Drawing Home Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Brenner

  Cover design by Ploy Siripant

  Cover photographs by haveseen / Shutterstock

  Cover © 2019 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Author photograph by Kathleen O'Donnell

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  littlebrown.com

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  First Edition: May 2019

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-47681-2

  E3-20190226-DA-PC-ORI

  E3-20190220-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jamie Brenner

  Newsletters

  For my Georgia

  There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.

  —Jill Churchill, Grime and Punishment

  My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.

  —Aunt Frances, Practical Magic (1998)

  Chapter One

  On summer weekends The American Hotel in Sag Harbor felt like the center of the universe. If you lived in town, you were stopping by for a drink, and if you were visiting, you wanted a spot in one of the eight guest rooms.

  It was the Friday before Memorial Day, not officially summer but close enough. The Hampton Jitney stopped right in front of the hotel and unloaded a fresh batch of Manhattanites every hour.

  Emma Mapson, a Sag Harbor native, had watched the summer crowds grow every year. She’d seen fancier restaurants open and higher-end boutiques decorate Main Street. But one thing that never changed was The American Hotel. The red-brick Colonial building looked and felt exactly as it had when Emma was a young girl, with the same antique wood furniture, nautical paintings, and Tiffany chandeliers. The lobby had the same well-worn couch and the same backgammon table where her father had taught her to play and where she, in turn, had taught her own daughter to play. It all seemed to say to her, Go ahead, live a little. At least, it used to feel that way.

  “I have a problem with my room,” a woman said, approaching the front desk.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Emma said, glancing down at the handwritten reservation log and trying to figure out which guest she was talking to. “What’s the problem?”

  “Everything!” the woman said. “I can’t find a single outlet for charging my phone. There’s no television, and there’s no closet.”

  Emma arranged her face into a practiced, neutral expression. Too empathetic, and it was like she was admitting there was a problem; too quizzical, and the guest felt even more provoked. Best to look simply blank.

  “What’s your last name, ma’am?” Emma asked.

  “Stoward.” She spelled it slowly, as if Emma were barely familiar with the alphabet. Emma flipped through the reservation ledger and found the woman was booked in the Cooper Room. True, there was no television in that room—or in any of the rooms. And although technically there wasn’t a closet, the room did feature a large antique armoire. She had no idea why the woman couldn’t find the outlets.

  “Mrs. Stoward, I’ll—” Emma looked up and caught a glimpse of a familiar mop of curly dark hair across the lobby.

  The American Hotel’s front desk provided the best people-watching in town. Emma never knew who might be sitting on the sofa, which offered views of Main Street on one side and the hotel’s always-full bar on the other; she might look up and see the town dockmaster, a tourist from the Midwest, a celebrity chef, or Billy Joel, a local. But she was happiest when the person planted in that coveted spot was the one she saw now, her fourteen-year-old daughter, Penny.

  Penny’s thin frame was hunched over her drawing pad, as always. Emma couldn’t see her face because it was hidden by hair. Oh, that hair. When Penny was a toddler, people had stopped Emma in the street to comment on her daughter’s curls. Emma watched her now, willing her to glance up. She could always tell from Penny’s eyes—big and dark and so unlike her own—whether or not she was in a decent mood. Emma didn’t know if it was Penny’s age or just Penny, but the mood roller coaster was something to be reckoned with.

  Emma smiled at the hotel guest standing before her. “I’ll be up to your room in a minute to see what I can do,” she said, buying herself some time to find out why Penny had left school so early. When the woman was out of sight, Emma slipped out from behind the desk.

  Penny, busy rummaging through her book bag, didn’t notice her.

  “Hi, hon,” Emma said. “What are you doing out of school?”

  Penny looked up, pushing her curls out of her face.

  “It’s a half day. You know, ’cause of the holiday weekend.”

  Of course. “Right! I forgot.” She leaned down to wrap her arms around her but Penny wriggled away. Emma straighte
ned up, trying not to feel rejected. “Okay. So what’s your plan?”

  “I’m going to hang out with Mr. Wyatt. But I need to buy a book first.” She gave Emma her puppy-dog-eyed I need money look.

  Emma sighed. “Can’t you borrow it from the library?”

  “They don’t have it yet and I really want to show it to Mr. Wyatt today.”

  Emma turned to look at the corner of the bar where the old man, a world-renowned artist and her daughter’s unlikely pal, could always be found in the late afternoon. “Don’t bother Mr. Wyatt right now. He’s talking to someone.” She walked Penny to the front desk and handed her a twenty. Her daughter leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.

  “I guess now I know the price of a little public affection,” Emma said.

  Penny rolled her eyes on her way out the door.

  Emma answered the ringing house phone, booked a room reservation, and then walked up the stairs to the second floor to see what she could do to placate the complaining guest.

  “Finally,” Mrs. Stoward said when she opened the door. She was not alone in the room. Emma spotted a man—Mr. Stoward?—seated on the edge of one of the twin brass beds. He was busy tapping away at his phone and didn’t bother looking up.

  “See what I mean?” Mrs. Stoward waved her arm as if to say Look at this disaster.

  Emma glanced around, taking in the antique full-length mirror, the red-and-gold-striped couch, and a set of Dominy chairs. The room also featured a beautiful armoire that could hold a full wardrobe.

  It made her crazy when summer people didn’t fully appreciate the charm of the hotel. The building dated back to 1843 and yet guests expected it to feel like the Four Seasons. And they never had any sense of the village’s history. They didn’t care that it had been a whaling port, a writers’ colony, a historic African-American community, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Did they know that John Steinbeck had called Sag Harbor home? No; all they wanted was restaurant recommendations.

  “Let me show you the outlets,” Emma said. She bent down and pointed out one hidden by the legs of the wooden desk.

  “Well, that solves one problem,” the woman said, hands on her hips.

  Emma walked to the armoire and opened it. “We have more hangers if you need them. I think you’ll find this very spacious.”

  Mrs. Stoward peered suspiciously at the armoire. “Is this cedar?”

  “Just use the damn cabinet, Susan,” mumbled the man.

  “And what about the television?” she said to Emma.

  That got the man’s attention. He directed his irritated gaze at Emma. “Yes, we need to get a television in here,” he said. “There’s a game at seven.”

  Before Emma could explain that they didn’t have televisions at the hotel, she heard a scream from the ground floor.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and she rushed from the room to the top of the stairs. One of the housekeepers was running up.

  “Someone just passed out at the bar!” the housekeeper yelled, almost breathless. Passed out? It was early afternoon. Had someone already overindulged? It had been known to happen.

  “Did you call an ambulance?” Emma said, running down the stairs to reach the front desk. She pushed through the wooden door between the stairwell and the lobby, a door she knew was often blocked by a café cart or a table, but she would lose precious seconds if she used the patio door and went around to the front entrance.

  Nothing was blocking the door to the lobby today. She grabbed the black landline phone on the front desk and dialed 911.

  “It’s Emma at The American Hotel. We need an ambulance for an unconscious customer.” The dispatcher asked her for some specifics, but from her spot, she couldn’t get a good look at the fallen customer, and the phone wasn’t cordless. The old-fashioned quirks of the place sometimes posed a challenge. She should have used her cell phone, but service could be spotty.

  Waiters and busboys gathered around the person on the floor; the bartender, Chris, was on his knees trying to help. Did Chris have EMT experience? She wouldn’t be surprised. Most people working in town were, if not jacks-of-all-trades, skilled at a variety of jobs. The person taking your dinner order one night could very well be operating your water taxi the next.

  She scanned the bar, looking for anyone she recognized, trying to get a sense of whether the guest on the floor was a tourist or a local. The bar had a few regulars who came for happy hour every day, year-round. They were the ones at the bar in the middle of a blizzard. The American Hotel was a club to these customers.

  Emma realized one bar stool was empty, the one at the corner closest to the lobby.

  Oh no. She hoped the person on the ground wasn’t who she thought it was.

  Penny crossed Main Street, heading for the bookstore. As far as she was concerned, the town had two major things going for it: the bookstore and the self-serve frozen-yogurt shop, BuddhaBerry. Somehow, between these two places, she would find a way to pass the three-day weekend.

  Penny didn’t do well with lots of free time. It made her anxious.

  “Instead of worrying,” her mom had said, “think of something you have to be happy about. Just one thing, even if it’s small.”

  One thing she had to be happy about was that eighth grade was nearly finished. It had been a brutal year. She’d almost failed math. Her best friend, Robin, barely had time for her anymore now that she’d become part of the group of “basics”—the girls with the flat-ironed hair and the new iPhones and the right clothes. Then, in December, the town’s only movie theater had burned down. Everyone freaked out—it had been a historic building, and that stretch of Main Street smelled charred for weeks afterward. The burned pit was nasty. Still, Penny was amazed how upset people got about it.

  “It’s symbolic,” her mother told her. “It’s a sudden loss. And too much about this town is changing as it is. We have to hold on to some things.”

  Without the theater, there was one less thing to do on the lonely weekends. And now, one less thing to do this summer.

  But she still had this place, Harbor Books.

  The bookstore smelled like fruit and spices from the Dobrá Tea bar in the back. The owner, a twenty-something woman named Alexis Pine, had told Penny about the tea thing months before it opened. Alexis was obsessed with it—oolong tea, pu’er tea, green tea. Alexis had long hair that had once been blond but was now the pinkish-red hue of hair that had been dyed with Kool-Aid. She had funky, boho clothes and was basically everything Penny wished she could be. Alexis also had two cats in the shop, a vintage-book collection in a glass case in the back, and an impressive working knowledge of graphic novels.

  “Hey, Penny,” Alexis called from the counter. “Your book came in.”

  Penny was moving on from her manga and superhero phase and getting into realism with the graphic novel This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki.

  Penny slid her mother’s twenty across the counter with her fingertips, trying to touch as little of the bill as possible.

  “Whatcha doing this weekend?” Alexis asked, handing Penny her change.

  Penny quickly shoved the change in her pocket, pulled her forbidden tube of Purell out of her handbag, and squeezed a fat blob of it on the backs of her hands and on her palms. It burned her skin, which was already dry and cracked from overwashing.

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing yet,” Penny said.

  She was embarrassed to admit that she didn’t have any plans. Why did she feel like such a loser lately? It wasn’t just the usual things, like not having a dad around and living in a house that was small and in the wrong part of town. Her otherness felt deeper, more unshakable, with every passing week.

  It was why she felt more comfortable around older people. They didn’t seem to notice anything strange about her. Most were just nice. This was why she had gotten into the habit of hanging around the hotel where her mother worked.

  That’s why she was going back there now to show her new book to Mr. Wyat
t.

  Mr. Wyatt had white hair and always wore a tweed jacket and carried a nephrite walking stick from Fabergé. His usual seat was in the near corner of the bar, his back to the lobby, and he didn’t talk to anyone because he was always bent over a cocktail napkin doodling. It had taken a while before she’d realized some of these napkin drawings were framed in the dining room. The night she’d noticed this, she wanted to ask her mom about it, but the bar had been packed, and if her mother had known she was still there, she would have sent her home. So she asked the old man, “How’d you get them to hang your drawings on the wall?”

  “They fished them out of the garbage or retrieved them from a crumpled heap at the end of the evening. I had very little to do with it.”

  It took her a few seconds to process this, and then she told him, “I draw too.” It was one of the few things she enjoyed.

  “I’m surprised anyone of your generation lets go of the phone long enough to put pencil to paper,” he said.

  “I’m not allowed to have a smartphone,” she said. Penny had OCD and anxiety, and the doctor said screens were the worst things for her. This didn’t help her in the friend department.

  “You’re not allowed to have a phone but you’re allowed to hang around in hotel bars?” he said.

  “I’m just visiting my mother at work,” she told him.

  The old man looked across the room at her mother, then back at her. He smiled for the first time. “Emma’s kid. I see the resemblance.” He had to be lying. Her mother was beautiful and she was, well, not.

  After that night, Mr. Wyatt asked to see her drawings. He met her in the lobby and they sat on the couch; she drank soda and he had martinis and he taught her about contour and proportion. A month or so later, she realized that Henry’s drawings were hung in other places besides the hotel. His artwork was all around town. Henry was famous.

  Now, as she was leaving the bookstore, her phone, her old, crappy, embarrassing flip phone, chirped with a text.

  Don’t be mad. You can totally come to the party. I’ll send you the address.

  Penny ignored it. She didn’t need Robin’s charity invitation. She had better things to do.