Everything We Didn't Say(14)

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she says.

I don’t answer.



* * *



When I come downstairs, freshly showered and feeling slightly more human, Mom isn’t in the kitchen. She’s in the laundry room folding towels—or at least I think she is. I tell myself she’s busy, and instead of picking up the conversation like she so obviously wanted me to do, I pour myself a glass of orange juice and grab a blueberry muffin from the basket on the counter. I swallow the juice quickly and tuck the muffin in a paper towel, then go wait for Ashley from the protection of the covered porch. It’s not long before she’s pulling down the driveway.

“Ashley’s here!” I shout through the screen door, grateful for my friend’s punctuality. “We’ll talk when I get back!”

There’s a muffled reply from inside the house, but I’m already running down the steps into the pouring rain. For a moment I can’t hear anything except the roar of water as it falls in sheets around me and explodes against the stone path. Then I’m wrenching the passenger-side door open and collapsing inside with a giggle.

“Some beach weather,” Ashley says wryly. I can tell she’s still irritated that I overruled her plans for the day. I’ll make her change her mind. I’m good at that.

“Got a towel?” I grin at her, offering up my dripping arms as evidence of my need.

“You didn’t take one?”

I shrug, but she reaches into the backseat and hands me a beach towel printed with multicolored popsicles.

“It’ll pass.” I squeeze the excess water out of my hair with Ashley’s plush towel. It’ll dry in a riot of dark blond curls, but I don’t care. I rather like my lion’s mane. It fits me.

“Are you even wearing your suit?”

I flash her, exposing my favorite green bikini top with the little white flowers.

My muffin is damp, but edible, and I tear off a corner with my teeth. A plump blueberry bursts against my tongue. “Thanks for getting me out of here,” I say around a mouthful.

“What happened this morning?” Ashley’s softening already, warming up to our comfortable chatter and the promise of a juicy story. “Did Law tear you a new one?”

“He’s not even home.”

“You dodged a bullet there.”

“Look,” I say, pointing in the rearview. “It’s clearing already.” There’s a patch of sky behind us where the clouds have torn that looks exactly like the swirl in the blue peppermints my mom used to take to church. They cut my mouth, but I sucked them anyway, yearning for something sweet. I feel like that a bit right now, hungry in a way that’s inexplicable and undefined.

“Spill,” Ashley demands. “Where were you this morning?”

My story is thin, bare bones, though I’m not exactly sure why I’m hiding things from her. It just seems to me that there are too many loose ends, and I know exactly how my best friend feels about my prime suspect.

“Their dog was poisoned?” Ashley’s nose wrinkles in revulsion.

“It was probably an accident.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell her what Jonathan said. Maybe I misheard him.

“Sure.” Ashley laughs dryly. “Just like it was an accident when someone hit their car in the grocery store parking lot.”

“Are you serious?”

“You didn’t know?” Ashley shoots me a sidelong glance as she slows for the corner that will take us to our favorite beach. “My dad had to file the incident report.”

Ashley’s dad is the manager of the Pantry and has a better grasp on local gossip than most. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m hesitant to share just how upset Beth was. How Jonathan seemed oddly calm about the whole affair. No, not calm. Accepting. As if he suspected what had happened long before Calvin told him. There’s simply no need to add fuel to this new development—and Ashley’s family is a bit like gasoline. The Pattersons love to talk.

“Why would someone do that?” I’m talking more to myself than to her, but Ashley answers anyway.

“It’s harmless.” She shrugs one shoulder. “The Murphys make things hard for themselves, and then people like to tease.”

“Tease?” I bristle, suddenly chilled in the blast of cold air pumping from the open vents. “Intentionally hitting their car in a parking lot is more like property damage.”

“It was a scratch.”

My anger is a sudden, solid thing, icy and unyielding. But I don’t want to fight with Ashley. Not now, not when I’ve orchestrated this outing, and the countdown to my departure has officially begun. I can feel the future tugging at me as I sit miserably in the front seat of her car. I don’t want this—any of it. Not the bickering or the dead dog or the conspiracy theories that blow around Jericho like the tumbleweeds that occasionally waft through town on sweltering August days. So I swallow my snappy retort and focus instead on the fact that the blacktop beneath our tires is chalky gray and dry.

I could say, I told you so. Not only has the storm passed right over us, it looks as if it never even rained in Munroe. This happens sometimes in our corner of the Midwest. A tornado cuts through a cornfield tearing one stalk from the ground and leaving its neighbor tall and unscathed. It pours on the south side of town, but there’s a mark on the pavement where the rain abruptly ends. Neatly drawn, impossible to miss. Life between normal and a life-changing tempest separated by a hair’s breadth.