The Last September: A Novel

I hope I’m not just being charitable toward myself but am remembering correctly, because it seems to me now that in that moment, I thought: if Charlie left for work every morning in a coat and tie, we might have enough money to pay our bills or move out of his father’s summer house. But we wouldn’t have been in the same room, all together, to witness Sarah’s long-awaited first step.

And that moment is what should have remained of the day—happy and indelible, an entry in a pale pink baby book. If the phone hadn’t rung two hours later, I never would have known to regret using up our luck so early. When I think about the rest of that day, and how it unfolded, there are too many stretches of time that would require rewriting, if ever the chance presented itself: to do everything over again.





2


I was at the post office when Eli called Charlie. All traceable moments were carefully detailed later, in police reports, so I know that at the precise instant the phone rang back at the Moss house, I was standing in the vault of mailboxes staring at a postcard from Ladd Williams. Sarah had one sticky hand wound into my hair and she stared down at the note intently, as if she could read it, too. Ladd had funny, distinctive handwriting—all sharp angles and cubes. I recognized it without having to look at the signature.

I turned the card over. On the front was a picture of a toucan. Honduras, it read, under the bird’s otherworldly green, red, and blue beak. Todo Macanudo. Ladd had gone there with the Peace Corps, but apparently he was back—the card was postmarked Saturday Cove. The note, which I’d already memorized, read: Dear Brett. Staying at my uncle’s cottage. He has some books you used to want, you can stop by to borrow if you like. Best wishes, Ladd.

I closed our box, leaving the rest of the mail—bills we couldn’t pay—untouched. As I pushed through the door into the sunlight, Sarah plucked the postcard out of my hands. “Cat,” she said, looking at the bird. Cat was her standard word for anything new. Then, as if she knew this wasn’t quite right, amended, “Kitty.”

How like Ladd, I thought, not to include a phone number or tell me the titles of the books. If I wanted to know, I’d have to show up on his doorstep. The last time I’d heard from him was just before he left the country, a little more than two years ago. He’d written a sort-of love letter intimating that I was the reason he needed to go away. But it was a convoluted piece of writing, filled with erasures and apologies and semisarcastic jokes, and I didn’t know how seriously to take it, or if I’d interpreted it correctly in the first place. I’d also never mentioned it to Charlie.

Sarah brought the postcard to her lips, nibbling delicately on one corner. Part of me wanted to take the bait immediately and drive over to his uncle’s compound. I wondered if anyone had told Ladd that I’d had a baby. I buckled Sarah into her car seat and pried the soggy postcard out of her grip. Instead of putting it in my pocket, I just tossed it onto the backseat, where Charlie could find it if he had any interest, which he probably didn’t. Charlie never got jealous.

And that’s what I thought about on the short drive home: a postcard from an ex-boyfriend. My husband’s general lack of jealousy, and how it was probably founded. If Ladd could see me now—with my hair unwashed and sweatpants doing nothing to camouflage the still-leftover pregnancy pounds, not to mention the child all but sewn to my hip—he probably would not be writing cryptic love letters.