I remember sitting next to each other on the beach, pressed together for warmth, laughing about the snake and worrying what Dad was going to do to us. I gave Tommy my shirt because he was quite a bit smaller than I was at the time and he didn’t have any body fat to protect him from the wind. I think I was fifteen and he was thirteen. We could have gone to a friend’s house, but for some reason we didn’t want to. I think the beach was the only place we ever felt safe. Walls and roofs may keep you warm and dry, but they don’t give you much room to run if you need it.
Anyway, when we got home Dad had locked the door and refused to let us in. We knocked at the kitchen door for quite a while, and then we went around back to try the sliding doors, and we could see him sitting in his chair in the living room, sipping whiskey and reading. We yelled through the glass and rapped on it for fifteen minutes but he never looked up. We spent the night in a hammock near the cornfield, holding each other and shivering. It was light in the sky by the time I finally fell asleep, and the first thing I saw when I woke up was Dad standing over us with an expression of disgust on his face.
“What a couple of little faggots,” he said. “Let go of each other and come inside before the fucking neighbors see you.”
Neither of us had the balls to remind him that we didn’t have any fucking neighbors.
I don’t remember what Dad eventually did to us. Locking us out for the night apparently took the edge off his rage (even though he’d sworn off the physical violence thing years before, I have no doubt he would have killed us if we’d stayed in the house that night) and whatever he came up with to punish us the next day completely escapes me now. His usual method was to make us quit doing something we loved to do—he made Tommy drop out of tennis one year and he made me give up band, for instance. But it must not have been too bad, because I have no memory of it.
And whatever it was, pissing off Dad like that was definitely worth it.
“Nathan?” Tommy’s shaking my shoulder again. “Camille just asked you a question.”
“Sorry, Camille.” I reach for a cracker and smear it with a big glob of Brie. “Whenever Tommy’s talking I fall into a coma.”
Tommy ignores me and slides his chair closer to Philip.
Camille pushes her hair off her forehead with an elegant finger. She has big blue eyes. “I was just asking if you ever get down to New York.”
Tommy snorts. “Nathan barely leaves the yard, let alone the state.”
I feel a flash of irritation. “I haven’t been there in quite a while. New York is a little overwhelming for me.”
“So’s downtown Walcott,” mutters Tommy.
Jesus, he pisses me off. I keep my eyes on Camille. “I’ve got quite a few friends there but I’m still working up the courage to go back. The last time I visited I hated every minute of it.”
She gives me a pitying smile. “You just need to give it more of a chance. It grows on you.” She looks around the table. “I’m always dumbfounded when I meet someone who doesn’t care for New York, aren’t you? It’s as if they’re from Mars or something. Why on earth would anyone feel that way?”
I smile back at her. “Because it’s hot and dirty and loud, and it smells like urine and stale garlic, and it’s full of people who think anyone from a small town is a rube with hay in his teeth who enjoys being spoken to in a condescending fashion.”
She recoils and Tommy glares at me. “Stop being so sensitive, Nathan. She was just asking.” He turns to Camille. “I should have warned you about Nathan’s temper, Camille. I keep hoping he’ll mellow out as he gets older but so far there’s no sign of that.”
She bites her lip. “It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to sound condescending. I’m sorry, Nathan.”
I mutter an apology too, and everybody falls silent for a minute. Tommy returns to his perusal of Philip’s earlobe and I stare into my drink.
When I raise my head, Camille’s running her fingers through Kyle’s hair, but she’s doing it mindlessly, as if she’s petting a cat. Kyle lets her do it but he doesn’t lean in to her touch, either. (He’s one of those people whose eyes are never still. They dart from my face to my hands and then around the porch like a bat in an old movie theater.) Camille and he are both watching me now, because Tommy and Philip are whispering to each other and seem to have forgotten us.
Camille leans forward, studying me. “I thought you’d be blond like Tommy.” Her voice is pleasant; she seems to have forgiven me for my outburst.
I shake my head. “Tommy’s adopted. We found him in the rushes down by the river, singing ‘Kum ba yah’ and turning water into wine.”
Tommy breaks off baby-talking to Philip long enough to look over his shoulder at me. “Nathan’s the one who’s adopted. He’s the bastard love child of Ernest Borgnine and Cher.”
I sigh. We could go on like this indefinitely, but I don’t want to. It’s just our old shtick, and suddenly I’m tired of it. I point at Camille’s wedding ring. “So how long have you two been married?”
She holds her hand out to me so I can see it better. It’s a delicate gold band with a single small diamond. “One hundred and sixty-three days. But we’ve been living together for over a year.” She gazes at Kyle and her face softens. “I finally talked him into making an honest woman of me.”
Kyle grins at her absently and scratches his jaw with his fingernails. He needs a shave. He turns back to me. “How long have you been living in this place?”
Camille frowns.
I sip my wine. “All but ten years of my life. I moved out when I went to college and back in when Dad died.”
Tommy grunts. “And now it will take the Connecticut National Guard to get him out of here.”
I scowl at him. “Tommy doesn’t approve of Walcott. There aren’t enough sex clubs and porno shops to keep him amused.”
Tommy narrows his eyes but Camille cuts in before he can respond. “It must be strange to still be in the same place you lived as a kid. Doesn’t the isolation get to you?”
I shrug. “Sometimes. But it’s really not all that isolated. The trees just make it seem like that.”
I can see that nobody believes me. They start chatting about the cottage and the weather, and I stand up to go inside and get the vegetables I’m roasting for supper out of the oven.
“What’s going on in the cornfield?” Tommy asks.
I look where he’s pointing. There’s a big patch of freshly dug dirt at the far end of the field, surrounded by broken and uprooted cornstalks. Christ. Dale Cromwell is not going to be happy. “Cheri Tipton was digging around out there today when I went to the beach. She was supposed to leave the corn alone, though.”
Camille gets up and walks a few feet toward the field. “What was she looking for?”
“She thinks there might be some relics from an old Indian village out there.”
Tommy makes a face. “A what? She’s nuts. There’s nothing there but crow shit and corn.”
“That’s what I told her, but she found an old letter that talks about this mysterious tribe who used to live around here.”
Camille leans down to pull a deer tick off her ankle. “Really? That’s very exciting.” She inspects the tick for a second, then calmly pulls it apart with