At least not on record.” Rosemary added. “And I know the record.” She stopped in front of the door to their room; the sign on it read Sweet Birch Suite. “I’m afraid you’ll find the inn a little lacking in that kind of gothic romance. But I do have some pristine historical artifacts I’d be happy to show you, including a set of napkins that were hand-embroidered by Mrs. Schuyler herself.”
Rosemary’s response was the kind of redirect that Reuben had used himself when he and Hannah were first dating, having met just over a year before at the Hartford Area Business Association’s annual meeting. The two of them had been seated at the same breakout table, a discussion that was quickly dominated by a personal business coach. During the “bio break,” Hannah elbowed Reuben as he waited for a turn at the coffee table.
“That guy needs to be personally coached in shutting his piehole, am I right?”
“Sorry?” Reuben asked.
Hannah waved her hand dismissively. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m not offended.”
Up this close, Reuben noted her eyes were swimming pool blue, the kind painted on baby dolls. He said, “I meant…I wasn’t sure what you were—”
“I’m Hannah Beck.” She took Reuben’s hand and shook it firmly.
“Right, Poppets,” he said. “I remember from the intros.” Hannah had told the group that her business was making hand-decorated cake-pops designed to look like actual people, famous or otherwise.
“And you’re Reuben Downes. I actually have one of your paintings.”
“Wow, really?”
“But don’t tell anyone because it’s the one that used to hang in the waiting room at the Marlborough Chiropractic Center. I used to work reception there. The painting was always in my line of view, and it was kind of, like, my escape on long, dull days. I used to imagine stepping into that lake. How cold the water would feel on my ankles. That greeny pine needle smell? Stuff like that. So when they laid off a few people, including yours truly, and didn’t give us a single day’s severance, I smuggled the painting out in what felt like a fair exchange.”
This was a lot of information for Reuben to take in, and he wasn’t sure if he should express appreciation that she liked the painting so much that she stole it or sympathy that she’d lost her job, so he chose to not comment on either. “That’s quite a coincidence, then, that we ended up in the same breakout session.”
“I actually totally finagled it with my friend Constance who works in catering. I mean, once I saw your name was on the attendee list. Cause I thought, how cool would it be to meet you and tell you all that?”
The line for coffee was moving painfully slowly. Hannah must have noticed Reuben silently counting the number of people in front of him.
“Listen, there’s an Italian bakery just a block from here. Their cappuccino is so good it brings tears to my eyes. Cap’n Coach won’t miss us. What do you say we ditch?”
In truth, Reuben had already decided to duck out of the rest of the meeting after he’d had some coffee to fortify him for the drive home. Normally, he would politely decline but there was something about Hannah’s openness and energy that he was enjoying.
“You know,” Reuben said, “that sounds great.”
Once they were settled at a tiny table in Caffe Allegro, sipping what Reuben had to admit was an excellent cappuccino—something he wouldn’t otherwise have ordered—he asked Hannah about Poppets.
“I’m very popular with the Bat Mitzvah set,” she had told him. “And let’s be real, it’s not easy to capture the nuanced facial features of a thirteen-year-old. They don’t let me put zits on them.”
Reuben sipped, entertained by her frankness. “Well, I’m sure most of your customers aren’t expecting sophisticated portraits.”
“Oh, no?” said Hannah. “You think a cake pop is any less of a canvas than what you paint your abstract impressionistic landscapes, or whatever you call them, on?”
“Yeah,” Reuben laughed but saw Hannah was asking in earnest. “I mean, no. I don’t actually know.” He couldn’t yet tell if this woman had a sharp sense of humor or was completely lacking in one. He tried to strike a more diplomatic tone: “I would imagine frosting isn’t the most cooperative of mediums.”
“It’s fondant, not frosting. And you’ve never actually seen a truly skilled decorative cake pop, have you?”
“I’m not big into desserts.”
“I’m not either,” she said. “I just like making them.” Without giving Reuben a chance to comment on the strangeness of being a baker who didn’t like sweets, Hannah asked him, “Want to know why I named my business Poppets?”
It was like a verbal ping pong match, and Reuben was on his heels but game to try to keep up. “Well, there’s the obvious pun with cake pops,” he answered. “And aren’t poppets, like, dolls of some kind?”
Hannah explained that historically, poppets were a form of witchcraft—dolls made from carved roots, clay, or even potatoes—to hex the person whose likeness they represented.
“Like voodoo dolls? You’re some kind of baking witch?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m a businessperson. I make a huge margin on every cake pop. If my customers’ hair started falling out or their house burned down or their girlfriend disappeared or they lost a ton of money in the stock market or their teeth turned black or their hamster spontaneously combusted…that would be bad for business.” She added. “You would have to be highly selective about who and when you hex.”
“Huh.” Reuben was still not sure to what degree she was or was not joking. “I’ve had clients I disliked but it hasn’t quite risen to wanting to murder their pets.”
“Oh my god, you’re wondering if I’m serious!” She laughed so boisterously that an older couple on the other side of the cafe turned to look at them. Reuben smiled and gave them a little wave.
She lowered her voice and leaned in. “Relax. I’m only messing with you to seem more interesting than I actually am. I mean…you’re like this tall, slightly-better-than-average looking, freaking amazing artist. And I’m just a college dropout who built her business around a trend that’ll probably be dead in three years.”
“I’m not any kind of big, amazing artist.” But then, worrying that Hannah might start to feel underwhelmed by him, he added, “But you are correct that I was voted Most Slightly-Better-Than-Average Looking in my senior year.”
Hannah let out that big, unselfconscious laugh again, and it was like a bright light switching on. Despite Reuben being nearly double her height, Hannah’s way of inhabiting a space seemed so much bigger and fuller than his own, which tended toward benign observation and a reticence to draw attention to himself. Even now in his mid-thirties, these survival byproducts of having grown up an only child who bounced around from school to school were still ingrained.
“Truthfully, I think you’re above-average-adorable but a girl’s gotta play a little hard to get.”
Two months later, Hannah had moved into Reuben’s loft apartment, the coveted top floor of an old sewing mill overlooking the Connecticut River. Within days, she’d claimed the sunny window seat as her morning coffee nook and cake pop “ideating space.” It wasn’t long before they hired a contractor to expand the kitchen to accommodate Hannah’s baking business and bring it into compliance with Connecticut’s cottage food laws. The renovation forced Reuben to shrink his painting area a little, but it meant that Hannah could sublet her kitchen rental space and use the savings to branch out into custom cookie portraits.
The trip to the Schuyler Inn was a short getaway during prime fall foliage season to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Reuben and Hannah’s not-totally-serendipitous first meeting.
“Okay, then what about witches?” Hannah asked Rosemary.
“Hannah, I think—” Reuben tried to interrupt but Hannah kept on.
“I read somewhere that a lot of these old houses have ‘witch windows’ that go sideways, probably designed to keep witches out, but I like to imagine they were to let witches in so they could hide from the pitchfork-and-torch people.”
For a moment, Reuben caught Rosemary eye and gave a slightly pained smile, silently apologizing for his girlfriend’s doggedness. Rosemary’s good-natured chuckle seemed aimed at reassuring him. No doubt, as an innkeeper, the woman has encountered all kinds of odd ducks.
“That’s certainly more interesting than the truth, my dear.” She slipped a key into the lock. “Back in the day, windows were too expensive to make them custom-sized, so people just used what they had on-hand and tilted them sideways to fit the space. That’s just the way Vermonters do.”
Hannah turned to Reuben and discretely mimed hanging herself in response to the innkeeper’s mundane explanation.
On the far wall of the room was a tall canopy bed festooned with blue and yellow ruffled pillows. Nearer was a dresser set with a wide porcelain bowl that Reuben thought might have served as a chamber pot in its past life. There was a vase full of silk hydrangeas on one nightstand and a stack of leather-bound books on the other. Nearly every surface, including the wooden hope chest at the foot of the bed was covered in lace.
“Hope you’ll be cozy,” said Rosemary setting the key on the dresser. “If you need anything between the hours of 8am and 7pm,” she rang a tinkling bell on a stand outside their door, “Just jingle.”
“Thanks very much, Rosemary,” Reuben said.
Once he shut the door, Hannah hopped on the bed. “Firm. Not much bounce,” she said. “I suppose that’ll muffle the bed-knocking for the guests next door.”
For precisely that reason, Reuben had tried to persuade Hannah to book a hotel instead. Inns inflicted a weird intimacy with strangers he was never at ease with. He didn’t enjoy feeling like a guest, always keeping his best manners in place, trying to be quiet even when flushing the toilet in your own room.
He straightened a doily. “It’s like someone’s grandmother exploded in here.”
“Well, I love it,” Hannah told him. “And, we’ve got a perfect weekend ahead of us, starting with a wild game feast tonight, a gondola ride to the top of Mt. Mansfield tomorrow morning, antiquing—duh—and a Ben & Jerry’s factory tour. Then Sunday, there’s this river gorge not too far away where, like, a hundred people have drowned since the 1950s. It’s called the ‘deadliest place in Vermont.’”
While Reuben didn’t consider any of these things particularly “perfect” (he would have preferred a weekend in Boston, strolling the galleries and hitting a club or two for some live music), he recognized that this weekend wasn’t about him. The getaway was meant to lift Hannah’s spirits, coming out of a challenging month navigating a lawsuit threat from a bride whose party-favor cake pops, several guests pointed out, looked a lot like the groom and one of the bridesmaids—who’d apparently had a romantic attachment a decade earlier. Hannah’s defense was that the two women wore the same mid-length haircut with the same highlights, and passing them on the street, one would honestly have trouble distinguishing one from the other. Still, the bride claimed mortification and emotional distress on the most important day of her life. Hannah was fully prepared to go to court, but Reuben and her lawyer persuaded her to settle, taking the high road for her business reputation’s sake. As Reuben hoped, the trip planning had lifted Hannah’s mood out of the angry funk she’d been in.
The first evening was more enjoyable than Reuben had been expecting, starting with the wild game dinner which featured small plates of wild boar sausage, an elk chop, a rabbit skewer, and a duck taco. The sex later that night was an absurdly funny but ultimately unsuccessful exercise at keeping Hannah’s more vocal expressions at a discrete level. To Reuben’s mortification and Hannah’s delight, the neighbors raised the volume of their television in response.
Waking after midnight with an arm stinging of pins and needles, Reuben lay listening. Even with the windows closed, the river beside the inn made for a cheerful background that contrasted starkly with the urban white noise at home, which was a constant stream of passing cars and occasional train horns.
After breakfast the next morning in the cozy sunroom, Hannah was comparing itinerary notes with two couples that had traveled together from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Reuben could feel their eyes bouncing back and forth between Hannah and him, the way strangers often sized them up as a couple, noting the contrast between her pretty petiteness and round-cheeked, rosy features, and his lanky frame topped by an unremarkable mop of brown hair. Reuben turned away, pretending to peruse the tourist literature rack.
Their day’s plan followed exactly what Hannah had outlined, starting with a drive to the ski resort at the base of the state’s largest peak. Behind the wheel, Reuben bent his neck low to get a full view of the mountains rolling by. The golds and oranges, flaming reds and evergreens below a flawless blue sky felt otherworldly. Connecticut had fall but not quite the widespread color overload he was experiencing now. They passed a tall, white steepled church tucked in among the foliage, so quintessential New England that it felt like a living postcard.
“We got a perfect ten of a day,” Hannah said. “When my sister was here in July, it was nothing but fog and rain, rain, rain the whole time.”
The resort’s gondola ride to the top of Mt. Mansfield was a little unnerving as Reuben and Hannah and a family of four were packed into a bubble-shaped car that traveled along a cable, rising 2,000 feet just short of the mountain top. They debarked and walked out among dozens of tourists, snapping photos of each other against the panorama of fall foliage.
Reuben and Hannah were quiet as they followed a hiking trail that was supposed to lead them to the peak’s ridge line. As the terrain turned steep and more challenging, Hannah’s flats offered no ankle support and even less traction. She slipped often and once lost a shoe that Reuben had to help her dislodge from a rock crevice.
“This is just nuts. Mountain goats hike stuff like this, not actual people,” Hannah said as a lean, tanned woman practically ran past them. “Let’s go back.”
Reuben had been excited to see the promised sweeping three hundred sixty-degree view. “Well,” he hesitated, watching the woman rock-hop up the trail like Spiderman, “I’d like to keep going. I can meet you in about an hour at the restaurant at the top of the gondola. Do you mind?”
Hannah’s expression suggested she did, in fact, mind.
He tried again, “I just think it would be a shame to come all this way and not get to the very top.”
She remained unmoved.
“I did tell you to wear sneakers…”
It had been a point of contention before they left the inn, but Hannah made it clear that sneakers weren’t “cute.”
“Fine.” Hannah shrugged the bag off her back, more fashion accessory than backpack. “You might as well take these.” She pulled a nearly bursting ziplock bag of trail mix and a squeezable water bottle.
“I have no place to put—” But Hannah accessed his jacket’s outer pocket for the trail mix and slid the water bottle in his inside pocket.
“Please don’t dilly-dally and daydream. We have a schedule.”
Reuben would have preferred a little more flexibility in what was supposed to be a relaxing weekend, but he would take his small victory. As Hannah headed back down, Reuben continued up, winding over rocky outcroppings and wide slabs that were tricky enough for him to realize that she had made the right decision for herself in turning back.
Though not in prime shape, Reuben maintained a steady, if a little winded, pace. When the trail finally reached the top of the ridge, he stood, eagerly taking in views in every direction for what must have been a hundred or more miles away. To the east, he could see what was likely Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and to the west, Lake Champlain laying low at the foot of the rugged Adirondacks. Everything below him was ablaze with color while the alpine environment he stood on was lichen-covered rock and scraggly evergreens. Though he would have liked to continue hiking all the way to what the map called “The Chin,” there simply wasn’t enough time to get there and back before needing to meet up with Hannah.
Moving aside for some hikers to pass, Reuben stepped onto a smooth rock face that seemed a good spot to sit and rest a moment. Now hungry, he was grateful that Hannah had foisted the trail mix and water on him.
The temperature alternated between sunny-warm and sharply chilly when strong, sudden gusts of wind kicked up and snatched at Reuben’s jacket. As he snacked, a raven dipped and glided just overhead in a way that seemed like pure joy. Reuben was alert and attuned to everything around him. For years, he’d been working only in-studio, focused on abstract-style paintings that could best be described as “aesthetically pleasing” for the corporate environments in which they were hung. This natural, untamed setting felt like a much-needed jolt to the jadedness he had started to feel toward his work, as clients became ever more proscriptive with what they wanted from their commissioned pieces.
Reuben shifted his gaze from the wide macro view of the peak to the micro world by his feet: a fist-sized rock covered in green, black, and orange swirls of flaky lichen. Beside it was a little plant cluster whose spiked, green shoots more closely resembled sea vegetation than what Reuben had expected from high alpine flora. He reached down to a patch of moss to feel its cool, damp fur.
The quiet contemplation of the moment revived him, too. Living and working with Hannah in the same close quarters, there never seemed to be space to be alone for any kind of time. Had she continued the hike with him, even if she didn’t fuss the entire way up, she would have provided running commentary, prodding him to respond when he wanted to simply admire the scenery.
He thought, How can it be that the things I adore most about Hannah—her fearlessness, the way she talks without filtering, her manic energy—are the same things that sometimes make me not want to be near her?
***
Seek & Find Antiques was one of several shops Hannah had researched. It was set back from the main tourist part of the town, down a well-maintained dirt road. It wasn’t actually an antique store so much as a restored old barn that rented out space to individual dealers. Thus, the contents were relatively organized by themes, which allowed Hannah to seek out the stalls—some of them literal stalls—that specialized in old farmhouse kitchen goods, while Reuben gravitated to the rusty tools and farm equipment, and then eventually to an area stocked with baseball memorabilia. He picked up an old catcher’s mitt, a massive slab of leather cinched together by a worn knotted leather string. He thought about its original owner, imagining a stocky, eighteen-year-old Vermont farm boy, a catcher with a cannon of an arm who had dreams of playing in the minors. Though it felt a little like trespassing, Reuben slid his hand inside the glove, noticing how the splaying of the finger pockets, which had conformed to the owner’s hand, felt just slightly off. A wider gap between the index and middle fingers, an awkward angle to the thumb. He thought about the sweat from the catcher’s hand, soaked layers-deep into the padding.
As an avid little leaguer and high school catcher himself, Reuben felt a warming of his thoughts as he recited in his head the names of his senior year teammates in their regular batting order: Crispin “Crispy” Mayer, Jimmy Deegan, Bobby Alfonso, Taylor Wade, Frank Gargiulo, Reuben, Denny Partridge (“C’mon get happy…” they would sing at him), Anton Bell, and Tiny Tim LaRoche.
“How old is this?” Reuben asked the vendor, a man his father’s age with a thick salt and pepper mustache that seemed to animate when he talked.
“That’d be a Goldsmith Model 181. Circa 1925. This one’s a Leather Front Khaki Back style. Look at that piping—it’s beautifully intact,” he ran his fingers along the edge to show. “For a well used glove, this one was lovingly cared for. You won’t see them in this good condition too often. Not the old ones, anyway. I could let her go for a hunner-twenny-five.”
“Oh?” Reuben had not been intending to buy, and in fact, wouldn’t have been able to say if he thought it was worth $5 or $500. In the moment, $125 seemed like a good deal for a mint condition antique mitt. “Huh.” Then, on pure impulse, he said, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll take it. Visa good?”
“Visa good.”
A couple stalls over, Hannah was eyeing a decorative muffin tin whose cups looked decidedly like six symmetrical breasts. When Reuben wandered over, she held it up to her chest and shimmied a little like a freak show stripper. He laughed then lowered her hand to set it down when the proprietor scowled. Hannah pulled him to a side table with an assortment of metal instruments.
“Look at these cake decorating tools I found. Aren’t they amazing?”
“They look like sadistic dentist tools to me. Is that a tiny saw?”
She turned to the woman who was now hovering nearby, “I’ll give you thirty-five for the set.”
“They’re listed for fifty. I’d say I can’t come down below forty-five.”
“Thirty-eight. Otherwise, I’ll just take the tiny saw.”
The woman gave a wheezy sigh. “If you make it forty-five, I’ll throw in this butter mold.”
Hannah inspected the small wooden stamp, turning it over a few times. “Fair enough,” she said and handed over the cash.
As they strolled through other sections, Reuben said, “How do you do that?”
Hannah looked up at him with a questioning expression. “Do what?”
“Bargain. I always feel so…not right about it.”
“You didn’t haggle over the price of that baseball relic?” Reuben shook his head. “That’s part of the fun of it, not just for buyers, for the sellers, too. It’s a dance of negotiation. Plus, these vendors probably don’t even pay for half their stuff. They’re the ones who show up just as garage sales are closing, and take anything of interest for a steal because nobody wants to make a dump run for all the crap that didn’t sell.”
She stopped to pick up a blue bird made of blown glass. “So, what’d you pay for it?”
“It’s not important.”
“Come on.”
“Sixty,” Reuben lied.
“I bet that guy paid ten bucks for it,” Hannah said. “Don’t feel bad. If it brings you joy, it’s worth the hundred or more that you actually paid for it. Yeah, I see through your mistruths, mister.”
She pinched his arm, not especially gently. And again, Reuben felt an unexpected tension between contentment that she knew him well enough to see through his lie and annoyance that she assumed he was utterly predictable. No matter that he clearly was.
They continued to wander the aisles, spotlighting for each other the more unusual finds. A taxidermied weasel with its pointy bared teeth; a collapsible top hat; a cigar box filled with buttons of all shapes, colors, and sizes.
As Reuben’s pace slowed, his imagination sparked with ideas for assemblages and sculptures—a creative medium he had all but given up in art school when he chose to specialize in painting instead. But here, these fragments of the past were just calling out for new life. One moment Reuben was imagining building a tiny birdcage out of ornate keys, then next he was staring at a polished Underwood typewriter, running his fingers over the keys, admiring how precise their roundness was, how their elegant serif strokes were like tiny letter portraits.
Between the lift of the hike and this torrent of new ideas, Reuben had to admit that the financial success he enjoyed from producing commercial art was bad at feeding his creative soul. This acknowledgement lit something inside him that felt a lot like optimism.
“Hey,” Hannah tugged his sleeve, jolting his mind back to the dusty antiques barn. “This is starting to feel like grocery shopping with my niece who stops to read every cereal box. Let’s get going. You need a shower before we head to dinner.”
Having eaten a giant waffle cone of Phish Food just a couple hours before, dinner was not an enticing prospect, but Reuben took Hannah’s outstretched hand and reluctantly left the antiques behind.
That night, as Hannah was in bed reading a hardcover she picked up about funeral practices around the world, Reuben was restless.
“I think I’m going to take a quick walk around the property.”
“Okay but don’t drown in the river. I just read that if it takes more than a day to find a body, it’ll be totally bloated and that means no open casket.”
“If that happens, you have my permission to cremate me.”
Her eyes welled up with happiness. “I’m the person who gets to handle your remains?”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that any time soon.”
Though his jacket was thin for the forty or so degrees outside, Reuben liked the bracing feeling it caused, keeping his muscles taught. In the quiet country night, he could tease out the sound of a single dry leaf flipping along the driveway on a breeze. He looked up to take in the clear sky of stars framed by the tops of the trees whose fading leaves filled the air with a musty sweetness. There’s a word for that smell, Reuben thought but he couldn’t remember what it was. A car approached from up the road, getting louder, passing, and then fading. Reuben turned down a path that hugged the river, careful not to wander too close to the edge.
***
“We should go out for breakfast,” Reuben said.
Hannah had been up for nearly twenty minutes, twittering around the room, seemingly unable to stay still. Now she was wandering as she brushed her teeth, and it took a moment for her to return to the sink to spit and rinse before responding, “Why would we do that?”
Reuben had been thinking that he wanted to get out early to see the how the morning light bent and stretched shadows out from the trees. He wanted to take real and mental pictures to bring home into the studio. “I don’t know, there are probably some cool little historic towns we can explore. Maybe an old cemetery you can wander.”
“While that’s a fine idea for later,” Hannah said, “I think there’s a gap in your understanding of the ‘& Breakfast’ part of this operation. Besides, I bet Rosemary has a collection of antique pancakes made by Mrs. Schuyler herself that she serves up for her favorite guests.”
Hannah pulled out one of Reuben’s shirts he didn’t recall packing and smoothed it out at the foot of the bed. “I love this color on you,” she said.
He knew she was trying to nudge him out of bed, but he didn’t mind. He was feeling upbeat, had even had a change of heart while dozing off the night before, deciding that his conflicting thoughts about Hannah were just the normal ebb and flow of being in a long-term relationship—his longest, in fact.
“Hand me some underwear?” he asked her.
She rifled through the suitcase. “I also brought these cords for you.”
“I’ll just wear the jeans from last night.”
“I think these will be more comfortable.”
“More comfortable than jeans?”
Hannah brought him the pants, underwear, and a wad of socks before going back to the mirror to apply lipstick.
“Seems a little dressy for antique pancakes.”
She turned abruptly. “You and I spend all our days wearing baking or painting clothes. Is it too much to ask that, just occasionally, we resemble the mature, successful people we are?”
It was an unexpectedly strong reaction to attire, something she attended to for herself but almost never commented on for Reuben. “Okay, if it’s that important to you.” He started to dress. “Wow, you even ironed the shirt.”
“I just thought it would be nice,” Hannah said, watching his reflection in the mirror. Besides, we have a big day ahead of us.”
“We do?”
“Oh, I just mean, you know, making the most of our last day here.”
In the dining room, sunlight reflected off the yellow and white tablecloths so brightly it took a moment for Reuben’s eyes to adjust. The Pennsylvania travelers Hannah had chatted with the day before were already seated for breakfast. At another table was a young couple that looked barely out of college, noteworthy for the fact that their hands seemed fused together, so that other efforts like spreading jam or pouring and stirring cream were impressively achieved single-handedly.
Rosemary, dressed in a buttery yellow cardigan that matched the room’s decor, delivered Reuben and Hannah a couple glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice.
“I hope everyone slept well!”
“Like a corpse that was not murdered,” Hannah said.
“How nice,” said Rosemary, her grandmotherly smile not quite reaching her eyes.
After she returned to the kitchen, Reuben said to Hannah. “You did seem to sleep well. Better than you have in a while. Maybe getting away was just the thing to move on from the whole crazy bride thing.”
“Oh that?” Hannah laughed lightly. “Yeah, she wasn’t crazy.”
“Not crazy. That’s a poor choice of words, right? Paranoid. Maybe a little insecure about her groom’s long-term fidelity?”
Hannah’s big blue eyes searched his trying to suss out his meaning.
“Wait. What do you think…Oh! Oh my god, you thought…I thought you knew. This whole time, I thought you knew!” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “That’s hilarious!”
“Knew what?”
She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “You thought it actually was a coincidence?”
“The bridesmaid thing?”
“Yeah.”
“It wasn’t?”
Hannah scrunched her face affectionately at him. “You must really love me to think that.”
“What do you mean, Hannah?”
“You think I’m a better person than I actually am. That’s really sweet.”
Reuben opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and then said, “It was on purpose? You ruined that woman’s wedding on purpose?”
“A) I didn’t ruin it. It was a perfectly lovely wedding. And B) In every meeting, she was completely horrid to her mother, her sister, the caterer, me. As if everyone was there solely to please her.”
“Well, it was her wedding.”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard Reuben. “And her husband was so lovely. He totally belonged with that bridesmaid instead. You’re looking at me funny.”
“How did you even know what she looked like?”
“Social media stalking, duh.” She took in a giant mouthful of pancake and spoke around it. “Really, it’s not a big deal. Even though I didn’t think I should, I took your sound advice and settled. The end. She was compensated and will live happily ever after for the next year or so before her husband realizes she’s a twat, and they get divorced.”
“Here we are!” Rosemary delivered two plates, each arranged with two large pancakes topped with a melting pat of butter. On the side was a sausage patty and a cozy mound of sliced fresh fruit.
Hannah poured an absurd amount of maple syrup on her pancakes as if she hadn’t just confessed to acting with malicious intent and lying about it. Processing what he’d just learned, Reuben picked at the fruit pile, spearing a single grape and chewing it slowly and deliberately, followed by a pale green melon ball.
Hannah was half-way finished with her plate when she observed, “You haven’t touched your pancakes. Are you mad at me?”
Mad wasn’t the right word but Reuben wasn’t sure what was. “No, I’m not. I just think, maybe, even if she was a jerk, it doesn’t mean you should have been, too.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut, “Oh god. You’re disappointed in me. That’s so much worse than being pissed off.” She took his two hands in hers and held them tightly. “You’re right. It was a shitty thing to do. But maybe sometimes, Reuben, standing up for yourself is important, too. That bride was so dismissive. At every meeting, she looked right through me like I wasn’t even there. And when she did talk to me it was loud and slow, like I was stupid—actually worse, like one of those automated phone systems. Made me feel so small.” She loosened her grip but didn’t let go. “The bridesmaid pop was just my little act of subversion. I really didn’t think anyone would notice.”
This was a rare moment of quiet vulnerability for Hannah. Reuben knew if he let go of her hands, she would make some wisecrack that would undermine everything she’d just told him, and he just wanted to stay in this moment with this Hannah, so he gently rubbed her knuckles and said, “I guess I can understand that.”
She took a relieved breath. “You are my love. I couldn’t bear you thinking less of me.”
Rosemary waltzed into the room with a pot held high. “Who wants more coffee?”
Cups around the dining room were raised as if in a toast to the coffee bearer. Hannah excused herself to head up to the bathroom, squeezing past Rosemary who was flitting from table to table filling cups like a human pollinator. Reuben took a few bites of pancake without really tasting them. His mind was lingering on the cake pop bride. He really did understood where Hannah was coming from; he’d worked with enough clients that behaved as if the people around them were the world’s extras, whose presence was tolerated only for what momentary usefulness they offered. But what nagged at Reuben was an uneasy acknowledgment that he’d wholeheartedly believed Hannah’s explanation, despite all the reasons he had to be at least a little skeptical.
When Hannah returned, Reuben was puzzled to find she had swapped her twill trousers for a calf-length navy blue dress he’d never seen her wear before.
“Is everything okay?” He asked her.
“Everything is wonderful,” she smiled at him.
When Hannah got down on one knee beside him, Reuben broke out in a sudden, itchy sweat from scalp to armpits to the back of his knees. “Hannah, what are you doing?” He whispered as the ambient noise of chatter and clanking silverware suddenly silenced.
“Reuben Anthony Downes,” she said with a quiet calm.
Oh no, no, no, no, Reuben thought—a record, stuck and skipping in his head, but out loud, all he said was, “Shh, shhh, shhh,” as if to quiet her so maybe no one in the room would hear what she had to say next, which was, of course, absurd because he could feel the intensity of everyone’s stares, eager to be part of this public private moment. One of the women had even pulled out her phone to record.
Hannah held out an open velvet box, not with a ring but with shiny silver men’s watch. “Will you marry me?” Coming from Hannah, it did not feel like a question; it felt like a pronouncement: “You will marry me.”
Her focus on their anniversary. The precisely planned weekend getaway. The strange behavior about his clothes. How had he not even had a whiff of this coming? His mind answered, because, until now, marrying Hannah hadn’t even registered with Reuben. It was clear that even after a year living together, he was still puzzling—and struggling—with understanding this, mostly, wonderfully weird woman.
Could he marry her? He certainly could. Would he now, or a year from now, or five years? He didn’t know. But perhaps the most important question was, should he?
Those swimming pool eyes were enormous and pleading, ready to swallow him whole if he didn’t say yes right that very second.
Reuben’s slack jaw open and closed but offered no actual words. Hannah popped up, a sprung jack-in-the-box, and shouted to the room, “And…scene!” She took a little bow and spun to face everyone, a rigor mortis grin frozen on her face. “Hope you enjoyed our little piece of performance art.”
Rosemary looked simultaneously concerned and dubious. A man with a silver crew cut started clapping lightly, which invited the others at his table to offer their tepid, confused clapping. More than anything, Reuben wanted to grab Hannah by the hand and pull her from the room but she was determined to sit back down in her seat and pretend everything was fine.
Everything was not fine. Reuben could see a tempest roiling behind her smiling countenance, and, it scared him.
“Hannah, I—”
“Don’t.”
“But I—”
“Still don’t.” She lifted her coffee mug and held it under her nose, blocking her words so only Reuben could hear them. “You just annihilated me.”
He matched her discretion by fixing his elbows on the table and covering his mouth with his fists. “I had no idea you were going to do that.”
“That’s how it’s done!” She shout-whispered at him. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“We had never even talked about it.”
“Do you not want to marry me?”
Reuben’s hesitation was like a manifest presence, something pulsing with mass and heat. Finally, mercifully, he said, “I don’t know.”
Hannah closed her eyes a moment. He couldn’t tell if she was fighting tears or trying to pretend she was somewhere else.
Reuben lowered his voice, stuttering with unease. “I—I just—I—I feel like maybe there are maybe some things I need to do.”
“Things you need to do? Like things without me?”
Again Reuben said, “I don’t know,” which once said out loud, sounded painfully like “yes.”
Her head started nodding tightly as if to a fast rhythm in her head. “You have things you need to do. I get it. I do. You have to do what you have to do. People have to do what people have to do, Reuben.” And with those words, she lifted her fork and drove it straight down into Reuben’s hand.
Reuben let out a howl of shocked pain. In an instant, one of the Pennsylvania men (an ex-Marine, it later turned out), crossed the room and caught Hannah in a bear-hug before dragging her out of the room.
The fork was standing straight up, fully embedded in the fleshy part between the thumb and forefinger on the back of Reuben’s left hand.
Reuben could feel the edges of his vision blur as someone, the college-looking guy (a nurse-in-training, it later turned out), held one hand firmly on his shoulder and the other on his forearm, telling him, “Hang on, you’re ok. Rosemary went to get bandages.”
“Where’s Hannah?” Reuben asked.
“She’s in another room. You’re safe. She’s not going to hurt—“
“I need to see her—“
“We have to take care of this first…What’s your name?”
“It’s Reuben,” Rosemary said, briskly striding over with a big first aid box.
“OK, Reuben, my name is George. I’d shake your hand, but…” He laughed nervously as Reuben’s eyes teared from the pain. “Reuben, I’m going to need to remove the fork so we can get you fixed up.”
It was surreal, both the image of the upright fork and the experience of looking down at his own hand as if it weren’t really real.
“I think he’s in shock,” someone said.
“Looks like she forked him real good,” someone else side-mumbled.
“On the count of three, Reuben.”
George lied, quickly pulling the fork out after “one.”
“Holy MOTHER of FUCK!”
There was surprisingly little blood coming from the fork’s four neat punctures. George inspected the wound while Reuben took quick, shallow breaths.
“Reuben, do you know if she had eaten from the fork before she stabbed you?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, yes, she was eating pancakes.”
Someone asked indiscreetly, “Can you get maple syrup poisoning?”
George said, “You should probably get a tetanus shot.”
In the meantime, Rosemary set his hand in a bowl of warm water. “There’s some Castile soap in there, which is antibacterial.”
“Isn’t all soap antibacterial?” someone asked.
“Well, soap can be effective in getting rid of bacteria, but—“
“I need to see Hannah,” Reuben said again, his voice croaking.
Rosemary nodded to a person behind him and he heard the door open and close as they left the dining room.
“You’ll want to see a doctor to make sure there’s no nerve damage,” said George.
Reuben’s chest tightened and said, “It’s my painting hand.”
Rosemary’s eyes softened in sympathy. “You’ll be okay, hon.” As she gently dried Reuben’s hand, the door opened again. George’s girlfriend spoke in a low voice to someone, but all Reuben heard was the word “gone.”
“Wait, she left?” Reuben croaked.
“Yeah. She grabbed a bag and took off,” George’s girlfriend said. “She said she won’t be back and doesn’t want to see your…fucking fat face ever again. She told me to tell you that—I don’t think your face is fat; it’s actually kind of oblong. Anyway, Gary says he can call the police if you want to press charges.”
“I’m not pressing charges.”
Rosemary put a hand on his shoulder, “Maybe you want to take just a few minutes to think about—“
“I’m not pressing charges.” Reuben said. He added, “I’m really sorry for the drama, everyone.”
“Makes for a great story to tell people back home.”
Reuben’s hand was pounding cartoonishly. Stabbing pain, he thought, nearly laughing out loud. “Rosemary, can I trouble you for a glass of water? Also, I may need to stay a few more nights.”
“Of course, you’ll stay as long as you need.”
George lightly secured a bandage with surgical tape. “Hell of a break up, man,” he said as he stood up.
I suppose it could have been worse, Reuben thought. Because somewhere deep in the tangle and turmoil of all the feelings he was experiencing—astonishment, regret, anger, worry, and pain, visceral pain—was the kind of thrill that comes from an ending about to become a beginning.
[End Chapter 1]
