The Lies About Truth(22)

“Sorry for the delay,” I said, taking the empty shotgun seat.

“It’s no problem,” Sonia said dismissively. She was busy riding Max’s ass about his shopping list.

“Mom, I didn’t make a list.”

“How do you know what you need if you don’t have a list?”

“I have a you,” he said, rolling his eyes at me in the rearview mirror.

Mom didn’t ask me about my list. Smart lady.

According to Sonia, Max’s clothes were ratty. I thought they had character; she thought they were overdue for a trip to Goodwill.

My mind didn’t make a list or worry about Max’s. It was busy as a waterwheel, turning over and over the question of whether Gray had or hadn’t put the envelopes in the mailbox. Nearly everything he’d said had been cryptic and inconclusive. But that was a product of us these days, and not necessarily related to the anonymous mailings.

When traffic on the Destin Bridge came to a standstill, I stared out the window, daydreaming. Crab Island, a shallow place in the bay where boaters liked to float and party, lay to my left. To my right, the east and west jetties stretched toward each other like two index fingers. I loved the bridge, and this view reminded me of bridge-jumping. And skinny-dipping.

And who in holy hell was sending those envelopes?

If it wasn’t Gray, it had to be Gina or Max.

Both were strong possibilities.

Gina had been trying hard to reconcile for months.

Max was a quiet fixer.

Either of them, if they’d found some way to access Big’s belly, were inventive enough to have done this. Max was in El Salvador when I got the first letter, so that put Gina higher on my list, but . . . I’d written all of the thoughts before he left, and his dad was home the day I got the first letter. One walk to the mailbox across the street and George McCall could have put an envelope in there for Max. Easy-peasy. He’d even said at dinner that Max had wanted to surprise me. They’d winked at their secrets.

Whether it was Gina, Gray, or Max, there was no point in spending the day frustrated. Shopping was bad enough. The needle in my brain scratched obediently to the next track, and my eyes drifted toward the spot on the bridge where Gray and I had held hands, said a prayer we wouldn’t die, and jumped.

Forty feet.

We kept our hands together until just before we hit the water, and then we slapped them to our sides, staying as pencil-straight as we could.

He yelled like a happy hooligan. I watched the surface rush up on us. We fell forever.

We remembered to do what the soldier told us. “Blow bubbles,” he’d said. “’Cause once you hit the water, up isn’t up anymore. Down is up, sideways is up, anything is up. The water will lie to you. Let out a few bubbles and follow the bubbles; you’ll reach the top.”

I frogged to the surface ahead of Gray, drawing air as if I’d never tasted it before. He broke through beside me, slung back his hair, and said, “Damn, that took my breath away.”

Gray did other things that night that took my breath away.

“Sadie?”

Mom’s voice lured me away from the memory.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t ‘yeah.’ Just tell me. Would you like to do that?”

“Ma’am?” I realized she’d been talking to me for a while, and I hadn’t heard any of it.

Her thumbs danced on the steering wheel; she pinched her lips a few times before she spoke. “Would you like to have Maria cut you some bangs?”

“What?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t suggest it sooner. It might make you feel less”—she lowered her voice as if I might not want her to speak the words in front of Max and Sonia—“self-conscious.”

I widened my eyes and attempted a joke. “Are bangs the new black or something?”

“Max.” Mom sounded downright exasperated. “Please tell her it will be fine.”

“Mom, don’t drag him into this. If it were fine, you wouldn’t be suggesting bangs.”

“Oh, shush.”

We whipped into Maria’s studio, and I got bangs. Just like that. Sonia made Max get a cut, maintaining that he also needed a new style. She was pretty emphatic that he wouldn’t be doing his own hair with kiddie scissors anymore.

Our moms and their damn style.

Post-cuts, Max and I took a walk of solidarity down the bathroom hallway. Partly to brush the hair from our clothes. Partly to bitch.

“Dammit, don’t I look like prepubescent Joker?” I mocked, widening my smile with my index fingers as I exited the bathroom.

“You look classy—Audrey Hepburn–ish,” Max said. “I’m the one who got weed-whacked.”

“Audrey is a goddess. And had dark hair.” Rather than continue that complaint, I reached up and stroked his hair—what was left of it—forward. “Sorry. I’m sure it was a sympathy cut.”

“Nope. That woman has plans to renovate me. Just you wait. She’s about to put me in Vineyard Vines and Sperrys when all I want are T-shirts and cutoffs. I already have those.”

“You sound like Trent.”

“Trent loved surfer clothes.” He palmed his head and laughed. “I should’ve had Maria bleach my hair blond.”

“He had the best hair,” I said.