Lock and Key(24)

The thing about negotiations, not to mention manipulation, is you can’t go too far in any direction. Refusing once is good, twice usually okay, but a third is risky. You never know when the other person will just stop playing and you end up with nothing.

I felt him glance over at me again, and I made a point of acting like I didn’t notice, couldn’t see him wavering. Come on, I thought. Come on.

“Really, it’s cool,” he said finally, as the entrance to the highway appeared over the next hill. “Just tell me where to go.”

“Man,” Nate said as he bumped up the driveway to the yellow house, avoiding holes and a sizable stack of water-logged newspapers. Up ahead, I could already see my mom’s Subaru, parked just where I’d left it, gas needle on empty, that last day Peyton had picked me up for school. “Who lives here again?”

“Just this girl I know,” I said.

As far as I was concerned, this entire endeavor would be quick and painless. Get in, get what I needed, and get out, hopefully with as little explanation as necessary. Then Nate would take me back to Cora’s, and this would all be over. Simple as that.

But then, just as we passed the bedroom window, I saw the curtain move.

It was very quick, so quick I wondered if I’d seen anything at all—just a shift of the fabric an inch to the left, then back again. The exact way it would have to for someone to peer out and yet still not be seen.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting to find here. Maybe the Honeycutts, in the midst of some project. Or the house empty, cleaned out as if we’d never been here at all. This possibility, though, had never crossed my mind.

Which was why Nate hadn’t even finished parking when I pushed open my door and got out. “Hey. Do you want—? ” I heard him call after me, but I ignored him, instead taking the steps two at time and arriving at the front door breathless, my fingers already fumbling for the key around my neck. Once I put it in the lock, the knob, familiar in my hand, turned with a soft click. And then I was in.

"Mom? ” I called out, my voice bouncing off all the hard surfaces back at me. I walked into the kitchen, where I could see the clothesline was still strung from one wall to the other, my jeans and shirts now stiff and mildewy as I pushed past them. “Hello?”

In the living room, there was a row of beer bottles on the coffee table, and the blanket we usually kept folded over one arm of the sofa was instead balled into one corner. I felt my heart jump. I would have folded it back. Wouldn’t I?

I kept moving, pushing open my bedroom door and flicking on the single bulb overhead. This did look just like I’d left it, save for my closet door being left open, I assumed by whoever packed up the clothes that had been brought to me at Poplar House. I turned, crossing back into the living room and walking over to the other bedroom door, which was shut. Then I put my hand on the knob and closed my eyes.

It wasn’t like making a wish or trying to dream something into being real. But in that moment, I tried to remember all the times I’d come home and walked to this same door, easing it open to see my mom curled up in her bed, hair spilling over the pillowcase, already reaching a hand to shield her eyes from the light behind me. This image was so clear in my mind that when I first pushed open the door, I was almost sure I did see a glimpse of red, some bit of movement, and my heart jumped into my throat, betraying in one instant all the emotions I’d denied to myself and everyone else in the last week. Then, though, just as quickly, something shifted. The objects and room itself fell into place: bed, dark walls . . . and that window, where I now remembered the bit of broken pane, half-taped up, where a breeze still could inch in, ruffling the curtain. I’d been mistaken. But even so, I stayed where I was, as if by doing so the room would, in the next moment, suddenly be anything but empty.

“Ruby? ”

Nate’s voice was low, tentative. I swallowed, thinking how stupid I was, thinking that my mom might have actually come back, when I knew full well that everything she needed she’d taken with her. “I’ll be done in a sec,” I said to him, hating how my voice was shaking.

“Are you . . . ?” He paused. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, all business. “Yeah. I just have to grab something. ”

I heard him shift his weight, taking a step, although toward me or away, I wasn’t sure, and not knowing this was enough to make me turn around. He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, the front door open behind him, turning his head slowly, taking it all in. I felt a surge of shame; I’d been so stupid to bring him here. Like I, of all people, didn’t know better than to lead a total stranger directly to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they’d be able to find their way back to it.

“This place,” Nate said, looking at the bottles on the table, a lone cobweb stretching across the room between us, “it’s, like—”

Suddenly there was a gust of wind outside, and a few leaves blew in the open door, skittering in across the kitchen floor. I felt so shaken, unsettled, that my voice was sharp as I said, “Just wait in the car. All right?”

He looked at me for a second. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure thing.” Then he stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him.

Stop it, I told myself, feeling tears pricking my eyes, so stupid. I looked around the room, trying to clear my head and concentrate on what I should take with me, but everything was blurring, and I felt a sob work its way up my throat. I put my hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking, and forced my feet to move.