Flying Solo(48)

“It’s 6:18,” he said. “Two minutes.” He rubbed one hand on his thigh.

“You don’t have to come in with me, you know,” she said. “I can do this myself.”

“We decided,” he said simply.

When they were seventeen, Laurie had gotten her first speeding ticket while driving her mother’s Toyota Camry home from June’s house. Convinced her parents would ground her for life or simply gaze upon her with disappointment forever, she had agonized for fully two days before she could bring herself to tell them. When she did, Nick had sat in his car in front of the house while she did it, just so she would know he was there. She got a stern but easily survived talking-to and agreed to pay the ticket herself, and then she pulled the curtain back on her bedroom window and gave him a thumbs-up, and he drove off.

Laurie listened to the birds, the occasional car going by, and the sound of her heart in her ears. “I’m nervous,” she finally told him.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, “I’m almost forty and I’ve never been part of anything scandalous, so I guess it’s about time.”

Nick looked at his phone again. “Okay,” he said. “6:20.” Just a moment later, his phone pinged, and so did Laurie’s. There was a text from Daisy addressed to the two of them and to June.

I’m ready, it said.

Farther down the street, June’s hand, easily recognizable from her bright red nail polish, emerged from the passenger-side window of a pure white Cadillac and gave a thumbs-up. The Cadillac pulled away from the curb, crept down the street, and turned in to the front lot at Sea Spray Antiques. When it was parked, the driver’s-side door opened, and a petite woman in her eighties emerged. She wore a bright blue dress and carried a purse that looked like a slice of watermelon. Her hair was an arresting shade of blue. She went up to the front door, then disappeared inside.

“Do you think this is going to work?” Laurie asked.

“Of course. You’ve heard how it goes when she starts asking questions.”

“I probably haven’t heard it as much as you have. She’s not my grandmother.”

He nodded. “Believe me, you have nothing to worry about. She’s been training for this her whole life. She’s going to eat lunch off this story for the entirety of her remaining days.”

It took about another two minutes to get the next text from Daisy. It was similar to the last one: He’s secured. Ready.

“Okay,” Laurie said. “Let’s go.” They got out of the car and shut the doors as quietly as they could. They walked a wide path around the back of the building until they found the parking lot where the rear door wasn’t quite closed, but was instead resting on a brick. Nick moved the brick Daisy had put there and opened the door, and they stepped into a small, dark passage with an employee bathroom and several stacks of dusty boxes. “Oh God,” Laurie whispered, grabbing Nick’s arm.

“What?”

She pinched her nose. She tipped her head back. Finally, she relaxed. “I thought I was going to sneeze.”

“Don’t sneeze,” he barely breathed. A closed door to their left led to the small office, where a dingy metal desk and a couple of file cabinets shared space with a mini-fridge and, for some reason, a standee of James Gandolfini.

“This fuckin’ guy,” Laurie muttered. When they got into the office, she spotted in the corner a tall and narrow door. She pointed to it and mouthed “Closet.” They crept across the office and opened the door. Fortunately, there wasn’t much inside; unfortunately, there couldn’t have been. It wasn’t more than a cubby for brooms, a tiny box that might hold a stepladder, and a mop bucket. But at the moment, it was empty except for what looked like furnace filters standing against the wall. “After you,” she whispered, and Nick stepped in. She followed behind him and closed the door. There was a square vent in the door near the bottom, but it still felt like the same air molecules had been in this closet for, conservatively, thirty years.

“It smells like wet cardboard,” Nick whispered. He was so close that she could feel his breath on her ear. If the light went on, she’d be able to see the texture of his cheek, the mole she’d forgotten about until the library, and the crinkles by his eyes that were just like the ones she had started to see in the mirror herself.

Total darkness was an unfamiliar sensation, and she instinctively reached out and felt for his arm, so she could rest her hand there. “It smells like several generations of spiders lived and died in here.”

“No no no,” he whispered back in the blackness. “Don’t say ‘spiders.’ You’ll make them come out.”

She felt him moving, then his hand was resting on her waist. She flexed her hand against his arm. One of his fingers sneaked under the bottom of her shirt and gave a reassuring scratch to the skin above her hip. It was quick. Scratch-scratch-scratch. I’m-right-here. Then they didn’t move. She could hear herself breathing. Was she breathing too loud? Did it sound like she was panting? Why did it seem like the air was whooshing in and out of her lungs? Could he hear it too? Then she twitched with surprise when his voice, more like a shaped exhale, came from just beside her ear: “It’s going to be fine.”

It got so quiet that she could hear voices coming from the store. One of them, unmistakably, was Ginger. The other was Matt. Ginger’s tone was patient, curious, friendly, unrelenting. His was practiced, polite, and under that, just a little tense. Just a little. “Okay, ready?” she whispered to Nick. He answered with a pat on her arm. She took out her phone and briefly flooded the closet with light long enough to text Daisy: We’re ready. Then she put it on Do Not Disturb.