13 Little Blue Envelopes(63)

Maybe David would let her in.

She knocked. There were heavy footsteps running down the

stairs inside, stomping along the hall.

It was Fiona who threw open the door. She was even tinier and blonder than the last time, like she’d been bleached and then left in the dryer too long.

“Is Keith here?” Ginny asked, already dreading the “no” that was sure to come.

“Keith!” she shrieked, before letting the door drop closed softly and stomping her way back upstairs in her heels.

He came to the door foamy lipped, a toothbrush handle

sticking straight out of the side of his mouth. He pulled it out, swallowed hard, and wiped away the minty freshness

with the back of his hand. It was only there for a second, but Ginny was sure there was a hint of a smile just as he drew back his hand. It flickered away as he took in the sight of her—rumpled, dirty, empty-handed.

“You’re not in Scotland,” she replied.

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“The school mucked it up. We got up there only to find that we had nowhere to stay and half our performances were canceled. You look like you might need to sit down.”

He stepped back and let her inside.

Keith’s room looked like it had been hit by a freak tornado.

The crates and boards that made up his old furnishings had given way to exploded boxes full of papers, bits of scripts, piles of books with titles like The Theatre of Suffering. Keith tucked the toothbrush behind his ear and started gathering up some of the papers on the sofa, clearing a spot.

“Did you just get back from Amsterdam? Or did you end up

somewhere else?”

“I went to Denmark,” she said. It seemed like it was so long ago, but it had been two, maybe three days? It was hard to tell anymore.

“How was that?” he asked. “Rotten? And how did you get

tan there?”

“Oh.” She looked down her arms. They were tan, actually.

“Then I went to Greece.”

“Well, why not? They’re right next to each other, aren’t

they?”

She dropped onto the seat he had cleared. Nothing held this sofa up but some cheap foam, and that was so worn out that she sank almost all the way to the floor.

“What happened to you?” he said, kicking some books out

of the way to make a seat for himself on the floor. “You look like you’ve just been airlifted out of some international tragedy.”

“Someone stole my bag off the beach. This is all I have left.”

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All the energy that had propelled her for days across land and sea and air had been spent, with no result. And now she was empty, tired, with no direction left to go in. Nothing telling her where to go, and nothing keeping her from going.

“Can I just stay here for a while?” she asked. “Can I just sleep here?”

“Yeah,” he said, his face clouding over. “Sure. You all right?”

“I’ll just sleep on the floor or something,” she said.

“No. Stay there.”

Ginny lay back and pulled the pile of Keith’s Star Wars

comforter from its resting place on the back of the sofa. She closed her eyes and listened to him moving his papers around.

She could tell he was watching her.

“The letters are gone,” she said.

“Gone?”

“They were in the bag. They took the last one.”

His brow wrinkled in appreciation of this fact. Ginny

pulled the comforter over her nose. It smelled surprisingly clean and fresh. Maybe everything smelled that way when

compared to her.

“When did you get back?” he asked. “And how?”

“Pretty much just now. Richard got me a plane ticket.”

“Richard? Is that your aunt’s friend that you’ve been staying with?”

“Kind of more than that,” she said.

“Meaning?”

She shifted a bit deeper into the sofa.

“He’s my uncle.

“You didn’t say that before.”

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“I didn’t know.”

Keith sat down on the floor next to the sofa and stared at her.

“You didn’t know?” he asked.

“I just found out. They were married, but just for health insurance or something, because she was sick. But they also liked each other. It’s complicated. . . .”

“You just found out? Now?”

“Richard just told me. And then I kind of ran away.”

She tried to bury those last few words in the fabric, but he seemed to catch them.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.

It was a good question.

“Don’t,” he said, pulling the blanket down. “You have to go back there.”

“Why?”

“Look,” he said, “this guy Richard cared enough to get you a plane ticket. He married your mad aunt because she was sick.

And that is not fake. This whole thing is weird, granted, but that at least is real.”

“You don’t get it,” she said, sitting up. “She wasn’t dead before. She was just gone. I knew she was dead. They told me she was dead. But I never saw her get sick. I never saw her die.