Everyone She Loved

Chapter 1: The Caulk Incident

The call came on a Tuesday, which felt appropriate. Tuesdays were the days things went sideways—pop quizzes nobody studied for, faculty meetings that ran long, the day his ex-wife had chosen to tell him she wanted a divorce. So when Adam Grasso's phone buzzed during his lunch break at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, and the caller ID read CONNECTICUT, he already knew the news wouldn't be good.

"Mr. Grasso? This is Kathleen Mortimer of Mortimer and Hess, attorneys at law, in Ridgebury, Connecticut."

"Okay," Adam said. He was sitting in the teachers' lounge eating a peanut butter sandwich he'd made at six that morning, and a glob of peanut butter had just fallen onto his khakis.

"I'm sorry to inform you that your mother, Barbara Grasso, passed away on Saturday evening."

Adam looked at the peanut butter on his pants. He picked it up with his index finger and put it back in his mouth.

"Mr. Grasso?"

"I'm here. Sorry. That's—thank you for letting me know."

"Your mother named you as her sole beneficiary. There are some conditions attached to the estate that I'd like to discuss with you at your earliest convenience."

"Conditions," Adam repeated.

"Yes, sir. Would you be available for a call later this week?"

He said he would. He hung up. He finished his sandwich. Then he went to the bathroom, locked himself in a stall, and sat on the toilet lid for eleven minutes, doing nothing at all.

His mother was dead.

They hadn't spoken in four months, which was actually on the shorter end for them. Their phone calls, when they happened, followed a rigid script. Adam would call. Barb would answer on the third ring—never the first, never the second—and say, "Oh, it's you." Then she'd spend forty-five minutes cataloging the failures of Ridgebury, Connecticut: the potholes, the property taxes, the woman at the post office who always smelled like tuna. Adam would listen, say "Mm-hmm" at appropriate intervals, and hang up feeling like he'd been slowly deflated.

He hadn't been back to Ridgebury since he was eighteen years old.

That was twenty-three years ago, and the reason was a fight so public and so spectacular that it had achieved a kind of legendary status in his memory. Graduation day, 2001. The ceremony was held on the football field. Adam, who'd been accepted to Reed College in Portland—as far from Connecticut as he could get without a passport—had made the mistake of mentioning this during his brief moment at the podium. His mother, sitting in the bleachers in a floral dress, had stood up and shouted, "You're throwing your life away for a city full of weirdos!" The principal had to ask her to sit down. She did not sit down. She elaborated on her position for another ninety seconds while three hundred people watched.

Adam had driven west two weeks later and never looked back.

Now Barb was dead, and she'd left him her house. With conditions.

The conditions, as Kathleen Mortimer explained during their follow-up call, were straightforward if insane. Adam had to live in the house for six consecutive months. If he did, the house and everything in it became his, free and clear. If he didn't, everything went to the Ridgebury Historical Society.

"She was very specific about the timeline," Kathleen said. "Six months from the date you take possession. You're welcome to leave for short trips, but your primary residence must be the house at 14 Birch Lane."

"And if I say no?"

"Then the Historical Society gets a very nice Colonial."

Adam did the math. The house, even in its presumably deteriorating state, was worth at least four hundred thousand dollars. His apartment in Portland cost him fourteen hundred a month. His teaching salary was forty-seven thousand a year. His savings account contained six thousand dollars and a sense of shame.

"I'll do it," he said.

He requested a leave of absence, which his principal granted with the kind of gentle concern that suggested everyone knew Adam's life was a quiet disaster. He packed his car—a 2014 Subaru with 187,000 miles on it—and drove east across the country in four days, eating gas station food and sleeping at rest stops like a man on the run from something, which, depending on how you looked at it, he was.

Ridgebury, Connecticut, population 8,400, looked almost exactly the same as it had in 2001. The town green was still there, with its white gazebo and its enormous oak tree. The library was still there, with its copper cupola gone green with age. The diner was still there—Rosie's—with its neon sign that had been missing the R for as long as Adam could remember, so it just said OSIE'S, which had always sounded vaguely Eastern European to him.

He pulled up to 14 Birch Lane at four in the afternoon on a Friday in late September. The house was a white Colonial with black shutters, a wraparound porch, and a front yard that looked like it had been maintained by someone who cared deeply about front yards. There were mums in the flower beds. Actual mums. His mother had planted mums.

Adam sat in his car for a long time, looking at the mums.

Then he went inside.

The house smelled like lemon furniture polish and old books. The furniture was nicer than he remembered—not fancy, but solid, well-chosen. There were bookshelves everywhere, crammed with paperbacks. The kitchen had been updated at some point: new countertops, a farmhouse sink, a refrigerator that probably cost more than Adam's car. On the refrigerator door, held up by a magnet shaped like a lobster, was a photograph of Adam at his college graduation. He was wearing a cap and gown and squinting into the sun. He had no memory of sending her this photo.

He opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for a jar of pickles and a bottle of white wine. Someone had cleaned it out.

Adam took the wine, found a corkscrew in the second drawer he tried, and sat on the porch with a glass of his dead mother's Pinot Grigio, watching the street.

A woman walking a golden retriever waved at him.

"You must be Barb's son!" she called out.

"That's me," Adam said.

"She talked about you all the time! We're so sorry for your loss. She was just wonderful."

Adam smiled and waved and took a very large sip of wine.

Wonderful. His mother. The woman who had once told him on the phone that the Ridgebury Fourth of July parade was "a funeral procession for American dignity."

He finished the bottle.

---

The hardware store was called Driscoll's, and it had been there since 1952. Adam went on Saturday morning because the upstairs bathroom faucet was dripping and the sound had kept him up all night, tapping against the porcelain like a tiny, persistent accusation.

He was standing in the plumbing aisle, staring at washers and having no idea which size he needed, when he heard a voice behind him.

"Adam?"

He turned around and there was Mike Caputo.

Mike Caputo, who had been his best friend from kindergarten through senior year. Mike Caputo, who had married Stacy O'Brien, who had been Adam's girlfriend from junior prom through the week before graduation, when she'd broken up with him because—and this was a direct quote—"you're leaving and I'm not, and I don't want to be the girl who waits."

Mike looked good. That was the annoying thing. He'd filled out in the way that some men do in their forties, going from scrawny to solid, and he had a full head of dark hair that was graying at the temples in a way that looked intentional, like he'd planned it.

"Mike," Adam said. "Hey."

"Hey."

They stood there.

"So you're back," Mike said.

"Temporarily. The house. My mom's will."

"Right. I heard about that. I'm sorry about Barb."

"Thanks."

More standing.

"She was great," Mike said. "Stacy and I saw her all the time. She came to our kids' school plays."

Adam felt something twist in his chest. "She did?"

"Every one. She'd sit in the front row and clap louder than anyone."

Adam couldn't reconcile this with the woman who had told him, three years ago, that she spent most of her time "sitting in this house waiting to die."

"That's nice," Adam said, because he couldn't think of anything else.

"Well," Mike said. "Good to see you."

"Yeah. You too."

Mike walked away. Adam stood in the plumbing aisle for another five minutes, then grabbed a tube of caulk he didn't need and went to the register. He paid $7.49 for the caulk and drove home, where he set it on the kitchen counter and stared at it like it contained the answers to questions he hadn't figured out how to ask yet.

The caulk did not answer.