Page 107 of The Treasure House

“Flo, maybe that’s enough,” I said anxiously, remembering how fast he’d shut down the night after the storm and how slow he’d been to open up again.

“No, it’s okay,” he said, giving me a shy sideways look. “I don’t mind.”

“She has that weird thing about public conversations and private conversations,” Flo reminded him.

He nodded. “Well, some things aren’t private so much as painful, I guess. Everyone around here knows about my mom. They were gentle about it, but they always knew she wasn’t doing well.”

“Like the way everyone knows Lainey can’t sing but is gentle about it?”

Jake laughed. “Yeah. Like that.”

Like how I knew Tina might die every time she went to work, but I never asked her to stop. Like how I knew she was chasing highs for secret subterranean reasons of her own, but I never asked her about it. I was gentle with her. Always afraid she, or we, might break. But in the Nar-Anon family meetings I eavesdropped on, I’d learned there were words for that kind of gentleness. Enabling. Co-dependency.

“Don’t ever be gentle with me,” Flo instructed us imperiously. “If I’m making a mess of things, I want to know about it.”

“Me too,” Jake said fervently.

“Me three.” I sat down next to him on the couch and surreptitiously took his hand, on the side Flo couldn’t see. I squeezed it.

“Is it weird for you to be here?” Flo asked him, cocking her head. “Because it’s not your mom’s place anymore.”

“No.” He looked around the room. “To be honest, it’s nice to see it come back to life.” He tightened his fingers around mine. “It’s like the place kind of disappeared under all the junk. Just like Mom disappeared. And I lost sight of what it used to be. What she used to be.” He had to pause to collect himself. “She was a big personality, my mom. Easy to anger, easy to cry, easy to throw her arms around you. She just kind of let it all hang out. But over time, it was like her personality changed. She seemed to get quieter, more nervous, until she was like a mouse hiding in its burrow.” He seemed to be struggling with tears. I squeezed his hand tighter and he exhaled, staring up at the ceiling, trying to get a hold of himself. “I miss my mom, you know?”

“I know,” I whispered.

Hazel whined and pulled away from Flo to come sit on Jake’s feet. She looked up at him, worried.

“When Mom went into the nursing home,” Jake continued, “my sister and I talked it over, whether to keep the house or not. Marly said we could make our own decision because when she’d gifted it to Mom, she’d gifted it to all of us—me and my sister as well. But my sister already lives in Rockport and doesn’t need it.”

“And you?”

“Well, I would have had to buy my sister’s share of the house off her,” he said carefully. “And I looked at the state of it and all the culch and I didn’t want to throw money at it. And, really, I just didn’t have the heart for it. It was too sad. But I didn’t want some developer to have it. Or people with too much money and no sense of what’s valuable about a place like this, you know?”

Flo nodded. She’d also crept closer and was comforting Hazel as Hazel comforted Jake. “We have the heart for it.”

“You seem to.” He reached down to pull at Hazel’s ears. “Besides, I like my place. I like seeing the ocean.”

“We can see the ocean.”

“Sure. But I’m closer.”

I turned to find him staring at me, his blue-green, glass-marble eyes calmer.

“Jake?” Flo asked. He tore his eyes away from mine.

“Yeah?”

“You should come have Christmas with us. You’re here all the time anyway.” She gave me a sly look.

“Yes, you’d be very welcome,” I said, trying to act naturally.

Jake flushed, looking both pleased and surprised. “Well, that’s a lovely offer. I’m going to spend Christmas Eve with my mother and Marly, and I promised to have lunch at my sister’s Christmas Day. But I’d love to come by after, if that’s okay?”

“That’s great,” said Flo brightly. “You can help with the dishes.”

“Flo!” I shot her a dark look.

“Joking!”