The lodge looked lonely and silent at the end of the drive, late-afternoon sunshine deepening the shadows behind loose shutters and warped guttering. It seemed to be waiting for something, and after staring up at his childhood for several long minutes, Frank decided it was waiting for sound. The drive was quiet, the windows dark. No chatter of hikers relaxing in rocking chairs on the wide front porch, a jug of lemonade between them. The rocking chairs were gone. No children whistled and yelled from the back patio. No splashing in the pool, which traditionally opened on Memorial Day weekend—though he and Tommy had always used it for up to a month before, usually under the cover of darkness. All he could hear now was the chitter of chipmunks and birds.
The front door was still locked. Frank searched his pocket for the keys and sorted through the compact ring until he found the right one. Or not. He tried another. No, no, and finally, yes.
Had the door creaked this morning? Last night?
It complained now, whining softly between halting groans. Perhaps if he pushed it open faster . . . Ugh, that smell. Mold and neglect assaulted his nostrils. Frank leaned back through the door to pick up his shopping bags, drawing in some fresh air as he did so. He abandoned any attempt to hold his breath halfway to the kitchen. He couldn’t watch the ceiling for new and threatening cracks if he passed out.
“Hello?”
His call was another lonely echo, the lack of response depressing. Tom’s absence felt distant yet distinct—as if the man who’d greeted him last night had been a ghost. Frank called out a few more times as he passed the guests’ sitting room and dining room. The house answered with gentle creaks.
The kitchen was surprisingly clean and did not smell moldy. It didn’t smell like cookies, either, and the jar his aunt had filled with treats baked just for family was missing from the end of the breakfast bar. Fading sunlight streamed through the west-facing windows, dusting across countertops, floors, and updated appliances. He couldn’t swear the walls had been painted a pale yellow thirty years ago, but despite the small changes, the kitchen had much the same feel it always had—of a quietly beating heart. The center of what had once been a home.
Had he visited this room the last time he’d been up here? Frank couldn’t remember. His three or four visits to the Poconos since finishing college had been brief and edged with trepidation.
The smallest of three fridges was humming, indicating it had power. Frank pulled open the door and found a block of cheese that had not been wrapped properly—the exposed part a dark, cracked yellow—a bag of slimy liquid advertising itself as celery, a jar of peanut butter, and nine cans of Mello Yello.
The kitchen reminded him of his aunt and uncle—his aunt in particular. She’d done a lot of the baking for the resort guests. The fridge screamed Tom. As a boy, he’d seemed to exist on peanut butter sandwiches and Mello Yello—though his battered old bottles had often been filled with homemade lemonade.
Frank unpacked his groceries, glad he’d had the foresight to buy a few things, and balled up the plastic bags. A muffled thump sounded behind him, from somewhere near the front of the lodge. After shoving the plastic bags into a drawer, Frank began to make his way back to the main hall. Just as he exited the kitchen, a shadow crossed the foyer. “Is that you, Tom?”
The shadow paused, obviously looking back at him, then darted toward the front door, which judging by the triangle of light across the floor, was open.
“Tom?” Frank started down the hall at a cautious pace.
By the time Frank reached the foyer, his heart pounded from more than the exertion of such a short run. The door remained open, but moving slightly, as though someone had just pushed past. A gentle whining groan rose from the hinges before it settled back into stillness.
A combination of mild terror and ridiculousness bubbled up behind Frank’s breastbone as he sidled up to the door, took a deep breath, and poked his head out onto the porch. No one lurked to either side. There was no second car parked in the circle. No figure sprinting across the lawn or down the driveway.
He hadn’t imagined the shadow in the hallway. Frank examined the door, not sure what he was looking for. Had he left it open?
“Something wrong with the door?”
Heart stopping mid-beat, Frank jerked backward, his body suddenly a loose collection of limbs wrapped in skin he no longer felt. He fell against the door, the back of his head catching the center-mounted knob on the way down, and landed in an untidy sprawl, half in and half out of the entryway.
Tom stood over him, all wide eyes and dark hair, mouth forming an O. He extended a hand and Frank batted it away.
“Where the fuck did you come from? And where were you?”
Tom tucked his hand into his jeans. “Are those two separate questions?”
Once his brain reestablished contact with his limbs, Frank pushed up to a sitting position and used the door handle to haul himself upright. “Did you come in and run out again?”
“What?”
“I saw someone in the hall. They ran when I called out.”
“Just now?” Worry etched a few lines into Tom’s forehead as he moved forward and peered through the doorway, poking his head out into the light. “Did you see which way they ran?”
“I didn’t. It was like they disappeared.”
“Probably a local kid on a dare. I’ve had to chase a few out of the barn before.” Tom ducked back. They were separated by mere inches, closer than they’d been in thirty years, and the fading sunshine showed Tom in a way Frank hadn’t seen in a long, long time. His hair was still longish and untamed. Not curly, more wavy and with a mind of its own. The dark brown was liberally streaked with gray, however; only the thickness and messiness of his cut hid the fact that he was older than he appeared. Frank resisted the urge to reach out and feel the dark strands, see if they had coarsened with age.
Tom looked up, his small, delicate features so achingly familiar. He’d always had a young face. Sweet and sharp, all dark eyes and light-brown skin. When they were boys, they’d often speculated on the identity of Tom’s father—after learning he hadn’t actually died in Vietnam. Hadn’t been a soldier at all. For a while, Tom had decided he was a long-lost Inca. Or maybe an Aztec. Someone whose ancestors had been fierce warriors. The warrior part had been important. Frank remembered that.
Tom leaned away from him, widening the space between them by another handful of inches. By the width of the doorway. He said nothing, and seemed to be giving Frank equal scrutiny. Then one corner of Tom’s mouth ticked upward. A half smile. “You really haven’t changed. I think you’re taller, but you’re still . . .”
Frank felt one of his eyebrows arching upward. “Still?”
“You.”
“Except older, grayer, and not quite as fat.”
Tom’s gaze swept back downward, taking in the trim of Frank’s waist, his legs, and upward, across his chest and shoulders. Frank’s skin tingled beneath his clothing. He swallowed.
“You were never fat,” Tom murmured.
A scoff crawled out of Frank’s throat before he could stop it. “Whatever.” He pushed away from the doorway, his head throbbing slightly. He touched the spot where he’d connected with the knob and winced as his fingers grazed a warm egg.
Tom’s brow wrinkled again, the concern gentler. “Did you hit your head? You went down pretty hard.”
“Because you happened out of nowhere. Were you here the whole time? I was calling for you.”
“No, I just got back. I used the side entrance and parked in the garage. We should move your car there. The sap from the trees over the front drive is hell on paint.”
Though tempted to point out that his car was a rental, Frank only nodded. “Do you have any Tylenol in this mausoleum?”
Tom’s smile returned, wider this time. “In the office. Where’s Anna?”
“She left to drive back to the shore.”
“Oh? Did she . . .” His expression shuttered a little and he turned away, leading Frank behind the desk again and into the office. He began pulling open desk drawers. “So, ah, I guess you guys talked about what you’re going to do with this place?”
Frank frowned at Tom’s back. His slim shoulders had drawn up and in beneath his dark-blue polo shirt. When he turned back around, bottle of painkillers in his hand, he was obviously trying for detached curiosity . . . and failing.
Frank took the pills. “We haven’t.” He glanced at the small white bottle with the red plastic cap. “And apparently it’s all going to be up to me.”
Tom said nothing.
“You don’t look surprised.”
Tom gave a shrug that was a touch too studied to be careless.
Frank shook his head. “I can’t believe Robert left the place to me. All of it. And none of the rest of the family wants anything to do with it.”
Tom’s attitude of nonresponse was starting to grate.
“Have you had—” Frank checked his watch “—dinner? It’s after six, we can call it dinner.”
“I got something earlier.”
Finally, an answer. “Well, I’m hungry. I bought a few things. Will you eat with me?”
Tom stared at him, making no response, until Frank feared he’d entered some sort of catatonic state. Then he blinked.
“What?” Frank asked.
Shaking his head slightly, Tom gestured toward the doorway.
In the kitchen Frank assembled a pair of hoagies, the act of layering in the meat and cheese, shredding the lettuce, stuffing tomato slices in between, and drizzling the wedge of fixings with salad oil taking him back to childhood, to sandwiches bought and shared with the boy—the man standing next to him. He sliced the long rolls in half across the middle, arranged them on the plates Tom had produced from somewhere, and gestured toward the items remaining on the counter. “Want a pickle? Some chips? Do you have anything other than Mello Yello to drink?”
“You bought all of this today?”
“Yes. There are supermarkets in Stroudsburg. Imagine that.”
Tom looked up from one of the sandwiches. “They’re like the hoagies we used to get from Vinnie’s.”
“That was the idea. I was feeling rather nostalgic this afternoon.” And at a bit of a loose end, really. After Annabelle had dropped him at the rental agency, he’d found himself driving up and down random streets with his thoughts caught halfway between past and present. Then he’d seen a supermarket and become obsessed with the idea of making sandwiches. He had to eat, after all. Then he’d gotten lost on his way back to the lodge, but Tom didn’t need to know all of that.
“There’s still a bunch of wine down in the cellar,” Tom said.
“Show me?”
The cellar held more memories, most packed away in boxes stacked floor to ceiling on wooden shelving. Another thing Frank’s aching head didn’t want to deal with. They passed a door with a small light mounted over the lintel.
“Do you still use your darkroom?” Frank asked.
Tom glanced over his shoulder. “Every now and then I get the urge to play around.”
“I suppose it’s all digital now.”
“Mostly, yeah.”
“Oh, how did your wedding go today?”
“How did you know I was shooting a wedding?”
“Annabelle told me.”
“Huh.” Tom’s shoulders hitched up and down. “It was fine.” His eyebrows crooked together.
“What?”
Again, he shook his head and continued on to the coolest part of the cellar, where row upon row of dusty bottles gleamed softly.
“Well now.” Frank rubbed his hands.
After selecting two contestants, Frank followed Tom back up to the main floor and the almost familiar smell of mold.
“What is rotting?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I can look into it tomorrow. One of the water tanks might be leaking.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Tom answered with his eyebrows, raising them in an arc of no kidding.
Once back in the kitchen, Frank couldn’t decide where to eat. The stools along the far counter, where kids and cookies usually took up residence, were still there, all tucked into a neat row. He glanced out of the windows instead, at the mess of woody vines covering the trellis separating the kitchen yard from the guest patio. “Want to eat outside? Are there tables on the patio?”
“One.” Tom chewed on his lip. “I sit out there sometimes. It’s . . . It’s not pretty out there, Frankie.”
The old nickname sent an odd thrill through Frank’s middle. “Because of the storm?”
Tom shook his head. “No. Not this storm, anyway.”
Frank located a corkscrew and a pair of glasses and nudged open the kitchen door. “Bring the sandwiches? And I suppose you’d better start filling me in on everything I’ve missed. All Anna kept saying was that it was all so sad. Economic downturn, hurricanes, no snow, and Robert being something of a sentimental old fool.”
Tom grunted.
Waving a hand in apology, Frank walked around the trellis. “I fail to see how such a popular resort could have—”
“Not pretty” had been an understatement.
The patio extended about twenty feet from the back of the lodge, forming a terrace overlooking the pool area, and the setting sun was not kind to the bare expanse of flagstone. Long shadows showed where the pavement was uneven and stones were missing. The single table Tom had referred to sat alone and forlorn, rusting through flaking gray paint. The chairs rocked unsteadily.
Worse—and it got so much worse—were the bare planters. No bright profusion of green dotted with flower heads of all shapes and sizes lined the edges of the patio, screening diners from the pool. But the most devastating part of all was the line of cottages behind the empty pool. Two of them resembled malformed playhouses, the roofs sagging—one collapsed completely. Another two appeared relatively unscathed, but dark and unloved. The two closest were . . . missing?
Frank turned back to Tom. “There were two more cottages over there, right? Where those patches of grass are? Or did we always have a lawn tennis arrangement on that side of the pool?”
“Tennis used to be over by the stables.”
An involuntary gasp parted his lips. “Do we still have stables? Tell me there are no horses.” He couldn’t stand the idea of horses living among all this neglect.
“Not for fifteen years. Robert got rid of the horses after Madge died.”
Frank remembered his aunt’s funeral. He’d come up for that, but hadn’t stayed overnight. After driving straight to the church, he’d come back here for a short while afterward. He didn’t remember seeing Tom, though. “Were you at her funeral?”
Tom shook his head. “Something came up.”
“What happened here, Tommy?” Frank gestured with his wine bottle and glasses. “How did . . . How could you even have accommodated guests two months ago? Aren’t there laws and licenses and . . . This place is a mess. This is more than storm damage.” Anger pulsed through him, formless and aimless. “It’s a tragedy. Our entire childhood smashed in and left to rot. How could you let this happen?”
“Me? Where were you? Where were you, Anna, and Matty? Robert had already had one heart attack before Madge died, and then it was like he was dead but still moving. He asked for help and no one came. It was me and the staff, and when the bookings dried up and he couldn’t afford to keep anyone on, it was just me.”
Tom paused for a ragged breath, his narrow chest heaving. Why was he so thin?
“We’d only just finished cleaning up the damage from the ice storm in ’07 when the housing market collapsed, and no one took a vacation for like three years. Then we got hit with Irene. Then Sandy. Meanwhile, there was no snow and the big corps. out of Atlantic City and Vegas were building casinos with indoor water parks.”
The plates clattered against the tabletop as Tom put them down.
“He got left behind, Frankie. By his family and by this town. He wasn’t young enough to keep up. I tried. I advertised. I researched. I came up with ways to keep the place running, and when he was with me, when he was making sense, we’d make plans. Then he’d disappear into his own head again, and it was up to me to make sure the house didn’t fall down around us.”
Staggered by the brief and awful recounting of the resort’s decline, Frank backed toward one of the rickety chairs and sat, not caring whether the thing gave way beneath him or not. He set the bottle of wine down and fished the corkscrew from his pocket. Once he had the wine open, he was tempted to drink it straight from the bottle. To guzzle it while liquid spilled across his chin and down his neck. He poured a glass and drained that instead. Poured another. Drank half of it. Placed the glass gently back onto the table.
“I would have come. If anyone had told me, I would have come.”
Tom scoffed. “You’ve visited exactly three times over the past thirty years, Frank.”
Not Frankie anymore. Frank.
Frank felt his mouth begin to form the words: I was afraid. He clamped his lips shut and shook his head, which did not improve the circular motion of his thoughts. “I’m sorry.”
Another disgusted sound. “Bit late for that, don’t you think?”
“It’s not as if I killed my own uncle.”
“No, you just left him to rot while you—”
“That’s not fair! I was little more than a child when I left here, and last I checked, I was not the only Tern. I have two siblings and two quite capable parents. If anyone is to blame . . .” Well. “I suppose we all are, in part. But no one told me! Damn it.”
Annabelle had mentioned the neglect, but she hadn’t laid it out in quite this manner—a brokenhearted and sick old man watching his home crumble around him, only the boy Frank had befriended almost forty years before between him and utter dejection. How had this happened? Frank could feel his mouth moving again, trying to form more words. He shook them off, away. Drained his second glass of wine and reached for the bottle.
Why did it feel so much like his heart was breaking? And why was the sensation so achingly familiar? His hand trembled as he refilled his glass. As he lifted it, tipping the edge toward his lips.
“Frank?”
His hand jerked, spilling the wine over his wrist and down beneath the cuff of his shirt. He watched dumbly as the dark-red liquid spattered across his thighs, staining his trousers.
When Frank looked up, Tom’s face seemed to waver as though viewed through rippled glass. Frank blinked. Warmth trickled down his cheeks. God, was this grief or shame?
Frank put down his glass and stood. Cleared his throat. “I think perhaps I’ll head up. It’s . . . been a long day.”
Then he turned and fled. His departure was slow and dignified, marked by the sound of his even stride against uneven flagstones. But still he fled, just as he had thirty years before.