Practical Magic (Practical Magic #2)(59)

Gary Hallet stoops down toward Sally. “Are you okay?” he asks, although he knows from her letter that Sally’s the kind of woman who wouldn’t tell you right away if something was wrong. It took her nearly eighteen years before she gave her sister a piece of her mind, after all.

“I’m going to sit down,” Sally says, casually, as if she weren’t about to collapse.

Gary follows her into the kitchen, and watches as she drinks a glass of cool tap water. He’s so tall he has to duck in order to pass through the kitchen doorway, and when he sits down he has to stretch his legs straight out so his knees will fit under the table. His grandfather always said he had the makings of a worrywart, and this pronouncement has turned out to be true.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he tells Sally.

“You didn’t upset me.” Sally fans herself with her hand, and still she’s flushed. Thank goodness the girls are out of the house; she has that to be grateful for at least. If they get dragged into this, she’ll never forgive Gillian, and she’ll never forgive herself. How did they ever think they could get away with it? What idiots, what morons, what self-destructive fools. “You didn’t upset me a bit.”

It takes everything she has to keep her nerve and look at Gary. He looks right back at her, so she quickly lowers her gaze to the floor. You have to be extremely careful when you look into eyes like his. Sally drinks more water; she goes on fanning herself. In a predicament such as this, it’s best to appear normal. Sally knows that from her childhood. Don’t give anything away. Don’t let them know what you feel deep inside.

“Coffee?” Sally says. “I’ve got some that’s hot.”

“Sure,” Gary says. “Great.” He has to talk to the sister, and he knows it, but he doesn’t have to rush. Maybe the sister just took off with the car, but it’s just as likely she knows where Hawkins is, and Gary can wait to deal with that.

“You’re looking for one of Gillian’s friends?” Sally says. “Is that what you said?”

She has such a sweet voice; it’s the New England vowels she’s never quite lost, it’s the way she purses her lips after each word, as though tasting the very last syllable.

“James Hawkins.” Gary nods.

“Ah,” Sally says thoughtfully, because if she says any more she’ll scream, she’ll curse Jimmy and her sister and everyone who ever lived in or traveled through the state of Arizona.

She serves the coffee, then sits down and starts to think about how the hell she’s going to get them out of this. She’s already done the laundry for their trip to Massachusetts; she’s gassed up the car and had the oil checked. She has to get her girls out of here; she has to figure out a really good story. Something about how they bought the Oldsmobile at auction, or how they found it abandoned in a rest area, or maybe it was just left sitting in the driveway in the middle of the night.

Sally looks up, ready to start lying, and that’s when she sees that this man at her table is crying. Gary is too tall to be anything but awkward in most situations, but he’s got a graceful way of crying. He just lets it happen.

“What’s wrong?” Sally says. “What’s the matter?”

Gary shakes his head; it always takes a while before he can talk. His grandfather used to say that holding tears back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you’re left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. Gary has cried more than most men ever will. He’s done it at rodeos and in courts of law; he’s stood by the side of the road and wept at the sight of a hawk someone has shot out of the sky, before going to get a shovel from the back of his truck so he can bury the carcass. Crying in a woman’s kitchen doesn’t embarrass him; he’s seen his grandfather’s eyes fill with tears nearly every time he looked at a beautiful horse or a woman with dark hair.

Gary wipes at his eyes with one of his big hands. “It’s the coffee,” he explains.

“Is it that bad?” Sally takes a sip. It’s just her same old regular coffee that hasn’t killed anyone yet.

“Oh, no,” Gary says. “The coffee’s great.” His eyes are as dark as a crow’s feathers. He has the ability to catch someone by the way he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking. “It’s coffee in general that does this to me. I get reminded of my grandfather, who died two years ago. He sure was addicted to coffee. He had three cups before he opened his eyes in the morning.”

Something is truly wrong with Sally. She can feel a tightness inside her throat and her belly and her chest. This could well be what a heart attack feels like; for all she knows she could end up unconscious on the floor in seconds flat, her blood boiling, her brain fried.

“Will you excuse me for a minute?” Sally says. “I’ll be right back.”

She runs upstairs to Kylie’s room and switches on the light. It was nearly dawn when Gillian got home from Ben’s, where half of her belongings are now taking up most of his closet space. Since she has today off, her plan was to sleep as long as possible, go shopping for shoes, then swing by the library for a book on cell structure. Instead, the shades are being cast open and sunlight is spilling across the room in thick yellow stripes. Gillian squirms beneath the quilt; if she’s quiet enough, maybe this will all go away.