Read Online The Vacationers: A Novel by Emma Straub - Free Book Online

Jim was not a foot-dragger or a layabout, not like all these young people who were living with their parents until they were thirty and spending their time playing video games. Jim liked to work. The weekend hadn’t been bad, but today was worse, though not as bad as when they were at home, when his chest seized just at the moment the alarm was to go off, his body panicked at its lack of forward momentum.
    For the past forty years, every day at work had been spent moving ahead, trying to be the smartest he could, trying to be the best he could, trying to open as many doors as possible, and now, just like that, the doors had closed, and he had nothing to do but sit at home and wait for the phone to ring. Which it wouldn’t. The board had made that clear: it wasn’t a threat, it was a promise. Jim was finished, professionally. As long as he wanted them to keep their mouths shut, he would stay home and take up bird-watching. This was presented as a courtesy. The gaping maw on the other side of the silence was that every magazine in New York and every website with a gossip column would be delighted to list the salacious details at length. Jimwould have balked at the threat if he hadn’t recognized it as the truth.
Gallant
’s new editor would be a clear-eyed man of thirty- five—even if no tragedy had taken place, Jim’s tenure had an expiration date. No one wanted advice from their father.
    The road was steep, and even though the most intense heat of the day had passed, there was no cover over Jim’s head, and the sun felt strong on the back of his neck. If this house had come along three months later, Franny wouldn’t have taken it. If Sylvia hadn’t graduated, if the whole vacation hadn’t been pitched as a gift to her, Franny would have canceled it. Jim didn’t know if he should feel grateful that the wheels had already been in motion, or stuck, as though he’d been caught in a bear trap. At home, there were always other quiet rooms, places to hide. Their house had been the right size, once, when there were two kids and a babysitter and visiting grandparents, but now it was far too big. The three of them not only had their own rooms, but had multiples: Jim had his office, and a den that Franny avoided, Sylvia had her room and Bobby’s, which she had turned into a holding pen for local disaffected youth, and Franny had everything else: the kitchen, the garden, the bedroom, her office. They never had to see one another if they didn’t want to, could spend days walking in their own loops, like the figurines above the entrance to the Central Park Zoo.
    Gallant
’s board had been unanimous in their decision. That’s what surprised Jim the most—he expected censure, yes, but not outright vitriol. The girl—he hated to remember the excitement he felt just hearing her name, Madison, a namehe would have ridiculed otherwise—had been twenty-three, the age that Franny was when they got married, so many thousands of years ago. Twenty-three meant that she was an adult, out of college and ready to enter the workforce. An editorial assistant. Franny had pointed out that Madison was only five years older than Sylvia, but twenty-three was an adult, a full-grown woman. Capable of making her own decisions, even if they were bad ones. When the board mentioned Madison, they used the word
girl
, and, once,
child
, which Jim’s lawyer had objected to, rightly. It wasn’t a courtroom, though, and such language held no weight. They were all sitting around the table in the conference room, as they had so many times before, discussing tedious matters. All ten board members had shown up for the meeting, which was unusual, and Jim knew the moment they walked in that things weren’t going to go his way. Not one of the three women on the board looked Jim in the eye.
    Jim rounded a corner. There was a long stone wall a few yards ahead, on the ocean side of the road. The mountains seemed to have shifted color with his elevation, and now