The Unexpected Everything

“What I told you last night?” he finally asked, and I nodded. “You’re the only person who knows that. Everyone knows I’m having trouble—there are whole websites devoted to it—but I haven’t told anyone else how bad it is.”

“Your secret is safe,” I said, raising my right hand. “Ex–Girl Scout’s honor.”

“Ex?”

“Long story,” I said, feeling like now was not the time to tell him the story that involved Toby, a cooler of ice cream, and Bri massively failing to be an effective lookout. “Another time. But I’m pretty sure the oath is still good.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair and causing the back to stick up funny. “I knew what was implied when my publisher offered me her house. I could stay there for free all summer, but at the end of it, I’d better have a book for them.”

We walked for a moment, not speaking, and I was suddenly aware of how loud the cicadas were all around us. I looked at the fireflies winking on and off in the grass while I tried to figure out how best to ask this. “So . . . what’s the problem?” I finally asked, knowing that Bri or Tom, who seemed to understand and appreciate an artistic temperament, would have found a gentler way to ask this. But I was having trouble getting my head around it. I sometimes didn’t want to study, but I did it anyway. You didn’t wait for the perfect studying mood to strike you.

I heard a buzzing sound and looked up to see the streetlights all flickering to life above us, going on one by one until you could see more clearly what had been fading in the slowly falling darkness—the bench by the edge of the duck pond, the tree branches over our heads, the details of Clark’s face.

“Well,” Clark said, and then stopped. It was like I could practically feel him choosing his words carefully, like he wasn’t used to talking about this. “Lately I’ve been thinking that I might be done.”

“With . . . writing?” I asked, just as a pair of headlights swung around the curve in the road. We stepped over to the side, and when the car was gone and we started walking again, we were a little closer still, now just inches away, even though we could have walked in the middle of the open, empty road, the streetlights casting our shadows on the ground in front of us.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t think it’s this book, or the pressure to continue the series. Or . . .” Clark shook his head. “It’s like I don’t have any more stories to tell. Which might be the case. Some writers only get a couple. Maybe I just got two.”

I looked ahead and realized that we were almost to the gatehouse; it was just beyond the curve in the road—the brighter streetlights and the road beyond Stanwich Woods, where Clark’s car was waiting, which would mean this was over. “Want to see a terrible statue?” I asked, quickly crossing the road to take us on a detour away from the gatehouse, hoping he would be turned around and wouldn’t realize exactly what I was doing.

“Always,” Clark said, deadpan. I led him down the street—was it really a street if it had no houses on it?—that ended with the statue of Winthrop Stanwich, with the small playground and picnic tables to the side of him. Only the main road had streetlights, so as soon as we stepped off it, we were back to only the fading light to guide us.

“But maybe it’s not true,” I said as we walked down the road to the statue. Possibly it was because it was so empty—this was mostly meant to be a walking path, without even a yellow line painted down the center—but we were walking farther apart now, a person space between us, so that we could turn and see each other. “That you only have two stories in you.”

“It might be,” Clark said, and I could hear the frustration in his voice. “I keep trying, but it’s like there’s nothing there. I’ve even tried writing other stuff, other than my series, and it’s not working. So I’m left with the conclusion that I really might be done.”

“But . . . ,” I started as we reached the statue. We both stopped in front of it, which was really the only proper reaction to seeing the statue of Winthrop Stanwich for the first time. Palmer’s brother Fitz always joked that by the time they were done building Stanwich Woods, they’d run out of money and decided to let the statue building go to the lowest bidder. It was in bronze, and life-size, or close to it. Winthrop Stanwich was depicted as a slightly rotund guy in a high collar, equally high vest, short breeches, and buckled shoes. There was a cape over his shoulders, slightly raised on both sides, which was probably meant to convey his movement but just made him look like a weird Puritan Batman. He had a beard and a monocle—though Fitz had a theory that he was supposed to have glasses before someone saw what was happening and just decided to pull the funding and call it a day. But the best thing about the statue was Winthrop Stanwich’s expression. He was reaching out his right hand, first two fingers extended, like he was pointing at something, his expression equal parts happy and confused. At least, that’s how I read it. Tom thought Winthrop was angry and attempting to scold someone, and Toby was convinced he was about to break into song. He was like an inkblot, and everyone saw in his expression what they wanted to.

For a while—not coincidentally, when both Palmer’s brothers were in high school—stuff kept showing up in Winthrop’s hand. It really was the perfect height and position to hang things on, though Palmer’s brothers had preferred to leave boxers dangling around his wrist. The Winthropping—it wouldn’t have been very hard to find the culprit, since it was down to the Stanwich Woods residents—had subsided somewhat, but every now and then there would be a note in all the residents’ mailboxes, asking them to stop putting Santa hats, or Halloween costumes, or just random take-out bags, on Winthrop. But it was ultimately a losing battle, and something else would show up before too long. He was unsullied now, though, pointing to whatever he was pointing to unencumbered.