Page 36 of What You Never Knew

“I saw Leslie Swann the other day, and she said the island was haunted,” I choose to divulge instead.

He scrunches his face up with disdain. “Leslie Swann? She’s a total crackpot.”

“Ezra, don’t be mean. And how does her believing in ghosts make her a crackpot but you believing in them is fine?”

“It’s not the ghost thing. She’s always coming to the city council meetings stirring up trouble. Reporting people for stupid things. Giving premonitions about the end of the world. I think she spends too much time alone with her cat and it’s gotten to her.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Sure, she seemed strange,” I concede. “But not downright crazy. Or at least not in the time it took to have a cup of tea.”

Ezra pulls back from me with an expression of confusion. “Wait a minute. You had tea with Leslie Swann? At her cottage?”

“I stopped in on my way home from the marina yesterday. My mother used to be friends with her mother. I just thought it would be nice to say hello. She invited me in for tea, we talked a bit, and that’s all.” Again I’m hesitant to tell Ezra the full details of our conversation but not totally sure why.

“Do me a favor, June,” Ezra says, more serious than I’ve seen him yet. “Stay away from Leslie Swann. She’ll just find some reason to start a campaign against you.”

“Okay,” I’m quick to answer. “It’s not like I want to be her best friend or anything.”

“Good,” Ezra says, before getting up from the glider and going into the cottage, putting an abrupt end to the conversation.

His dislike of Leslie is uncharacteristic. Ezra is the kind of guy who likes everyone and never has a bad word to say. I can’t help but wonder what on earth she did to make him dislike her so much.

Ezra wants to check in on his mom before going shopping, so we head to his place first. I’ve never been to his house before, and it makes me realize how tied to Avril Island we were during the summers, and the places that were frequented mostly by cottagers. Very rarely did we mix with local people.

It’s right on the lake and has a brand-new looking boathouse with a double boat slip and apartment up top. Ezra tells me he built it when his business started to take off and he needed to have a place to dock both boats and store his tools. He added the apartment for himself so that he didn’t have to live in the house anymore but still be close enough to keep an eye on Willa.

The little stone cottage that sits beyond the large boathouse is a stark contrast. Ezra takes me up to his apartment first. He wants to shower and change clothes.

It’s open concept, with big windows looking out at the water. I’m impressed. He’s made it feel spacious but cozy at the same time, not too crowded but with enough stuff to make it feel homey. Looking around, I note the obvious influence that working in million-dollar cottages has had on his taste.

The floors are new hardwood but look like perfectly aged barn board. The kitchen has all new chef-quality appliances, a long island covered in a pricey slab of marble, and custom cabinetry. The living room is anchored by a massive gray sectional and a heavy antique wooden coffee table, both sitting on a large area rug. Custom bookshelves line the walls and are filled with books.

Ezra tells me to make myself at home and disappears down a hallway to shower and change. I move around the living room, soaking up the domestic details of him. On the wall are some black-and-white photographs that have been blown up and framed. One is of a pair of feet dangling over the lake; you can see right down to the rocks on the bottom. The tanned, dirty feet belong to a child, and I’m pretty sure they’re Ezra’s. The next photo is of a clothesline lined with white sheets, which are billowing up in such a way that the forest is revealed just beyond them, and if you look very closely you can see the forms of two people standing far away among the trees. The last photo was taken looking up into a tree. The bark is in focus, but the higher up you look the more out of focus the tree becomes, so that you’re barely able to make out that someone is actually sitting high up in the branches.

Moving in closer, I get the strange sense that it’s me up there in that tree. I take a step back and look at all the photos together and know it right away—they’re May’s. The breath is sucked out of me. Stumbling on her work without warning is like seeing her ghost face-to-face.

“June,” Ezra calls out for me from somewhere in the apartment. I turn away from the photos and follow the sound of his voice.

He’s standing in the middle of his bedroom, still damp from the shower, wearing only a towel around his waist. Seeing all that skin, his muscles, the hair on his chest, wipes my brain clean and makes my body start buzzing.

He motions for me to come closer, and I step into his embrace. My hands go to his back, still slick with water, and my mouth lands on his. I can taste the body wash he used in the shower and smell the deodorant he must have just applied. My senses are overloaded with pine, citrus, and sandalwood, and I love it.

The wet from his stubble brushes my own cheeks as he puts a hand on the back of my head and pulls me in as close as he can. I am just about to rip that towel from his body when his cell phone starts ringing on the bedside table.

He pulls free from me. “Shit. That’s my mom.” Adjusting the towel around his waist, he goes over and answers it. From the one-sided conversation, I gather that she saw him arrive with me and is asking who he’s with and why he didn’t bring me into the cottage. He tells her my name and reminds her who I am and then says we’ll be in to see her in a minute. He’s about to hang up but stops and listens to whatever she’s saying. “Yes,” he says patiently. “Avril Island Bennett. The youngest daughter.”

He hangs up the phone and shoots me an apologetic look. “I told her four days ago that you were back, and she seemed so lucid about it.” He looks pained. “It’s just hard to know which version of her you’re going to get from day to day.”

“I can imagine,” I say with sympathy. “Why don’t we just put a pin in that.” I point to his bed. “And I’ll let you get dressed.”

When he comes out of the bedroom, he finds me standing in front of the photos on the wall. “These are May’s, aren’t they?” It comes out sounding accusatory, even though I didn’t mean it to.

“My god,” he says, stopping short. “I should have warned you.”

I wave my hand in an exaggerated way. “It’s fine, really. I’m fine.” My voice sounds too high, and I wonder if he knows how I really feel underneath it. “But I’m just wondering where you got them. And the feet—are they yours? And am I the one in the tree?”

He comes to stand beside me. “Those are my feet, and yes, that’s you in the tree, and that’s us in the forest beyond the clothesline.” He looks at the pictures fondly. “Your sister gave them to me. After that time in town when we saw each other but didn’t talk. She sent them home the next day with my dad in an envelope and a note saying what each one was and that she thought I might like them. It was like she knew our friendship was pretty much finished and that I might want some memento of it.”

I swallow down a thick lump of tears. That was exactly like May. Going around after me to try to make up for the damage I’d done. She was as much a support to Leo through our divorce as she was to me.