Sign Here(29)

“I have a daughter,” he said, “Melanie. She’s four.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn leather wallet. Lily could make out a photograph of a young girl through a hazy plastic sleeve, and she smiled appropriately.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Gavin said, snapping the wallet closed. “I like her. I only get her on the weekends nowadays, though.”

“Oh,” Lily said, and she surprised herself by putting her hand on his wrist, where it lay against the handle of the shopping cart. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You’re doing a lot of apologizing for a grocery store encounter with a stranger.”

Lily laughed. “Sorry, I—”

Then they both laughed, and she fell the-first-few-percent in love with him. It felt so much like panic that she could barely tell the difference at the time, but when he asked her six months later when she first knew, that was it. The first time she touched his skin, the first time she watched him inhale, easily, when she made him laugh.

“Listen, I don’t want to overstep, but I’m in this group at Eaglewood Presbyterian, for grief. And we’re doing a kind of memorial next weekend, for the anniversary. We do it every year. I’d love to have you there, if you’d want to come.”

Lily blinked, her eyeballs suddenly hot.

“Oh, I don’t know if that would be—”

“I won’t tell them who you are if you don’t.”

Lily had been beautiful her whole life, and therefore no one thought to care about the strength of her character. All they did was tell her to be grateful for the beauty, as if they already pitied her for who she would be—what she would have left—if she came to outlive it. So when Gavin asked for something else, she felt the starved rest of her rise, grateful for the challenge.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

Gavin reached into his pocket, furrowing his brow. Later, Lily would tease him for that concentration face of his. She would use two fingers to smooth the wrinkle between his eyebrows when he ordered room service or lost his way around construction. But in that moment, everything he did was new.

“Here’s my card,” he said, handing her a worn slip of paper. “It would mean a lot if you came.”

Lily took it warily. It had been the better part of two decades since the media had pounded at their door, but she hadn’t forgotten the feeling of being used for a story.

“Not because you’re Silas Harrison’s wife,” Gavin said, as if she spoke it. “Just because you knew Sarah.”

Lily couldn’t help but notice how much his smile looked like hers.

“It was good to see you again,” Gavin said, running a hand through his hair. “Damn, the Lily Thompson. Tenth-grade me would be freaking out right now.”

“Oh, stop; we’re all grown up.”

“Doesn’t make you any less the Lily Thompson.”

It wasn’t until she’d loaded the groceries in the back seat and strapped herself into the front, her heart still pounding, that she realized she should’ve corrected him. She was Lily Harrison now. She hadn’t been Lily Thompson in a long time.





PEYOTE





I WENT A WEEK without talking to Cal, and things started to feel the way they had before I met her. Normal. Predictable. It felt good, having her out of my life. Like removing a splinter.

Then KQ called me into her office.

“Yo, Peyo!” she hollered when I knocked on her door, as if she hadn’t just summoned me.

“What’s up, boss?”

“Come in; sit down. I have a proposition for you.”

I closed the door and pulled out the chair across from her. She was excavating her mouth with a toothpick, and some unknowable mass from between her teeth hit me on the cheek. I winced.

“I’ve noticed the work you’ve been putting in, Pey. Slow but steady wins the race, right?” She laughed, and I managed to laugh with her. “No, but seriously, you’ve got a great record here. A mostly great record. A passable record, Mr. Trip.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“It’s time you take on more responsibility.”

KQ widened her jaw, reaching for her back molars. Her tongue curled and pushed against her teeth, undulating with every flick of her wrist like a blind creature from the deepest part of the ocean. I looked away.

“That sounds good.”

“Look, I know that we are not known for our teamwork here. But the truth is, our success is judged by our whole floor. If we don’t succeed as a team, we don’t succeed at all.” She threw the toothpick at the garbage next to her desk. It landed on the floor.

“Sure,” I said.

“So I want you to be a coach. And I don’t mean Little League; I mean ice-skating. The ones who take sad little girls and starve and torture them into fucking magical ice ballerinas.”

I stared at her. I even looked behind me, as if she were talking to someone else.

“You want me to . . . teach people?” I asked when I found the office door still closed and the two of us alone.

“Well, I would rather think of it as bullying people, but sure. Whatever gets results.”

I had absolutely no interest in taking time out of my day to teach anyone how to do anything. I had one goal and one goal only: to get my fifth Harrison and complete the set. Everyone else could burn, for all I cared.