The Night Before(6)

“My car. The one Laura took on her date.”

Joe kissed her ear and laughed. “Good for her,” he said.

Rosie pushed him away and sat up, looking back and forth between Joe and the empty driveway she could still see through the bay window.

“It’s not funny!” she said.

“So she got carried away. So what?” Joe slid his hand across her thigh. “Maybe we should get carried away.”

“Stop.” Rosie pushed his hand off and stood up. Arms folded, shoulders tense with worry, she walked across the room to the window.

“Don’t you think it’s strange how she came back after all these years? Dating on the Internet. Staying out all night…”

Joe sat up now as well, pulling the throw blanket around his bare shoulders. “She’s trying to figure things out, that’s all. Maybe it’s about time. Maybe she’s tired of running.”

Rosie considered this. Laura had left this town the second she graduated from high school. She’d never looked back. There had been “drive-bys” at the holidays. She’d sent gifts for Mason. She’d called and texted and emailed. But she’d never come to stay. When Rosie wanted to see her, she took Mason into the city and forced Laura to be part of their lives.

And now, suddenly, here she was. Wanting to change. Looking for the right kind of man. Wearing makeup and dresses. Taking advice from Rosie when she used to chastise her, calling her a girl, as if there were no insult that could sting more.

Come on! Stop being such a girl!

Christ, how she used to taunt them all into danger. Climbing trees taller than their roofline. Walking across the barely frozen pond.

Come on!

There was a nature preserve behind the houses on their street. Acres of woods, trails, and streams that had been their playground. Laura was the youngest and they had all taken to protecting her from herself, Rosie and Joe among them.

She’d eaten up the attention like a starving animal, from the neighborhood kids when she was younger, and, later, from the nuns at their Catholic school.

St. Mark’s of the Holy Trinity. It was a joke in their Protestant family. The city had decent schools through eighth grade, but they got too big and unruly after that. Private schools were expensive. So were the houses in the smaller towns nearby, the more suburban communities, because their public schools got kids into the top colleges. Parochial school was the best option for families like Rosie and Laura’s, especially after their father left.

The faculty had adored Laura. So when they caught her smoking in eighth grade, and doing other things every other year until she graduated, they would speak to her like a little lamb who was born without the instinct to herd. There’s a good reason to stay with the herd, they would tell her. Nothing less than survival itself.

If you keep leaving the herd, the wolves will come.

Laura always had the same response.

Good thing I like wolves.



* * *



Rosie looked back at Joe.

“I’m going to check her room,” she said.

“Don’t do that.” Joe was close to pleading.

“Why not?”

“Because if she did Uber home and was finally able to sleep, you’ll wake her up. She hasn’t slept well since she got here. She’s turning into a zombie.”

“But what if something happened?”

“It was just a date.”

“With some guy from the Internet.”

“That’s what people do these days. And besides that, he’s old as fuck and drives a BMW.”

Rosie sighed. “I have a bad feeling,” she said.

“You always have a bad feeling this time of year.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. It was barely September, but the distinctive smell was in the air, the changing seasons, fires burning, tugging at memories that would never find a place to settle. And once they crept from the back corners of her mind, they always played out to the end.

Cool night air. Smoke and heat blowing sideways from a fire. The branches popping, not quite dead. Not ready to burn …

“What if it’s about Laura? What if it’s a sign?”

Rosie walked back to the sofa and stood in front of him.

“Please don’t wake her up. I can’t take a sister fight at five in the morning.”

“I have to check. I’ll be quiet.”

Joe grabbed her wrist, but then let go when he felt her pull away.

There were so many things they still didn’t know about Laura’s return. She never said his name—this guy who broke her heart. They called him “Asshole.” Or, if Mason was in the room, “A-hole.” That had been Joe’s idea. Neither of them had wanted to press her for answers she wasn’t ready to give.

But there were so many pieces of her story that weren’t adding up.

For the first time in my life, I thought I had it right.

She said she’d been seeing a therapist, trying to break bad habits, change. But if she’d gotten it right, this man would not have disappeared.

The nuns at St. Mark’s had been right about her, always leaving the safety of the herd. And Laura was right about herself. She liked wolves.

But Laura was no lamb.

Rosie stopped at the top of the stairs and let the memory play on.