The Lies They Tell(13)
Tristan glanced over his shoulder. “Oh.” He made a wide turn and took them into the harbor, returning to the yacht club dock. He leaned back, waiting.
Bridges stepped onto the dock with her. “Sorry about . . . well, everything, I guess. Tonight was pretty much a fail. I’d like to try again, if you want.”
Pearl opened her mouth, not entirely sure what was going to come out. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tristan tilt his head, roll his shoulders as if working out a cramp. “Sure. Why not?”
As Bridges entered her number into his phone, Pearl felt it for the first time. Tristan’s full attention, focused squarely on her.
She grew intensely aware of her body, the awkwardness of how she stood, slightly hunched, arms folded. She straightened her spine by degrees and lifted her chin, her skin thrumming.
She wasn’t the only one who felt the scrutiny. Bridges shifted, met her eyes, took an uncertain step closer. Of course they wouldn’t kiss; it would be ridiculous. It hadn’t been a real date. But it was as if the decision had been made for them, an invisible hand moving his knight to take her, the pawn.
Bridges’s lips touched hers. Her eyes remained open, her nostrils full of his cologne, spicy and fresh. When he pulled back, he said softly, “I’ll call you.”
She turned and left without a word, blood roaring in her ears, counting each plank she put between them, counting the seconds until she reached dry land. There, she gripped a lamppost and watched the boat’s taillights disappearing across the water, heading toward a destination they hadn’t wanted her to know.
Five
DAD WAS UP, making his hangover special: scrambled eggs, black coffee. He’d been asleep on the couch when she got home—not late, before the national news started—but this time, she hadn’t woken him. Hadn’t fixed him toast and asked him to watch the Tonight Show with her. Instead, she’d slipped into her room, where the light from her tablet crept beneath the door until the wee hours.
Now she rubbed her lips, trying to erase a memory as Dad moved between fridge and stove. She looked at the scars on his hands. The burns had healed well, but the cuts from where he’d punched out the parlor window to get inside the Garrisons’ house had required almost twenty stitches, the pinkish scar tissue twining up his wrist like young roots. “Missed you coming in last night,” he said, as if partially catching the flow of her thoughts. “Good party?”
“Not bad.”
“Any puking?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Sounds like a success to me.” He fixed her a plate, squirting on lots of ketchup, the way she liked it, and she felt such a rush of guilt and affection for him that her eyes burned. Always being a relatively easy, responsible kid had earned her his trust, especially now that she was eighteen and Dad had done away with her already lax curfew for good. If he knew where she’d really gone and who’d she’d been with last night, if he knew about Tristan—she blinked rapidly, stirring her fork in her plate. She’d told him she’d gone over to Katy Scanlon’s house for one last party with her graduating class; Katy was a sort-of friend who she hadn’t spoken to since the last day of homeroom.
Dad watched her as he swallowed two Excedrin with his coffee. “I’m headed to the club. Wysocki-Tillman wedding needs one hundred and fifty folding chairs set up before eleven.”
“You guys already put up the tents?”
“Fought with those things all day yesterday. Meriwether was hanging around bitching about ‘divots in the grass.’ Dickie told her if she can think of another way to hammer in stakes to let us know.”
Pearl laughed. “I’m working the reception, thank God.” It was infinitely better to arrive after the ceremony was over; you didn’t want to be within a mile of the tents with the wedding planner, Meriwether, and the mother of the bride all swarming around, sniping at one another about floral arrangements and seating plans. Meriwether was already in a snit over preparations for the upcoming formal ball and charity auction; club members were donating antiques and passes for all-day boat tours of Frenchman Bay faster than anyone could keep up with them. Seeing Dad and a couple of other groundskeepers lugging massive carved armoires or boxes of carnival glass past the dining room windows on their way to the storage building had become a regular occurrence.
Pearl studied Dad over her juice glass. His eyes were red from the six-pack he’d killed last night, but otherwise, he seemed okay, complaining about familiar things that had always been in their lives: the tight-ass club, management breathing down his neck. An outsider would never know he’d been called into a closed-door meeting this spring with General Manager Gene Charbonneau and the board to discuss the Garrison incident, and how exactly they were supposed to continue to put their trust in him. After fifteen years with the club, Dad had been made to beg for his job. Few people would blame them. Even after the state police chief came out to say that the killings had all the earmarks of being an isolated incident, and that the murderer had almost certainly left the area, people were scared. If there was no arrest, you just didn’t know. It could happen again.
“How about we hit North Beach after supper one of these nights?” Dad said suddenly, and Pearl glanced up. “We haven’t been out there yet this year. Might be some good glass.”
“Yeah, absolutely. Anytime.” Beachcombing on North was a summer tradition for them. The currents around the cove made for some unique finds. Pearl had done some research online about rare sea glass colors; she’d found both purple and aqua on North, not to mention a scalloped white that looked like it might have come from an antique serving dish.