“He didn’t do it!” Emma leapt to her feet with such force that her chair flipped over. It crashed to the floor, and everyone jumped. “It was my fault! I was the one who was driving the boat.” She turned and bolted from the table.
“Emma!” Amelia called after her. There was the slam of the front door, and silence fell over the room. “Perry, we need to go after her.”
But Perry had sat back down, hard, in his chair. “That can’t be right.”
“What did Emma mean?” Jane demanded.
Jake grabbed his crutches and jammed them under his arms. His face flushed red, eyes wild. “I was trying to protect her.”
“Wait. You knew this all along?” Amelia asked.
Edward rose. “Okay, everybody, let’s catch our breath. Please let’s take a minute.”
“Is that true? What Emma said?” Phoebe turned to find Olivia standing in the doorway, arms crossed.
All the anger drained from Jake’s face at the sound of her voice. “Baby, I was going to tell you.”
“But you didn’t,” Olivia persisted.
“Liv, please.”
She started to laugh, a soft, sad laugh. “All this time. You lied to the police. You lied tome.”
“Olivia,” he pleaded. “I needed to protect Emma.”
“From what?” Amelia snapped. “We should’ve known, Jake.”
“From Perry!”
Jane put both hands to her forehead, her voice stern. “Jake. Not now.”
“Then when, Mom?” He turned back to Perry. “The measuring stick you hold for all of us to live up to? It’simpossible. You’ve done it to me my whole life. And I couldn’t stand the thought of you doing that to Emma.”
There was a collective intake of breath. Perry stared back at his brother, saying nothing.
Amelia reached for his hand, but he brushed it off. Then, slowly, he rose from the table and pushed his chair in.
“Perry,” Edward said softly. “Hang on a second.”
Perry was already moving away from the table.
Phoebe was the only one who dared to follow Perry out to the foyer, where he paused at the door. “Do you want to be alone?” she asked, gently.
He opened the door and looked across the yard. “I’m used to it.”
She watched him walk across the yard at the pace of a much older man. The rainstorm had let up earlier, and a single ray of sun shot through the spongy sky. Phoebe looked up in time to see a bank of gray cloud swallow it.
Perry
He drove home but did not go inside. Instead, he walked through the rain around to the back of the house and continued across the puddle-filled yard. At the top of the stairs that led down to the lake, Perry removed his shoes. They were hand-stitched saddle-brown wingtips with brogue detail. His favorite pair, and a gift from Amelia last Christmas. He set them side by side on the top step, then removed his socks, which he carefully rolled and nestled, one into each shoe. At the rate the rain was coming down, he estimated the shoes would be filled with water in less than fifteen minutes.
At the bottom of the stairs, Perry stepped lightly across the grass and onto the dock. The boards were soaked and cold beneath his bare feet. He bent to roll up his slacks and continued to the edge. There, he sat and dangled his feet into the water. The rain had returned in soft, silver streams, breaking the glassy surface. He needed to sit and think.
He’d been wrong about so much. All these years he’d worked to provide his family everything, thinking that would somehow secure them a position of safety within their position of good standing. When it wasn’t just the outside world he needed to shield them from, but also themselves. He was so busy provinghimself—to his family, his neighbors, and yes, to Jake—that he hadn’t noticed Emma needed him in a way he had not considered. He’d been wrong about his feelings for Olivia; they were not something to be ashamed of. And they posed no threat to his love for his wife. Good, strong Amelia, whom he’d strayed from not in infidelity, but in heart. Just as he had with Emma. They did not need things; not fast boats or high fences. They needed him. His attention and his time. Such foolishly simple things. And yet they were everything.
His feelings about Olivia had stirred in him a consternation, a kind of awakening. At first Perry feared he was falling in love with her. The urge to protect her from Jake may have come from a good place, but it was displaced. It was Perry’s urge to protect himself from their past. A younger brother against whom he competed. Whom he compared himself to, and always came up short. Olivia represented another thing Jake had won. What Perry realized now was that she didn’t need saving. And she certainly did not need him. Jake did not pose a threat to her. It was he, Perry, who’d felt threatened. And it was something he would have to come to terms with.
Perry sat until his wet hair was plastered across his forehead, his glasses blurred by rivulets. Until the gray sky turned charcoal, then opaque. Until his shirt clung to the skin of his back, his slacks soaked through. Then he climbed the stairs again, past his wingtip shoes, back across the yard, and got into his car.
