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The Second Home

Christina Clancy
Chapters (47)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraphs
  5. Prologue
  6. Part One
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. FOUR
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. Part Two
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. Acknowledgments
  46. About the Author
  47. Newsletter Sign-up

Title Page

The Second Home by Christina Clancy

Copyright Notice

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Dedication

For my family, my home

Epigraphs

I walked past a house where I lived once: a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.

—YEHUDA AMICHAI

The house of childhood sold,

or razed—

not lost but

softened, distended:

diaphanous linked chambers springing from

a lightshaft or a varnish smell,

the way a floorboard aches,

a scrap of wallpaper

tunnels the heart.

—BY DON BOGEN

Prologue

Ann had never been to Wellfleet in February. Each fall her parents emptied the water heater, shut down the well pump, flushed antifreeze down the toilets, threw some sheets over the furniture, pulled down all the shades, and closed the house. Cape Cod felt like a hazy dream the rest of the year, a place suspended forever in beach days filled with sunshine and warmth.

But there she was, alone and cold in a house that felt both familiar and now strange because it was the off-season, and because her parents were gone, although she could feel them there. It was as if they were sitting behind mirrored glass during a focus group like the ones Ann participated in at work, watching and listening to everything Ann did and said. Even now, half a year after they’d died, she kept waiting for some magical door to swing open, and for her parents to walk out from the other side of the glass to tell her they’d been watching her this whole time.

She felt her parents’ radiant energy in everything she saw as she paced the house to stay warm: in the chipped wineglass left in the sink, the sloppily folded beach towels and stained pillowcases, her mother’s cookbooks, her father’s telescope, even in the bulb digger where they’d always hidden the heavy iron key that unlocked the back door. Their possessions seemed ready to be put to use again and again, and made the house feel like it was less a place they’d left behind than a place they’d planned to return to.

Ann shivered and took a sip of her now-cold Starbucks coffee. She checked her phone to see if Carol, the Realtor, had tried to contact her to say she’d be late, but she had weak cell reception out here on the Outer Cape. Maybe she’d gotten lost. You couldn’t see the house from Route 6, and the mouth of the long driveway, tucked in a thicket of brush and oak trees, was easy to miss.